The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copyrighted by BookRags, Inc.
ARE WOMEN PEOPLE?
("Look at the hazards, the risks, the physical dangers that ladies would be exposed to at the polls.”—Anti-suffrage speech.)
You’re twenty-one to-day,
Willie,
And a danger lurks
at the door,
I’ve known about it
always,
But I never spoke
before;
When you were only a baby
It seemed so very
remote,
But you’re twenty-one
to-day, Willie,
And old enough
to vote.
You must not go to the polls,
Willie,
Never go to the
polls,
They’re dark and dreadful
places
Where many lose
their souls;
They smirch, degrade and coarsen,
Terrible things
they do
To quiet, elderly women—
What would they
do to you!
If you’ve a boyish fancy
For any measure
or man,
Tell me, and I’ll tell
Father,
He’ll vote
for it, if he can.
He casts my vote, and Louisa’s,
And Sarah, and
dear Aunt Clo;
Wouldn’t you let him
vote for you?
Father, who loves
you so?
I’ve guarded you always,
Willie,
Body and soul
from harm;
I’ll guard your faith
and honor,
Your innocence
and charm
From the polls and their evil
spirits,
Politics, rum
and pelf;
Do you think I’d send
my only son
Where I would
not go myself?
("I am opposed to woman suffrage, but I am not opposed to woman.”—Anti-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 Adam’s
fall.
O girls, suppose that Mr.
Webb
Should alter his
decree!
Suppose he were opposed to
us—
Opposed to you
and me.
What would be left for us
to do—
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.”—Mr. Bowdle’s anti-suffrage speech in Congress, January 12, 1915.)
You, who despise the so-called
fairer sex,
Be brave.
There really isn’t any reason
You should not, if you wish,
oppose and vex
And scold us in,
and even out of season;
But don’t 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
“sainted mother.”
("Women are angels, they are jewels, they are queens and princesses of our hearts.”—Anti-suffrage speech of Mr. Carter of Oklahoma.)
“Angel, or jewel, or
princess, or queen,
Tell me immediately, where
have you been?”
“I’ve been to
ask all my slaves so devoted
Why they against my enfranchisement
voted.”
“Angel and princess,
that action was wrong.
Back to the kitchen, where
angels belong.”
("Every true woman feels——“—Speech of almost any Congressman.)
I am old-fashioned, and I
think it right
That man should
know, by Nature’s 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 he’s always
ready to expound it,
Especially in
legislative hall,
The joys, the cares, the halos
that surround it,
“How women
feel”—he 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 government—to
him divinely sent—
I drink it in
with ladylike compliance.
But cannot listen—no,
I’m only human—
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 woman’s place.
Have no home? Well, is
that so?
Still, it’s 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,—or
starve or rob—
Only let me have your job!
("My wife is against suffrage, and that settles me.”—Vice-President Marshall.)
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.
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!
("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
(An Indiana judge has recently ruled: As to the right of the husband to decide the location of the home that “home is where the husband is.”)
Home is where the husband
is,
Be it near or be it far,
Office, theatre, Pullman car,
Poolroom, polls, or corner
bar—
All good wives remember this—
Home is where the husband
is.
Woman’s 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:
“Home is where the husband
is.”
(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 Sturm’s delightful
theorems
Illicit joys assure,
Though permutations and combinations
My woman’s
heart allure,
I’ll 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.”—Mrs. 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 L’Ouverture—remember
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,
They’d lead a pleasant,
peaceful life.
Let us, dear sisters, never
make
Such a ridiculous mistake;
But teach our children o’er
and o’er
That liberty is just a chore.
("No brass bands. No speeches. Instead a still, silent, effective influence.”—Anti-suffrage speech.)
We are waging—can
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 whisper—there
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:
“We’re
opposed to you-know-what.”
No
one knows
What
we oppose,
For we call it
“You-Know-What.”
("I hate a woman who is not a mystery to herself, as well as to me.”—The 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,
Salome’s
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 Chambers’
incomparable minx,
The conjugal views of the
patient Griselda,
The fire of Sappho,
the calm of the Sphinx,
The eyes of La Valliere, the
voice of Cordelia,
The musical gifts of the sainted
Cecelia,
Trilby and Carmen and Ruth
and Ophelia,
Madame de Stael and the matron
Cornelia,
Iseult, Hypatia and naughty
Nell Gwynn,
Una, Titania and Elinor Glyn.
Take of these
elements all that is fusible,
Melt ’em
all down in a pipkin or crucible,
Set ’em
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, who’s
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 Emancipation—
That takes a lot
of time.
Or, if the suffrage doctrine
fails to charm her,
There are the
Antis—rather in her line—
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.”—Bernard 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!
Isn’t 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.”—Editorial in London Globe against co-education.)
There, little girl, don’t
read,
You’re fond of your
books, I know,
But Brother might mope
If he had no hope
Of getting ahead of you.
It’s dull for a boy
who cannot lead.
There, little girl, don’t
read.
("The Latin man believes that giving woman the vote will make her less attractive.”—Anna 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,
But—the
men have less to lose.
("Our laws have not yet reached the point of holding that property which is the result of the husband’s earnings and the wife’s savings becomes their joint property.... In this most important of all partnerships there is no partnership property.”—Recent 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 they’re very dark
and drear)
In
your ear.
Lady, share the praise I obtain
Now
and again;
Though I’m shy, it doesn’t
matter,
I will tell you how they flatter:
Every compliment I’ll
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,
I’ll provide the flax and food,
If you’re 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.)
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.
In Time of Peace
What’s this? You’ve
wed an alien,
Yet you ask for
legislation
To guard your nationality?
We’re shocked
at your demand.
A woman when she marries
Takes her husband’s
name and nation:
She should love her husband
only.
What’s a
woman’s native land?
“Oh, That ’Twere Possible!”
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.”—N.Y. Times, Feb. 7, 1915.)
Oh, that ’twere possible
After those words
inane
For me to read The Times
Ever again!
When I was wont to read it
In the early morning
hours,
In a mood ’twixt wrath
and mirth,
I exclaimed:
“Alas, Ye Powers,
These ideas are fainter, quainter
Than anything
on earth!”
A paper’s laid before
me.
Not thou, not
like to thee.
Dear me, if it were possible
The Times
should ever see
How very far the times have
moved
(Spelt with a
little “t").
The Times Editorials
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:
“Yes, that’s
the sort of thing that men believed
Before the First
Reform Bill was conceived!”
(For Both Sides)
1. Because no woman will leave her domestic duties to vote.
2. Because no woman who may vote will attend to her domestic duties.
3. Because it will make dissension between husband and wife.
4. Because every woman will vote as her husband tells her to.
5. Because bad women will corrupt politics.
6. Because bad politics will corrupt women.
7. Because women have no power of organization.
8. Because women will form a solid party and outvote men.
9. Because men and women are so different that they must stick to different duties.
10. Because men and women are so much alike that men, with one vote each, can represent their own views and ours too.
11. Because women cannot use force.
12. Because the militants did use force.
1. Because pockets are not a natural right.
2. Because the great majority of women do not want pockets. If they did they would have them.
3. Because whenever women have had pockets they have not used them.
4. Because women are required to carry enough things as it is, without the additional burden of pockets.
5. Because it would make dissension between husband and wife as to whose pockets were to be filled.
6. Because it would destroy man’s chivalry toward woman, if he did not have to carry all her things in his pockets.
7. Because men are men, and women are women. We must not fly in the face of nature.
8. Because pockets have been used by men to carry tobacco, pipes, whiskey flasks, chewing gum and compromising letters. We see no reason to suppose that women would use them more wisely.
1880—Anti-suffrage arguments are being worn long, calm and flowing this year, with the dominant note that of woman’s intellectual inferiority.
1890—Violence is very evident in this season’s modes, and our more conservative thinkers are saying that woman suffrage threatens the home, the Church and the Republic.
1900—A complete change of style has taken place. Everything is being worn a l’aristocrate, with the repeated assertion that too many people are voting already.
1915—The best line of goods shown by the leading anti-suffrage houses this spring is the statement that woman suffrage is the same thing as free love. The effect is extremely piquant and surprising.
1. Because travelling in trains is not a natural right.
2. Because our great-grandmothers never asked to travel in trains.
3. Because woman’s place is the home, not the train.
4. Because it is unnecessary; there is no point reached by a train that cannot be reached on foot.
5. Because it will double the work of conductors, engineers and brakemen who are already overburdened.
6. Because men smoke and play cards in trains. Is there any reason to believe that women will behave better?
(By the Children’s Anti-School League.)
1. Because education is a burden, not a right.
2. Because not one-tenth of one per cent. of the children of this country have demanded education.
3. Because if we are educated we should have to behave as if we were and we don’t want to.
4. Because it is essentially against the nature of a child to be educated.
5. Because we can’t see that it has done so much for grown-ups, and there is no reason for thinking it will make children perfect.
6. Because the time of children is already sufficiently occupied without going to school.
7. Because it would make dissension between parent and child. Imagine the home life of a parent who turned out to be more ignorant than his (or her) child?
8. Because we believe in the indirect education of the theatre, the baseball field and the moving picture. We believe that schools would in a great measure deprive us of this.
9. Because our parents went to school. They love us, they take care of us, they tell us what to do. We are content that they should be educated for us.
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.
* * * * *
The Bundesrath of Germany has decided to furnish medical and financial assistance to women at the time of childbirth, in order “to alleviate the anxiety of husbands at the front.”
How strange this would sound: “The 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.”
When a benefit is suggested for men, the question asked is: “Will it benefit men?”
When a benefit is suggested for women, the question is: “Will it benefit men?”
1. Because man’s place is the armory.
2. Because no really manly man wants to settle any question otherwise than by fighting about it.
3. Because if men should adopt peaceable methods women will no longer look up to them.
4. Because men will lose their charm if they step out of their natural sphere and interest themselves in other matters than feats of arms, uniforms and drums.
5. Because men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them peculiarly unfit for the task of government.
In 1875 the Supreme Court of Wisconsin in denying the petition of women to practise before it said:
“It would be shocking to man’s 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.”
It then names thirteen subjects as unfit for the attention of women—three 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.”—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 woman’s 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 “social and ceremonial meetings”?
That the Obstetrical Society refused to allow a woman’s 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?
“Woman’s place is in my home.”—Appius Claudius.
“I have never felt the need of the ballot.”—Cleopatra.
“Magna Charta merely fashionable fad of ye Barons.”—King John.
“Boston Tea Party shows American colonists to be hysterical and utterly incapable of self-government.”—George III.
“Know of no really good slaves who desire emancipation.”—President of the United Slaveholders’ 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.
“The Michigan commission on industrial relations has discovered,” says “The Detroit Journal,” “that thousands of wives support their husbands.”
Woman’s 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 “tell every man you meet, your tailor, your postman, your grocer, as well as your dinner partner, that you are opposed to woman suffrage.”
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.
Many Men to Any Woman
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
womanhood—
(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.
Advice to Heroines
A heroine must shrink and
cling
When heroes are
about,
And thus the watching world
will think:
“How brave
his heart and stout!”
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 it’s
time to cling.
With apologies to R.L.S.
A heroine must be polite
And do what others say is
right,
And think men wise and formidable—
At least as far as she is
able.
“My dear,” he
said, “observe this frightful bill,
Run up, I think you’ll
own, against my will.
If you will recollect our
wedding day
You vowed on that occasion
to obey.”
“I do recall the day,”
said she, “and how
Me with your worldly goods
you did endow.”
“That,” he replied,
“is palpably absurd——”
“You mean you did not
mean to keep your word?”
“O, yes,” he answered,
“in a general way.”
“And that,” said
she, “is how I meant obey.”
If They Meant All They Said
Charm is a woman’s 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 woman’s
powers!
My typist weeps for hours
and hours:
I took her for her weeping
powers—
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 you’ll admit it’s
very nice
To feel your cook’s
afraid of mice.
Democracy is this—to
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 alike—are
much alike.
Feminism
“Mother, what is a Feminist?”
“A Feminist,
my daughter,
Is any woman now who cares
To think about her own affairs
As men don’t
think she oughter.”
No, it isn’t 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
Evolution
Said Mr. Jones in 1910:
“Women, subject yourselves
to men.”
Nineteen-Eleven heard him
quote:
“They rule the world
without the vote.”
By Nineteen-Twelve, he would
submit
“When all the women
wanted it.”
By Nineteen-Thirteen, looking
glum,
He said that it was bound
to come.
This year I heard him say
with pride:
“No reasons on the other
side!”
By Nineteen-Fifteen, he’ll
insist
He’s always been a suffragist.
And what is really stranger,
too,
He’ll think that what
he says is true.
“Only the worst of them
vote.”
“Are not
the suffragists frights?”
“Nietzsche’s the
person to quote.”
“I prefer
love to my rights.”
“Are not the suffragists
frights?”
“Sex is
their only appeal.”
“I prefer love to my
rights.”
“No, we
don’t think, but we feel.”
“Sex is their only appeal.”
“Woman belongs
at the loom.”
“No, we don’t
think, but we feel.”
“Doesn’t
it rub off the bloom?”
“Woman belongs at the
loom.”
“Isn’t
the speaker a bore!”
“Doesn’t it rub
off the bloom?”
“Oh, it’s
a fad—nothing more.”
“Isn’t the speaker
a bore!”
“Nietzsche’s
the person to quote.”
“Oh, it’s a fad—nothing
more.”
“Only the
worst of them vote.”
The Universal Answer
Oh,
there you go again,
Invading
man’s domain!
It’s Nature’s
laws, you know, you are defying.
Don’t
fancy that you can
Be
really like a man,
So what’s the use of
all this fuss and trying?
It
seems to me so clear,
That
women’s highest sphere
Is being loving wives and
patient mothers.
Oh,
can’t you be content
To
be as you were meant?
{souls
For {books belong to husbands
and to brothers.
{votes
(By an admirer of the late H.C. Bunner.)
“I know what you’re
going to say,” she said,
And she stood
up, causing him some alarm;
“You’re
going to tell me I’ll lose my charm,
And what is a woman when charm
has fled?
And you’re
going to say that you greatly fear
I don’t
understand a woman’s sphere;
Now aren’t you honestly?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I know what you’re
going to say,” she said,
“You’re
going to ask what I hope to gain
By stepping down
to the dusty plain,
By seeking a stone when I
might have bread;
You’re going
to say: ’Can a vote replace
The tender force
of a woman’s grace?’
Now, aren’t you honestly?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I know what you’re
going to do,” he said,
“You’re
going to talk to me all day long
Trying to make
me see I’m wrong;
And other men who are less
misled
Will pale with
jealousy when they see
The time you give
to converting me;
Now, aren’t you honestly?”
“Ye-es,” she said.
“I don’t pretend
I’m clever,” he remarked, “or very
wise,”
And at this she murmured,
“Really,” with the right polite surprise.
“But women,” he
continued, “I must own I understand;
Women are a contradiction—honorable
and underhand—
Constant as the star Polaris,
yet as changeable as Fate,
Always flying what they long
for, always seeking what they hate.”
“Don’t you think,”
began the lady, but he cut her short: “I
see
That you take it personally—women
always do,” said he.
“You 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?”
“No, I don’t admit
they haven’t,” said the patient lady then,
“Or they could not sit
and listen to the nonsense talked by men.”
Chivalry
It’s treating a woman
politely
As long as she
isn’t a fright:
It’s guarding the girls
who act rightly,
If you can be
judge of what’s right;
It’s being—not
just, but so pleasant;
It’s tipping
while wages are low;
It’s making a beautiful
present,
And failing to
pay what you owe.
From Our Own Nursery Rhymes
“Chivalry, Chivalry,
where have you been?”
“I’ve been out
seeking a beautiful queen.”
“Chivalry, Chivalry,
what did you find?”
“Commonplace women,
not much to my mind.”
(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 hadn’t one for me;
The men about me laughed and
frowned and said: “Go home, because
We really can’t be bothered
when we’re busy making laws.”
Oh, it’s women this,
and women that and women have no sense,
But it’s pay your taxes
promptly when it comes to the expense,
It comes to the expense, my
dears, it comes to the expense,
It’s pay your taxes
promptly when it comes to the expense.
I went into a factory to earn
my daily bread:
Men said: “The
home is woman’s sphere.” “I
have no home,” I said.
But when the men all marched
to war, they cried to wife and maid,
“Oh, never mind about
the home, but save the export trade.”
For it’s women this
and women that, and home’s the place for you,
But it’s patriotic angels
when there’s outside work to do,
There’s outside work
to do, my dears, there’s outside work to do,
It’s patriotic angels
when there’s 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.
It’s hard upon occasions
to be forceful and sublime
When you’re treated
as incompetents three-quarters of the time.
But it’s women this
and women that, and woman’s like a hen,
But it’s do the country’s
work alone, when war takes off the men,
And it’s women this
and women that and everything you please,
But woman is observant, and
be sure that woman sees.
Beware!
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:
“If you must have one, make it of me.
Bad though they be, yet I’ll
agree
If you must make them, why
make them of me.”
But chivalry’s dead,
as I always expected
Since women would
not let things stay as they were;
So now, I suppose, when a
statue’s erected
Men will say brutally:
“Make it of her.”
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 they’re
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.
From a Man’s Point of View
Women love self-sacrifice
Suffering and good advice;
If they don’t love these
sincerely
Then they’re 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 woman’s
lips.
But it must not be supposed
I am in the least opposed.
If they want it let them try
it.
For I think we’ll profit
by it.
I went to see old Susan Gray,
Whose soldier sons had marched
away,
And this is what she had to
say:
“It isn’t war
I hate at all—
’Tis likely
men must fight—
But, oh, these flags and uniforms,
It’s them
that isn’t right!
If war must come, and come
it does
To take our boys
from play,
It isn’t right to make
it seem
So beautiful and
gay.”
I left old Susan with a sigh;
A famous band was marching
by
To make men glad they had
to die.
Dependence
(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.—Press Clipping.)
The young men said to their
mother,
“Hear us,
O dearest and best!
Time cannot cool or smother
The love of you
in our breast;
Here is your place and no
other—
Come home and
rest.”
And the mother’s 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 guns—
The presents that at Christmas
time
We give our little
sons;
And many a glittering trumpet
And many a sword
and drum;
But as they’re 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.
Militants
Hippolta, Penthesilea,
Maria Teresa and
Joan,
Agustina and Boadicea
And some militant
girls of our own—
It would take a brave man
and a dull one
To say to these
ladies: “Of course
We adore you while meek,
Timid, clinging and weak,
But a woman can
never use force.”
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
“Here,” he said,
“will come no whisper of the world’s alarms
and
malice,
In these granite
walls imprisoned, I will keep you safe from ill.”
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: “My
heart is fickle and the world is full of danger,”
And he offered
her his stirrup and he pointed down the road.
The Ballad of Lost Causes
(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 sex’s
prompt decay?
Where are those
who used to say:
“Home alone is woman’s
sphere;
Only those should
vote who slay”?
Where the snows of yester-year?
Where are those who used to
quote
Nietzsche’s
words in dread array?
Where the ancient crones who
wrote:
“Women rule
through Beauty’s sway”?
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 ask—and
ask in vain—
Why no one in a suffrage state
Has moved to change
things back again?
A MASQUE OF TEACHERS
THE UNCONSCIOUS SUFFRAGISTS
(A by-law of the New York Board of Education says: “No 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.”)
Board of Education.
Three Would-Be Teachers.
Chorus by Board:
Now please don’t 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 bad——
Board:
How
very sad, how very sad!
1st Teacher:
He’s
good, but hear my one excuse——
Board:
Oh,
what’s the use, oh, what’s the use?
1st Teacher:
Last
winter in a railroad wreck
He
lost an arm and broke his neck.
He’s
doomed, but lingers day by day.
Board:
Her
husband’s doomed! Hurray! hurray!
2nd Teacher:
My
husband’s kind and healthy, too——
Board:
Why,
then, of course, you will not do.
2nd Teacher:
Just
hear me out. You’ll find you’re wrong.
It’s
true his body’s good and strong;
But,
ah, his wits are all astray.
Board:
Her
husband’s mad. Hip, hip, hurray!
3rd Teacher:
My husband’s
wise and well—the 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
life’s harmonious.
(Curtain.)
The Unconscious Suffragists
“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.”—Benjamin Franklin.
“No such phrase as virtual representation was ever known in law or constitution.”—James 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?”—Lord Macaulay’s 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.”—Dr. 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.”—De 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.”—William 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.”—The New Freedom, by Woodrow Wilson.