Anne O'Hagan

“ I am a housekeeper, eager to have my family's surroundings as healthful and pleasant as may be. What part have I had in framing the tenement house laws of the City of New York, the building laws of the city? What part have I had in determining the building code? Homemaking is not an art which has its beginning and end in the selection of wall-papers and the thrifty and nutritious cooking of inexpensive meats. You cannot have a safe, secluded home under building laws which allow paper-thin partitions between you and your neighbors. You cannot have safe, comfortable homes in firetraps. ”

“ It would rejoice my soul exceedingly could I have a voice in appointing the men who inspect the foodstuffs, the weights and measures, the cold-storage plants, and all the institutions in which I, as a housekeeper, am vitally and—even if I were an anti-suffragist—legitimately interested. ”

“ Of course, you may tell me that men are as vitally interested in the building code and the choice of building inspectors as are women. They are, that is true—but they do not seem to realize it. Generations of regarding the franchise as a right exercised for large, vague, far-away reasons—tariffs, and the maintenance of a gold standard, and the building of armories, and the national triumph of the Republican or the Democratic party—have clouded them to the close, personal, homely reasons for its exercise. ”