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?
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.
“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.
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.
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.