Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“
[blocks in formation]

In the matter of taking poverty out of the list of crimes, the equal-suffrage States lead easily. Colorado, California, Washington, Illinois, Idaho, Oregon, and Utah have mothers' pension laws that stop the cruel business of kidnapping children because the mother cannot earn enough to keep the wolf from the door. Only six non-suffrage States have adopted this humane measure. Idaho and Utah carry off first honors for generosity, both awarding ten dollars a month for the oldest child, but Utah allowing seven dollars per month for each additional child against Idaho's five dollars.

Child labor seems also to be a first consideration of the voting woman. Arizona is the one State in all the Union to adopt the model law framed by the National Child Labor Committee. California sets fifteen as the working age, and Washington, Colorado, Kansas, Utah, Illinois, and Oregon have well-nigh perfect laws. Fourteen years is the dead-line, fifteen years during the school term, and sixteen years in all dangerous trades.

[blocks in formation]

glass factories of Pennsylvania, and the canneries of the Northern States.

THE FIGHT AGAINST ILLITERACY

EVERY one of the equal-suffrage States has a complete compulsory-education law, splendidly safeguarded and bulwarked by truant-schools and truant-officers, parental-delinquency provisions, etc. Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas have no such law, and in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Virginia the laws are utterly worthless.

It is distinctly noteworthy that in the list of the ten most illiterate States in the Union-Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia-there is not an equal-suffrage State.

Colorado, Arizona, and Oregon are the three great experiment-stations for penitentiary reform, and have demonstrated the absolute practicability of the "honorand-trust" plan. California women have just secured an extension of the indeterminate sentence to all crimes except murder, and also a provision for the payment of wages to working convicts and for assistance to discharged prisoners. Illinois, since equal suffrage, is experimenting with the "honor-and-trust" plan, and Idaho and Utah have sent committees to Colorado to study Tom Tynan's methods. Of the non-suffrage States, only Iowa has bettered penal conditions, the others resting content with prison methods that are stupid and wasteful when they are not cruel and barbarous.

Minimum-wage laws are almost entirely peculiar to the equal-suffrage States. California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Utah have them, and at work. Massachusetts is the only non-suffrage State in their class.

The slightest analysis of these summaries, and their comparisons with nonsuffrage States, develops certain facts instantly. The woman vote is definitely against the saloon, against commercialized vice, and against the theory that an "open" town helps business.

It is for more schools and better schools and compulsory education, for the home in preference to the institution, and for the dignity and protection of motherhood in

[blocks in formation]

The percentage of registered men voting was 54.2, and that of women, 50.2. Further comparisons are made possible by these facts: Hollywood, Westlake, Wilshire, and West Adams are prosperous, fashionable districts, while the others are given over to the moderately circumstanced or poor. A very interesting survey of the Berkeley election returns establishes similar conclusions: the larger woman's vote was cast in the so-called "exclusive" neighborhoods, the smaller woman's vote in the poorer districts, and the average in the precincts inhabited by people of modest means.

THE RATIO OF VOTING MEN AND WOMEN

IN Idaho, according to tables prepared by Mrs. Burton French and Mrs. Frederick Dubois, about seventy-six per cent. of the women voted at the last election, and about eighty-four per cent. of the men. Mrs. Frank Mondell of Wyoming and Mrs. Sutherland of Utah are authority for the statement that every election calls out the same proportion of women as men.

While no large election has been held in Illinois since equal suffrage, various small-town elections have been held, and the figures are rather interesting:

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

WOMEN

MEN WOMEN PER CENT.

1556 1504 49

1348 1350 50

2104 1429 40 3154 2127 40 3619 2485 41 10907 4827 31

4201 3567 46

Seattle and Denver furnish figures with regard to the claim that "bad women" have a way of controlling elections in equal-suffrage States. As will be seen, 345 women voted in the first ward, where Seattle's red-light had its being at that time. In Denver the "bad lands" were confined to Precincts 1, 2, and 3 of the fourth ward prior to abolition. The election commission presents this table:

[ocr errors]
[merged small][ocr errors]

1313 ΙΟΙΙ 43

[merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors]

3706 3079 46

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Assuming that every one of these votes represented prostitutes, what of it? Compare 345 with 21,807, or 144 with 38,000. As a matter of fact, the assumption is grossly false. The writer, out of his experience as newspaper man and police commissioner in Denver, is willing to assert that not ten per cent. were prostitutes. The majority of these women are girls under the voting age or foreigners, while the remainder, practising their sorry trade under assumed names, are unwilling to expose their identities by registration. In both Denver and Seattle, a large percentage of the vice-ward vote probably represented the wives of the day-laborer class, since segregation is invariably practised at the expense of those whose poverty makes resistance impossible. As a bit of further information, Idaho has a law prohibiting persons of lewd life from voting.

WOMEN AS OFFICE-SEEKERS

Do women become inveterate office-seekers?

as

In Wyoming, where equal suffrage is forty years old, there are two members of the legislature and a number of women serving superintendent of schools. Mrs. Miller, one of the legislators, is the mother of grown sons, one of whom preceded her in the office; and the other, Miss Truax, a teacher, was petitioned to become a candidate as a protest against legislative delay in connection with school measures.

In Colorado, where the women have voted for twenty years, virtually all the educational offices have been turned over to them. Since 1895 the state superintendent of public instruction has been a woman, and to-day forty-three out of sixtytwo counties have women for county superintendents of schools. Denver has a woman president of the election board, a woman member of the school board, and, prior to commission government, had another able woman as clerk and recorder of deeds. A member of the board of regents of the state university is a woman, and throughout the State there are these women office-holders: two city auditors, eight city treasurers, three city clerks, ten county clerks, one county commissioner, twice as many as at any previous period in the twenty years.

In the state legislature at the present writing there are two women in the lower house and one in the senate, the latter elected in 1912. Mrs. Riddle is a German epitome of common sense who enjoys a competence through years of dairy farming. Mrs. Lee is the mother of grown children, and Mrs. Robinson, the senator, is an ex-college professor and a very brilliant writer.

In addition to these, two women serve on the state board of charities and corrections. Mrs. Helen Grenfell, as a member of the penitentiary board, has made penal reform possible, and there are women on the boards in charge of the various industrial homes.

Utah has three women in the legislature, and in Idaho the state superintendent of public instruction is a woman, twenty-five out of thirty counties have women superintendents, a woman is on the board of regents, and there are about twenty county treasurers and auditors. Washington has two able women in the legislature.

Instead of being inveterate office-seekers, there is far more ground for a charge that the voting women have entirely failed and absolutely refused to show the interest in office-seeking and office-holding that is entailed by her percentage of the vote.

THE INFLUENCE OF EQUAL SUFFRAGE

UPON THE HAPPINESS OF HOME

HAS equal suffrage disrupted the home? As far as divorce statistics may be trusted, these show that Wyoming has 118 to every 10,000; Colorado, 158; Utah, 92; and Idaho, 120. It is questionable, however, whether they amount to anything. Utah has the lowest divorce rate in the Union, which might easily be turned into an argument for Mormonism. It is much more to the point that there is not an instance on record of a divorce arising from anything connected with the vote. This statement is laid down as a challenge.

There is now only the one remaining question to consider: Has the vote coarsened or cheapened women?

In Colorado, most attacked along this line, there is an Equal-Suffrage Aid Association composed of the most prominent men in the State, organized for the sole purpose of denying falsehoods and refuting slanders.

Senator Charles S. Thomas, also an exgovernor, Southern born, and the possessor of a voting wife and voting daughters, expresses the male sentiment of Colorado when he says: "The one offensive feature of equal suffrage has been the flood of blackguardly abuse heaped upon our women by foes of the movement. Scavengers, commissioned to attack and defame, have made pretense of studying our lives, thoughts, laws, and institutions between trains. The supposition that inclusion in the responsibilities of citizenship implies the instant degradation of our wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters can only proceed from mental perversion and degeneracy."

Bishop Spaulding of Utah, after long observation, declares that equal suffrage has developed better wives and better mothers, and that women have brought to their duties as citizens and legislators superior humanity and motherliness.

The Portland "Oregonian," unalterably conservative, admits editorially that equal suffrage has turned out to be one of the strongest fortifications of the home, and throughout his entire investigation the writer could not find any one, not even a dethroned "boss," who would put his name to the charge that the vote had debased the women of his State.

The inevitable first result of equal suffrage is the removal of all polling-places from the neighborhood of saloons. What was good enough for men is not good enough for their women folk. For the most part, voting-booths are in churches, parlors, corner groceries, or schools. Illinois had many of its polling-places decorated with potted plants, many Kansas towns introduced "no-smoking" regulations, and in all of the older equal-suffrage States there is yet to be recorded an instance of insult to women in connection with the franchise.

Let conclusion come with the words of Mrs. Grenfell, that very wonderful woman whom many pick as Colorado's best citizen:

The opponents of equal suffrage never tire of declaring that woman's place is the home. I agree with them most heartily. It is because of the home that I want wo

men to have the vote. The State is so much the over-parent to-day that I cannot look after my home without the vote. The law says when the child shall go to school, what books it shall study, what food it shall eat, what carfare it shall pay, when it shall be vaccinated or given serums, punishes the child with truant-officers, truant-schools, juvenile courts, and tells when it may quit school and when it may go to work. It is through franchises gained by the ballot that I am told what to pay for my water, my gas, my electric light, my telephone; it is by the vote that liquor questions are decided, and ordinances adopted for the regulation of morals. I happened to read yesterday where the women of Kansas City were protesting against a return to the policy of licensing prostitution and making the community a sharer in the shameful gains. In another column I saw where an ordinance prohibiting saloons near schools and churches had been smothered in committee by an alderman who happened to be Kansas City's most notorious saloonkeeper. Are those not questions that affect the home? And will any one say that the voteless women of Kansas City are able to give their homes the fullest possible protection?

One must also consider the seven or eight millions of women who are forced outside the home by the necessities of existence. Is this vast army of underpaid, overworked toilers to have no voice at all? If women voted in New York, do you think America would be shamed by the spectacle of the Triangle Factory owners being fined $20 for the very offense that cost the lives of 145 girls in a former fire?

I have always thought, and I still think, that a government entirely by men is as stupid as a government entirely by women would be. There are as many home features in municipal or state administration as business features. Perhaps you may remember that the Indiana legislature recently passed a $5000 appropriation for the better care of hogs, and defeated an appropriation of $5000 for the better care of children. Do you see what I mean? I do not question the importance of the appropriation for the revenue-producing hog, but would n't it have been well had some woman been in that legislature to stand up for the non-revenueproducing child?

CATCHING IT

BY AMY WENTWORTH STONE

MARIANNA LANE swung back in drafts any more, Esther," she said.

hammock, tapping her small, brown toe on the porch as she swung. It was a charming porch, framed in clematis and woodbine, but Marianna had no eye for its good points. She was lying with two slim arms clasped behind her head, staring vacantly up at the ceiling and composing a poem. On the wicker table beside her stood a glass of malted milk and a teaspoon. They were not the subject of the poem, but they were nevertheless responsible for it. In the first place, Marianna would not drink her twelveo'clock malted milk, and as she was forbidden to go off the porch until she had done so, there seemed to be nothing better to do than to cultivate the muse in the hammock. After patiently sipping malted milk for eight years, Marianna had suddenly rebelled. In the second place, her cousin Frank, who lived in the next house, had been inspired by this beverage to make up an insulting ditty.

"Grocerman, bring a can
Baby-food for Mary Ann!"

he sang loudly over the hedge whenever he caught sight of Marianna's middy blouse and yellow pigtails. That was yesterday. To-day the malted milk was standing untouched upon the wicker table, and Marianna in the hammock was trying to think up an offensive rhyme for Frank. When she found it, she intended to go around on the other side of the house and shout it as loud as ever she could in the direction of her uncle's garden. This, it is true, was a tame revenge. What Marianna really wanted to do was to go over and pinch her cousin Frank; but that, unhappily, was out of the question, as Frank had a cold, and she was strictly forbidden to go near anybody with a cold. Frank was always having colds, and Mrs. Lane, who knew how unnecessary they were, was severe upon her sister-in-law.

"Children don't catch colds by sitting

a germ. There is no need of children of intelligent parents coming in contact with germs. But you let Frank play with anybody and eat anything. Then he does n't assimilate his food, and has no resistance. Proper assimilation, that should be our watchword. If you belonged to our Civics and Hygiene Club, you would understand these things, Esther. Some day I want to show you about food values and the proper combinations for Frank."

Meanwhile Marianna lay back in the hammock, trying Frank in all sorts of interesting combinations.

"Frank, bank; Frank, crank; Frank, lank; Frank, sank," she repeated softly to herself. She had gotten as far as “Frank, Frank, spindle-shank," when the screen door opened, and her mother came out upon the porch. upon the porch. She was buttoning her white gloves, and had her card-case and parasol stuck under her arm.

"I'm going now, Marianna," she said, "and I hope to find my little girl more reasonable when I come back." She glanced at the malted milk.

Marianna pouted down at her blouse. "And as soon as you have decided to be mama's obedient little daughter," went on Mrs. Lane, "you may go down to Bates's and get ten-cents' worth of animal crackers, and you may eat twelve before supper. Now kiss mama."

Marianna lifted a wayward mouth. Her mother sniffed.

"Marianna," she said gravely, "have you been eating a peppermint?"

"Oh, no, Mama," replied Marianna in a tone of offended innocence.

"Let me see your tongue," said her mother. Marianna stuck that organ out as far as it would go. At the same moment her eyes fell upon a scrap of pink paper almost under the tip of her mother's parasol. On it could be read the words:

A DELICIOUS, LASTING FLAVOR PERFUMES THE BREATH

« AnkstesnisTęsti »