The Woman's Journal, vol. 43, no. 9, March 2, 1912, p. 68

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H WOMANS JOURNA

LUCY STONE and HENRY B. BLACKWELL A Weekly Newspaper Devoted to Winning Equal Rights and especially to Winning Equal Suffrage for Women. E ditor MISS ALICE STONE BLACKWELL 3 MONADNOCK STREET, DORCHESTER, MASS Conuibuting Editors MISS MARY JORNSTON 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: National Suffrage Headquarters, 505 Fifth Ave. NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION

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 Hall, University of Chicago, Ills. MARY WARE DENNETT, Corresponding Secretary. 505 Fifth Avenue, New York. SUSAN W. FITZGERALD, Recording Secretary, 555 Boylston 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. ——————o SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1912

SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1912

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THE RULE OF THE PEOPLE"

Theodore Roosevelt, in his letter announcing that he will accept the presidential nomination if it is offered him, says: “One of the chief principles for which I have stood and for which I now stand and which I have always endeavored and always shall endeavor to reduce to action, is the genuine rule of the people, and therefore I hope that so far as possible the people may be given the chance through direct primaries to express their preference as to who shall be the nominee of the Republican Presidential convention." Can we have “gsenuine rule of the people" while half of the people are debarred from all vote in the matter? A. S. B.

TWO HOT CUSTARD PIES

A dramatic incident in the press reports from Denver throws a side light on several favorite objections to suffrage. The other day a bandit entered a restaurant just as Miss Ina, who was in charge, walked forward from the kitchen, holding in each hand a steaming hot custard pie. The bandit bade her hold up her hands. Although reared under a regime of votes for women, Miss Inma prized the results of her cockery. She answered boldly, “I won't drop these pies for any villain like you." The bandit answered that he did not care what she did with the pies, but bade her on pain of her life not to move, and himself moved toward the cash register. Miss Ina saw her chance. Deftly raising one of the steaming custard pies, she hurled it at his head, and the soft part struck the bandit full in the face." Naturally he fled. He got his deserts in more senses than one. The antisuffragists claim that the responsibilities of the ballot will destroy women's nervous system. Colorado has had equal suffrage for 19 years, but evidently this young woman had her nerve all with her. Incidentally, she proved that she could fight, and fight effectively, though with a peculiarly feminine weapon.

A. S. B.

MR. BOK'S APOLOGIA

Mr. Edward W. Bok says that he has received a number of letters from women asking why he seems to go out of his way “to offend a great many estimable women by anti-suffrage articles." As the readers of The Woman's Journal are amons those who have been indignant, we shall give them the benefit of Mr. Bok's apologia, such as it is. He says: “We do not go out of our way to offend any class of women. Being a woman's magazine such a course would be folly and suicidal. The question of woman suffrage is in the air—it is a discussed question. It is natural that this magazine should discuss it. Before we were ready to do so our silence was construed to mean that we were afraid because it would hurt our circulation.”

The time when Mr. Bok was not “ready" to express himself against equal rights for women must have been a long while ago. His magazine has been assailing woman suffrage for many years past. He recalls the fact that on one occasion he gave both sides a hearing, publishing an article in favor by Jane Addams and one in opposition by Lyman Abbott. Mr. Bok continues: “Then folks wrote in and said: “Yes, but what is your opinion? We gave it. Then came a torrent of abuse. If our convictions had been in favor of equal suffrage, and we had said that, we would have caught it from that side. “Some readers away from the centers asked: Do women of

THE WOMAN'S JOURNAL. MARCH 2, 1912 AL prominence, whose lives and works are in points of vantase, disbelieve in woman suffrage? We showed that fifty of the ———most prominent women of America were on the antisuffrage 1 side." becor And he recapitulates a number of the names. Some of espec them are of women “prominent" only because they happened to circu marry a multimillionaire or a successful politician. One is that of a suffragist. By the way, did Mr. Bok ever publish a list of and fifty of the prominent women who are in favor? A. S. B. resol

RICHARD BARRY'S REPORT

Mr. Bok continues: “Then our readers requested: 'Send some one to the suffrase States and find out what has actually been done. We did."

Whom did Mr. Bok send? Anyone who might be expected to be impartial and truthful? He selected Richard Barry, who had previously distinguished himself by a malignant assault on equal suffrage, and by reckless inaccuracy in treating of it. Mr. Barry had published in Pearson's Magazine for February, 1910, an article in which he referred to Mrs. Matilda Josslyn Gase as a “determined spinster," described Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont as the “Honorary President" of the N. A. W. S. A—which has no Honorary President, and in which Mrs. Belmont held no office whatever—and said that Mrs. Harriet Stanton Blatch “put both her two daughters through Cornell University. One took a course in civil engineering, the other in blacksmithing." Mrs. Blatch has only one daughter. The tone of his article throughout was venomously hostile to votes for women: and he quoted the leading suffragists of New York (in the words of the Woman's Journal's editorial comment at the time) “as saying many things which their friends know they never could or would have said."

As might have been expected in view of his previous record, Mr. Barry's account of woman suffrage in the enfranchised States, written for Mr. Bok's magazine, was a tissue of abominable falsehoods. It called out a chorus of denial from prominent men and women in the States concerned. Out of Mr. Barry's many misstatements, the only one of which Mr. Bok ever allowed a correction to appear in his magazine, so far as we remember, was the assertion that the suffrage States had no organizations to find homes for dependent children. A. S. B.

AS TO MRS. GODDARD

Mr. Bok continues: “The article was published, and the suffragists said: It is false. Why didn't Mr. Bok let a Colorado woman speak? We asked Mrs. Francis W. Goddard, acknowledged as one of the most prominent women in Colorado, to speak. She did, and declared that woman suffrage in Colorado was a failure."

Mrs. Goddard is very old and very rich—two factors that usually make for conservatism. She is a reactionary standpatter in politics, an advocate of the “wet" as against the “dry" policy on the liquor question, and, like everybody else in Colorado who stands for the corrupt corporations and against the people. she hates Judge Lindsey. In an interview with the Providence Journal, during a visit to that city, Mrs. Goddard declared that Judge Lindsey had committed every crime in the calendar. As the women's votes prevented his defeat, she naturally looks upon woman suffrage as a failure. When Lindsey was invited to speak in her home town of Colorado Springs, Mrs. Goddard first tried to get the invitation retracted, and, failing in this, called up woman after woman of her acquaintance by telephone, begging them not to go to hear him. When the legislative committee of the Colorado Springs Woman's Club wrote to the members of the Legislature asking them not to elect as U. S. Senator a grafter and an upholder of special privilege, although no names were mentioned, Mrs. Goddard took the description as aimed at the candidate whom she favored, and resigned from the club. That is the sort of woman she is. A. . B

MR. BOK'S “CANVASS"

Mr. Bok says the suffragists declared that Mrs. Goddard was “absolutely alone in her position." She was not alone; she had the enthusiastic approval of all the vicious interests in Colorado. And no one has ever denied that there are some other Antis in Colorado, though they are an insignificant minority. Mr. Bok continues: “We had a canvass made of some prominent Colorado women, and we printed their opinions—eighteen of them, all declaring that woman suffrage in Colorado had not accomplished what it was hoped it would. “Now may I ask: Is all this going out of our way to offend" anybody? We did what our readers asked of us, and when we were challenged by the suffragists we answered their challenge."

According to the Colorado papers, Mr. Bok both wrote and telegraphed to Colorado, urging Mrs. Goddard to secure antisuffrage opinions for publication in his magazine. Out of the thousands of women in the State, he finally obtained statements from eighteen—only two of whom said that it had done any harm. And the eighteen, according to the Denver papers, were mainly fashionable women devoted to “bridge," who took no interest in public improvement. Mr. Bek speaks of making a canvass. Did he try to get any opinions in favor? Was not his whole canvass directed to get opinions opposed, and those only? He adds:

“The oft-repeated story by the suffragists that the editor of this magazine offered a Colorado woman $500 to say that woman suffrage in her State was a failure, and that she refused, has not the first scintilla of truth to it. Although I have personally written at least half a dozen times to Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, who made the statement, asking for the proof, she has never furnished it to me." Miss Shaw may have repeated a newspaper report which she supposed to be true, but of which confirmation is lackins. On the other hand, Mr. Bok has over and over given currency to the grossest falsehoods about woman suffrage; has habitually refused to correct them; and in addition has assumed a hypocritical pose of impartiality and magnanimity very irritating to those who know the truth. His present defence is as disingenuous as his whole course on this question has been.

A. S. B.

MR. BOK ON BOYCOTTS

Mr. Bok says that boycotting his magazsine “seems to have become quite a fashion among different woman's orsanizations," especially during the past year. Nevertheless, he assures us, his circulation shows an unprecedented growth. He adds:

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“The point is this—and it is printed here for the suidance and information of those ladies who are always so ready to offer resolutions or a boycott: A boycott of any article sold inter- State'—that is, in other States than that in which it is manufactured—has been held by the U. S. Supreme Court to be illegal and actionable at law. Some day some woman's club or orsanization declaring a boycott on some periodical or article, may find its members served with summonses to appear in court to answer an actionable charge. Not necessarily from this magazine. This is not a personal or velled warning. These words are printed as information: as a preventer of trouble, particularly to those ladies in the States where women have voted for a number of years, who, one might think, would by this time have learned enough of civics and law to be careful how they create a boycott on this or any other magazine or company."

It is significant that it should be particularly the women in the enfranchised States who look upon Mr. Bok's magazine as so untruthful that it ought to be boycotted. They know the facts. But his point about the illegality of a boycott is correct; and indignant women should content themselves with pointing out the chronic meanness and slipperiness of Mr. Bok's course on this question, and let their hearers draw their own conclusions as to whether they want to keep on taking his magazine. A. S. B.

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MORE AND MORE AND MORE LITERATURE

Two years ago the average monthly receipts from literature at National Headquarters was $90. This last month, it was $970. Some statistics may lie, but these don't, and the obvious conclusion to which they point is that the demand of the American public for data on the suffrage movement is growing more imperative every day.

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The National Association is the publishing center for all the State and local associations, no one of which could reasonably provide for itself as mush or as many varieties of literature as it meeds for all phases of suffrage work. Certain kinds of campaign leaflets are necessarily printed locally, as is literature which deals with certain local social or industrial conditions, but, in general, the same arguments and objections have to be met all over the country, the same data presented to the legislators and the voters, and the women.

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The National Literature department has grown so fast that it has been exceedingly difficult to keep up both the quantity and quality of the supply. The quantity is a relatively simple matter, being dependent only upon the ability of the Association to pay the printer's bills, a not altogether easy matter, in spite of the fact that the department has become self-supporting during the last few months, for the reason that receipts from the sale of literature are severely drained by the demands of other departments which are not and never can be self-supporting.

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The quality of the literature is not at all a simple matter, since it quickly becomes out of date as to statistics and social conditions. To revise carefully and accurately requires a large amount of research, involving time and a deal of correspondence. There is less and less demand for literature of the purely argumentative sort, and more and more for specific data as to the actual workings of equal suffrage.

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Fortunately, the department at last has what it has long needed—an editor. Mrs. Frances Maule Bjorkman, a trained magazine and newspaper writer, is bringing up to date all the old literature which is worth reprintins, and is producing and editing some very valuable new literature in various forms— pamphlets, booklets, leaflets and fliers. This necessary work has delayed the publication of the new complete catalogue far longer than one would wish, which is still another indication of a more rapid srowth of work than the Association has been able to provide workers to handle.

MOR COl

A Literature Half-Way House Western hurry-calls for suffrage literature can now be sent to a branch supply station which has been established for the Naticnal Association at the Headquarters of the Ilinois Association (Fine Arts Building, Michigan Ave., Chicago). This arrangement was brought about through the initiative of Miss Jane Addams and Miss Breckinridge, and it fills a leng-felt want. Suffragists frequently need literature suddenly, as one does the doctor, and if they chance to live in Nevada or Arizona it is discouraging to realize that eight days is about as short a time as can be counted on for getting it from National Headquarters, and, moreover, the express charges on any sizeable parcels are ruinous to the average suffrage treasury, thanks to the fact that our country is disgracefully behind others in not having reasonable postal rates.

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The Chicago office will have in stock all the chief publications of the National Association, and in suffcient quantity to fill quite large orders. The prices will be the same as those at National Headquarters. The saving will be in time, postage and express. The office is to be in charge of Mrs. Mary Plummer, Secretary of the Illinois Association, and member of the National Literature Committee, who has made arrangements for the prompt filling of all orders. This base of supplies will be specially advantageous to all of this year's campaign States, except New Hampshire, particularly toward the end, when election day is near, and eleventh hour projects are hastily developed, and every hour's work—or wait—counts.

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505 Fifth Avenue, New York.

AN OBJECT LESSON

When parents are forbidden to send their children on a vacation, and mothers are choked and clubbed for resisting the efforts of the police to tear their offspring from them by force, a much deeper issue is raised than the success or fallure of the Lawrence strike. Such acts sow the seeds of anarchy far and wide. How are our foreign immigrants to learn respect for the law, if the law is stretched to their disadvantage in a desperate struggle? It recalls the old minister's prayer: “O Lord, do mot suffer us to despise our rulers—and do not suffer them to behave so that we cannot help it!" A. S. B.

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