MRS. THOM. Your mother doesn’t believe in the enfranchisement of women! She is a disgrace to her sex. It is the women who, coddled in the lap of luxury, are unwilling to turn out from their enervating seraglios to do an honest day’s work for the hard-working women and girls of the People who do the most damage to the cause! It is they whom tricky politicians make use of when they say that they would give their support to the enfranchisement of our sex if they thought that the majority of women really wanted to vote.
MR. VAN TOUSEL. But my mother doesn’t live in a seraglio, Mrs. Thom.
MRS. THOM. Oh, I know, they don’t call it by that name in polite society because here in New York the rule is, different wives, different roofs, and one is not supposed to know of the existence of the other. One lives in a brown stone Fifth Avenue mansion, and another in a Harlem flat.
MR. VAN TOUSEL. But, Mrs. Thom, my mother is a widow.
MRS. THOM. Then she should be on our subscription list. She can’t give the excuse that her husband does not approve of it. I will call and see her. (Takes out notebook and writes in it.) Now, Mr. Becker, please, directly below Mr. Van Tousel.
MRS. BROWN. (Aside.) She talks like a dentist.
MR. BECKER. I will not sign the petition, Mrs. Thom. I do not want women to have the vote.
MRS. THOM. You don’t believe in “the cause”!
MR. BECKER. I do not consider it a cause.
MRS. THOM. Oh, you are one of those men who try to raise themselves by keeping women down. You are a dog in the manger, who never has and never will do any good for your country, yourself, and who tries to keep others from being patriotic. The vote of women means the purification of the government. Well, we don’t want your signature. It will never represent anything. (Rolls up petition and puts in her pocket.)