The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-10-30

From the Louisville Courler-Journal. rNHERE are times when ever the most oracular are at a loss quite clear
 ! ly and surely to decide whether to laugh or to whistle. It is not always easy | to sit steady in the boat. The narrow strip of territory lying between the devil and the deep blue sea-or, as we some- times rudely put it in our vernacular, be- twixt hell and the iron works-is so studded with masked batteries and rifle pits that safe transit seems hopeless. As a rule, one has to shut his eyes and trust to his legs, blessing his good for tune if he gets across with skin intact and whole bones. The present array raises such a dilemma. It is most impos- ing We dare not laugh, and we are al-
 together too polite to whistle
 It is a feminine prerogativc to eat her cake and have it. He who does not concede this is no man at all So how, $ the Courier-Jaurnal to proceed and what is it to say in order that it may rot perpetrate some absurd solecism, or gaucherie; for, mark you, in it's own
 clumsy way, the Courier-Journal has been fighting the womans battle for emanci- pation time out of mind
 Badinage aside, there is so much in the movement which is about to have it's ex- pression here that we disapprove, and yet
 so much of it's ideals with which we are in the completest sympathy, that it is
 hard to draw the line between the fanci-
 ful and the real; the true and the false; that which may be pursued with safety by women having the honest support of
 men, and that which is the emanation either of fanatical exploitation or or ganized selfishness; because, in all agita- tons appealing to popular emotion-mas- culne no less than feminne-the sinister clements of ambition and vanity and greed, arrive soon or late at the front | to take the lead and to play upon the passion and credulity, too often the ig- norance, of the many. Tn every great l affair the character of the leadership even
 as much as the justice of the cause, has l d determinate influence upon results Absolute equality of birthright can not | he denied There is nothing vested which may be claimed as exclusive and exceptional by either men or women. IT | n man wants to fashion the gowns and | rock the eradles-if the woman wants to lead armies and dig ditches-why, who
 shall say them nay? Women have lead armies. There are men milliners. Yet | che could scarcely be blamed for wish ] ing to avoid intimacy with she soldier | or he nursery maid. We dare say that 1 Joan of Arc was a little trying Tor
 everyday companionship, whilst Mir Milk-
 SOD does not stand as a type for the ad- | miration of women
 | In period of universal movement to- | ward the Characterization of systems there l is no reason to doubt that woman suffrage will arrive with the rest of the revolu- 1 tionizing features aimed at the regenera- | ton of society The conditions of mod crn life, improved as they be, are none so
 good that they may not be bettered, and' l the claim that woman suffrage will bet
 Ter them rests upon plausible, though, we
 think, mistaken and sophistical, argu-
 ment If the Courier-Journal believed l that the admission of women to the fran | chise would purify the ballot, or elevate
 woman in the scale of humanity, it would not hesitate to advocate woman suffrage.
 It is our opinion that it would do noth-
 ing of tho sort. It would the rather ag-, l gravate than amend the conditions of
 which women justly complain.
 | The mistake of the suffragist equally | with the suffragette is in exaggerating | the virtues of suffrage. There would be never a drunken, idle husband the less l no avenue or vista of feminine opportun-
 ity the more. Two bad or foolish women l to one good wise woman would swell the | sum of corruption in the elections. The | gle objective point, if any objective | point could be reached, would be to rob
 the woman of her grace and charm and
 to brutalize her; and when thus brutal | ized, she should take the field as the direct competitor and antagonist, not the
 mate and helpmate, of man-his chiv- l airy, derived from motherhood and sister, | hood and sweethearthood, withdrawn l from her-we should become a world of brutes, she, being physically the weaker. | t, get the kicks and the cuffs, and to go
 down in the strife.
 | Certainly God and nature seem to have directed otherwise A good and wise man
 and woman--even two well intentioned
 people joined together in honest we'd l lock-fnd enough to do each in the sphere
 appointed; the woman to make the home,
 the man to plunge into the stream and | swim for both.
 1 Woman was, in the sincere belief of the Courier-Journal, created to be the moral light of the universe. Put out this light by putting her outside the temple, and the world be dark, indeed. The issue of rights" is wholly misleading issue.
 Assuredly, let us repeat, woman was born
 to every right the man has-and a
 few more! Voting is often an imposition,
 sometimes very irksome, and always nuisance. She that dabbles with pitch lshall be defiled. Yet whenever the moth-