Life — November 28, 1912 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

NOVEMBER 2%, 1912 “While there is Life there's Hope’ Published by LIFE PU 17 West Thir: J. AL Mivcwmnt. Pre English Offices, Cannon House, Breams Bidgs., Londo NE of the novelties in political news since election has been the pres- sure from the j suffrage States for high office for women. All the papers printed the telegram (November 9) of Mrs. Shortridge Foltz from Los Angeles to President-elect Wilson, urging him to consider, in making up his cabinet, the women of the suffrage States, and ad- vising him that “a wise scholarly woman” in the cabinet would “ bring great assistance for the universal good of the people.” Four days later at the meeting of the Why Club in Denver, to celebrate the extension of the suffrage to four more States, Mrs. Bradford, the newly clect- ed State Superintendent of Instruction for Colorado, pointed out that women now had votes enough to claim a place in the cabinet, and the club agreed to plan at its next meeting a “nation- wide movement” to open the cabinet doors to ladies. Of course, that’s all in the day's work, and more coming. Governor Wilson has not as yet nailed the suf- frage banner to any of his masts, and will hardly feel constrained to be the pioneer in adding women to his polit- ical family. But if Mr. Roosevelt had been elected there would have been un- deniable logic in these suggestions. He might not have assented to them by appointing—say, Mrs. Belmont to be Secretary of War, but when Brother Debs gets in he may actually do it. None of the reluctances based on long standing habit of mind which might LISHING COMPANY A. MILLER, Sec'y and Treas. st Street, New York E.C. affect Theodore would carry any con- siderable weight with Eugene. And very likely Mrs. Belmont would make a pretty good Secretary of War. She is efficient and used to affairs, and versed in commanding men, and she would doubtless keep an excellent house and a good cook, and con- tribute effectively to the social side of any administration that enlisted her. We recommend the suffragists to make their demands more definite and par- ticular and concentrate on the proposi- tion of Mrs. Belmont for Secretary of War. Certainly the place to take this bull is by the horns. He will never wait for the ladies to embellish him with a nose ring. HAT became of the factory vote and the workingman vote that was all going to Roosevelt? Some of it went for him. And some te Taft, a good deal to Wilson, and some to Debs. We seem to have no large group of voters who vote as a group. Union labor doesn’t; the Roman Catholics don’t, the women don’t, nor the farm- ers, nor the manufacturers. It was pointed out in the late campaign that while Mr. Perkins of the Harvester Trust was working overtime and dis- bursing faithfully for Roosevelt, Mr. McCormick, president of the same cor- poration, was laboring and disbursing faithfully for Wilson. The voters do not seem to study their own per- sonal interests very closely in voting. They vote a great deal from con- siderations of sentiment, and are a good deal moved by what blood happens to be in them, and there are thousands who are quite capable of voting against what they conceive to be their personal interests, either because they like the other candidate better or because they think he repre- sents what is better for the country. In the greater crises, of course, the good of the country becomes a mov- ing consideration with great numbers of men who see their duty and do it. Women, especially, are not going to vote as women. For one woman's vote a President would get by appointing a woman to his cabinet he would be quite likely to lose three votes of women who don’t want a woman in the cab- inet. The mass of women are not keen for suffrage. They are loath to take the field against it, because that is a lot of trouble and makes them con- spicuous. But if the suffrage is handed to them they are quite as likely to use it to confound the suffragists as to promote them. That can be done privately. F the war in Turkey was where it could more conveniently engage the talents of our newspaper reporters, it would undoubtedly make as good read- ing as the Becker trial, the testimonies of the gunmen and McManigal’s de- tailed narration of the exploits of the union dynamiters. But the most we hear about the war is merely what happened, and not much of that. An educated soldier who has studied war can trace the plans of the campaign against Constantinople, but the mass of readers do not know much more than that the Balkan allies went in with a rush and fought like wild-cats, and that Turkey went down in a heap. When it comes to details there is more in the New York papers about the row over the Board of Education than about that war. At this writing almost everything comicbooweee