Part 10

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The manager of a large school for the athletic training of girls says he has a number of pupils who can “heave a weight one hundred and eighty feet.” It almost seems that if women can do that they ought to have the physical strength to heave a ballot into a box.

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The anti-suffrage ladies mourned over the women’s peace parade because it showed such a “thirst for publicity.” Yes; those timid, shrinking creatures themselves wouldn’t do a thing except parade up and down the streets wearing a big American Beauty rose to attract attention to their being “antis;” open headquarters in conspicuous places, call mass meetings and orate from the platform, besiege Congress and Legislatures, attend political conventions and go before the committees and send their representatives all over the country to conduct a publicity campaign against the suffragists. Oh, yes, they’re “shrinking” all right—getting smaller every day.

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“If women go into politics, who will do their work?” wail the “antis.” The men can do it, as they’ve already taken most of it away from the home.

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How could anybody wish the poor congressmen a Happy New Year when they had to begin it by voting on woman suffrage?

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The churches and the social-uplift societies seem to have almost as much trouble in stopping the tango as the government does in putting an end to the snake dances among the Indians.

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That new woman fire inspector in New York reported in one week thirty-seven violations of the law. The next thing she knows she will lose her job.

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A hen at the Agricultural College of Oregon has laid 283 eggs this year, while the roosters stood around and crowed; and a cow in Michigan has given 18,733 pounds of milk, while the—but why specialize in order to prove the superior value of “the female of the species?”

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Miss Julia Lathrop, head of the National Children’s Bureau, says, “The anti-suffragists are like the hypnotized chickens which balk at a chalk line when there is nothing beyond.” Yes, and after the ballot is actually given to women they are just like chickens when some corn is dropped the other side of the chalk line.

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French annuity companies have discovered that women live twenty years longer than men, and now they propose to give women a choice of dying young or having their premiums raised.

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“If my mother-in-law comes to heaven, I’ll leave,” wrote a New Orleans man, just before he committed suicide. Doubtless she will speed the parting guest.

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It is too bad that members of the European nobility cannot come over here to hunt grizzly bears without being accused of seeking a rich wife, but perhaps it is because their graces and lordships have so long considered American heiresses as game.

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Chicago women say that when they had to go to the City Hall before they got the ballot the officials there were polite but now they are cordial. In other words women without a vote are tolerated; with it, they are welcomed. Unfortunately many women don’t know the difference.

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Morrison I. Swift, lecturing on the “Humanist Forum,” whatever that may be, says, “Women are amazingly incompetent to bring up children, have no special aptitude for it and it is doubtful whether they have any real liking for it.” So? Well, perhaps men had better try their hand at it for a while; but any woman who ever left father in charge for a few hours and remembers the general chaos she found on her return has her doubts as to man’s aptitude along this line.

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“Woman’s closer relation to the machinery of government is inexpedient,” says the chairman of the New York anti-suffrage press committee. Well, if she takes out an accident policy she might run the risk of watching to see that it doesn’t slip so many cogs.