The Woman's Journal, vol. 43, no. 9, March 2, 1912, p. 72

Boxes

COMPLACENT WOMEN

By Max Ehrmann

Complacent women sitting idly by, mot a hand for freedom's e. Hear you no voices calling you to rise? Hear you no bitter cries of women slaves, Scar-marked and cuffed throush all the ages past, The fevered tongues of a thousand years of night, The sea dirge of a sea of women's tears? Complacent women sitting idly by, Bereft of dreams, dead faced, and leaden souled, What sting will rouse you up to stand erect, Convert your beggars' whines to flierce demands, And heat your heart with flames of human fire? 1Is there within your soul no pride of life, No whispered music, and no star of hope? Are you some breed between the horse and man, A little over one, beneath the other, That you have no desire for human rights? Slaves of ten thousand years, playthings, and worse, I taunt you, sting you with the tongue of shame, To rouse you up to claim your human rights.

SAN FRANCISCO WOMEN REGISTER BRISKLY

Working Women Are Given Time off to Register—Mayor Lends His Car— Many Baby Carriages at Registrar's office—Father Often Guards Baby While MWMother Registers—Forty Extra Clerks Needed to Take Women's Names

The women of San Francisco celebrated Feb. 14 in a manner calculated to rouse good old St. Valentine from his long sleep.. The New Era Club sounded the trumpet call, summoning the newly enfranchised women to pay their devetions to Uncle Sam in the form of registration as citizens. The club kept open house at the St. Francis Hotel all day, serving tea (35 a pound donated tea), and other sood things to all comers, dispatching all not yet registered to the City Hall in automobiles, and aderning the occasion with the social graces women love.

So it came about that hundreds of shopgirls rode to and from the registration office in Mayor Rolph's car (donated for the day along with a score or more others). Clubwomen had been interviewing employers for a week, with the result that all working women in the large establishments were allowed time to register on this or some other day of the week.

There were octogenarians in the Registrar's cffice, and there were baby carriages galore outside, some of them attended by faithful fathers, who stood guard “while mother registered." The registrar's forty extra clerks (including one lone woman) seemed to be helping the regular staff to smile all day, in spite of the fact that a small army of working women had besieged the place before the doors were open in the morning, and it was understood that evening sessions were about to begin. Clubwomen coached the applicants, and the clerks apologetically in sisted that this must be the reason that it tocok, on an average, only half as long to register a woman as a man!

The occasion for speeding up the registration is only a bond election upon which everybody is agreed anyway—not a moral crisis which might be expected to appeal to women, ner the climax of a campaign filled with the speeches and smiles of popular candidates. So the Registrar's opinion that 60,000 women will have resistered in the city by the time the books close next week is eminently satisfactory to the faction which has been contending that women want to vote.

One of the clerks at the St. Francis Hotel got a story out of the situation. He says a woman drifted up to his desk and softly said she wanted to register. She looked at the large page spread before her and asked if she should write her cwn or her husband's name. “Husband with you?" asked the clerk, still briskly. “No." “Then just write your own name. Private bath?"

THE WOMAN'S JOURNAL, MARCH 2, 1912

And the clerk understood, still briskly.

Altogether it was a glorious democratic, new-era sort of day, with the California sunshine flooding everything, with the scent of daffodils in the air, and with violets so cheap that even the least of these new citizens for once shared some one's “three bunches for a quarter," and found them satisfactory substitutes for the cigars with which hopeful politicians formerly expressed their love of all mankind. Mary Calkins Brooke, in New York Evening Post.

KANSAS LABOR MEN ALL FOR SUFFRAGE State Convention Endorses Votes for Women Almost Unanimously

The Kansas State Society of Labor and Industry, at its recent meeting in Wichita, listened to Mrs. Lillian Michner and Mrs. Lilla Day Monroe on equal suffrage, and then voted for it without discussion and almost unanimously. This vote meant much more than the mere ordinary carrying of a resolution, because those standing pledged themselves not alone to vote for the amendment, but also to work and speak for it.

Mrs. Monroe appeared before the convention by invitation of Miss Zula Taylor, one of the women delegates representing the Garment Makers' Union. Mrs. Monroe has been before the society so many times with suffrage resolutions that she is personally acquainted with many of the leaders. They were pleased at her little conceit about her union card. She claimed that she had a right to be heard because she had a union card. When she described it, and teld that it was given to her by a minister, they knew it was her marriage certificate. But she insisted that it was a union card, and permitted her to work for the State without price or consideration, and that she had already furnished four citizens, and that she had heard that citizens in Kansas were nmow worth $5,000 per head to the State, per year. So, because of her labors for the State, she asked that she be made a full-fledged citizen, with all the rights and privileges of any other citizen of Kansas.

DR. CHARLES. F. AKED SPEAKS IN NEVADA

ie Lectures for Suffrage in Reno, and Offers to Give a Month of Speaking Later for the Cause—State University Hears Two Addresses on Votes for Women

Mrs. Stanislawsky, president of the Equal Franchise League of Nevada, addressed the University Assembly not long ago, on the general question of woman suffrage, and was sreeted by the students with three cheers and a tiger. Miss Anne Martin addressed them the following week. Miss Martin is an American girl who was converted in England, and worked for some time with Mrs. Pankhurst's society. She explained the militant movement. A local paper says: “Her lecture was attentively listened to by the audience of students, professors and townspeople."

OUnder the auspices of the Nevada Equal Franchise Society, Dr. Charles Aked of San Francisco, formerly of England, and of Mr. Rockefeller's church in New York, gave a stirring address on woman suffrage on Lincoln's Birthday in Reno, that has produced a very strong impression, The Congregational Church was full to overflowing, hundreds of people standing, and applauding the telling points of the address for the full hour Dr. Aked spoke.

Miss Anne Martin presided in the absence of Mrs. Stanislawsky, State President, and read extracts from letters from Miss Christabel Pankhurst, Lady Strachey and Rev. Anna H. Shaw, expressing their interest in the Nevada campaisgn. Judge Seeds of Reno, in a short address at the close of the meetinsg, called for an endorsement of the distinguished speaker's masterly argument, which was passed without a dissenting voice.

Mr. Robert Price sat on the platform, Mrs. Bridges and Mrs. Edsall of the Nevada Equal Franchise Society presided at the literature table, where suffrage leaflets and The Woman's Journal were distributed at the end of the meeting. Ten young ladies of Reno, in white dresses and yellow badges, the suffrage colors, collected the promise cards, which pledged nearly $200 to the cause. One member of the society gave $100.

Dr. Aked, who campaigned for the woman's amendment in California last autumn, shows such interest in the Nevada campaign that he has offered his services to the Nevada Equal Franchise Society for a month, when the question is actually before the people next year, following the passage of the amendment the second time by the Legislature. President Stubbs of the State University, a warm supporter of equal suffrage, was unable to be present, owing to a conference with Mr. Clarence Mackay in New York.

SOME NOVEL FEATURES AT SUFFRAGE HEARINC

Charts Show Growth of Women Voters in Number and Good Effect of Their Ballots

There was a crowded attendance at the legislative hearing on woman suffrage in Massachusetts last Monday evening. The hearing was conducted for the suffragists by La Rue Brown, assisted by John Weaver Sherman in behalf of the American Federation of Labor, which is championing the bill, and by Victor J. McCome for the Socialists. Charles R. Saunders conducted the hearing for the Antis.

The speakers for the submission of the suffrage amendment were ex- Congressman Samuel L. Powers, Prof. Lewis K. Johnson of Harvard, Mrs. Lionel Marks (Josephine Preston Peabody), Mrs. Maud Wood Park, John Weaver Sherman of the State Branch of the American Federation of Labor, Henry Abrahams, president of the Boston Central Labor Union, Henry Sterling and Fred J. Kneeland; against suffrage, Miss Mary S. Ames, president of the Massachusetts Antis, Miss Miunie Bronson of New York, and Prof. Willlam T. Sedgwick of the Institute of Technology.

A new feature, in which the committee seemed much interested, was two charts prepared by the suffragists. One showed the growth of the woman voter—from a little girl when only a handful of women in Wyoming could vote for President of the United States, to a tall woman now that a million women have the ballot—and the other showed the relative infant mortality in different countries, the eleven with the lowest rates being all of them countries where women vote.

In the South Carolina Senate, Senator Hall has introduced, by request, joint resolution for a constitutional amendment, giving women the right to vote, but not to hold office.

HUMOROUS

Mrs. Gibbs: “So your husband's will is law?" Mrs. Dibbs: “Yes, but can sometimes bribe him not to enforce it."

First Actor: “Ah, my boy, I owe a great deal to that old lady." Second Actor: “Your mother?" First Actor: “Heavens, no! My landlady.'—Judsge. Waterman (shaking his fountain pen): “You have no idea how easily these pens run!" His neighbor (applying a blotter to his trousers): “Oh, I have an inkling!"—Harvard Lampoon.

“Johnny, why don't you try to stand at the head of your class, instead of always being at the foot?" “Shucks! By standing at the foot of the class 1 can see out of a window, pa."—Birmingham Age Herald.

“That young son-in-law of said Mr. Cumrox, "says I'm unreasonable., And maybe he's right." “What's the trouble? “Before their marriage I objected to his attentions to my daughter. Now I'm objecting to his inattention.'—Washington Star.

woman Beforc the Law

One Year's Sentence the Penalty a Dentist Gets for Trapping a School Girl in Back Room for Sixteen Months and Making Her an Unwilling Mother

the result that the dentist was sentenced to one year in prison. This case is well known in Los Angeles and all Southern California, and has created great interest, not only because of the atrocity of the crime, but because of the mild sentence.

On August 15, 1911, the girl was rescued from a room back of the dentist's office, where she had been recognized as she looked out of the window. She had been in the room since the previous November, and had been allowed out only once, and then in company with the dentist. She had been without food for days at a time; there had been no fire in her miserable room; her clothes were in rags, and she was greatly changed in appearance.

At the trial she was asked why she remained in the room a prisoner if she was so badly treated. Her answer was, “I had to remain, for I had no clothes, and Dr. M. would buy me none." When asked why she did not call to pedestrians on the street, she said she had tried, but as the dentist's room was adjoining and he could hear her, he always rushed in and stopped her. On the day of his arrest he had tried to make her accompany him on a camping trip. She had fought against going, fearing that he meant to get her away into the mountains and desert her, or make a worse victim of her.

In the testimony it was learned that the dentist's first wife had secured a divorce from him on the ground of brutality. He married a second time, and a week after his arrest his second wife was found raving and suffering and alone. She became the mother of a dead child. By her he had three other children. It was learned that other girls of the city and county had been his victims, and that it was his boast that he could make any woman or girl his victim if he chose.

Members of the jury expressed regret that the man could not have been given a life sentence. The maximum penalty in such a case, however, is one year in prison— about one-third less time than the school girl was held a prisoner for him to abuse, yet this was the extreme penalty of the law! The San Francisco Chronicle of November as said that the dentist received the verdict of guilty with a gasp of astonishment. He appeared to have expected acquittal, and his attorney had certainly made a most eloquent plea in his behalf.

Receiving the light sentence of one year in prison and knowing the ease with which criminals of his stamp are acquitted up and down the length and breadth of the country, he was fully justified in his surprise at his sentence. But this case is only an example of the atrocities which vicious men practice on young and helpless girls, and this is only an example of the kind of punishment meted out to them by laws that have been made without the woman's viewpoint. No body of women, be they suffragists or, anti-suffragists or indifferent, could, in the very nature of things, have made the penalty for such a crime so light. The suffragist, of course, looks upon the Votes for Women movement as the inevitable opponent of such laws. The suffragist hails the Votes for Women movement as the bright dawn of a new day, in which knowledge of such cases will be brought to women's minds, and in which women will be made suffragists willy nilly, through the knowledge they obtain of the every-day workings of the law regarding women.

There is more to Votes for Women than the demand for the ballot. There is education involved, knowledge of life as it is lived and suffered; there is knowledge of the law, knowledge of the way a law is made, there is knowledge of public officials and the enforcement of the law, and with women there is involved something of conscience. Spread the knowledge of the open discrimination of the law against women, as in this awful story, and you spread Votes for Woment!

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.

DENTIST was tried in California some months ago, and on November 24 was found guilty of trapping a school girl for sixteen months in a room next to his office, where a child was born to her. The jury was out less than one-half an hour, with

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