"National as well as state legislation has been affected by women, if the testimony of men like Harvey W. Wiley is accepted. In his campaign for pure food laws, he stated repeatedly that his strongest support came from women's organizations. That support was not passive and moral, merely expressed to him privately, but these women inundated congress with letters, telegrams, petitions, pleading for the passage of the laws in question. These communications were presented to congress by their recipients who often urged as their reason for supporting pure food laws the appeals of women whose interests in food should not be ignored.
"The Consumers' League of New York helped the national food committee to defeat a mischievous amendment to the Gould bill, which requires that all package goods should be labelled as to the amount of their contents.
"Mrs. Albion Fellowes Bacon, of Indiana, practically single-handed, secured the first tenement house laws of value for Evansville and Indianapolis. She did this before the National Housing Association, of which she is now a director, was formed. The recent improvements in the Indiana housing legislation are due apparently to her continued leadership and to the public opinion which she has helped to create. In her case it was personal initiative and moral persuasion.
"Another example of personal influence on legislation exerted by women is that of Frances Perkins, of New York, in her fight for the fifty-hour bill for the women workers of her state. Unlike Mrs. Bacon, Miss Perkins represented a society—the Consumers' League—which asked for this measure, and she was supported in her demand by the Women's Trade Union League and other organizations. The measure would have been defeated, as is widely known and acknowledged in New York, had it not been for the personal sagacity and watchfulness of Miss Perkins.
"The social service committee of the 'American Club Woman' states that in the first year of its existence it has done important and effective work. It was largely responsible for the passage of an ordinance by city councils regulating dance halls.
"Similar activities, both positive and negative, can be discovered in the records of practically every woman's association not organized for purely literary purposes."
We all know that this is true. Mrs. Beard also says:
"The woman's influence lies not in physical force, but in the occasional subservience of the mind of man to the actual presence of a moral force."
The influence of this moral force is so strong and has come to be so well recognized that certain types of politicians and commercial interests rebel against it. They wish to destroy it, and as the best means to that end they advocate—woman suffrage! That is not at all in line with what one is told at suffrage meetings. We are told that women need the ballot in order that they may improve the conditions in the home, that they may help the working girl, and put through good legislation. But the rank and file of suffragists are being deceived in these matters, for suffrage works, and will work directly the other way. The New York World has committed a great indiscretion and has let this cat out of the bag. The World recently came out for suffrage and gave its reasons. One of them is that a few women, representing perhaps ten per cent of the sex, have under present conditions too much influence. These women, the World says, "have maintained at times a reign of terror over legislative bodies, in consequence of which half the country is now bedeviled by some form or other of harem government, and legislators are forever making ridiculous concessions to women agitators." These "women agitators" are, of course, the club women, social workers, and others interested in social welfare. In order to make it unnecessary for legislators to make "ridiculous concessions" to this type of woman, the World advocates—what? Giving the vote to all women! It has certainly hit upon the most effective expedient, and it is because the vote will do exactly what the World claims for it, that anti-suffragists are so opposed to it. The World says that most of the reasons urged in favor of suffrage are fantastic and unreal, that women are not purer and more noble than men, and that they are not so wise as men in general affairs. It admits that they will not purify politics—indeed, that they will confuse and disorganize government, without reforming it; but nevertheless it believes in woman suffrage because it will destroy the power of the ten per cent of women whose influence is now so strong!
The question for intelligent women to decide is whether or not they want this influence destroyed. If they wish to give up the moral influence which a body of women, educated, public-spirited, non-partisan, can wield—an influence so strong that legislators feel obliged to make what the World calls "ridiculous concessions" to it—if in its stead they wish to depend on political influence gained through the ballot, which can be applied only to one party, which can be entirely offset by the votes of women who are ignorant, boss-controlled, and whose votes are purchasable—if they prefer that, they will get their wish if woman suffrage wins. That is exactly how it is working out in the suffrage states. In Wyoming the politicians were clever enough to foresee this. Woman suffrage was granted by one of the most corrupt legislatures Wyoming ever had. These men knew that at that time good women were few in that sparsely settled State, and they knew they could "manage the others."