A Baptist minister in Chicago has opened in his church a school of home training to make women more desirable for wives. That school had better be closed by the authorities for women are so “desirable” already that school boards, theater managers, telegraph and telephone heads, even the government, are requiring those they employ to guarantee that they will not marry within a specified time. A school to make women less desirable—that is the need of the hour.
A Cincinnati legislator has introduced a bill for a commission to “prescribe the fashions to be worn by women in the State of Ohio.” One good thing about it would be that when it came to appointing officials to enforce the rules not an office-seeker in the State would be left without a job.
New York’s commissioner of corrections suggests that the one hundred and seventy-five wife beaters on Blackwell’s Island be put to making creosoted paving blocks. Good idea! The perfume will remind them of what awaits them after their exit from this world of inadequate punishment.
That Englishman who was put into jail because he had no money to pay the taxes on his wife’s property must have a poor opinion of the law-making ability of his sex. Women couldn’t do any worse, unless they condemned the poor husband to death.
The Norwegian Parliament first gave municipal suffrage to women taxpayers; then gave them the Parliamentary franchise; then it removed the taxpaying qualification for the municipal vote. Its next step was to make them eligible for all political offices. Then it granted them the right to speak in the State church, but would not allow them to preach; now it proposes to let them hold the Church offices. Lastly it gave the complete franchise to all women. There are only a few more inches to cut off and the State is bearing up as well as could be expected.