The Woman's Journal, vol. 43, no. 6, February 10, 1912, p. 48

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THE MOTHER OF THE RACE

By Laura Bell Everett

Goes she forth unclaimed, she champions orphan children, toil-o'erborne; Asks that laws protect their childhood, pleads for those who helpless mourn. When she's “wedded to conviction," let not man decry her part; It is hers to ease the sorrows of the old world's throbbing heart.

Not alone 'midst the zenanas is the message still unknown That the strong shall lift the weaker to a place beside his own. Where the Message from the Mountain, in its spirit, finds a place, She, “the female of the species," reigns, the Mother of the Race. Berkeley, Cal. WOMEN IN PUBLIC SERVICE

They Are Active and Useful in Many States

That women are eminently fitted to attend to municipal housekeeping is recognized by Comptroller Prendergast, who last week appointed Mrs. Anna W. von Hohoff examining inspector of the Inspection Bureau of the Finance Department of New York City. The duties of the Inspection Bureau are to examine and watch all purchases for the city and to certify whether they are according to specifications. When the Chief Inspector is away, Mrs. von Hohoff will be acting Chief Inspector in command of the Bureau.

Governor Goldsborough of Maryland has appointed Miss Sallie Dorsey State Librarian. Mrs. Ida Pearl Sylvester has been appointed by Mayor Seger to the School Board of Passaic, N. J. She is a graduate of Mt. Holyoke College, and is well qualified. The Mayor had been asked to appoint a woman by the pPassaic Equal Suffrage League, the Monday Afternoon Club, and a petition signed by 400 leading men and women of Passaic.

The contract of the State of Pennsylvania with Miss Violet Oakley of Philadelphia to take up the interior decoration of the State Capitol where the late Edwin A. Abbey left off, has just been signed. Miss Oakley is to have the entire decoration of the Senate Chamber, consisting of nine panels, and of the Supreme Court room. She will spend about a year in making studies and preliminary sketches. Much of the research will be done in Europe. Her sketches will be submitted to the Board of Public Grounds and Buildings for approval before the actual execution of the paintings is begun. The canvases will be painted at her studio in Philadelphia. She will give bond in the sum of $50,000 for faithful performance of the contract.

For services rendered to the fire department of New York City, three women, Miss Helen Gould, Mrs. Agnes Neustadt and Mrs. R. H. Mainzer, have been presented with gold badges

THE WOMAN'S JOURNAL, 10, 1912 which permit them to pass throush because the ity of w re mes. vote tor Womarn Miss Carrie Paghorn, a truant of- and, when the laws were once passed. ficer employed by the Board of Edu- would be more exacting in having cation, Atlantic City, N. J., has made them enforced. The antis need not an effective campaign this winter for worry that they would not have the prosecution of parents who fail enougsh charitable work to do, for, Cattle and S to send their children to scheol. with the combined efforts of all the Consideratic

The public safety committee of the New York City Federation of Women's Clubs is working for legislation to require fire alarm and fire drills wherever fifty or more men, women or children are employed. Some fifty members of the W. C. T. U., led by Mrs. Lillian M. N. Stevens of Maine, have gathered at Washington in behalf of bills for the regulation of the liquor traffic. St. Louls women are demanding an ordinance to provide clean places of amusement for the girls in that city. Suffragists and other progressive women in Delaware are striving for the establishment of a college for women to be affliated with Delaware College at Newark. The Consumers' League in Maryland is agitating for a ten-hour working day for women. New Orleans club women are protesting against the colored comic supplements. The New England Conference, representing 55,000 women, in session at New Haven, Conn., sent a message to Congress urging the passage of the Children's Federal Bureau bill. It would seem that the public service rendered by women ought to convince all sensible men of the exnodionowy of wiving them the balleft

F. M. A.

MAY POISON GIRLS

Effort to Prevent it Blocked in Congress

The bill to prevent the use of poisonous phosphorus in matches has been referred in the U. S. House of Representatives to a secret sub-committee of five—a course said to be without precedent. The use of this poisonous kind of phosphorus instead of the harmless kind is now forbidden in most European countries, but its abolitien in the United States is bitterly fought because the harmless kind costs a little more. The poison variety gives a terrible disease to the workers—but most of the workers are young girls, and their lives are cheap. They have no votes.

THE NEW CITIZEN Up-to-Date Paper Started by Louisiiana Women

Up-to-Date Paper Started by Louisiiana Women

Mrs. Sake D. Meehan is editor of The New Citizen, a paper for women just started by the Era Club of New Orleans. Mrs. Grace G. Watts and Mrs. Grace German Chamberlain are associate editors, and Mrs. Pauline Tewnsend Myers is circulation manager. The new periodical has 16 pages, good paper and type, and is full of interesting matter. A prominent article in the first issue is a strong plea for woman suffrage, entitied “Votes for Women, Why Not?" The New Citizen will be issued monthly at 624 Gravier street, except during July, August and September; price 50 cents; to clubs, 35 cents.

TOLD BY MISS ROYDEN

Test of a Feeble-Minded Woman

Miss Maude A. Royden told the following during her recent talk in Baltimore: On the occasion of a visit to a home for feeble-minded women, she asked the superintendent how she determined when a patient was sufficiently reeble-minded to warrant detention. “Well, you see," was the reply, “we have a large tank which is kept filled with water by a spigot at one end. The patient is given a ladle and told to empty the tank. Them that isn't reeble-minded turns off the spigot."

Women are at present classed politically with idiots—those poor creatures who, like the antis, are content to work forever trying to accomplish their end, but who aren't keen enough to realize that a vote would help to turn off the spigot and so shut off the supply, thus enabling them really to accomplish something. “Them that isn't feeble-minded turns off the spigot." Votes for Women will help them to turn off the spigot from which runs the supply of saloons, immorality, insanity, tuberculosis, etc.,

; and, when the laws were once passed, would be more exacting in having them enforced. The antis need not worry that they would not have enough charitable work to do, for, with the combined efforts of all the people, it will take years—more than eighteen (as in Colorado), or fortythree (as in Wyoming) to clear away entirely the accumulation of wreckage—the result of 136 years of onesided government.

ANTI HUMOR

Suffragist Relates Her Experienc and Draws Her Own Conclusions

I was standing in the Just Government League Booth at the Pure Food Show recently held. in Baltimore, attending strictly to my own business of offering suffrage flyers to all passersby. An irate anti pushed into the line directly in front of our booth and fairly shouted at me, “You ought to be in your home!" Naturally, I was shocked, but soon recovered sufficiently to ask meekly, “What is the trouble with you and our home?"

The only difference I could see was in my favor. I was out of my home, working, while she was out of hers on pleasure bent. A splendid example, thought, of the obtuseness of the anti style of argument. The Tables Turned

During this same Pure Food Show an anti friend of mine approached the booth with eyes wide open and lower jaw hanging. “You there?" she cried. “Why, yes," I replied, “why not?" “Come out of there right away!" she said. “I'm ashamed of you. What does Dr..—" (my husband) think of your engaging in this sort of work?" “He thinks it very nice, indeed. He belongs to the Men's League, you know. By the way, where is your husband?" “Why, he isn't here," she replied. “One of us had to stay home with the baby, you know." It was my turn. “Go home at once," Isaid. “I am ashamed of you. Go to your child—to your husband—to your four walls! Don't you know that only suffragists so grossly neslect their homes and families?"

Taffy and Woman Suffrage

“A little taffy now and then is ished by the best of men." “Six flavors, twenty-five cents a pound at the Suffrage Booth during the Horticultural Show in the Fifth Regiment Armory." So read the sign above the booth.

A dignified old gentleman, whose personal appearance vouched for the truthfulness of his remarks, approached the booth, read the sign, and. with a merry little twinkle in his eye, said to the suffragist in attendance: “Well, this beats all! I never in all my life heard of a lady selling taffy to a gentleman. Why, all the taffy I've ever had the ladies have given me!"

“That's just where you're mrstaken," the suffragist replied. “You've never received any taffy in your whole life which you haven't paid for—and dearly, too. You'—but the old gentleman had vanished. A Militant Anti A suffragist recently telephoned to a friend asking her to attend a club meeting that afternoon to hear Mrs. Hooker talk on votes for women, adding, “I know you are opposed, but 'm sure you are broad-minded enough to want to hear both sides of the questions."

“No, indeed," the friend replied. I have heard Mrs. Hooker speak three times, and if I went this afternoon 1 should throw a book at her head!"

Thus it may be seen that there are militant methods even among the antis.

HUMOROUS

Old Lady (to new arrival at Riviera Hotel): “And are you here for tennis or sgolf?" Newcomer: “Neither— bronchitis.'—Puck.

“I call that rank mratd “What now?" “After I teach that girl to skate, she goes to another fellow for a post-graduate course!"—Louisville Courier-Journal.

woman's Chicf Business

Cattle and Sheep, Hogs and Chickens get More Consideration at National Capitol than do Children, and yet Women are tfold they are Sufficiently Represented in the Government and Do Not Need

States Senate and the subject was A Proposed Children's Bureau. A bill had been introduced into Congress to have a children's bureau to “investigate and report upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life,"' and “especially investigate the questions of infant mortality, the birthrate, orphanage, juvenile courts, desertion, dangerous occupations, accidents and diseases of children, employment, legislation affecting children in the several States and territories, and such other facts as have a bearing upon the welfare of children."

Strange as it may seem in an enlightened country in the year 1912, there was grave opposition to such a bill What can one say of the men who opposed it? That they were ignorant of the awful thing they did? That they honestly believed that such a bureau ought not to be established? That they were acting in the best interests of the country? That they were representing the wishes of the people of the United States? Was it because they were representing the mothers of the nation? The answer is an emphatic “No" in each case

Some years ago a noted American author said that merely to preserve the balance of the population each married couple must have four children, “two to replace the parents and two to die." While it would not be fair to say that this represents every man's viewpoint, it certainly does represent the man's viewpoint in illuminating distinction from the woman's viewpoint, and as such it may throw a little light on the opposition to the Children's Bureau Bill.

Certain it is that no mother in her senses would deliberately speak of preserving the balance of the population by allowing for the death of two children out of every four. It is also certain that no mother in her senses would oppose the Children's Bureau. Is it credible that if mothers had the vote in this country today they would send to the United States Senate men who could so little represent them as to oppose a Children's Bureau?

The United States Government has live stock bureaus and it sends men all over this country to inspect the horses, cattle and hogs of the people. Some years ago an appropriation was made at Washington of $500,000 to fight the boll weevil. Approximately $125,000 per year are spent by the Government for the publication known as “Disecases of the Horse," of which each congressman gets 1,000 copies. But, as Senator Dickson said in discussing the matter, “When any attempt is made by the Senate of the United States to place the children of this nation on at least an equal basis with the hogs and the cattle and the sheep and the chickens, senators rise and discover great constitutional limitations and prohibitions.' When it comes to publishing the reports of such a bureau august senators have grave misgivings about furnishing the information contained in such reports to the general public. They make out that such reports ought not to be put into the hands of any child and that they ought not to be read or seen by women or children.

Now isn't it time that the mothers of the country took issue with these representatives of the people? What little children have to live against is certainly not too bad for their mothers to know! The august senators know that as soon as the mothers really know about these things, such men as oppose the Children's Bureau and the distribution of reports of such a bureau will no longer be returned to the Senate.

Mothers who bear little children in their bodies, mothers who go through the gates of death to bring them into the world and give the best years of their life to rearing them, know the value of child life, and were they voters in all the States of the Union as they are in six glorious Western States, there is not a senator in the present Congress who would dare to be party to the flippant discussion that took place in Washington the last week in January!

Get a copy of the Congressional Record of January 24, 1912, from your senator in Washington and read pages 1329 to 1336. Take the Children's Bureau as a text, and go forth to convert mothers to Equal Suffrage, and there is mot a doubt in the world but that you will enter upon the most vigorous and effective campaign for Votes for Women that has ever been known. Store up the facts about the Children's Bureau bill and take the facts to every woman you know who is not now a suffragist. Show her how close is the connmection between child welfare and the vote. See if you can find onehalf dozen responsible women in your community who do not believe in Votes for Women after the case of the Children's Bureau has been put to them.

Is there any wrong being done to women and girls which you would like dealt with? Send us the facts. We shall not use your name. But sign your name and address. We may want to write to you.

JRING the week of January 24 a group of men representing every State in the Union were holding a little session at the National Capitol and were discussing a matter of vital interest to every mother—not to say every woman—in the country. The group of men was none other than the United

The Vote

Agnes E. Ryan.

As pres City hope larg