Dodge City times. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1876-1892, 1878-01-26
" WOMAN'S DAY" THE SENATE,
Mary Clemmer Applies the Lash to the
shoulders of the senatorial Solons.

Washington Letter to the independently
On Tuesday the morning journals an
nounced that would be s'Woman's Day"
in the Senate. The announcement in
the journals was made with dignity and
without comment. In the Senate the
petitions We're presented without digni-
ty, and, with q few exceptions, with
comments which reflected with deep dis
credit on the ones who uttered them.
1t is disgrace to the United States Sem
ate, which can not be wiped out, that it
will not present petition coming from
thousands of honorable women in the
land without laughter, ridicule and
sneers. Ii we needed any added proof
to the already too evident fact that, as an
aggregate, the Congress of the American
people does not consist of gentlemen,
we have it in their tones, words and
manners when they present woman's
petition. Judging by these, you must
believe that nothing on earth is quite so
So funny as that a tax-paying citizen
often the widowed head of family, an
intelligent, educated, thoughtful being
should ask that she have some voice
in the laws that govern her.
Forty Senators presented petitions,
signed by thousands of men and women,
asking for constitutional. amendment
enfranchising women. A few read the
petitions as they would any other, with
dignity and without comment; but the
majority seemed intensely conscious of
holding something unutterably funny
IN their hands. They appeared to con-
slider it huge joke. The entire Sem
ate presented the appearance of a
laughing school practising side-splitting
and ear-extending grins. Mr.. Wadleigh
eaned back in his chair and shook with
laughter, after portraying to his next
neighbor, Pinkney Whyte of Maryland,
the apparition of Pinkney's landlady
descending upon the polls like 4 wolf on
the fold, to annihilate Pinkney's election
an avenging landlady, of terrible re-
pute for executive temper, who, it is de-
clared, imprisoned Pinkney in his own
parior, and barricaded another descend
ant of a signer of the Declaration of In
dependence, Hester Clymer, till, to save
him from starvation, food was lifted to
him from the street on poles. Oglesby,
erst warrior of Illinois, spake with en-
dearing gallantry of his 90 dear constitu-
ents," whom he did all his wit could do
to make ridiculous, till the whole Sem
ate laughed, and even Roscoe Conkling,
who never condescends to sheer at
swoman in public, turned and listened
and smiled his most sardonic smile. !
Then Thurman blew his loudest regula- !
ton blast-Sure portent of approach /
ing battle-aDd rose and moved that the .
petitions be referred TO the Committee |
on Public Lands, of which Oglesby is 4
chairman. At this proposition-in-
tended TO be equally humorous and con-
temptuous-the whole Senate laugh
ed aloud. There was one Senator
man enough and gentleman enough
to lit the petitions from this
insulting proposition. 1t was Senator
Sargent of California, the husband of
the woman who, though Senator's
wife, is brave enough to be the Presi-
dent of the Woman's National Suffrage
Association. He turned to Mr.. Thur
man and demanded for the petition OF
more than ten thousand women at least
the courtesy that would be,given to any
other petition. Whereupon Thurman,
with a flippancy of which | would not
have believed him capable, if l had not
seen il, blew his nose anew, and declar-
ed that he ''only wished the petition I
referred TO the Committee on Public ,
Lands that the women might have two
strings to their bow" Then the craven ,
Senate declared the notion" which
was only an insult, carried. Let it be I
recorded of the Senate If the United
States of the forty-ffth Congress that |
the one petition which it received as a /
joke and treated with ut c
ter contempt and outrage was the pc /
tition of tens of thousands of the moth I
ers, daughters and wives of the land; i
hat the one petition which they receiv- +
ed and dropped with utter indifference h