Arizona republican., 1909-03-09
SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
 IS CENTURIES OLD
According to Professor Fcrrero, An cient Rome Had Suffragists-Move- ment Began with French Revolution in Modern Europe, and More Than Sixty Years Ago in This Country.

New York, March 3.-(Special Cor
 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 caus- ed many persons to regard the demand that votes be given to women as
 new movement. In reality, it is merely
 revival of an issue which has been
 agitated, more or less spasmodically, | for the past sixty years in America | and for more than twice that period | in Europe, where it had its beginning Even ancient Rome, according to Pro- l lessor Guglielmo Ferrero, the famous Italian historian who has been lectur- ing in this country. had it's suffragists. In modern times the origin of the demand for the emancipation" of
 women dates back to the French revo- lution. It was from a mob of women gathered to harangue the assembly in behalf of "woman'S civil and political
 rights" that the bloodthirsty outbreak of the lowest elements of Paris arose,
 resulting in the storming of the Hotel
 de Vile and precipitating the orgy of
 bloodshed that followed. The leader
 of this mob was Rose Lacombe, a ia
 nous 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 movement, as well
 as the founder of the less widely sue
 cessful equal suffrage agitation.
 Like many anotherl leader of "mili-
 tant womankind," Rose Lacombe suf-
 fered the fate of falling in love and
 marrying This alienater the support
 of her followers, and she spent her
 later days in keeping a shop in Paris.
 She was succeeded as a 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 per
 fidy to the republican cause.
 The next leader of the agitation was
 Throigne Mericourt, a woman of
 wealth. who had defied all moral con
 yentiOns. For her active part in the revolution she was hailed as the bride of Citizen Populus.' and claimed as
 her wedding gift the heads of ten prisoners, which were carried in pro cession before her on bikes.
 With the close of the French revolu- tion, the womaHs clubs were dissolved, and this phase of the movement came to an end. The center of the agita- tion was next transferred to England where Mar Wollstonecraft assumed it's leadership. One of the features of T .I and girls should be educated together in the public schools and in colleges. This ddea of CO., education has Seen much more widely adopted in the United States than in Miss WOllstone- crafts own country, although there has developed recently a reaction against it, so far as higher education is con cerned. Another plank in her platform was the industrial equality of men and women and the admission of the lat ter 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 1 scandalously" Her relations with the painter caused Browning to write his poem about the pair containing a pas sage that often is quoted, beginning, | Strong and fierce in the heart, dear" She was unquestionably a brilliant | woman, but her later relations with | Captain Gilbert Inlay, a wealthy l American, and William Goodwin, an l EnglishmAn. destroyed her influence 1 and brought obloquy upon the cause | which she championed.
 The next leader who arose to agi- | tate the cause of woman's rights and | the one who first introduced the agi- l tation into America, was Frances 1 Wright. In 1925, when she was 30 | years old, she came to the United | States and attempted to found a col | ony of whites and blacks near Mem phis, Tenn, based on social equality | between the races. Failing in this, she | took to featuring and writing on free | thought and woman's rights, but her | attacks on religion and marriage caus- ed her to be barredfrom many cities. | Other leaders of this early movement in America were Ernestine Rose and Margaret Fuller, the former a Polish | and socialist, and the lat | ter a prominent member of the famous Brook rmIcommunity.
 These early leadeHs of what has since developed into the equal suffrage did not make votes Tor ! womeen the sole object of their agita- ton. The demand for ballot-box priv ileges played a minor part in their ef forts The chief features of their pro gram were better educational oppOr- tunities for women, ,<better protection for their property rights and their general admission to industries then closed to them. Most ofthem, as has been the case with the women promi- nent in the suffrage movement in later years, where advocates of socialistic deas. It was only when such women IS Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone toook charge of the woman's rights cause that the ballot came to be regarded as the magic wand which should open the loor to all the privileges that women : ,raved, and release them from their slavery to man. It is curious fact, .