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by Alice Duer Miller
- Father, what is a Legislature?
A representative body elected by the people of the state.
- Are women people?
No, my son, criminals, lunatics and women are not people.
- Do legislators legislate for nothing?
Oh, no; they are paid a salary.
- By whom?
By the people.
- Are women people?
Of course, my son, just as much as men are.
To the New York Tribune, in whose generous columns many of these verses first appeared, the author here wishes to express her gratitude.
Treacherous Texts
Campaign Material (For Both Sides)
Womenâs Sphere
A Masque of Teachers: The Ideal Candidates
The Unconscious Suffragists
Look at the hazards, the risks, the physical dangers that ladies would be exposed to at the polls.
âAnti-suffrage speech.
Youâre twenty-one to-day, Willie,
And a danger lurks at the door,
Iâve known about it always,
But I never spoke before;
When you were only a baby
It seemed so very remote,
But youâre twenty-one to-day, Willie,
And old enough to vote.
You must not go to the polls, Willie,
Never go to the polls,
Theyâre dark and dreadful places
Where many lose their souls;
They smirch, degrade and coarsen,
Terrible things they do
To quiet, elderly womenâ
What would they do to you!
If youâve a boyish fancy
For any measure or man,
Tell me, and Iâll tell Father,
Heâll vote for it, if he can.
He casts my vote, and Louisaâs,
And Sarah, and dear Aunt Clo;
Wouldnât you let him vote for you?
Father, who loves you so?
Iâve guarded you always, Willie,
Body and soul from harm;
Iâll guard your faith and honor,
Your innocence and charm
From the polls and their evil spirits,
Politics, rum and pelf;
Do you think Iâd send my only son
Where I would not go myself?
I am opposed to woman suffrage, but I am not opposed to woman.
âAnti-suffrage speech of Mr. Webb of North Carolina.
O women, have you heard the news
Of charity and grace?
Look, look, how joy and gratitude
Are beaming in my face!
For Mr. Webb is not opposed
To woman in her place!
O Mr. Webb, how kind you are
To let us live at all,
To let us light the kitchen range
And tidy up the hall;
To tolerate the female sex
In spite of Adamâs fall.
O girls, suppose that Mr. Webb
Should alter his decree!
Suppose he were opposed to usâ
Opposed to you and me.
What would be left for us to doâ
Except to cease to be?
The women of this smart capital are beautiful. Their beauty is disturbing to business; their feet are beautiful, their ankles are beautiful, but here I must pause.
âMr. Bowdleâs anti-suffrage speech in Congress, January 12, 1915.
You, who despise the so-called fairer sex,
Be brave. There really isnât any reason
You should not, if you wish, oppose and vex
And scold us in, and even out of season;
But donât regard it as your bounden duty
To open with a tribute to our beauty.
Say if you like that women have no sense,
No self-control, no power of concentration;
Say that hysterics is our one defence
Our virtue but an absence of temptation;
These I can bear, but, oh, I own it rankles
To hear you maundering on about our ankles.
Tell those old stories, which have now and then
Been from the Record thoughtfully deleted,
Repeat that favorite one about the hen,
Repeat the ones that cannot be repeated;
But in the midst of such enjoyments, smother
The impulse to extol your âsainted mother.â
Women are angels, they are jewels, they are queens and princesses of our hearts.
âAnti-suffrage speech of Mr. Carter of Oklahoma.
âAngel, or jewel, or princess, or queen,
Tell me immediately, where have you been?â
âIâve been to ask all my slaves so devoted
Why they against my enfranchisement voted.â
âAngel and princess, that action was wrong.
Back to the kitchen, where angels belong.â
Every true woman feelsââ
âSpeech of almost any Congressman.
I am old-fashioned, and I think it right
That man should know, by Natureâs laws eternal,
The proper way to rule, to earn, to fight,
And exercise those functions called paternal;
But even I a little bit rebel
At finding that he knows my job as well.
At least heâs always ready to expound it,
Especially in legislative hall,
The joys, the cares, the halos that surround it,
âHow women feelââhe knows that best of all.
In fact his thesis is that no one can
Know what is womanly except a man.
I am old-fashioned, and I am content
When he explains the world of art and science
And governmentâto him divinely sentâ
I drink it in with ladylike compliance.
But cannot listenâno, Iâm only humanâ
While he instructs me how to be a woman.
(A woman engineer has been dismissed by the Board of Education, under their new rule that women shall not attend high pressure boilers, although her work has been satisfactory and she holds a license to attend such boilers from the Police Department.)
Lady, dangers lurk in boilers,
Risks I could not let you face.
Men were meant to be the toilers,
Home, you know, is womanâs place.
Have no home? Well, is that so?
Still, itâs not my fault, you know.
Charming lady, work no more;
Fair you are and sweet as honey;
Work might make your fingers sore,
And, besides, I need the money.
Prithee rest,âor starve or robâ
Only let me have your job!
My wife is against suffrage, and that settles me.
âVice-President Marshall.
I.
My wife dislikes the income tax,
And so I cannot pay it;
She thinks that golf all interest lacks,
So now I never play it;
She is opposed to tolls repeal
(Though why I cannot say),
But womanâs duty is to feel,
And manâs is to obey.
II.
Iâm in a hard position for a perfect gentleman,
I want to please the ladies, but I donât see how I can,
My present wifeâs a suffragist, and counts on my support,
But my mother is an anti, of a rather biting sort;
One grandmother is on the fence, the other much opposed,
And my sister lives in Oregon, and thinks the questionâs closed;
Each one is counting on my vote to represent her view.
Now what should you think proper for a gentleman to do?
Three bills known as the Thompson-Bewley cannery bills have been advanced to third reading in the Senate and Assembly at Albany. One permits the canners to work their employés seven days a week, a second allows them to work women after 9 p.m. and a third removes every restriction upon the hours of labor of women and minors.
âZenas L. Potter, former chief cannery investigator for New York State Factory Investigating Commission.
Let us not to an unrestricted day
Impediments admit. Work is not work
To our employés, but a merry play;
They do not ask the lawâs excuse to shirk.
Ah, no, the canning season is at hand,
When summer scents are on the air distilled,
When golden fruits are ripening in the land,
And silvery tins are gaping to be filled.
Now to the cannery with jocund mien
Before the dawn come women, girls and boys,
Whose weekly hours (a hundred and nineteen)
Seem all too short for their industrious joys.
If this be error and be proved, alas
The Thompson-Bewley bills may fail to pass!
I hold it as a fundamental principle and so do you, that every people has the right to determine its own form of government. And until recently, 50 per cent of the people of Mexico have not had a look-in in determining who should be their governors, or what their government should be.
âSpeech of President Wilson.
Wise and just manâfor such I think you areâ
How can you see so burningly and clear
Injustices and tyrannies afar,
Yet blind your eyes to one that lies so near?
How can you plead so earnestly for men
Who fight their own fight with a bloody hand;
How hold their cause so wildly dear, and then
Forget the women of your native land?
With your stern ardor and your scholarâs word
You speak to us of human liberty;
Can you believe that women are not stirred
By this same human longing to be free?
He who for liberty would strike a blow
Need not take arms, or fly to Mexico.
(An Indiana judge has recently ruled: As to the right of the husband to decide the location of the home that âhome is where the husband is.â)
Home is where the husband is,
Be it near or be it far,
Office, theatre, Pullman car,
Poolroom, polls, or corner barâ
All good wives remember thisâ
Home is where the husband is.
Womanâs place is home, I wis.
Leave your family bacon frying,
Leave your wash and dishes drying,
Leave your little children crying;
Join your husband, near or far,
At the club or corner bar,
For the court has taught us this:
âHome is where the husband is.â
(A speaker at the National Education Association advised girls not to study algebra. Many girls, he said, had lost their souls through this study. The idea has been taken up with enthusiasm.)
I will avoid equations,
And shun the naughty surd,
I must beware the perfect square,
Through it young girls have erred:
And when men mention Rule of Three
Pretend I have not heard.
Through Sturmâs delightful theorems
Illicit joys assure,
Though permutations and combinations
My womanâs heart allure,
Iâll never study algebra,
But keep my spirit pure.
Where on earth did the idea come from that the ballot is a boon, a privilege and an honor? From men.
âMrs. Prestonia Mann Martin.
Who is it thinks the vote some use?
Man. (Man is often such a goose!)
Indeed it makes me laugh to see
How men have struggled to be free.
Poor Washington, who meant so well,
And Nathan Hale and William Tell,
Hampden and Bolivar and Pym,
And LâOuvertureâremember him?
And Garibaldi and Kossuth,
And some who threw away their youth,
All bitten by the stupid notion
That liberty was worth emotion.
They could not get it through their heads
That if they stayed tucked up in beds,
Avoiding politics and strife,
Theyâd lead a pleasant, peaceful life.
Let us, dear sisters, never make
Such a ridiculous mistake;
But teach our children oâer and oâer
That liberty is just a chore.
No brass bands. No speeches. Instead a still, silent, effective influence.
âAnti-suffrage speech.
We are wagingâcan you doubt it?
A campaign so calm and still
No one knows a thing about it,
And we hope they never will.
No one knows
What we oppose,
And we hope they never will.
We are ladylike and quiet,
Here a whisperâthere a hint;
Never speeches, bands or riot,
Nothing suitable for print.
No one knows
What we oppose,
For we never speak for print.
Sometimes in profound seclusion,
In some far (but homelike) spot,
We will make a dark allusion:
âWeâre opposed to you-know-what.â
No one knows
What we oppose,
For we call it âYou-Know-What.â
I hate a woman who is not a mystery to herself, as well as to me.
âThe Phoenix.
If you want a receipt for that popular mystery
Known to the world as a Woman of Charm,
Take all the conspicuous ladies of history,
Mix them all up without doing them harm.
The beauty of Helen, the warmth of Cleopatra,
Salomeâs notorious skill in the dance,
The dusky allure of the belles of Sumatra,
The fashion and finish of ladies from France.
The youth of Susanna, beloved by an elder,
The wit of a Chambersâ incomparable minx,
The conjugal views of the patient Griselda,
The fire of Sappho, the calm of the Sphinx,
The eyes of La ValliĂšre, the voice of Cordelia,
The musical gifts of the sainted Cecelia,
Trilby and Carmen and Ruth and Ophelia,
Madame de Staël and the matron Cornelia,
Iseult, Hypatia and naughty Nell Gwynn,
Una, Titania and Elinor Glyn.
Take of these elements all that is fusible,
Melt âem all down in a pipkin or crucible,
Set âem to simmer and take off the scum,
And a Woman of Charm is the residuum!
(Slightly adapted from W.S. Gilbert.)
(It has been said that the feminist movement is the true solution of the mother-in-law problem.)
Sylvia, my dear, I would be yours with pleasure,
All that you are seems excellent to me,
Except your mother, whoâs much more at leisure
Than mothers ought to be.
Find her a fad, a job, an occupation,
Eugenics, dancing, uplift, yes, or crime,
Set her to work for her Emancipationâ
That takes a lot of time.
Or, if the suffrage doctrine fails to charm her,
There are the Antisârather in her lineâ
Guarding the Home from Maine to Alabama
Would keep her out of mine.
Good heavens, when I think what the young boy of to-day is growing up to I gasp. He has too many women around him all the time. He has his mother when he is a baby.
âBernard Fagin, Probation Officer.
Hush-a-bye, baby,
Feel no alarm,
Gunmen shall guard you,
Lest Mother should harm.
Wake in your cradle,
Hear father curse!
Isnât that better
Than Mother or Nurse?
With apologies to James Whitcomb Riley.
The result of taking second place to girls at school is that the boy feels a sense of inferiority that he is never afterward able entirely to shake off.
âEditorial in London Globe against co-education.
There, little girl, donât read,
Youâre fond of your books, I know,
But Brother might mope
If he had no hope
Of getting ahead of you.
Itâs dull for a boy who cannot lead.
There, little girl, donât read.
The Latin man believes that giving woman the vote will make her less attractive.
âAnna H. Shaw.
They must sacrifice their beauty
Who would do their civic duty,
Who the polling booth would enter,
Who the ballot box would use;
As they drop their ballots in it
Men and women in a minute,
Lose their charm, the antis tell us,
Butâthe men have less to lose.
Our laws have not yet reached the point of holding that property which is the result of the husbandâs earnings and the wifeâs savings becomes their joint property.... In this most important of all partnerships there is no partnership property.
âRecent decision of the New York Supreme Court.
Lady, lovely lady, come and share
All my care;
Oh how gladly I will hurry
To confide my every worry
(And theyâre very dark and drear)
In your ear.
Lady, share the praise I obtain
Now and again;
Though Iâm shy, it doesnât matter,
I will tell you how they flatter:
Every compliment Iâll share
Fair and square.
Lady, I my toil will divide
At your side;
I outside the home, you within;
You shall wash and cook and spin,
Iâll provide the flax and food,
If youâre good.
Partners, lady, we shall be,
You and me,
Partners in the highest sense
Looking for no recompense,
For, the savings that we make,
I shall take.
(The law compels a married woman to take the nationality of her husband.)
I. In Time of War
Help us. Your country needs you;
Show that you love her,
Give her your men to fight,
Ay, even to fall;
The fair, free land of your birth,
Set nothing above her,
Not husband nor son,
She must come first of all.
II. In Time of Peace
Whatâs this? Youâve wed an alien,
Yet you ask for legislation
To guard your nationality?
Weâre shocked at your demand.
A woman when she marries
Takes her husbandâs name and nation:
She should love her husband only.
Whatâs a womanâs native land?
With apologies to Lord Tennyson.
The grant of suffrage to women is repugnant to instincts that strike their roots deep in the order of nature. It runs counter to human reason, it flouts the teachings of experience and the admonitions of common sense.
âN.Y. Times, Feb. 7, 1915.
Oh, that âtwere possible
After those words inane
For me to read âThe Timesâ
Ever again!
When I was wont to read it
In the early morning hours,
In a mood âtwixt wrath and mirth,
I exclaimed: âAlas, Ye Powers,
These ideas are fainter, quainter
Than anything on earth!â
A paperâs laid before me.
Not thou, not like to thee.
Dear me, if it were possible
âThe Timesâ should ever see
How very far the times have moved
(Spelt with a little âtâ).
Lovely Antiques, breathing in every line
The perfume of an age long passed away,
Wafting us back to 1829,
Museum pieces of a by-gone day,
You should not languish in the public press
Where modern thought might reach and do you harm,
And vulgar youth insult your hoariness,
Missing the flavor of your old world charm;
You should be locked, where rust cannot corrode
In some old rosewood cabinet, dimmed by age,
With silver-lustre, tortoise shell and Spode;
And all would cry, who read your yellowing page:
âYes, thatâs the sort of thing that men believed
Before the First Reform Bill was conceived!â
(By the Childrenâs Anti-School League.)
An argument sometimes used against paying women as highly as men for the same work is that women are only temporarily in industry.
Forty-four per cent of the women teachers in the public schools of New York have been more than ten years in the service, while only twenty-six per cent of the men teachers have served as long.
ââ-
The Bundesrath of Germany has decided to furnish medical and financial assistance to women at the time of childbirth, in order âto alleviate the anxiety of husbands at the front.â
How strange this would sound: âThe Bundesrath has decided to furnish medical assistance to the wounded at the front, in order to alleviate the anxiety of wives and mothers at home.â
When a benefit is suggested for men, the question asked is: âWill it benefit men?â
When a benefit is suggested for women, the question is: âWill it benefit men?â
In 1875 the Supreme Court of Wisconsin in denying the petition of women to practise before it said:
It would be shocking to manâs reverence for womanhood and faith in woman ... that woman should be permitted to mix professionally in all the nastiness which finds its way into courts of justice.â
It then names thirteen subjects as unfit for the attention of womenâthree of them are crimes committed against women.
Vile insults, lewd talk and brutal conduct were used by the indicted men to frighten respectable women who went to the polls in Terre Haute at the last election, asserted District Attorney Dailey.
â Press Dispatch.
- Are the polls unfit for decent women?
No, sir, they are perfectly orderly.
- Tut, tut! Go there at once and swear and be brutal, or what will become of our anti-suffrage argument?
- Is it true that the English government is calling on women to do work abandoned by men?
Yes, it is true.
- Is not womanâs place the home?
No, not when men need her services outside the home.
- Will she never be told again that her place is the home?
Oh, yes, indeed.
- When?
As soon as men want their jobs back again.
That in 1869 Miss Jex-Blake and four other women entered for a medical degree at the University of Edinburgh?
That the president of the College of Physicians refused to give the women the prizes they had won?
That the undergraduates insulted any professor who allowed women to compete for prizes?
That the women were stoned in the streets, and finally excluded from the medical school?
That in 1877 the British Medical Association declared women ineligible for membership?
That in 1881 the International Medical Congress excluded women from all but its âsocial and ceremonial meetingsâ?
That the Obstetrical Society refused to allow a womanâs name to appear on the title page of a pamphlet which she had written with her husband?
That according to a recent dispatch from London, many hospitals, since the outbreak of hostilities, have asked women to become resident physicians, and public authorities are daily endeavoring to obtain women as assistant medical officers and as school doctors?
Womanâs place is in my home.
âAppius Claudius.
I have never felt the need of the ballot.
âCleopatra.
Magna Charta merely fashionable fad of ye Barons.
âKing John.
Boston Tea Party shows American colonists to be hysterical and utterly incapable of self-government.
âGeorge III.
Know of no really good slaves who desire emancipation.
âPresident of the United Slaveholdersâ Protective Association.
On February 15, the House of Representatives passed a bill making it unlawful to ship in interstate commerce the products of a mill, cannery or factory which have been produced by the labor of children under fourteen years.
Forty-three gentlemen voted against it.
Forty-one of those forty-three had also voted against the woman suffrage bill.
Not one single vote was cast against it by a representative from any state where women vote for Congressmen.
âThe Michigan commission on industrial relations has discovered,â says âThe Detroit Journal,â âthat thousands of wives support their husbands.â
Womanâs place is the home, but under a special privilege she is sometimes allowed to send her wages as a substitute.
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage is sending out leaflets to its members urging them to âtell every man you meet, your tailor, your postman, your grocer, as well as your DINNER PARTNER, that you are opposed to woman suffrage.â
We hope that the 90,000 sewing machine operatives, the 40,000 saleswomen, the 32,000 laundry operatives, the 20,000 knitting and silk mill girls, the 17,000 women janitors and cleaners, the 12,000 cigar-makers, to say nothing of the 700,000 other women and girls in industry in New York State, will remember when they have drawn off their long gloves and tasted their oysters to tell their dinner partners that they are opposed to woman suffrage because they fear it might take women out of the home.
If you have beauty, charm, refinement, tact,
If you can prove that should I set you free,
You would not contemplate the smallest act
That might annoy or interfere with me.
If you can show that women will abide
By the best standards of their womanhoodâ
(And I must be the person to decide
What in a woman is the highest good);
If you display efficiency supreme
In philanthropic work devoid of pay;
If you can show a clearly thought-out scheme
For bringing the millennium in a day:
Why, then, dear lady, at some time remote,
I might consider giving you the vote.
When men in Congress come to blows at something someone said,
I always notice that it shows their blood is quick and red;
But if two women disagree, with very little noise,
It proves, and this seems strange to me, that women have no poise.
I.
A heroine must shrink and cling
When heroes are about,
And thus the watching world will think:
âHow brave his heart and stout!â
But if he chance to be away
When bright-faced dangers shine,
It will be best for her to play
The oak-tree, not the vine.
In fact the most important thing
Is knowing when itâs time to cling.
II.
With apologies to R.L.S.
A heroine must be polite
And do what others say is right,
And think men wise and formidableâ
At least as far as she is able.
âMy dear,â he said, âobserve this frightful bill,
Run up, I think youâll own, against my will.
If you will recollect our wedding day
You vowed on that occasion to obey.â
âI do recall the day,â said she, âand how
Me with your worldly goods you did endow.â
âThat,â he replied, âis palpably absurdâââ
âYou mean you did not mean to keep your word?â
âO, yes,â he answered, âin a general way.â
âAnd that,â said she, âis how I meant obey.â
Charm is a womanâs strongest arm;
My charwoman is full of charm;
I chose her, not for strength of arm
But for her strange elusive charm.
And how tears heighten womanâs powers!
My typist weeps for hours and hours:
I took her for her weeping powersâ
They so delight my business hours.
A woman lives by intuition.
Though my accountant shuns addition
She has the rarest intuition.
(And I myself can do addition.)
Timidity in girls is nice.
My cook is so afraid of mice.
Now youâll admit itâs very nice
To feel your cookâs afraid of mice.
Democracy is thisâto hold
That all who wander down the pike
In cart or car, on foot or bike,
Or male or female, young or old,
Are much alikeâare much alike.
âMother, what is a Feminist?â
âA Feminist, my daughter,
Is any woman now who cares
To think about her own affairs
As men donât think she oughter.â
No, it isnât home neglecting
If you spend your time selecting
Seven blouses and a jacket and a hat;
Or to give your day to paying
Needless visits, or to playing
Auction bridge. What critic could object to that?
But to spend two precious hours
At a lecture! Oh, my powers,
The home is all a woman needs to learn.
And an hour, or a quarter,
Spent in voting! Why, my daughter,
You could not find your home on your return.
Said Mr. Jones in 1910:
âWomen, subject yourselves to men.â
Nineteen-Eleven heard him quote:
âThey rule the world without the vote.â
By Nineteen-Twelve, he would submit
âWhen all the women wanted it.â
By Nineteen-Thirteen, looking glum,
He said that it was bound to come.
This year I heard him say with pride:
âNo reasons on the other side!â
By Nineteen-Fifteen, heâll insist
Heâs always been a suffragist.
And what is really stranger, too,
Heâll think that what he says is true.
âOnly the worst of them vote.â
âAre not the suffragists frights?â
âNietzscheâs the person to quote.â
âI prefer love to my rights.â
âAre not the suffragists frights?â
âSex is their only appeal.â
âI prefer love to my rights.â
âNo, we donât think, but we feel.â
âSex is their only appeal.â
âWoman belongs at the loom.â
âNo, we donât think, but we feel.â
âDoesnât it rub off the bloom?â
âWoman belongs at the loom.â
âIsnât the speaker a bore!â
âDoesnât it rub off the bloom?â
âOh, itâs a fadânothing more.â
âIsnât the speaker a bore!â
âNietzscheâs the person to quote.â
âOh, itâs a fadânothing more.â
âOnly the worst of them vote.â
Oh, there you go again,
Invading manâs domain!
Itâs Natureâs laws, you know, you are defying.
Donât fancy that you can
Be really like a man,
So whatâs the use of all this fuss and trying?
It seems to me so clear,
That womenâs highest sphere
Is being loving wives and patient mothers.
Oh, canât you be content
To be as you were meant?
For souls/books/votes belong to husbands and to brothers.
(By an admirer of the late H.C. Bunner.)
âI know what youâre going to say,â she said,
And she stood up, causing him some alarm;
âYouâre going to tell me Iâll lose my charm,
And what is a woman when charm has fled?
And youâre going to say that you greatly fear
I donât understand a womanâs sphere;
Now arenât you honestly?â âYes,â he said.
âI know what youâre going to say,â she said,
âYouâre going to ask what I hope to gain
By stepping down to the dusty plain,
By seeking a stone when I might have bread;
Youâre going to say: âCan a vote replace
The tender force of a womanâs grace?â
Now, arenât you honestly?â âYes,â he said.
âI know what youâre going to do,â he said,
âYouâre going to talk to me all day long
Trying to make me see Iâm wrong;
And other men who are less misled
Will pale with jealousy when they see
The time you give to converting me;
Now, arenât you honestly?â âYe-es,â she said.
âI donât pretend Iâm clever,â he remarked, âor very wise,â
And at this she murmured, âReally,â with the right polite surprise.
âBut women,â he continued, âI must own I understand;
Women are a contradictionâhonorable and underhandâ
Constant as the star Polaris, yet as changeable as Fate,
Always flying what they long for, always seeking what they hate.â
âDonât you think,â began the lady, but he cut her short: âI see
That you take it personallyâwomen always do,â said he.
âYou will pardon me for saying every woman is the same,
Always greedy for approval, always sensitive to blame;
Sweet and passionate are women; weak in mind, though strong in soul;
Even you admit, I fancy, that they have no self-control?â
âNo, I donât admit they havenât,â said the patient lady then,
âOr they could not sit and listen to the nonsense talked by men.â
Itâs treating a woman politely
As long as she isnât a fright:
Itâs guarding the girls who act rightly,
If you can be judge of whatâs right;
Itâs beingânot just, but so pleasant;
Itâs tipping while wages are low;
Itâs making a beautiful present,
And failing to pay what you owe.
âChivalry, Chivalry, where have you been?â
âIâve been out seeking a beautiful queen.â
âChivalry, Chivalry, what did you find?â
âCommonplace women, not much to my mind.â
(With rather insincere apologies to Mr. Rudyard Kipling.)
I went to ask my government if they would set me free,
They gave a pardoned crook a vote, but hadnât one for me;
The men about me laughed and frowned and said: âGo home, because
We really canât be bothered when weâre busy making laws.â
Oh, itâs women this, and women that and women have no sense,
But itâs pay your taxes promptly when it comes to the expense,
It comes to the expense, my dears, it comes to the expense,
Itâs pay your taxes promptly when it comes to the expense.
I went into a factory to earn my daily bread:
Men said: âThe home is womanâs sphere.â âI have no home,â I said.
But when the men all marched to war, they cried to wife and maid,
âOh, never mind about the home, but save the export trade.â
For itâs women this and women that, and homeâs the place for you,
But itâs patriotic angels when thereâs outside work to do,
Thereâs outside work to do, my dears, thereâs outside work to do,
Itâs patriotic angels when thereâs outside work to do.
We are not really senseless, and we are not angels, too,
But very human beings, human just as much as you.
Itâs hard upon occasions to be forceful and sublime
When youâre treated as incompetents three-quarters of the time.
But itâs women this and women that, and womanâs like a hen,
But itâs do the countryâs work alone, when war takes off the men,
And itâs women this and women that and everything you please,
But woman is observant, and be sure that woman sees.
In the days that are gone when a statue was wanted
In park or museum where statues must be,
A chivalrous male would come forward undaunted
And say: âIf you must have one, make it of me.
Bad though they be, yet Iâll agree
If you must make them, why make them of me.â
But chivalryâs dead, as I always expected
Since women would not let things stay as they were;
So now, I suppose, when a statueâs erected
Men will say brutally: âMake it of her.â
She may prefer things as they were
When they start making the statues of her.
Men are very brave, you know,
That was settled long ago;
Ask, however, if you doubt it,
Any man you meet about it;
He will say, I think, like me,
Men are brave as they can be.
Women think theyâre brave, you say?
Do they really? Well, they may,
But such biased attestation
Is not worth consideration,
For a legal judgment shelves
What they say about themselves.
Women love self-sacrifice
Suffering and good advice;
If they donât love these sincerely
Then theyâre not true women really.
Oh, it shocks me so to note
Women pleading for the vote!
Saying publicly it would
Educate and do them good.
Such a selfish reason trips
Oddly from a womanâs lips.
But it must not be supposed
I am in the least opposed.
If they want it let them try it.
For I think weâll profit by it.
I went to see old Susan Gray,
Whose soldier sons had marched away,
And this is what she had to say:
âIt isnât war I hate at allâ
âTis likely men must fightâ
But, oh, these flags and uniforms,
Itâs them that isnât right!
If war must come, and come it does
To take our boys from play,
It isnât right to make it seem
So beautiful and gay.â
I left old Susan with a sigh;
A famous band was marching by
To make men glad they had to die.
An Englishwoman whose income has stopped, owing to her two sons having joined the English army, was taken care of last night at the Florence Crittenden Mission.
âPress Clipping.
The young men said to their mother,
âHear us, O dearest and best!
Time cannot cool or smother
The love of you in our breast;
Here is your place and no otherâ
Come home and rest.â
And the motherâs heart was grateful
For the love of her cherished ones,
And her labor, bitter and hateful,
She left at the word of her sons,
Till she heard far off the fateful
Voices of guns.
Their love did more enslave her;
They did not understand
That none could guard or save her
When war was on the land,
But herself, and God, who gave her
Heart and mind and hand.
Last year the shops were crowded
With soldier suits and gunsâ
The presents that at Christmas time
We give our little sons;
And many a glittering trumpet
And many a sword and drum;
But as theyâre made in Germany
This year they will not come.
Perhaps another season
We shall not give our boys
Such very warlike playthings,
Such military toys;
Perhaps another season
We shall not think it sweet
To watch their game of soldier men,
Who dream not of defeat.
Hippolta, Penthesilea,
Maria Teresa and Joan,
Agustina and Boadicea
And some militant girls of our ownâ
It would take a brave man and a dull one
To say to these ladies: âOf course
We adore you while meek,
Timid, clinging and weak,
But a woman can never use force.â
Her old love in tears and silence had been building her a palace
Ringed by moats and flanked with towers, he had set it on a hill
âHere,â he said, âwill come no whisper of the worldâs alarms and malice,
In these granite walls imprisoned, I will keep you safe from ill.â
As he spoke along the highway there came riding by a stranger,
For an instant on her features, he a fleeting glance bestowed,
Then he said: âMy heart is fickle and the world is full of danger,â
And he offered her his stirrup and he pointed down the road.
(About 465 years after Villon.)
Tell me in what spot remote
Do the antis dwell to-day,
Those who did not want to vote,
Feared their sexâs prompt decay?
Where are those who used to say:
âHome alone is womanâs sphere;
Only those should vote who slayâ?
Where the snows of yester-year?
Where are those who used to quote
Nietzscheâs words in dread array?
Where the ancient crones who wrote:
âWomen rule through Beautyâs swayâ?
And those lovers, where are they,
Who could hold no woman dear
If she had the ballot? Nay!
Where the snows of yester-year?
Prince, inquire no more, I pray,
Whither antis disappear.
Suffrage won; they melt away,
Like the snows of yester-year.
There are no homes in suffrage states,
There are no children, glad and good,
There, men no longer seek for mates,
And women lose their womanhood.
This I believe without debate,
And yet I askâand ask in vainâ
Why no one in a suffrage state
Has moved to change things back again?
(A by-law of the New York Board of Education says: âNo married woman shall be appointed to any teaching or supervising position in the New York public schools unless her husband is mentally or physically incapacitated to earn a living or has deserted her for a period of not less than one year.â)
CHARACTERS
Board of Education.
Three Would-Be Teachers.
Chorus by Board:
Now please donât waste
Your time and ours
By pleas all based
On mental powers.
She seems to us
The proper stuff
Who has a hus-
Band bad enough.
All other pleas appear to us
Excessively superfluous.
1st Teacher:
My husband is not really badââ
Board:
How very sad, how very sad!
1st Teacher:
Heâs good, but hear my one excuseââ
Board:
Oh, whatâs the use, oh, whatâs the use?
1st Teacher:
Last winter in a railroad wreck
He lost an arm and broke his neck.
Heâs doomed, but lingers day by day.
Board:
Her husbandâs doomed! Hurray! hurray!
2nd Teacher:
My husbandâs kind and healthy, tooââ
Board:
Why, then, of course, you will not do.
2nd Teacher:
Just hear me out. Youâll find youâre wrong.
Itâs true his bodyâs good and strong;
But, ah, his wits are all astray.
Board:
Her husbandâs mad. Hip, hip, hurray!
3rd Teacher:
My husbandâs wise and wellâthe creature!
Board:
Then you can never be a teacher.
3rd Teacher:
Wait. For I led him such a life
He could not stand me as a wife;
Last Michaelmas, he ran away.
Board:
Her husband hates her, Hip, hurray!
Chorus by Board:
Now we have found
Without a doubt,
By process sound
And well thought out,
Each candidate
Is fit in truth
To educate
The mind of youth.
No teacher need apply to us
Whose married lifeâs harmonious.
(Curtain.)
They who have no voice nor vote in the electing of representatives do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes.
âBenjamin Franklin.
No such phrase as virtual representation was ever known in law or constitution.
âJames Otis.
But these great cities, says my honorable friend, are virtually, though not directly represented. Are not the wishes of Manchester, he asks, as much consulted as those of any other town which sends members to Parliament? Now, sir, I do not understand how a power which is salutary when exercised virtually can be noxious when exercised directly. If the wishes of Manchester have as much weight with us as they would have under a system which gives representatives to Manchester, how can there be any danger in giving representatives to Manchester?
âLord Macaulayâs Speech on the Reform Bill.
Universal suffrage prolongs in the United States the effect of universal education: for it stimulates all citizens throughout their lives to reflect on problems outside the narrow circle of their private interests and occupations: to read about public questions; to discuss public characters and to hold themselves ready in some degree to give a rational account of their political faith.
âDr. Charles Eliot.
But liberty is not the chief and constant object of their (the American people) desires: equality is their idol; they make rapid and sudden efforts to obtain liberty and if they miss their aim, resign themselves to their disappointment; but nothing can satisfy them without equality, and they would rather perish than lose it.
âDe Tocqueville: Democracy in America, 1835.
A government is for the benefit of all the people. We believe that this benefit is best accomplished by popular government because in the long run each class of individuals is apt to secure better provision for themselves through their own voice in government than through the altruistic interest of others, however intelligent or philanthropic.
âWilliam H. Taft in Special Message.
I have listened to some very honest and eloquent orators whose sentiments were noteworthy for this: that when they spoke of the people, they were not thinking of themselves, they were thinking of somebody whom they were commissioned to take care of. And I have seen them shiver when it was suggested that they arrange to have something done by the people for themselves.
âThe New Freedom, by Woodrow Wilson.