Life — March 9, 1911 — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

a EAIRESES: Pziscilla Swings With Her Right HAT fool woman, Mrs, Martha McCul- loch-Williams, has broken loose again. 1 am sorry I cannot reprint the whole of a letter which she wrote to that deluded newspaper, the New York Sun, and which that organ of the Antis printed in its issue of February 22d. She says, for instance: I hold and can prove beyond contravention that no woman has ever done one really great thing save and except to be the mother of a great or a good man. How silly. Has this per- son ever been invited to take tea with Mrs, O. H, P. Bel- mont? Has she ever seen Mrs. Blatch in action? Has she ever scen that pretty girl, Miss Inez Milholland, sacrificing her maidenly modesty to advance the Cause? Surely this person who é writes flub-dub letters for print doesn’t know real, womanly greatness when she sces it. If she wants an answer to that argument ali sne needs to do is to get on any crowded street-car in New York City. She will sce that if any woman carrying a baby, or any woman with the gray hairs that come with age, gets aboard, some man will get up and give her his seat. Let a Suffragette crowd her way in and no matter how gorgeously she is gowned, no matter how big her hat nor how much her hat- pins stick out, no matter how mannishly she is togged out or how assertive her manner, not a man will budge to make room for her. There’s the real secret. Men not know womanly great- ness when they see it. I've ridden all the way from the Bat- tery to Harlem with a number of our peerless leaders and not a single man has had the sense to sce that we were the great women of our period. Neither this McCulloch-Williams per- son nor the men know a really great woman when they see one, ERE’S another contradiction of what this woman says. In her letter she asks: “‘ When women cease from being womanly, what man will care to shelter and cherish them?” All I have to say in reply to this is that the other evening one of the prettiest girls we have induced to join the Cause was actually proposed to by’ one of our very nicest gentleman- Suffragettes. ROM a member of a German Suf- fragette club comes the information that “ Since the German Govern- ment does not pay the least at- tention to the colossal surplus of German girls and, as the high price of meat makes it in- creasingly difficult for respectable girls to get married, the girls of our circle have decided to become British subjects, emigrate to Canada and gratify the aspirations of Canadian bachelors.” Which simply goes to show that if there were Votes for Women in Germany laws would be enacted lowering the price of meat and these poor girls would not be reduced to the awful alternative of emigrating for the purpose of marrying Canadians. HERE has lately been a reck- - oning in the theatres con- 3 trolled by Mr. Charles Frohman, which shows that seventy per cent. of the persons who patron- ize the kind of shows he presents are women, From this it would seem that women really control the Frohman theatres. This has long been suspected, but it is no reason for the usually sane New York World to ask editorially Is it because of the women that America has no national drama or anything approaching a literary drama?” and go on further and say: In all lands where the stage has been great and possessed a distinctive nationality it has been a man's stage. It is only with us that it has become femi- nized. American women, though they may not_pos- sess the ballot, have long enjoyed equal suffrage rights with men in all matters of art, literature and the drama, and with a result that raises an interest- ing question as to their fitness for the political fran- chise. I would have you understand, Mr. Man-Editor of the World, that even if we women do support the bad art of Mr. Frohman's theatres, it is not Suffragettes who keep alive the chorus-girl shows that infest Broadway. If the men prefer that sort of entertainment to hearing our peerless leaders talk about Votes for Women on the street corners, women must not be blamed for the decline of the drama in America. And what is the drama in comparison with our Cause? AM in receipt of a letter written on the stationery of a well-known Fifth Avenue club. The writer is, of course, a man, and here is what he says: __ Dear Miss Jawnoxes.—Am I to understand that if women get the vote, you are going to pick out such women as now are conspicuous in your movement to be your political representatives? I know lots of women whom I respect for their intelligence and rea- sonable way of looking at public questions. I con- sider them in every way, except physically, the equals of many men voters, and the superiors of the great majority of those who now enjoy the suffrage. But I never see them conspicuous among the women who most frequently are mentioned in the public prints as prominent in your agitation. In fact they are rather opposed to you and your kind. Will you please en- lighten me? Yours very respectfully, Of course our peerless leaders, whose names you most often sec in the papers, would be our candidates for office. Those ladies are the finest specimens of our sex. It is true they lack all the usual feminine attributes, but they are goo! examples of the kind of women who would be our political leaders if we had the vote. They know how to manage other women. Could you ask for any better qualification for politi- cal leadership when women get the ballot? Priscitta Jawsones. comicbooks.com