Life — October 16, 1913 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

662 Fal lel A A Declaration By THE WoMEN oF THE Unitep STATES OF AMERICA. (With no apologies to Thomas Jefferson.) By Anna Nixon. HEN, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for women to dissolve the tyrannical bands which connect them with a barbarous state of so- ciety long past, and to assume the separate and equal station to Which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that men and women are created equal, that both are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that any form of government which denies women these rights should in justice be altered or abolished. All experience has shown that women are more dis- posed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are ac- customed. But a long train of usurpations constrains us to throw off such government and provide new guards for our future security. To provide this, let facts be sub- mitted to a candid world: Men have’ compelled our obedience to laws which we have had no voice in making. They have imposed taxes on us without our consent, and “taxation without representa- tion is tyranny.” They have excited domestic insurrection among us: they have humiliated us by investing the negro and certain degraded and illiterate whites with the right of suffrage which they deny only to'the criminal, and insane— to wo- men and children. > 4 They have denied us the control of property; they have denied mothers the possession and control of children. They have sold our children into the slavery of factory and sweat shop; they have driven ‘our sisters into white slavery by denying them a living wage. Nor have we been wanting in attention to men. We have cooked their meals, mended their clothes, cared for them in sickness, and kept their homes; we have been faithful to them in adversity; we have admired them and have praised them whether they deserved it or not. © Neither have we been entirely dependent upon men; when necessary we have gone out into the world and earned a living for ourselves and for those dependent upon us. We have petitioned for redress and have been ignored or ridiculed. We have appealed to men’s native justice and magnanimity ; we have conjured them by ties of com- mon kindred to disavow their usurpations. They have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity; when our sisters across the sea resorted to militant methods to secure their just rights they were cast into prison. We must therefore acquiesce in the necessity which demands our emancipation, hold men enemies in war—in peace, friends, THE OBVIOUS THING Columbia: oH, THANK YOU SO MUCH, UNCLE SAM. I NEVER DOUBTED YOUR GENTLEMANLY INSTINCTS. We therefore publish and declare that women are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent Citizens, and that, as Free and Independent Citizens, they have full power to vote. And for support of this declaration we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. After Women Obtained the Vote N a registration booth in San Francisco an old colored woman had just finished registering for the first time. “Am you shore,” she asked the clerk, “dat Ise done all has to do?” “ Quite sure,” replied the clerk, “ you see it's very simple. “T'd ought to knowed it,” said the old woman. “If those fool men folks been doing it all dese years, I might a knowed it was a powerful simple process.” M tired,” declared Womanhood, in effect, “ of being a better half by courtesy and a submerged tenth in point of fact!” comichooks.