Representation

("My wife is against suffrage, and that settles me.”—­Vice-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 woman’s duty is to feel,
      And man’s is to obey.

II

    I’m in a hard position for a perfect gentleman,
    I want to please the ladies, but I don’t see how I can,
    My present wife’s 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 question’s closed;
    Each one is counting on my vote to represent her view. 
    Now what should you think proper for a gentleman to do?

Sonnet

("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 employes 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.”—­Zenas 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 employes, but a merry play;
    They do not ask the law’s 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!

To President Wilson

("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.”—­Speech of President Wilson.)

    Wise and just man—­for such I think you are—­
    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