Part 17

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The doctors are now admonishing the women that if they keep on with the present style of tight-fitting hats and headbands nothing can save them from baldness. Women have been listening to this kind of prophecy for several generations and yet have kept their hair on; but when they look about they observe that nearly all the men are baldheaded.

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Representatives of nearly all the organizations of women in Chicago are demanding that places shall be given to women on the boards of education, of parks and of libraries. How can they do it when they see how splendidly all matters connected with the municipality are managed by men? Women don’t seem to be showing that old-time admiration and trust which used to be their greatest charm.

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The Simple Life and Open Air Exposition in London is exhibiting the Fully Furnished Man, who carries on his person all the necessities of life except food. That is nothing to be proud of. All the other animals have done this ever since they ceased to belong to the vegetable kingdom. The only difficulty will be to keep this new kind of man out of civilized society.

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Why try to get acquainted with the people on Mars, when we have so little time to give to those we know on earth?

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It is charged that 46,000 men have deserted from the regular army during the last ten years. Should women who are willing to fight but can’t be disfranchised on that account, while men who can fight but won’t are freely granted the vote?

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One of the Western railroads has placed a woman in charge of its dining car and the customary howl at women’s usurping the work of men is now in order. To be sure having charge of a dining-room has always been considered a woman’s business but that was only when there was no salary attached.

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“We must abolish everything that bears even the semblance of privilege,” is the Wilson slogan. Thanks, Mr. President. Will you kindly get yourself into a state of mind where you can see that the possession of the suffrage by only one-half the people is about the most iniquitous privilege that could exist?

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Mrs. Dodge, president of the Anti-Suffrage Association, wants to go into the fight against suffrage in the next presidential campaign with 500,000 women at her back. All right; she will need every one of them. But what is to become of the half-million families while the wives and mothers are marching on to victory behind Mrs. Dodge?

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“Bustles” for women are to be the fashion this spring. Thanks for the prospect of even that much relief to the helpless onlookers.

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Mr. Croker’s Indian bride says she cannot be a “squaw” until she is a mother. Oh, yes; first a squall then a squaw.

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“The pay here,” said Mayor Curley, of Boston, in dismissing all the women in his office, “is quite sufficient to maintain a man.” Then how on earth did women ever happen to get the jobs?

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“Behind the skirts of suffragism,” says an official statement of the “antis,” “Mormonism goes to the polls, socialism marches red and rampant on the streets, and feminism stalks and swaggers in our homes.” The old-fashioned thing—to wear skirts so wide as all that!

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The Alimony Club of divorced husbands in New York are howling loud and long because the court has ruled that they must continue the payment of alimony even though they are kept in prison and can’t earn a dollar. Another crowd who are out of jail are rending the air because they have to pay alimony just the same after their former spouses have wedded again. The fair divorcees answer that since only men are considered competent to make the laws or even to elect the lawmakers, they have no right to kick against the results. Its awful the little respect women show nowadays for the superior wisdom of men!

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It is rather late in the day to warn women against being “jostled at the polls.” That is about the only place where they would not get jostled.