The Woman's Journal, vol. 43, no. 8, February 24, 1912, p. 60

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THE WOMAN'S JOURNAL

FFoNDD B 3 LUCY STONE and HENRY B. BLACKWELIL A Weekly Newspaper Devoted to Winning Equal Rights and especially to Winning Equal Suffrage for Women. Editor MISS ALICE STONE BLACKWELL 3 MONADNOCK STREET, DORCHESTER, MASS Conuibuting Editors MISS MARY JOHNSTON MRS. IDA H. HARPER MISS ELLIS MEREDITH REV. CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE MRS. MABEL CRAFT DEERING Office - 585 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. Telephone, Back Bay 4717 NEW YORK office: Nationsl Suffrage Headquarters, 505 Fifth Ave. NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE 505 Fifth Avenue, New York City. ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President, Moylan, Pa. JANE ADDAMS, 1st Vice-President, Hull House, Chicago, Ills. SOPHONISBA P. BRECKINRIDGE, 2nd Vice-President, Green iall, University of Chicago, Ills. MARY WARE DENNETT, Corresponding Secretary. 505 Fifth Avenue, New York. SUSAN W. FITZGERALD, Recording Secretary, 585 Boyliston Street, Boston, Mass. JESSIE ASHLEY, Treasurer, 505 Fifth Avenue, New York. HARRIET BURTON LAIDLAW, 2nd Auditor, 6 East 66th Street, New York. ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, Editor of “The Woman's Journal," Monadnock Street. Dorchester., Mass. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 912 ,¢éMaB;Br&rlolt Eered at the post-office, Boston, Massachusens, as second class manter SUBSCRIPTION One Year . . . . $1.00 Dote Six Months .50 Four Months on Trial. . Single Copies . . .05 Canadian or Foreign: One Year . . 1.50 On sale at Brentano's, New York City; also on news-stands in New York, Boston and elsewhere. RECEIPT of payment must not be expected to show on address label w weeks from date received. Instructions for RENEWAL. DISCONTINUANCE or CHANGE OF ADDRESS should be sent two eore the date they are to go into effect. Both old and new addresses must always be given. r trr u ees oud be addressed to the office of The Woman's Jourm55 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. Registered letters o express company's money orders may be sent at our risk. Money sent e e iee will be at the risk of the sender. Checks and drafts and post-office orders should be made payable to The Woman's Journal. Advertising rates will be sent upon application to advertising manager. New York Advertising Representative, M. D. Bryant & Co., Inc. 200 Fifrth Avenue, New York City.

SELMA LAGERLOF ON SUFFRAGE

Mrs. Velma Swanston Howard has done a real service to the English-speaking public in translating from the Swedish Selma Lagerlor's address before the International Woman Suffrage Consress at Stockholm, which is published in The World's Work for February. An American delegate to Stockholm told in The Woman's Journal of the deep impression made by this beautiful address, and how strange, almost uncanny, it was to hear, amid a breathless silence, a sad voice speaking in an unknown tongue to a vast audience, who listened, men and women alike, with the tears running down their faces. All of us longed to know what she had said. We are now enabled to read the main part of her plea.

The beloved Swedish authoress says that women, for countless generations, have devoted their lives to making sood homes; this has been their sreat contribution to the world. Meanwhile men have built up the State, and have had the management of almost all the world's work outside the home. She continues “The majority of homes are not perfect, and many are bad. But the good and happy homes do exist; we have seen them; we have lived in them. Women can create them in poverty and in affluence, in lowliness and in refinement. They are to be found in kings' castles and in cotters' huts.

“Now, as to the States—these our sreater homes, so diffcult to build, constructed with so much effort, watered by so much blood and so many tears, builded by the help of the strongest characters, the boldest minds—is there or has there ever been one that has satisfied all its members? Are they not always in the midst of continuous reform work? Does one not desire even today to reform and reconstruct them from the bottom up? Do they not present constant reasons for discontent and bitterness? “Where is the state in which there are no unprotected children? wherein no budding genius is crushed, but where all its young are lovingly nurtured?

“Where is the state that sgives to all its aged poor the protection and respect due those who are nearing the end of this life? Where is the state that punishes offenders only with the idea of correction and development? Where is the state that utilizes every talent, that gives, and in which the unfortunate receives, as much thoughtful consideration as do the most favored? “Where is the state that does not embody alien peoples it cannot care for? Where is the state that gives to all the opportunity of living their own lives, so long as they do not disturb the harmony of the whole? Where is the state wherein none of its members may go to waste in idleness, drunkenness, and in shameless living?

“Perhaps you will answer that this is not the business of the state. It stands for law and order. But if such is the case, why does it meddle with all these other matters? It does so because it knows that the state which does not create happiness cannot prosper. It is essential to its welfare to be beloved by high and low. The state must be a promoter of comfort, security, education, culture, and ennobling; for to it mankind must look for the realization of their hopes. “I have been bold enough to state that the home is woman's creation. But I did not say that she alone created it. Fortunately for her and for all of us, she has ever had the man with her. Master and mistress have sat side by side. Had the woman toiled alone she could not have solved the problem. The home would not have been in existence, either as a dream or as a reality.

Nothing has impelled man to take woman with him into the fow d ————Hall of Justice, into the Civil Service Department, into the the eff House of Commerce. He has forged his way alone. “Think how long he alone performed the duties of physician be obl He still prepares his own meals at the barracks; he coaches at want t the boys' school. He has taken upon himself the hardest tasks,vacu and he has mot been araid o wo o “But has he bucceeded? Witness the hatred between the to a b classes; witness the stiflied cries from beneath, all the threats and revolutions. Witness the complaints of the unemployed; witness emigration! Does all this signify that he has succeeded, or that he ever can succeed? M

“Alas, we women are not perfect beings! You men are no more perfect than we are. How are we to attain that which is great and good unless we help each other?

“We do not think that the work can be accomplished at once, but we do belleve that it would be folly to reject our help. “We believe that the winds of God are bearing us onward, that our little masterwork, the home, was our creation with the help of man. The great masterwork, the state, shall be perfected by man when in all seriousness he takes woman as his helper." Selma Lagerlof thinks that in the so-called “woman's invasion" into man's traditional sphere, there is something fundamental and irresistible, like the impulse that leads to the shifting of populations, and makes it impossible for governments to stop emigration so long as there is unbroken land awaiting cultivation anywhere in the world. She says to the women:

“You must enter all fields; you must be on hand everywhere, if the state is ever to be beloved like the home. Be certain that your services, now so despised, shall soon be sought after. They will be in such demand that you will hardly be able to meet the wants. Be assured that we shall soon be in evidence everywhere —in uninhabitated regions and in cities, with many new occupations not yet known to us, but all working toward the One Good." A. S. B.

RIGHTS AND DUTIES

Dr. Lyman Abbott has come out with another attack on votes for women. He says that suffrage is not a right but a duty, and that he does not believe in it “because I do not believe that the duties of men and women are the same." Does he not believe that it is the duty of women as well as of men to tell the truth? To pay their taxes? To observe the laws? To practice all the Christian virtues? Of course he does believe that the duties of men and women are the same in regard to a hundred things. Whether they are the same in regard to the one hundred and first is a question to be decided on its merits, and not to be dismissed by a dogmatic assertion that their duties are always and necessarily different.

Dr. Abbott says that the main business of government is to protect persons and property, and that “hitherto women have been exempt from the duty of protecting persons and property." Have they? All the police of the country are hired with tax money which has been paid by women as well as by men. All the cost of armies, courts and prisons is defrayed from taxes, either direct or indirect, levied upon the whole community, women as well as men. Women contribute to the protection of persons and property in exactly the same way that the majority of men do,—that is, they help to pay for it; and the payment is compulsory.

They also protect persons and property in many other ways. Are not children persons? The duty of caring for and protecting children generally devolves upon women, and is, in fact, their special work. It is also generally recognized as women's duty to protect their husbands in the home from discomfort, dirt, draughts, disease, impure food, and bad moral influences. In all these duties women are unduly handicapped if they have no voice in making the laws. The mere difficulty of keeping the house clean is enormously increased if the streets are not well cleaned, so that the children continually track dirt into the home. The duty of protecting the family from impure food is made tenfold more difficult, sometimes impossible, if pure food laws are not passed and enforced. “Go home and cook your husband's dinner," said a New York alderman to Mrs. Sophia Lobingier when she came with other women to ask for an ordinance to forbid the keeping of meat in cold storage beyond a certain length of time. But however carefully she might cook it, the meat might make her husband ill if it had been kept in cold storage too long.

Not only are women held responsible for protecting the health and lives of their own husbands and their own children, but it is now recognized that they have a duty toward protecting the children of the whole country and toward protecting the public health. Consistent anti-suffragists still deny this. In the late debate in the U. S. Senate over the establishment of a Children's Bureau, Senator Bailey of Texas scoffed at the women who had asked for the measure. He was reported as saying that the more a woman knew about the things she ought to know about, the less she would know about what went on in Congress. But consistent anti-suffragists are few. Dr. Abbott and his like assume that it is women's duty not only to study political questions and form a correct opinion, but to exert themselves to educate the public and the lawmakers. They call upon women to circulate petitions, and to write letters to Congressmen, and to attend hearings in behalf of pure food, peace and arbitration, clean streets, and a thousand other subjects which are dealt with by law. Any woman who heeds all these appeals—really worthy appeals, too—has to give more time to it in a month than she would have to give to all her political duties in a year, if women had the ballot. Dr. Abbott does not tell her that she has no duty in the matter because the majority of women have not yet been aroused to any active interest in promoting pure food legislation, or peace and arbitration treaties, or any other public improvement.

Where the question of duty comes in, the question of numbers ceases to be relevant. There are too many instances in which the majority of people are indifferent to their duty, to make it safe for any minister of religion to say that no womar ought to do a thing until the majority of women are convinced that it is their duty to do it. An inclination to shirk duty is one of the commonest characteristics of the human race, both male and female. A writer in the Baltimore Sun lately said that he could not attach much weight to the question whether the majority of women wanted to vote. The majority of healthy male children did not want to be washed, he said, yet they ought to be, and the majority of men did not want to work, yet idleness was bad for them. Dr. Abbott and his like hold the mother responsible for the

morals of her son, even if there is a sambling-house within a few doors of her home and a brothel on the opposite corner. In the effort to get rid of such things, there is no more reason why an intelligent and progressive mother who wants to vote should be obliged to wait until all the indifferent and ignorant mothers want to vote than there is why a housekeeper wishing to adopt a vacuum cleaner should be forbidden to do so until the majority of housekeepers have decided that they prefer a vacuum cleaner to a broom. A. S. B.

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TO STOP WHITE SLAVE TRADE Mr. James Bronson Reynolds writes to the editor of The Voman's Journal:

“You doubtless know of the so-called Mann and Bennet laws passed by the National Congress two years ago. The former aims to authorize the prosecution of interstate traffic in women; the latter, the importation of women from foreign countries for immoral purposes. Under these two laws the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice undertook important prosecutions during the first six months of this year. Its work, I believe, was excellent. The Attorney General himself informed me that he took a personal interest in these prosecutions, and counselled the methods and means to be employed. At the end of these six months the prosecutions decreased because the appropriation had been exhausted. The present National Budget calls for but $25,000.

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“Several of us are combining to secure, if possible, an appropriation of $250,000 for the coming year. Will you not sive your co-operation and aid in arousing the woman's organizations of the country to address the Congress on this matter? The two laws referred to provide the means for a splendid attack upon this most awful form of slavery, which kills the soul while leaving the body alive. “If we can establish a standard of enforcement for two or three years, we can make a most important step of progress in the reduction of commercialized vice. My experience as Secretary to the Mayor of New York opened my eyes to the extent of the interstate traffic, and I learned that the traffc followed interstate lines because they proved by experience to be the lines of least resistance. My immigration experience while in Washington revealed to me the extent of the importation of women into this country for immoral purposes.”

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Mr. Reynolds gives the following list of men who should be written to upon this subject: The President. The Attorney General. Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge, Chairman of the Committee on Immigration of the Senate. Hon. John L. Burnett, Chairman of the Committee on Immigration of the House. Hon. Francis E. Warren, Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations of the Senate. Hon. John J. Fitzgerald, Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations of the House. Hon. Oscar W. Underwood, Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House. Hon. James E. Mann, the Republican minority leader of the House. The address of all these gentlemen is Washington, D. C. Mr. Reynolds says:

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“Of particular importance are the President, the Attorney General, and the Chairmen of the Appropriations Committees in the Senate and in the House. Any other Congressmen may be addressed and asked to appeal to their party friends on the Appropriations Committees. Whatever is done must be done within the next three weeks."

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The Woman's Journal is glad to add its most earnest appeal to that of Mr. Reynolds. In view of the $75,000,000 lately voted by Congress to swell our already bloated pension fund, the $250,000 asked for is very modest. Incidentally, there will seem to many women to be a strong argument for equal suffrage in the fact that so txifling a sum as $25,000 has been mamed for this purpose, and that these important prosecutions have been allowed to lapse for want of an appropriation. Write at once; get your husbands and brothers to write; and get every organization to which you belong to pass a resolution and send it to Washington. A. S. B.

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A FLY IN AMBER

It is easy, in most cases, to have charity for the Antis, and to recognize that the majority of them are well meanins, though misguided. But one's gorge rises against the action of that Dean of Women at Rochester University who chose the week of Miss Anthony's birthday to sather the women students together and address them on “Why I Am an Anti-Suffragist."

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In Byron's tragedy of “Marino Faliero," a famous Doge of Venice, whose prowess in war has repeatedly saved the Republic, yields in his later life, under the smart of a salling personal wrons, to the temptation to join in a plot for the overthrow of the government. He is found out, and there is a sreat scene in which his wife pleads his cause before the council. A member of the council says: “He is a traitor, and betrayed the state."

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“And, but for him, there now had been no state To save or to destroy; and you, who sit There to pronounce the death of your deliverer, Would now be sroaning at a Moslem oar, Or digging in the Hunnish mines in fetters."

PROF.

But for the Anthony sisters there would now be no women at Rochester University, and no Dean of Women. It was Mary Anthony who made up the sum required to secure the admission of girls to the University, when it seemed impossible otherwise to complete the fund in time. That Dean may be a woman of good intentions. If so, she is unfortunate. But for this affair, her memory after her death would have passed into harmiless oblivion, with that of hundreds of other ordinary deans, male and female. But now she will so down in history as a type of marrow-mindedness and ingratitude, preserved like a fiy in amber, through this one ill-judged and singularly inappropriate action. A 8np

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Suppose woman, thoush equal, to differ essontially in her intellect from man,—is that any sround for disfranchising her? Shall the Fultons say to the Raphaels, “Because you cannot make steam-engines, therefore you shall not vote"?—Wendell Phillips.