The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-03-08
SUFFRAGE IDEA
 IS CENTURIES OLD Ancient Rome Had Its Sufrag-
 iSt Workers IN FRENCH REVOLUTION Movement Had It's Beginning in This Country More Than Sixty Years
 Ago-Famous Leaders of
 Early Times.
IN FRENCH REVOLUTION

New York, March -(special)-The agitation which has been stirred up In both the United States and Great Brit ain within the past few months by the advocates of woman suffrage has caused many persons to regard the demand that votes be given to women as a new move ment In reality it is merely revival of an issue which has been agitated more or less spasmodically for the past @ years in America and for more than twice that period in Europe. where it had It's beginning. Even Ancient Rome, ac- eerding to Professor Guglielmo Ferrero, the famous Italian historian who has been lecturing in this country, had It's suffraglsts.
 In modern times the origin of the de- mand for the emancipation of women dates back to the French revolution. It was from a mob of women gathered to harangue the assembly in behalf of "woman's civil and political rights that the blood thirsty outbreak of the lowest elements of Paris arose, resulting In the stormng of the Hotel de Vile and pre- cipitating the orgy of bloodshed which followed. The leader of this mob was Rose Lacombe famous actress of the day, renowned for her beauty She founded one of the female clubs that played so terrible part in the revolution and perhaps is entitled to be considered the originator of the woman's club move ment, as well as the founder of the less widely successful equal suffrage agita- tion.
 Like many another leader of militant womankind" Rose Lacombe suffered the fate of falling in love and marrying. This alienated the support of her followers and she spent her later days in keeping shop in Paris She was succeeded as leader of this early womans rights party by Marie Olympe de Gouger, who seems to have been sufficiently .emancipated' for she openly led an immoral life and early lost her head by the guillotine for perfidy to the republican cause.
 The next leader of the agitation was Throigne Mericourt, woman of wealth who had defled all moral conventions. For her active part in the revolution she was hailed as ''the bride of Citizen Pop ulus' and claimed as her wedding gift the heads of ten prisoners which were carried in procession before her on bikes.
 With the close of the French revolution the womans clubs were dissolved and this phase of the movement came to an end. The center of the agitation was next transferred to England, where Mar. Wollstonecraft assumed it's leadership. One of the features of her work was the demand that boys and girls should be educated together in the public schools and in colleges. This idea of co-education has been much more widely adopted in the United States than in Miss Wostoneerafts own country, al- though there has developed recently reaction against 1t so far as higher edu- cation Is concerned. Another plank in her platform was the industrial equality of men and women and the admission of the latter to all sorts of occupations. She put into practice her own notions of the equality of the sexes by making love to Fusch a well-known Swiss painter of her day, of whom Sheridan Knowles wrote that she pursued him scandal ously." Her relations with the painter caused Browning to write his poem about the pair containing a passage that often is quoted, beginning, 'Strong and fierce in the heart. dear" She was un- occasionally a brilliant woman. but her later relations with Captain Gilbert Inn lay, wealthy American, and William Goodwin, an Englishman, destroyed her influence and brought obloquy upon the cause which she championed.
 The next leader who arose to agitate the cause of womans rights and the one who first introduced the agitation Into America was Francis Wright. In 1925, when she was 30 years old, she came to the United States and attempted to found a colony of whites and blacks near Memphis, Tenn, based on social eQud11lN DelWtcu tiic idcNs.a 1T oAih6 III this she took to lecturing and writing of free thought and woman's rights but her attacks of religion and marriage caused her to be barred from many cities Other leaders of this early move ment in America were Ernestine Rose and Margaret Fuller. the former a Polish communist and socialist and the latter a prominent member of the famous Brook Farm community
 These early leaders of what has since developed into the equal suffrage move ment did not make votes for women the sole object of their agitation. The de- mand for ballot box privileges played minor part in their efforts. The chief features of their programme were better educational opportunities for women. better protection for their property rights and their general admission to industries then closed to them. Most of them, as has been the case with the wo- men prominent with the suffrage move ment in later years, were advocates of women as Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone took charge of the woman's rights cause that the ballot came to be regarded as the magic wand which should open the door to all the privileges which women craved and release them from their slavery to man. It is a curious fact. however that while the right to vote has as yet been