Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1909-10-03
WOMEN TO FORCE BETTER
MORALS.

For one thing, there will be law
that compels the publication of mems
names, after certain indiscretions, and
there will be other laws equally awful
for some men"
This is part of the program laid
down by the suffragettes of the North.
headed by Mrs. o. H. P. Belmont.
The movement, Mrs. Belmont as
serts partakes somewhat of the nature
of a revolt against the injustice with
which women have been treated
through the long centuries.
One of the main purposes, and the
one that has the best foundation to
stand upon, is the breaking down and
destruction Of the double code of NOR
ais, the practical enforcement of the
rule that what holds good as to the
woman in the realms of morals must
apply with equal force to the man.
This is the first time that it has ev-
er been seriously proposed to compel
the publication of the names of men
who have been guilty OF moral lapses
from which women have suffered the
penalty Of public obloquy. All too
frequently, as the general public is
we'll aware, the woman has been
pilloried in the public press, her name
made by word and a shame to her.
self and her family, while the man has
received scant attention and no COM
mensurate punishment.
Mrs. Belmont proposes that this be
remedied, that the man be placed in
the stocks alongside of the woman,
that the same measure of publicity be
dealt out to him, married or single
though he may be, without regard to
his position in the social or the bust
ness or the political world, that is
meted to the woman in the case.
Really the idea is refreshing. If
adopted it might go long ways to-
ward bringing men with immoral pro-
clivities up with a sudden turn. The
| thought that law existed that actual
| ly compelled the publication of their
names and misdeeds. the blaZoning
forth to their world, to their wives and
children and parents and relatives and
| friends, of the iniquities of which they
have been guilty, might go long
ways toward putting curb upon their
unlawful indulgences.
! The suffragettes of America are evil
IDENTIFY bent on campaign Of purif1ca-
ton of moral conditions that may have
telling effect. There is something
novel in the ideas they advance. The
claim that there should be but one
moral code for both sexes has been
advanced in a wishy-washY sort of
way from the pulpit and in the news
papers for many years, but no one has
ever seen the same odium attach to
the man who does wrong as inva-
riablly falls upon woman similarly
circumstance. The world, even the
moral world, has shown by its prac-
| tees that it didn't really believe in its
| heart that the same divine or secular
moral laws applied to men as to wo-
men. But if the millions of club wo-
men in America, whose assistance Mrs.
Belmont has invoked, really take up
the cudgels in defence of women in
this respect there may be some startl-
ing changes in public opinion and in
public policies.
| 1t has long been claimed that if wo-
men interested themselves in politics
on the moral side, that there would
speedily be cleansing of the political
conditions of our cities. Perhaps Mrs
Belmont's movement may be the be-
ginning out of which a moral revolu-
ton viii be wrought.