Part 21

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First fruits of woman suffrage! A San Francisco wife has just been granted a divorce because her husband talked too much!

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Dr. Mary Walker advises girls to put on trousers. They might not be so pretty but they would certainly be more modest than those things women are now wearing.

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The scientific world is highly excited over the report of the birth of an atom. Its chief interest to women is the effect it will have on their getting the suffrage, as the public insists on connecting this in some way with the birth rate.

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The Buffalo Express, commenting on the public schools teaching boys to sew, says: “Quite necessary! For how will the women of the future get their gowns, if men do not learn to sew?” They can get them just as they do now—from the male dressmakers who got onto the woman’s job as soon as there was any money in it.

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Women have a good deal to learn about politics. There was the woman candidate for mayor of San Diego, who announced that her first act if elected would be to put through an ordinance taxing bachelors. Naturally the bachelors all voted against her; the benedicts did the same because they didn’t want the bachelors to feel that there was such an easy escape from marriage, and the women turned her down because they thought she was quite capable of levying a tax on spinsters.

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The public has borne with some fortitude the close-fitting garb of women—it has had its compensations; but now that the National Association of Clothing Designers has decreed that men’s clothes also must be tight fitting—well, if the police fail to do their duty the common people must rise up.

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The Supreme Court of Illinois has decided that the women of that State may vote for President but not for county commissioners. If they had a choice, they would much prefer to vote for the commissioners, whose work comes a great deal nearer home to them; but the party “bosses” would rather trust them to vote for President as there is no local graft in that office.

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The national anti-suffrage president says, “The extent to which suffrage agitation detracts from charitable enterprises is appalling.” How can this be when that lady herself assures us that the suffragists represent less than ten per cent. of the women? Ninety per cent. surely ought to be sufficient to do the charitable work, if they can spare the time from chasing after the suffragists.

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Some men are organizing a pneumatic-tube system through which from a central kitchen hot meals can be shot to any part of the city day or night. Women sometimes wonder whether men intend to leave them any domestic duties. About the only thing untouched is the nursery, but a man has invented an electric cradle that rocks itself, so woman will have to find some other way to move the world.

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A Kansas City judge has ruled that under certain circumstances wives may lie to their husbands. The latter never waited for any judicial decision.

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From the fuss made about Dr. Anna Shaw’s shaking her fist during a suffrage speech one would think it was the size of a sledgehammer, while really it is about as big as a little red apple.

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A record has been unearthed in London, showing that women used to be plumbers in 1500. Very likely; but that was before the business became so profitable that only men were competent to engage in it.

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The manager of the largest vaudeville circuit in the country has issued orders that there must be no more jokes at the expense of the woman-suffrage movement. Lovers of humor need not be discouraged, however, for the literary bureau of the Anti-Suffrage Association will still continue to issue its bulletins.

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Dr. Geisel, president of Shorter College, Georgia, says that institutions of higher education interfere with women’s natural destiny. Chancellor Day, of Syracuse University, says if college women don’t marry it is because their marriage standard is higher and they are not finding men fitted for fatherhood. As all the colleges can’t be abolished in order to lower women’s ideal of marriage, it looks as if something will have to be done to bring men up to the new standard.