Part 16

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“Oh, suffragists, do you know that if you succeed the future men will be one-sided mongrels in nature and education, having had two fathers and no mother?” (Anti-suffrage document.) Good gracious! Just to think they’ve got ‘em like that in those Western States, and the rest of the country doesn’t even know it!

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When the women of a certain church in Brooklyn ask for a voice in its affairs they are told that St. Paul commanded women to keep silent in the churches; but when they take up the calendar Sunday morning they find a request from the deacons to take off their hats. They are now insisting that Paul and the deacons come to an understanding.

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Leaders of the anti-suffragists insist that women shall not be enfranchised against their protest, but when all the big organizations of women in the country are asking for it, who is making the protest? What is the matter with that ninety per cent. the antis claim to represent that they can’t speak up? Ninety per cent. can make a great deal more noise than ten.

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President Wilson said the last session of Congress accomplished so much simply by “sawing wood.” He was careful not to add, “and saying nothing.”

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John Redmond and his followers want home rule for Ireland but they don’t intend that those who rule the home shall have any part in it.

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The entire State of Kansas is quarantined because of the foot-and-mouth disease. This is the strongest argument against woman suffrage that the “antis” have been able to find for a long time.

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“Persons who try to stop the woman suffrage movement,” said a Chicago elections commissioner, “are in the position of a man throwing himself in front of a locomotive.” Well, they always expect that the bosses who run the political machines will apply the brake.

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The latest government report from New Zealand, where women have voted twenty-one years, shows that, while the population has doubled in thirty years, the number of men in prison has increased only from 631 to 853, and the number of women prisoners has decreased from 94 to 64. It seems from these figures that woman suffrage in New Zealand did not double the criminal vote and did not produce a reign of anarchy and crime. Perhaps it is only in the United States and in those of the States where it has never been tried that it will have this effect. Still the “antis” should bolster up their charge with a statistic or two.

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The Keith and Proctor circuits forbid any burlesquing of the suffragists. That’s right, and the anti-suffragists give their own continuous vaudeville performances.

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One little woman in the big Woolworth Building in New York manages the electrical apparatus for running twenty-eight elevators—and yet some people think a woman hasn’t nerve enough to drop a ballot in a box.

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Gertrude Atherton says, “Women politicians will be just like men politicians—no better, no worse.” We knew, of course, that they couldn’t be any—well, we had hoped they might prove to be a little better.

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“Young women,” said Representative Bowdle, of Cincinnati, in the suffrage debate, “will beware of this movement, which positively destroys all feminine charm and deters young men from marriage.” (Loud applause by the sixty-seven married members from the twelve States where women vote.)

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Before and after taking was strikingly illustrated by the Missouri Legislature in its action on the woman-suffrage amendment. The senate adjourned to the assembly chamber to hear the women present their case. The committee reported unanimously in favor. Both houses adopted the report by large majorities. Then St. Louis suddenly got busy and the Legislature rescinded its action! It heard its master’s voice!

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By a new law voters in Nebraska can send their ballots through the mail when necessary. This answers the question, Who will care for the baby when mother votes? Mother will and Uncle Sam will deposit her ballot. Anti-suffs knocked out again!