The herald., 1893-10-01
WOMAN'S WORLD.
SOMETHING ABOUT ENGLISH WoM-
EN- IN POLITICS.

EN- IN POLITICS.
women as School Commissioners New
! Field For womon's CIubs--Mako Life For
Store Girls Easier-The summer Coifrure.
Gan a Woman Reform a Man?
=, The part the women play in an Eng
fish election is one of the things which
no American can accept as an improve
ment over our own methods. It may
either amuse him or shock him, but he
would not care to seeit adopted at home.
The canvassing in the country from cot
tage to cottage he can understand. That
seems possible enough. 1t takes the form
Of q polite visit to the tenants, and the
real object is cloaked with few vague
inquiries about the health of the chill
dren or the condition Of the crops and
the tractlike distribution of campaign
documents. But in town 1t Is different.
The invasion Of bachelor apartments by
young primrose DANES is embarrassing
and un-nice and is the sort of thing we
would not allow our sisters to do, and
the house to house canvass in the alleys
of Whitechapel or among the savages of
Lambeth, which results in insult and
personal abuse, is, to our way Of think
ing, simple impossibility.
The English as rule think we allow
our women to do pretty much as they
please, and it is true that they do in
many things enjoy more freedom than
their British cousins, but the men in our
country are not so anxious to get into
Office, greedy as they are after 1t, as to
allow their wives, in order to attain that
end, to be even subject to annoyance;
certainly not to be stoned and hustled off
their feet or splattered with the mud Of
the Mile End road. ANY one in England
who followed the election last year knows
to the wife of which distinguished can
didate and to the daughters of which cab
met minister refer.
have seen women of the best class
struck by stones and eggs and dead fish,
and the game did not seem to me to be
worth the candle. confess that at the
time l was 80 intent ON admiring their
pluck that it appeared to me as rather
fine than otherwise, but from this calm
er distance can see nothing in the ac-
tive work of the English woman In poll
tics which justifes the risks she volun-
tarily runs of insult and indignity and
bodily injury. A seat in the house would
hardly repay candidate for the loss Of
one of his wife's eyes or Of all of his sis
ter's front teeth, and, though that is put
ting it brutally, it is putting it fairly.
1t would not be fair, however, if left
the idea in the readers mind that the
women go into this work unwillingly.
On the contrary, they delight in it, and
some of them are as clever at 1t as the
men and go to as great lengths-from
Mrs. Langtry, who plastered her house
from pavement to roof with red and
white posters for the Conservative can
didate, to the duchesses who sat at tho
side Of the member for Westminster and
regretted that it threatened to be an or
derly meeting.
1t is also only fair to add that many of
the most prominent Englishmen in poll
tics are as much opposed to what they
call the interference Of women in mat
ters political as they are to bribery and
corruption and regard both elements of
an electoral campaign with a pronounced
disfavor. The reply which the present
president of the United States made to
those enthusiastic and no doubt we'll
meaning women who wished to form
leagues and name them after his wife
illustrates the spirit with which the in
terference of women in politics is re-
garded in this country.
But thenit is new thing with us, and
it is only right to remember that from
the days of the Duchess of Devonshire's
sentimental canvass to the present Eng
ish women have taken part in gen.
eral elections; that there is precedent
for it, and when you have said that Of
anything English you have justified it
for all time to come. Tho young Amer
lean girl who would not think it proper
to address men from platform and give
them chance to throw things at her
must remember that the English girl
would not give the man she knew cup
of tea in the afternoon unless her mother
were in the room to takc care of her.
And am sure tho women in my can
didate's campaign almost persuaded me
that they, as the political agont declared,
did more than himself to win the cleo
tion. Richard Harding Davis in Har-
per's.