Los Angeles herald., 1909-05-29
MANS TENDERNESS
Is "A DELUSI0N'


Mrs. Pierce Bailey addressed the New
Woman's Suffrage club of New Ro-
chelle on Monday on Free Woman
hood" says the Plain Dealer. Among
other things she said:
The dream of free womanhood is not
a new dream. In Plato's ideal republic
women are to sit in the state councils
as well as men, And though Plato's
dream remains yet to be realized in in
dividual instances and in high office
women have successfully guided the
ship of state. Witness Isabella of Spain,
Queen Elizabeth and Marie Theresa OF
Austria, and st. Catherine of Siena!
who was called in council by popes and
emperors. But the reality of free Wom-
anhood has never yet actually come to
pass, even today in enlightened Amer
lea. The American woman, petted, Gull
tured, spoiled, is an economic slave III
the eyes of the law, not permitted To
defend her own interests, to direct the
education of the children, or to protect
the virtue of her sister women.
All that the most advanced suffraglst
among us asks is the right to take care
of herself Not in opposition to man OF
mans interests, but in partnership With
man, or when man, being human, is SC
busy taking care of himself, he forgets
to take care of woman. 1t is popu-
lar delusion among women that men
take SuCn ltilu6I Nellt VI ltiCiii
prick this bubble, study conditions IN
those states where man-made laws low
err the age of consent to 10 years, OF
observe those instances in commercial
life where woman is forced to labor Tor
half pay. The school teachers Of New
York city are defrauded of their right
full remunera ton in the name of what!
Of justice and right? No, but of econ
omy.
The new woman has given her wit
ness to every age. Her contemporaries
have viewed her with distrust, often
with hate. students of Jeanne d Arc
know that the chivalry of England
gave as one plausible excuse for burn
ing her that she insisted on wearing
bows dress. The great Napoleon ban
ished Nine de Stael forty miles from
Paris because her ideas were danger
Gus. And our own dear old Susan An
thony was a butt all her life for the
ieers and sneers of those who could
see in a woman fighting for her sisters
civic rights only ugliness and absurd
itv. But as the race progresses, the
new and the dangerous become the es-
tablished and the orthodox Jeanne
dare has been sainted, and if Nine. de
Stael could return it would take more
than the power of a Napoleon to snub
her. Susan ANTHONY has won the re-
spect even of her caricaturists.
But woman today has still many
preiudices and weaknesses of her slave
days. She is still in many instances
content to live under and have her
well being dependent on laws in maxi
ing which she has no part. She sees
the most degraded being of the male
sex have a voice in the disposing of
her property in the education of her
children in the very safeguarding OF
her life, and yet she remains dumb and
powerless as was the black man fifty
years ago. For woman without the
vote is without representation. Man
can work for woman, he can defend
her physical weakness, but he can
not represent her; sex differentiation
makes this impossible. Is it not pro-
verbal that men cannot see things as
women see them?
We have at last reached a stage of