Ida Husted Harper

“ In the States where women can vote they have not exactly turned their swords into plowshares but they have transformed their suffrage societies into civic clubs, and instead of their begging men to give them votes, the men are begging women for the votes they already hold in their lily-white hands. ”

“ Yes, and as there wouldn’t be any human beings of the future if it were not for women it almost seems as if they were of enough importance to have a vote.
Why should the advocates of woman suffrage be criticised for trying to defeat members of Congress who are opposed to it when all of the parties do their best to prevent the election of their opponents? If the suffragists did not try to keep their enemies out of Congress they wouldn’t have political sense enough to vote. ”

“ The president of the Arizona Federation of Women’s Clubs said, in a recent speech, “It requires courage to be a good statesman and only nerve to be a good politician.” To apply this formula to suffrage—it requires only nerve to be a good anti-suffragist, but one really has to wonder where they get enough of it.
A six-foot woman who has recently been appointed purser on a Hudson River boat is opposed to suffrage because she does not feel equal to the burden and she thinks it would tend to make women take men’s jobs away from them. ”

“ Congress treats women better than their forefathers did, for rather than pay taxes they destroyed the women’s favorite beverage—tea—and held onto rum; but Congress has taxed beer and whiskey to the limit and left the women their soft drinks.
The New York Tribune congratulates the country that the American woman is not trying to be a man. The very idea! As if women, having almost reached the top step, would deliberately turn around and tumble to the bottom!
The-anti-suffragists have declared officially that they “recognize man as the head of the nation’s household.” ”

“ It is very peculiar that mothers have always been taught that their finest work is to train their boys for the highest duties of citizenship, and yet if these same boys spend a few hours each day in school with women teachers they are ruined for life. Is it only when there is a salary attached that a woman’s teaching becomes dangerous? ”

“ Representatives of nearly all the organizations of women in Chicago are demanding that places shall be given to women on the boards of education, of parks and of libraries. How can they do it when they see how splendidly all matters connected with the municipality are managed by men? Women don’t seem to be showing that old-time admiration and trust which used to be their greatest charm. ”

“ When that International Congress of Women Voters meets in San Francisco next summer, there will be a fine chance to observe how the suffrage has unsexed women and destroyed the feminine instincts in at least nine countries.
Whenever anybody issues the edict that women have not the physical strength to vote some of them immediately shin up a flagpole on a fifty-story building and take a header off the Brooklyn Bridge for a moving-picture show, loop the loop in an airship and climb the highest mountain in the world. ”

“ The Alimony Club of divorced husbands in New York are howling loud and long because the court has ruled that they must continue the payment of alimony even though they are kept in prison and can’t earn a dollar. Another crowd who are out of jail are rending the air because they have to pay alimony just the same after their former spouses have wedded again. The fair divorcees answer that since only men are considered competent to make the laws or even to elect the lawmakers, they have no right to kick against the results. ”

“ When the women watched that crowd of men in Madison Square Garden cheer and howl and whoop and yell an hour and a half for one candidate, and the next night a similar crowd go through the same performance the same length of time for another candidate, they fully realized that women are too emotional for political life. ”

“ One striking difference between the United States Senate and the British House of Commons is that when a deputation of women suffragists make a call the Senators receive them with open arms and the Commoners shout for the police.
The nurses who cared for Mr. Roosevelt in the Chicago hospital have been so deluged with offers of marriage they have had to go into seclusion. It’s such a very funny way men have of showing their appreciation of a woman by offering to marry her! ”

“ Anything that keeps a man with his family is an enemy to the saloon.
The latest census report shows that there are about thirty thousand more divorced women than men in the United States. This seems to indicate that the men get back into the married state as quickly as possible but the women know when they have had enough.
The wild outcry of the anti-suffragists against “feminism” indicates that they prefer masculinism for women. Let them have it, for luckily they are not of enough importance for all womankind to be judged by what they do and say, as is the case with the suffragists. ”

“ The Anti-Suffrage Association is very desirous of adopting a color for its very own, but thus far has found that all in the rainbow and out of it have been pre-empted by the innumerable suffrage societies. ”

“ A man in the audience of State Senator Helen Robinson, of Colorado, called out that as there was only one woman and thirty-four men in the Senate, this showed it was a place for men. She answered that as there were eighty-seven women and eight hundred men in the State penitentiary, this evidently showed the same thing. Doesn’t she know that men won’t love her if she talks like that? ”

“ The Ceres Ladies’ Society, fifty years old—the society, not the ladies—admitted a few men as a compliment and now has filed an ouster against them because they usurped all the offices. Sixty years ago Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed a women’s temperance society and were persuaded to admit men, who at the first election, got control of the offices. The two women walked out of the society and out of the temperance movement straight into that for woman suffrage. Men should have a care! ”

“ The Los Angeles woman police officer who is touring the Eastern States gives as one great advantage of woman suffrage that men no longer have to go down town to talk politics. A good many men would consider that an argument against it.
The secretary of state for New York is willing to concede a good deal to women, but insists on the “physical superiority” of men. Then how do all life insurance statistics happen to show that women live to a much greater age than men? ”

“ Because a man finds marriage such a nice institution that he gets right back into it, while a woman—well, she doesn’t.
Ex-Speaker Cannon says that as women can now vote in Illinois it is a good time for handsome men to run for office, and that is why he ran. But Illinois women can’t vote for Congressmen and that is why he was elected.
The women of Alaska, at the first election since they were enfranchised, elected an entire non-partisan ticket. It is no wonder the old party machines put on speed and try to run over a woman-suffrage amendment. ”

“ His name is Abnel—a German doctor who has made a discovery. “The world’s well-being is threatened by the adoration of suffragists for dissolute men. The clinging, domestic women are naturally attracted to strong men.” Of course—the men would have to be strong to support their weight. “But the women politicians have lost the selective instinct,” he says. “They flutter toward the Don Juans like moths and are consumed before they realize their own folly.” Yes, people notice this in those Western States—a perfect holocaust as soon as women get the ballot. ”

“ A Chicago suffrage club has just been formed, to which only young, unmarried women are eligible. It seems only yesterday that girls were solemnly admonished that if they advocated woman suffrage no man would marry them, but they can’t be scared that way now. ”

“ Seems as if it would have to be a cold day when she was not able to go to the polls.
New York’s Alderman Quinn objects to woman suffrage because it would make monkeys of the men. Don’t worry—a lot of them haven’t waited for woman suffrage.
A young “efficiency expert” in Chicago tells his audiences that because a woman’s heart is in matrimony she is and always will be a failure in business. Give her a chance, son! Business is a matter of the head. ”

“ A woman office-holder who is getting a $4,500 salary says: “No, I am not a suffragist. Why should I want to vote? Men have always been mighty good to me.” Prosperity sometimes does affect people that way—makes them so nearsighted they can’t see what is happening to their neighbors. ”

“ The corporation counsel of the District of Columbia has ruled that the new eight-hour law for women applies to those who do mechanical work in a newspaper office, but not to those who do brain work. He probably considers that those big, forty-page papers are a greater strain on hands than brains, and it sure does seem like that when you try to read them. ”

“ Should women who are willing to fight but can’t be disfranchised on that account, while men who can fight but won’t are freely granted the vote?
One of the Western railroads has placed a woman in charge of its dining car and the customary howl at women’s usurping the work of men is now in order. To be sure having charge of a dining-room has always been considered a woman’s business but that was only when there was no salary attached. ”

“ People used to object to letting women vote because of the publicity it would give them; but nowadays when one sees the public stunts of the suffragists trying to get the ballot and of the “antis” trying to prevent it, he devoutly wishes that they might all be made voters at once so they could retire to the privacy of their homes and families. ”

“ The National Women’s Trade Unions’ League and its various State auxiliaries and all kinds of working women’s organizations are continually passing resolutions for woman suffrage. On the other hand, Dr. Katharine Bement Davis, superintendent of the Bedford Reformatory for Women, says that her charges, almost to a woman, are opposed to it. If a person is to be judged by the company she keeps, one hardly feels like getting acquainted with the members of the Anti-Suffrage Association. ”

“ New York State has 101.2 men to every 100 women. That extra one and two-tenths of a man ought to make it entirely possible to give a vote to women without fear of changing the style of sex domination.
Some of the men are angry because the women said they are going to ride in the Washington suffrage parade with an imbecile, an insane person and a convict. The men say that the only time a woman should keep such company is on election day. ”

“ The new invention of making rubber tires out of a substance extracted from whiskey suggests that it would be an excellent thing on most of the “joy” rides if the whiskey was in the tires instead of the automobile.
The public-school teachers who want the suffrage have raised the cry, “Can disfranchised teachers train citizens?” Of course they can, so long as they can be had for half the price that a man would charge for the job.
A Democratic candidate for congressman-at-large in Illinois, who is an anti-suffragist, is making his canvass on the platform: “A husband and a home for every woman.” ”

“ The president of a New York club said in her address to the City Federation the other day, “You neglect culture and buzz around too much; you should set aside ten minutes every day to meditate on something refining and ennobling.” ”

“ A speaker at the annual convention of the National Municipal Leagues takes President Wilson to task because his “History of the American People” scarcely mentions women. Why single out the President’s for what is common to all histories? The women ought to get even by writing histories themselves and leaving out the men. That is almost though not quite the case in the history of woman suffrage, but the men are mentioned whenever they vote it down. ”

“ Did somebody remark that women are too radical to be trusted with the suffrage?
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. ”

“ The male editors of the two leading fashion magazines are using columns of space in argument whether the women of this country shall adopt American or French styles. The National Association of Master Bakers, at their recent convention, adopted a resolution in favor of woman suffrage, giving as a reason that if women go into politics they won’t have time to stay at home and bake bread. It is really outrageous the way women are crowding into the fields of labor that belong to men! ”

“ Women have a good deal to learn about politics. There was the woman candidate for mayor of San Diego, who announced that her first act if elected would be to put through an ordinance taxing bachelors. Naturally the bachelors all voted against her; the benedicts did the same because they didn’t want the bachelors to feel that there was such an easy escape from marriage, and the women turned her down because they thought she was quite capable of levying a tax on spinsters. ”

“ Forbes Ross, an eminent English physician, has discovered that in two thousand years the men will have degenerated into gorillas. The women can save the race, he says, but not if they insist on the vote. The women will probably answer that they will take the vote now and run the risk of the gorillas two thousand years hence. And, when one comes to think of it, after the treatment the suffragists in England have received from some of the present generation of men, gorillas would have no terrors for them! ”

“ Some men are making an effort nowadays to scare women out of their independence by letting them stand in the street cars; but the women answer that they are better able to stand than many of the men they see sitting down, and that, according to statistics, a woman has a good many more years to ride on street cars than men have. ”

“ The president of the Woman’s Club at Boise, Idaho, where they have had equal suffrage for nearly twenty years, says that “nothing puts the fear of God into the hearts of men like the ballot in the hands of women.” Yes, a certain class of men feel much more comfortable to know that women are using the beautiful, indirect influence of prayers and tears.
60Sir Almoth Wright says the advocates of equal pay for women do not know the commercial value of having the employe work shoulder to shoulder with the employer. ”

“ What are the women coming to? A man jumps up in the midst of an eloquent speech by the president of the National Suffrage Association and asks her to marry him, and she answers that she would rather have a vote than a husband! The time was when a woman would rather have a husband ”

“ Having discovered that woman suffrage has led to polygamy in Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Kansas, Nevada, Montana and Illinois, they have now found, according to their official statement, that it means “the deliberate return to savagery.” Alas, yes! one can hear the war whoops even now—they sound like the suffragists celebrating a victory!
44Frenchmen often express great sympathy for the wife-ruled American husband, but they can’t point to a case over here where wives have a quarrel and then stand their husbands up to fight a duel in order to settle it. ”

“ With an amendment for full suffrage pending in a certain State, the opponents believe in nipping any voting tendencies in the bud; so the district attorney announces that any woman giving a tea party to induce other women to come out and register for the school election, at which women can vote, will be prosecuted under the corrupt practices act. ”