Read Ebook: Suffrage snapshots by Harper Ida Husted

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The anti-suffragists say that the suffrage movement is driving women away from marriage and "the feminist movement is turning marriage into a trade for alimony," and yet that the two movements are one and the same. But how can a woman make an alimony bargain if she has not been married? It really seems as if those "antis" had set out to prove the charge that the feminine mind is incapable of logic.

If the anti-suffragists would observe their Golden Rule, that "a woman's place is at home," it would not be half so easy for those other women to get the ballot.

Outside of the South only two States voted solidly against the woman suffrage amendment in the lower house of Congress--Vermont and Delaware. Please excuse them, they're such little ones.

Virginia suffragists have discovered that in 1829 her women petitioned a constitutional convention for the franchise. That was only eighty-six years ago, and petitions from women are seldom acted upon in so short a time as that.

At the legislative hearing in Massachusetts, the other day, one of the opponents said she did not believe women ought to vote but thought one-half the Legislature should be composed of women. Just as her sister "antis" always have done, she keeps one eye on the offices.

During the recent registration in San Francisco, automobiles were provided for the women, while the men were left to walk, and they rent the air with their protests. In Washington a jury composed of men and women had to go to the country to inspect some property. The women were sent in automobiles and the men in wagons, and their anger could be heard for miles. As the young woman wrote to her sweetheart, "The trubble with you is you are jellus."

Possibly women as well as men may be at their best when fifty, but they will never give anybody a chance to prove it on them.

Representative J. Hampton Moore, of Philadelphia, is quoted as saying it will be 20 years before Congress hears any more about prohibition or woman suffrage. That 0 must be a printer's mistake, and even the 2 is fifty per cent. too much.

Indiana women have formed a council to work with the Legislature "for the uplift of women and children." Wouldn't it be of greater benefit to the State if they would work for the uplift of the legislators?

Anti-suffragists are censuring Senator Helen Ring Robinson, of Colorado, because she is in the East lecturing instead of at home legislating. But she can't unless the Governor calls a special session, as the Legislature does not meet this year. Those anti-suffrage objections are such funny little boomerangs!

New Zealand has just been celebrating the twenty-first year of its equal-suffrage law. To be sure that country is some distance off, but it seems as if we should have heard of the wrecked homes, ruined families, declining birth rate, feminized men and general reign of socialism, polygamy and other things which the "antis" declare will follow woman suffrage. If they will then they have done it, so let us have a bill of particulars from New Zealand.

A Chicago lawyer secured a big alimony for his client on the argument that a man who marries a handsome woman must dress her in a style befitting her beauty. This ought to put the plain woman several laps ahead in the matrimonial race--but it won't.

If the colonel feels a little disheartened at the lapses in the Progressive party while he was away revising the map of South America, he can cheer up at the boom in votes for women. There will be more than twice as many of them in 1916 as when he set out to round them up two years ago.

The Supreme Court of the District of Columbia has decided that after a wife has left her husband's bed and board she may establish her own domicile wherever she pleases. That is an improvement on the old law, which did not allow her any place to sleep and eat legally without her husband's permission.

Mrs. John Martin, a leader of the "antis," said recently, in a public address in New York, "If they dare attempt to force the ballot on us here in the East, they will find that we are the daughters of the heroes who fought and bled at Concord and Lexington, who starved at Valley Forge!" Seems as if we had heard somewhere that those heroes did all that for the specific purpose of obtaining the ballot. "Descendants" is a very suitable word to apply to their daughters.

It was a woman who solved the "Million Dollar Mystery" and received the ,000 prize; but that isn't the worst of it--she hasn't any husband to take care of the money for her.

The Anti-Suffrage Society forbids its members to say, "Woman suffrage is coming!" That's right--it shows a lack of originality to use the same slogan as the suffragists and how can they expect to raise money for a campaign against a sure thing?

A rich New Yorker, who has just died, left his fortune for his daughters in the hands of masculine executors because he doubted women's wisdom in business. How did he happen to have so much confidence in men's honesty in business?

Speaker Clark is no "neutral" when it comes to woman suffrage. During the House debate the other day the officers of the Suffrage Association were invited to occupy his bench in the gallery and have luncheon in his rooms at the Capitol. Give him the Iron Cross.

A man in Chicago has written a booklet against woman suffrage, in which he relates that when he was a small boy he and his sister were attacked by wolves, which his mother drove off with a gun. "If she had been a suffragette," he says, "she would probably have been away from home that night attending a political meeting and Sister Lucy and I would have been eaten alive." Sister Lucy might have been a loss to the world.

A wife has recently laughed herself to death at one of her husband's jokes. At least there is the consolation that she never will have to listen to any more of them.

The anti-suffragists say that "feminism and the family are inherently and irrevocably incompatible." When we find out what that means we are going to get mad about it.

Professor Hugo M?nsterberg, of Harvard University, after years of careful research has decided that women form their opinions and judgments just as rapidly and accurately as men. Thanks for that small concession, kind sir! It is so unexpected!

The women anti-suffragists have just held their first convention, while the suffragists have had them by the hundreds. Now let the antis get up one parade and match it against the more than a thousand suffrage parades on May 2d, to prove that "the vast majority of women do not want to vote."

A speaker at the annual convention of the National Municipal Leagues takes President Wilson to task because his "History of the American People" scarcely mentions women. Why single out the President's for what is common to all histories? The women ought to get even by writing histories themselves and leaving out the men. That is almost though not quite the case in the history of woman suffrage, but the men are mentioned whenever they vote it down.

"The cause of equal suffrage is so one with civilization and humanity that I wonder any civilized man can be against it," is the latest utterance of William Dean Howells on the question. He was careful not to say "civilized woman," because he did not want to hurt the feelings of the Anti-Suffrage Association.

The president of the Arizona Federation of Women's Clubs said, in a recent speech, "It requires courage to be a good statesman and only nerve to be a good politician." To apply this formula to suffrage--it requires only nerve to be a good anti-suffragist, but one really has to wonder where they get enough of it.

A six-foot woman who has recently been appointed purser on a Hudson River boat is opposed to suffrage because she does not feel equal to the burden and she thinks it would tend to make women take men's jobs away from them. Her picture in the papers should be labeled "The Typical Anti-Suffragist, an Unconscious Humorist."

One member of the lower House of Congress obtained unanimous consent that another member's eulogy on his dog should be printed in the Congressional Record. Worse stuff probably has gone into that Record; but if two women members of the Legislature in some of those Western States had been guilty of this performance wouldn't the country have rung with their unfitness for office?

The reformers say that when woman is economically independent she will be free to do the "proposing." Perhaps then she won't want to.

A man has started to walk with a donkey from Maine to Oregon on an election bet. The photographers should label their pictures, "Find the man."

Great Britain has solved the race-suicide problem. Hereafter the parents, where either is insured, will get thirty shillings for each new baby. What a simple solution! What a magnificent recompense! The little island won't hold the infants.

The judge of the Chicago Domestic Relations Court gives six reasons for the trouble in married life, and one of them is the interference of mothers-in-law. If it were not for the other five reasons, there would probably not be so much necessity for mothers-in-law to interfere.

The Anti-Suffrage Association is very desirous of adopting a color for its very own, but thus far has found that all in the rainbow and out of it have been pre-empted by the innumerable suffrage societies. The "antis" over in England had just such a difficulty, but finally decided on blue and black. Then they had made a button and on it placed the head of a dear little chee-ild; but when the black and blue infant made its appearance, it was received by the suffragists with such screams of laughter and proffers of sympathy that it suddenly vanished and was never seen again.

In Denmark the men police are going on a strike, because the new women police are to have a higher salary than men get when they begin. There is nothing strange about this news, except that Denmark should pay women such salaries.

A woman office-holder who is getting a ,500 salary says: "No, I am not a suffragist. Why should I want to vote? Men have always been mighty good to me." Prosperity sometimes does affect people that way--makes them so nearsighted they can't see what is happening to their neighbors.

There doesn't seem to be any particular reason why four or five women should have been guests of honor at the annual banquet of the Police Lieutenants' Benevolent Association, but they just sat up there and sang, "We're here because we're here." And that isn't the worst of it--they're going to be everywhere else and the men who don't like it will have to go to the edge of the earth and jump off.

The president of the New York Press Club in talking lately to a woman's society on suffrage said: "Keep within the sex line. I and the men behind me will never forgive you if you step outside of that line!" Is it anything like the bread line? And how are women to know if they fail to toe the mark exactly? They are as far now from what was originally considered the "sex line" as if it was the equator and they were at the poles and yet the men seem to have forgiven them.

If the New York women keep on rolling up that big suffrage fund the men will feel it their bounden duty to take over the management of the amendment campaign.

A New Jersey woman has been obliged to get a divorce because her husband was so "inordinately fond of dress" that he spent all his earnings on his clothes. Vanity and foolishness know no sex.

New York State has 101.2 men to every 100 women. That extra one and two-tenths of a man ought to make it entirely possible to give a vote to women without fear of changing the style of sex domination.

Some of the men are angry because the women said they are going to ride in the Washington suffrage parade with an imbecile, an insane person and a convict. The men say that the only time a woman should keep such company is on election day.

With an amendment for full suffrage pending in a certain State, the opponents believe in nipping any voting tendencies in the bud; so the district attorney announces that any woman giving a tea party to induce other women to come out and register for the school election, at which women can vote, will be prosecuted under the corrupt practices act. Of course then he will prosecute the ward bosses who round up the men in the back rooms of saloons to arrange for their registering and voting. Or is it only drinking tea that is a corrupt practice?

In Missouri there are 141 unmarried men to 100 unmarried women. It seems as if every woman there ought to be able to get a husband, but perhaps some of them are particular.

Some of those husbands who stay out late nights are surprised that the suffragists find it necessary to have so many classes for training inexperienced speakers.

Winston Churchill mispronounced a Greek word in the House of Commons lately, to the consternation of its members. Imagine the commotion in the House of Representatives at Washington if a member should make a mistake in his Greek!

"Our only problem now," says the national anti-suffrage president, "is, Can we make the negative majority large enough to keep the voters from having to vote on it again for twenty-five years?" No use to waste any time and money figuring on that problem. The answer is, It can't be done.

One of the New York Supreme Court justices, in adjourning a case against a woman recently, said, "My sex has been deceiving the other sex since the day of Adam." There has always been a suspicion that in that little transaction in the Garden of Eden it was Adam himself who was deceived. Since then possibly the men have been trying to get even, but it looks nowadays as if the women were beginning to claim their share from the tree of knowledge, and deceiving them was not quite so easy.

The only "perfect woman" has been found at Cornell University. To find perfect ladies visit a bargain counter.

A noted astrologer has seen in the stars victories for woman suffrage in many States. The "antis" see stars every time there is a new victory; but when they pick themselves up they never make any forecast of the future.

Cuban women are organizing for the suffrage and a flourishing society already exists in Hawaii. Truly the anti-suffragists are kept so busy these days trying to stem the tide they are obliged to forget that a woman's place is at home.

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