Part 22

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Husband applied for a divorce because his wife was “absolutely independent.” Judge granted it and he started off to find a dear little dependent who would give him a sort of manly feeling.

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King Alfonso is said to have become an advocate of woman’s rights under the influence of his British Queen. Can’t she be spared long enough to go home and try her hand on Cousin George?

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Young and impecunious members of the nobility may now be rented out for afternoon tea in London. This is not a bad use to make of them, but they could command a higher price in New York and Washington.

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Is one reason why so many men oppose woman suffrage because they are afraid their wives would obey St. Paul’s injunction to ask of their husbands at home when they wanted information and questions on political issues might prove embarrassing?

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At the suffrage hearing before the Massachusetts Legislature the “antis” evidently got their Irish up, as Molly Maguire called equal suffrage “the most deadly menace that ever faced the State,” and Joseph Murphy said, “I am one of a family of fourteen children and my mother didn’t need any vote to do it.” Perhaps it wouldn’t have been safe, as she was such a “repeater;” but Pa Murphy’s chest must have swelled with pride when he went to the polls on election morning and represented sixteen people with one ballot.

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“The Silent Woman,” an ancient play, has been resurrected, perhaps as a reminder of something gone forever. The anti-suffragists used to claim that title, but if they are not making as much noise as the suffragists nowadays it is only because there are not nearly so many of them.

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At the recent election in Louisiana the men voted down a constitutional amendment to allow women to serve on school and charity boards, and the election officers in New Orleans were so afraid it might slip through that seventeen were indicted for “padding” the returns against it. Doubtless they intended this simply as an act of chivalry.

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Governor Marshall, of Indiana, said recently to the Council of Women in Indianapolis, “There is not a working woman in this city doing an honest work who is not more important to this State than the Governor.” Funny he should talk like that when the women there can’t vote; but he only confirmed the suspicions they had had for some time.

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The Anti-Suffrage Association sends out a press bulletin saying, “We object to being called away from uplifting the world through the old channels of education and religion to assist in uplifting it by the doubtful channels of the ballot box.” They need not leave their job for it is such a big one that if derricks are erected in both channels it will still be necessary to call for outside help.

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Prime Minister Asquith is caricatured by Punch as Mona Lisa with the smile that won’t come off. To the suffragists he looks more like the cat that swallowed the canary.

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“The clinging-vine type of women will continue to multiply,” we are assured by those who claim to know. Well, that is a very good business, since they don’t seem to be able to do anything else.

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In all the New York public-school gymnasiums the number of girls exceeds the number of boys. This does not indicate that the girls are preparing to be militant suffragists but only that the boys would rather smoke cigarettes and shoot craps.

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Secretary of State Bryan says he wouldn’t feel sure of the support of women as they did not vote for him when he was a candidate; but he must remember that he hadn’t discovered then that he was in favor of woman suffrage.

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Admiral Chadwick’s recent assertion that “women teachers develop in boys a feminized, emotional, illogical manhood” is receiving some support from great editors. It is very peculiar that mothers have always been taught that their finest work is to train their boys for the highest duties of citizenship, and yet if these same boys spend a few hours each day in school with women teachers they are ruined for life. Is it only when there is a salary attached that a woman’s teaching becomes dangerous?