The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-07-26
Who Is Your Neighbor?
BY FRANCES GRIFFIN.

Every time speech is made concern
 ing the glories which the South
 ern States are to enjoy through the
 accomplishment of the Isthmian Canal,
 me speaker presents the fact, as a sweet
 morsel rolled under the tongue, that the great islands of Australia and New Zea-
 land are to be brought into delightful propinqutty to us. The inhabitants of
 tnese valuable British possessions are
 English speaking people, thrifty and en- ergetic, prosperous and progressive. We nave alright to anticipate much pleasure
 m the approaching proximity of such neighbors. Lately their women have had the power of the ballot conferred upon
 them, and immediately they have pre- sented an object lesson to the world of tneir appreciation of it's value. The re- forms they have secured by means of , tneir vote would probably have been call
 eu aI another time, "meddling in mems ana1rs, but in reality, it is only a closer acquaintance with eternal justice. Within tnese islands, since women have voted
 the divorce laws have been equalized: a married man prevented from willing all ms property away from his wife and chill
 dren; the wife receives half her husbands pay when he Is employed on relief works:
 the saloons are closed on election days:
 woman is freed from brutal husband
 ana ne IS compelled to maintain his wife ana children; very wholesome laws en- acted concerning illegitimate children.
 NOW, such power in the hands of women IS contagious When these women are brought up longside of us, they will taunt us with the condition around us, and set us thinking with renewed vigor concern ing way out.
 It is well that the geography of this country has placed mountains and forest between the Gulf and the Colorado wo- men, Tor they might have joined hands with the Australian women concerning the ballot business, and there Is no tell ing what might have happened. The Col orado women have been doing a few things lately. That State owes to her women the laws establishing an Industrial school for Girls; a Home for Dependent children; removing the emblems from the Australian ballot; making fathers and mothers joint guardians of their children. introducing the indeterminate sentence so much desired by the friends of prison reform; giving the Board of Charities and Corrections power to investigate charit- able institutions; placing drinking foun- tains in the street; providing for the care or the feeble-minded, and many other good things that the men had overlooked and forgotten. An element in politics that effects such Improvements can not harm politics, nor can politics reformed, cleansed and uplifted harm the women at work.
 Mir. M. J. Sanders, President of New orleans Progressive Union, has this state ment in the 'Progress:" q have asked several men about the effect of the ballot on woman herself? The women of today are not like those of a hundred years back. My cook Is better educated than a Queen of England was, a few centuries "a A -
 not 1njure women and make them less good wives and mothers. The average man today prefers wife who can sym pathize with his highest aspirations to one who Is a mere player-of-cards and runner-after-teas."
 The truth is women must look after themselves a little. The great world of business has absorbed the old home em- ployments and the old spinning wheel is standing on it's head in the woodhouse while women and children are away from home under the direction of a boss at the mills. The legislators are talking by the hour about the pay and conditions or Women's labor. It looks a little like the women should have a voice in-that themselves and that men alone should not be left to legislate for working girls. IT women were to shut themselves up alone to legislate for men, the injustice NN SNNt U Sldl0' OI andlrS would cry to Heaven for adjustment.
 The Louisiana women with their, little slice of power to remedy the evils about them, will stand at the head of the class as far as Southern women are concerned. when the Australian great danes open up school from across the seas
 There is no remedy for all this, but to stop up the canal at once; for the arch perpetrator himself-he of the sage's head ana the Hons heart, he, with the love of country exceeding the flame of the seven stars, is looking with level eyelids upon the many brave processions of glorious