Los Angeles herald., 1909-08-27
EQUAL SUFFRAGE

Related to some Of the noblest
houses of England and direct de-
scendant Of men who have made his
tory" in the United States, Mrs. Jess
lea Penn Hunter an authoress and
playwright who has made the cause of
woman a life work, tells the readers
Of The Woman's National Daily why
a woman is intended to and ought to
be on equal basis with men both So
cially and politically.
Mrs Hunter is q firm believer in
the principle of shorter hours, less
work, an equal division of wealth and
government ownership. She is an
ardent suffragist as we'll as an advo-
cate of Socialism.
ut is time for the women Of America
to come to the front" she says, "and
write their names in the political an
nails of their country, take up the bur
den of civilization and lend the infu-
ence of their greater spiritual develop
ment to the making of those laws un-
der which they and their children must
live. That she should be compelled
to demand what should be her un-
questioned right is the keenest COM
mentary upon the justice and chiValry
Of man who would deny the wife and
mother what is SO freely given to the
vilest of foreign emigrants and negroes.
IN nothing is the inconsistency OF
theory and fact so startlingly apparent
as in the attitude Of man to woman,
and she pays dear price for the empty
phrases with which he proclaims her a
superior being-for the occasional seat
in a crowded car-for the half gruds-
ingly lifted hat-for the state of servi-
tude and dependency and beggary
which he is pleased to call his protec-
ton. She pays a dear price, for in re-
turn she is denied the right to mako
the laws for her own government or to
receive equal pay for equal work"
1T sounds well to say that woman
belongs in the safety of home-but
there must be the home in which to
remain. Even a woman can scarcely be
expected to stand meekly in the streets
and starVe, or snatch the crumbs
dropped from the tight clinched hand
of greedy man-and there are many OF
us who can tell just how tightly
clinched that hand can be. She must
use those weapons with which a merci-
full God has endowed her for the bat
tie; to deny her that privilege is to
send her unarmed into the conflict
which men have found took the best
that was in them, armed though they
were to the teeth. She must have food
ana SlelIGr ana ClOlIlI5-ll 10 liC-
birthright-she must have it-aye and
she will have it, laugh who may. Neces-
sity is the armor that turns their jeers
she will onward and fear not.
1--WE are in the midst of great
economic struggle and future genera
tions will read in wonderment of the
battle of the sexes in the labor marts of
the world-with admiration for those
splendid women who have been the
pioneers. through the wilderness of pre-
iudice-with contempt for those men
who sought to snatch the crust from
the lips Of wife and mother. Nor will
they fail to wreathe In laurel the
memory of those great and broad
minded men who have made possible
for US the pilgrimage to success. we
hungered and they gave us bread-we
thirsted and they gave us drink-to
them all hail.
For half a century the battle has
raged-the battle of the seXes-a battle
ground contested at every point-but
though the progress has been slow 1t
has been none the less sure. One by one
the doors Of industries and professions
have been opened to her-into them
one by one she has entered, and to her
eternal credit be it said that wherever
she has set her foot the moral atmos-
phere has been the cleaner and the
purer for her coming. 1t Is not fact
that woman has produced the unsettled
conditions Of the economic world. True
to the ethics of supply and demand,
the need of woman brought the
woman.
But here for the first time the world
was face to face with the need, the sup
ply, and a prejudice that refused to
unite the two. Woman Would-and man
Wouldn't; and so the battle waged until
citadel after citadel went down and vic
L,s11 hnf
woman came into her own-even into
the Holy of Hoies-almost the most
iercely contested fortress of all-into
those courts where once she had come
as a culprit only-into the courts of
law where precedence binds the old to
the new and forges chains for genera
tions yet unborn.
"Where there is wrong there is rea-
son for that wrong, and the reason is
not hard to find here. Statistics prove
that women form but 20 per cent Of
the criminal class of America. That
means that the criminal instinct IS
Just four times stronger in man than
woman and it is this criminal half
of the human unit which has for so
many centuries shaped the destiny Of
the world. No wonder that folly sits
on the right hand of kings while wis
dom wears the cap and bells. That the
barroom flourishes in the shadow OF
the church, while liquor with its COM
plement of horrors stalks the earth.
That innocent childhood Is crushed in
the factories and in the mines, and
Christian womanhood sold for bread.
And all this is the result of mans
deSpotic sway-but note the difference
in those states and nations where Wom-
an has even a limited voice in the MAX
ing of the laws. Statistics again prove
that in proportion as she rises in the
scales of Justice drunkenness and de-
bauchery sink to their level. The school
house stands where the gambler played.
Prayer downs the ribald jest. The VINE
cup is empty, and thus is fulfilled the
scriptural promise that woman's heel
should crush the head Of the serpent
for liquor is the serpent of life-and
man, criminal man, with the hereditary
curse of centuries of unrebuked vices
strong within him, is being driven into
the fold of the righteous-into the
keeping of those laws laid down for the
guidance of woman-into the practlce
of what he has preached.
"But woman is arising to a sense or
her responsibilities-tO her rights and
to her necessities-she is demanding OF
man equality in business, equality in
law, and equality in government. From
north to south, from east to west the
voice of woman is calling-woman who
has suffered from the misrule of man
and who is determined to set her moral
HI r1I,uciao1 Gtppnpth-