Anti-Suffrage Essays

Chapter 116).

To establish a standard for cream (Acts 1907, chapter 217).

To establish the standard of milk (Acts 1908, chapter 643).

To provide for the proper marking of heated milk (Acts 1908, chapter 570).

Relative to licensing dealers in milk (Acts 1909, chapter 443).

To provide for the appointment of inspectors and collectors of milk by Boards of Health (Acts 1909, chapter 405).

Relative to the liability of producers of milk (Acts 1910, chapter 641).

To provide for the inspection and regulation of places where neat cattle, their ruminants or swine are kept (Acts 1911, chapter 381).

To authorize the incorporation of medical milk commissions (Acts 1911,

Chapter 506).

Relative to the establishing of milk distributing stations in cities and certain towns (Acts 1911, chapter 278).

Relative to the labelling of evaporated, concentrated, or condensed milk (Acts 1911, chapter 610).

To regulate the use of utensils for testing the composition or value of milk and cream (Acts 1912, chapter 218).

To safeguard the public health against unclean milk containers and appliances used in the treatment and mixing of milk (Acts 1913, chapter 761). Relative to the production and sale of milk (Acts 1914, chapter 744).

To prohibit charges for the inspection of live stock, dairies, or farm buildings (Acts 1915, chapter 109).

The State is divided into eight health districts, with an inspector for each in the State employ. Each city has its board of health; each town administers the laws through its selectmen. The City of Lynn has a board of health; also health inspectors, who do much of their work before we are up--from 2 to 5 o'clock. They inspect all the milk stations; take samples from milk wagons; inspect dairies that sell milk in Lynn, wherever those dairies may be, even out of the State--as, for instance, the Turner Centre Creamery in Maine. All that doesn't look as if the milk situation was being neglected.

Massachusetts is doing a great deal for the children. There are over 5,800 wards in the care of the State Minor Wards Department. I do not need to tell you what a great work is being done for the care and education of these little ones; it speaks for itself.

Our opponents do not say much about the work women are doing on State Boards. There are plenty of positions already held by women who are doing inconspicuous and unexciting work, yet, nevertheless, most useful to the Commonwealth. Here are some of them, with the number of women on each board:

The State Board of Health, Lunacy and Charity was organized in 1879, with 2 women on the board.

The work is now divided among different departments.

The State Board of Education had 1 woman member as far back as 1880; it now has 2.

The State Board of Charity has 2.

The Free Public Library Commission has 2.

The Commission for the Blind has 2.

The Homestead Commission has 1.

The Minimum Wage Commission has 1.

The Board of Registration of Nurses has 3.

The Prison Commission has 2, who also serve on the Board of Parole for the Reformatory for Women.

The Board of Trustees of the State Infirmary and State Farm has 2.

The Board of Trustees of the Hospitals for Consumptives has 1.

The State Hospitals at Worcester, Taunton, Northampton, Danvers, Westboro, Medfield, Monson, Boston, Foxboro, have 2 each.

The Gardner State Colony has 2.

The Wrentham State School has 2.

The Massachusetts Training School Trustees has 2.

The Massachusetts General Hospital has 1.

The Perkins Institution for the Blind has 1.

The Hospital Cottages for Children has 1.

Here are forty-five women doing voluntary work on these Boards, all appointed by the Governor and working under laws passed by the men in the Legislature.

Take another line. The manual of the labor laws enforced by the State Board of Labor and Industries, covers the enforcement of the laws relative to the education of minors, employment of minors, hours of labor, apprenticeship, hours of labor for women, health inspection, lighting, ventilation, cleanliness, guarding against dangerous machinery, work in tenement houses, etc.

The little book entitled "Woman Suffrage, History, Arguments, Results," tells all about the suffrage states and gives the good laws that have been enacted since women voted. It gives the impression that none such are passed in male suffrage States. It has just two words about Massachusetts; under the heading of "School Suffrage," it says, "Massachusetts--1879." Under California, however, it gives a list of the following laws and institutions:

Mothers' Pensions. Minimum Wage. Juvenile Court. State Training School for Girls. Teachers' Pension. Weights and Measures. Civil Service. State Housing Commission. Milk Inspection. Tuberculosis. Workingmen's Compensation Psychopathic Parole.

But it carefully omits to mention that Massachusetts has all of these, that some of them are much broader in scope, and that many are of longer years standing.

You go into the Western States, and you find that legislation is conducted on a different basis from what it is in Massachusetts. Altogether too frequently, bills are pigeon-holed; the bills can't be reported out of committee unless the chairman consents; and the result is that many bills never see the light. Here in Massachusetts law-making is better managed. The number of bills presented is large; 3,459 were printed during the session of 1914, and 2,802 were printed during the last session. Some of these were offered by women. A woman, as well as a man, can petition the Legislature. Every bill is referred to a committee; it is given a public hearing, is reported upon and action taken, one way or another; not one bill is pigeon-holed. The Massachusetts system of legislative procedure is not surpassed anywhere in the United States, and there are competent boards and officers who carry out the various laws. Many of the things the suffragists agitate about and think they need the franchise to bring to pass, they would find are already being administered at the present time if they would only look into the facts.

HOW MASSACHUSETTS FOSTERS PUBLIC WELFARE

MONICA FOLEY

Miss Monica Foley, was educated in the Boston schools, graduating from the Boston Academy of Notre Dame; is a member of the Massachusetts Bar and Secretary of the Massachusetts Association of Women Lawyers. She is a director of the Notre Dame Alumni Association of Boston, and is connected with the State Commission on Economy and Efficiency. J. A. H.

In the suffrage campaign just closed so much was heard of the greatness of some of our states, including Utah and Nevada, Colorado and Wyoming, that one was tempted to inquire, "Is there no good now in Massachusetts?" It seemed passing strange that our Commonwealth, which had always been the leader in every great turning point of the policy of the nation, should have so signally failed that it ceased to exist as a model to be extolled; it was stranger still that her worthy record was ignored by her own sons and daughters. And yet the facts are that while we may hold high in memory the examples of those who have gone before us, we may also rejoice that the men of our own time not only uphold the best ideals and lofty purposes of our State, but are day by day working out her problems in such a way that her position is still secure as a pioneer in sane legislation, her laws are still models for all states (particularly woman suffrage states) her name is still cherished in the wildernesses where her sons are pioneers, still venerated on her own soil where her people stand at the gateways and welcome the oppressed.

Proud as we are of her traditions, glorying as we do in her present achievements, we are unafraid that the future will see her fall from her eminence, from the dignity which has always characterized her statehood and made her name a synonym for the best in government in the nation, our Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

While this paper deals almost wholly with the executive functions of the state, to make no mention of our judiciary would be to omit reference to one of the brightest pages of our history. Massachusetts law and Massachusetts judiciary decisions have always been and are now quoted and respected in the greatest courts of the country. This splendid system is being maintained at an annual cost exceeding $600,000.

Hand in hand with the establishment of a great judiciary system, Massachusetts has devoted herself to the highest ideals of human charity, and her enormous expenditures show that selfish materialism plays no part in her legislation. Year by year the calls for charity are more insistent, and year by year the State responds more generously. The State Board of Charity was first organized in 1863, and at the present time is an unpaid board of nine members, two of whom are women. The institutions under their supervision are governed by unpaid boards of seven members, two of whom are women, this latter being provided by law, except in the instance noted below. The institutions under the supervision of the board are the State Infirmary for the sick poor at Tewksbury, and the State Farm at Bridgewater for misdemeanants and insane criminals, both opened in 1854 and costing the state nearly $1,000,000 annually. The training schools for delinquent children are the Lyman School for Boys at Westborough (1848) and the Industrial School for Boys at Shirley (1909) and for Girls at Lancaster (1856) costing over $300,000 annually. The hospitals for consumptives are located at Rutland (1898), North Reading (1909), Lakeville and Westfield, both the latter being opened in 1910. Upon these suffering poor the State spends over a half million dollars each year. The Norfolk State Hospital at Walpole was opened in 1911 for inebriates and drug habitues. There are no women on this board of trustees, there being no women inmates of the hospital. There has also been located at Canton since 1907 a Hospital School for crippled children. A hospital for lepers has been maintained at Penikese Island since 1905.

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