Part 18

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Paris is tired of the tango. Public opinion caused it to be danced too respectably. It may hold on awhile in the United States, we can stand a considerable amount of respectability, but not too much when it becomes unfashionable.

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No, Ethelyn, Lu Lu Temple is not the name of a woman suffrage headquarters. It is the rendezvous of an ancient and honorable body of men in Philadelphia, where they think women are too frivolous to vote.

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Arkansas has now been added to the list of “dry” States by action of its Legislature and Wisconsin requires a health certificate from would-be bridegrooms. No woman suffrage in either State. Really the men are getting so good nowadays there will be nobody for women to reform when they obtain the ballot.

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The superintendent of public schools in Cincinnati will start “a six months’ course of study for prospective brides,” and besides all the usual housekeeping stunts they will be taught to calk a water pipe, put up shelves, mend door knobs, etc. If he isn’t careful he will create a prospect that will scare all the girls away from matrimony. Women can be so many things nowadays besides carpenters and plumbers.

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The New York Tribune says, “Another ten years and the clinging vine will be only a moist and tender memory.” What a fortunate thing for the oak!

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The sphygmograph is the invention of a woman doctor and the person who wears it cannot tell a lie, even to his wife. Something of this sort was bound to happen when women were permitted to enter the medical profession.

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“Feminism is the process of putting father out of business,” is a specimen anti-suffrage epigram. If feminism means that able-bodied young women shall earn their own living, perhaps father will have a chance to get something ahead for his old age.

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The Reno Gazette in its fight against the suffrage amendment said that when a straw vote of the women was taken in 1895 in Massachusetts, they declared against enfranchisement 38 to 1. Suppose they did—what has that to do with the women of Nevada in 1914? The fact is, however, that the women voted in favor of it 25 to 1. Next!

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And so the anti-suffrage ladies are going into the thick of the congressional fray to help elect the men who will promise not to give them a vote! It is now in order for them to get up a street parade and then the suffragists won’t have a thing on them—they will have done everything they were afraid they might have to do if enfranchised and they haven’t got the ballot as a compensation for doing it. The joke is on them.

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The ancient question, “Could women voters work out their road tax?” has been answered by two in Iowa. They did worse, for they won two out of three prizes offered by the county for work on highways. It was all right for them to do the work but very wrong for them to win the prizes.

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“Women never could serve on the police force,” an anti-suffragist rushes into print to declare. “Could frail woman withstand, year in and year out, the severe climatic changes constantly occurring?” Well, several million of her do, as they start out each morning to earn their daily bread.

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The “antis” are dreadfully vexed at the suffragists because of their reported attempts to convert the women public-school teachers, the women in the government departments, the women wage-earners and women in divers other capacities. Putting it mildly they are like the schoolboy who wrote, “To sum up Daniel Webster’s character—it is one which I do not approve!”

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Some awful things are promised in the season’s styles for man. They are to be more expensive, which will require him to owe his tailor more than ever. Evening trousers are to be very loose so that he can perpetrate the tango and turkey trot without accident. For the rest of the day the clothes are to be very tight so as to show the natural form, and this is where the public will start a suffragette movement.

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Do not criticise Mr. Bryan because he said nothing new in regard to woman suffrage. Everything that could be said was said long ago but until recently the political ears were very deaf and very long.