An American Suffragette

by Isaac Newton Stevens

Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss told of the enormous gains recently made by the "Antis" among the select people of the city, and passed off the suffrage parade as merely a tatterdemalion host of the riff-raff of the city led by a few notoriety seekers.

"You see, Miss Holland," Frank whispered, "what a good thing it is that I came here; I never should have known that that parade wasn't one of the finest assemblages of women in the world if I hadn't."

Silvia laughed in spite of herself, and the stout lady on the platform went on piling up the indictment against her sex, and showing how demoralizing the vote had proved to women; how the suffrage sentiment was dying out in the West; how the "Antis" were organizing even in the suffrage States to lift the curse from their kind; how much purer and nobler politics would be without the influence of woman, and wound up with a glowing peroration on behalf of the women who were fighting to maintain the sanctity of the home and the elevation of the children.

Silvia gave an impatient ejaculation. "How can you take it so quietly, Miss Renner?" she asked. "I confess it always stirs me up."

"It wouldn't if you had the ballot," said the smaller woman. "It's just amusing, or tiresome, according to how well it is done. You women are the worried and worrying Marthas; we are the Marys, who have chosen the better part that shall not be taken away; we know it can't be, and this is something like hearing people laboriously argue that the world is flat with the sun revolving around it."

After the opening speech there were brief addresses by Dr. David Dearson on the disastrous results to motherhood should women participate in the active life of the nation; by the Reverend Jayson Yerkes on the Pauline doctrine of the subserviency of the truly feminine woman; by Mrs. Workman Werther on the decadence of feminine charm among women aping men's interests in life, and Crawford Dorer, a labor leader, opposed the movement because the natural timidity of woman would, he predicted, set back all hope of militant progress for the workers of the world. The "Antis" listened with a somewhat strained and puzzled attention, and a group of working-women, out on strike, and sitting in the balcony, gave an angry hiss, which was instantly suppressed. The last speaker, Mr. Reuben Rice, was one of those wandering scribes who travel through the West and write up suffrage from a Pullman-car window, and as he exposed the weaknesses, the failures and the pitiful spectacle that voting women make of themselves, he galvanized the audience into a semblance of real life and interest.

Dr. Earl found the speeches entertaining if not enlightening, and after the second, gave himself up to the silent enjoyment of collating the arguments presented in juxtaposition. No sooner had one speaker convinced his hearers that women would precipitate anarchy by their radicalism than the next proved equally conclusively that an era of dilettantism and millinery shop legislation would be the inevitable result of woman suffrage; no sooner were they filled with the horror of the degradation of politics by the class of women certain to participate in it, than another speaker assured them that politics was already so vile that any woman would be hopelessly contaminated who had anything to do with the gangrenous growth, and yet another showed that women wouldn't vote anyhow. It was all he could do to control the muscles of his face when the Reverend Mr. Yerkes told them in one sentence of the dissension that would rend families and in the next that married women simply voted as their husbands dictated, and he could not repress a smile when the doctor and the professor made it clear that if woman is to reproduce the race she must not be expected to do anything else, only to have Mrs. Werther show how woman must be free to take part in the ennobling activities of the world, philanthropy, charity, etc., if she is to "bring to motherhood that crown which is the glory of the race," and much more of the same sort. He heard the ancient argument about bullets and ballots, and in the same breath his attention was called to Semiramis conquering Assyria, the Amazons invading Asia, the triumph of Sappho in song, Aspasia in the salon, Deborah among the Judges of Israel, George Eliot in literature, and a host of others who had won distinction.

The audience was told that it was entirely proper to agitate, cajole, coax, beseech, threaten, bully and browbeat men into voting for candidates and measures desired by the women; anything that stopped short of blackmail and personal intimidation bore the hallmark of refined femininity, but to take two minutes to accomplish results for themselves by depositing a ballot on election day meant everlasting damnation to all feminine traits! And Leonora patted her pretty little hands, and looked up to Earl for approval, feeling that at last he must see that Silvia and her cohorts were routed horse and foot.

When the attack upon Western women was well under way, and Mr. Rice, a dapper little chap, looking like a freshman from high school, was rolling out his arraignment of Denver women in particular as typical of the nethermost depths to which the voting female may descend, Carroll Renner wrote a few lines on a bit of paper, and gave it to one of the ushers, and a few minutes later she had the satisfaction of watching the portly Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss read it. When Mr. Rice had concluded his diatribe, the lady stated in dulcet tones that Mr. Frank Earl was said to be in the audience, and as he lived in Denver, and was known to have strong views on this question, there was an urgent request that he should come to the platform, that they might know from one who had long witnessed with regret the deteriorating effects of woman suffrage that nothing that they had heard was in any way exaggerated. She vouched for Earl as one whom she had known since his boyhood, a member of one of the most highly respected families in New York, and who had never failed to reply when she had needed statistics from the field of woman's dethronement.

There was a bustle and stir over the audience, and John Earl looked a good deal startled, while Leonora was openly delighted. An excellent speaker, and a trained debater, the occasion had no terrors for Frank Earl. In fact, he confessed to himself as he made his way to the platform, he had not had so much fun as he expected to enjoy in the next fifteen minutes for many a long day. He was introduced with many rather florid expressions, and began by stating his position calmly, unmistakably, as opposed to the extension of the franchise to women. He then made a few complimentary references to those ladies who nobly put aside their own devotion to the home, the sphere they adorned so admirably, in order to save their misguided suffrage sisters from the evil effects of their mistaken zeal.