“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.