“Women don’t know anything about politics. Did you ever hear them talking together? Well, first they talk about fashions, and children, and housework; and then, perhaps about churches; and then perhaps—about theatres; and then perhaps——” At each “perhaps,” he gazed down at his finger-tips where his ideas appeared to originate, looking up at me at each new point. “And then, perhaps—about literatoor!” he ended triumphantly. “Yes, and that is the way it ought to be,” he added, satisfied.
“But don’t you believe that voting might make women think?”
At this suggestion he recoiled, then recovered and grew jocose.
“Do you think I want my wife working against my interests? That’s just what she’d be doing—voting against me. Women can’t understand politics.”
I began to tell him about California women voters, but he interrupted. “Women wouldn’t change things if they did vote. They’d all vote just like their husbands.”
Sometimes they said to Miss Younger, “If you were a voter——”
“But I am a voter,” Miss Younger, who is from California, would reply.
Their attitude invariably changed.
Miss Younger comments: “They said they respected femininity, but it was plain that they did respect a voter.”
It was hard, hard work.