The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-04-23

Mary Johnston has come and gone. but the impression of her personality, the in- fuence of her words, her enthusiasm, her humor and her superb earnestness-al this is left as gift to those in Birming- ham fortunate enough to have seen and heard her.
 "One thinks of woman suffrage in diff ferent way somehow" says one.
 "Of course it is coming, and we must get ready for it."
 .'Why, I always did believe in it. you know"
 How curiously small and stupid people seem who say they are against it.
 How funny to see really sure enough anti-suffrage person"
 "Oh, the woods are full, though.
 So the comments go.
 One might really suppose some people in Birmingham had but just stepped out of the ark. All their opinions drip so with antediuvian drIppings.
 MT. Jafnes Weatherly is going to talk before the Equal Suffrage league, and representatives of the other clubs of both men and women here next Saturday aft eroon at the parish hall of the Church of the Advent The time is 3:3o. The puhlic is invited.
 The city commissioner will discuss cer- tain economic and social laws affecting women in Alabama and say just why he himself believes in woman suffrage
 For there still are people who want to know "Why?''
 why do you believe in equal suffrage?' When folks ask that question it invana- bly, gives one a queer little funny little feeling as of having stepped back into hooped skirts-of not really living in the big broad brand new twentieth century! Because. among all intelligent and gen uinelv cultivated people today the right justice and expedency of equal suffrage is taken as so absolutely a matter Of course, that the adverse sentiment is nov looked upon as hall mark of stupidity ignorai.ce, prejudice-or, simply the ante- diluvian drippings that some of us can not help and wouldn't if we could'
 Said one Birmingham girl; I'm not going to be a suffragigt because none of the boys will ask me to dance If l am. And they won't invite me to the Country club And nobody win ask me to marry him.'
 An,
 That is 6 delicate question for suffra- eist who isn't married to controvert
 Can it be done? Let us think There are many of ds, members of the Birmingham Suffrage as sociation, who are not mairied-not yet Some of us are still young, still pretty if we may believe the men (and women tco), and still are many things that ex- cellent and brainy young men i've arc toid) desire in wives Now, would the young lady in question, and all those in her company. small boys ct al, believe us if we told her that her sad fears arc founded on fiction and not on fact?
 She need not be in the. least bit. scared
 Not just precisely on that account!
 For odd to say. that pointed little ques- tion toward which the little lady so lifts mp all her aspiration has actually beer put to some Of us, more frequently since we became suffragists than ever it was before.
 No, We aren't afraid of that. Simply the study of equal suffrage makes girls and women trine more discriminating They really stop to think:
 What sort of man is this I am talk. ing for a life eomrade? What sort of } father will I give to my childreh?" Said Mary Johnston: Every girl wants Ter lover to be the finest man in all this world. Every wife would be glad to be able to worship her husband
 Sensible and progressive men rather like equal suffrage sentiment in woman
 Perhaps it gives them, let us say. some thing q little new to tame, to overcome to subdue.
 T
 Yes.
 Most small boys. however, are quite dead set against it. Boys, and clowns -and mountebanks and people two-by' four.
 Men are lords of the earth no more.' Alas,
 Is that so?
 You should have heard Mary Johnston speak For she believes in lords-and la dies, too. But she doesn't believe in fak' lcrds. or fake ladies. She believes il human beings; that woman is hu'nai being the same as a man; that father hood and motherhood are the first wold end the last; that the home must h' made sweet end fine and wholesome Ali, the child lifted higher and higher, thi child's interests guarded and protected before and after birth.