The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1896-08-22
WOMAN AS A PROVISO.

Published by Request of the American
Woman Suffrage Association.
In Ohio the supreme court has decided
that women may vote for school officers,
provided that 1t shall not be considered a
constitutional privilege but legislative
boon. Thus the women OF Ohio are
school electors, provided only that they
shall not be considered as having a con-
stitutional status which leads to the re-
mark that there is always a proviso
where women are concerned and always
will be until they stand the equals of
men under laws civil as well as divine.
When ! was in the Glasgow museum. ex-
amining the old blue laws of the Scottish
kirk, | found a decree that women might
attend services in the cathedral. convert
ed from papa masses to Calvinistic
psalmody, provided they did not sit in
the seats placed for the men; they were
to sit on the floor. or bring their stools
with them. In Edinburgh, in the ma
tional collection of trophies, military and
CIVIL saw one of the very stools permit
ted by the kirk the stool that Janet Ged-
dcs Ito whom monument has been
erected in the Scottish caDitaD threw at
the Episcopal clergyman, with the re-
mark. "Tak ye that for dawring to say
mass at my lug"
1t seemed to me then, as II seems to me
now, in looking over the Ohio decision,
that here was n proviso with more spirit
in it than its projectors anticipated. Like
the stool provided by the kirk for the
women of Scotland will be the decision
of the Ohio court, for the man must look
to his robes who rustles them in the ears
of women awakened to their rights and
duties. All the same, Ohio women arc
thankful for the proviSo, and the judges
who made it.
Tho gravity with which modern men,
who have usurped all law and author
ity, pass upon the rights anc privileges
of women would be lauGhable If 1t was
not so presumptuous. The Scottish kirk
was at least honest when 1t built its
chief seats for men and reegated its
women to the floor; but the men now who
assert they would give to women all the
rights and privileges they enjoy, provided
they could be assured 1t was not for the
physical and moral rliination of society
and the sex, have no such honest merit.
As reasonable creatures, they know that
the women who sit beside them in the
church pows and the entertainment hall
who vote at church elections, teach in
the schools, sell goods in store and shop,
work beside them In the factory and carry
prizes in the salons, are not likely to
change their morals and manners the mo-
ment they take a ballot in their hands.
4 4 \
The worst feature of this sort of legisla-
ton secured by women's work, is that
when women get IT through they cannot
see II fairly carried out, because they are
cut off from looking after 1t by the liml-
tations of the proviso. For instance. the
Army Nurse bill, which the Women's Re-
lief corps got passed by congress two
years ago after an eight years campaign
is proving inadequate because the men Of
the pension office rule out the regimental
nurses, Notwithstanding they were paid
and found by the government, because Of
a technical difference in their induction
into service. As a proviso woman has her
limitations. Give her the swing of the
civil law in the same degree she has Of
the moral code. and she will be found to
be as much of a success as a conservator
Of good government in the state as she
has long proved herself to be in the
church. whether as an occupant of n front
pew, or saying her prayers on the bare
cathedral floor.
Kate Brownlee Sherwood
-D