The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1912-10-24
LEGAL SIDE OF QUESTION
Declares That Women are Taking
Great Interest in Question in Wiscon-
sin and That They Should be Given a
Chance to Cast the Ballot.

Gerald II. Mcdowell, formerly super
lntendent Of the Kenosha schools, but
now practicing attorney in ST..
Joseph, Michigan, spoke before large
gathering Of the best known Kenosha
people on the legal, social and human
itarian aspects of the suffrage ques-
ton at Guild Hall last night.
Mr.. Mcdowell was introduced by
S. G. Newman and the title of his talk
was Catching Up With China and
he repeatedly called attention to the
fact that China, considered by many
Americans to be a very backward
country, is really far ahead of the
United States owing to the fact that
the women in China have the right to
vote.
The chief obstacle to the cause of
suffrage, according to Mr.. Mcdowell,
is the wife of the indulgeht husband
who, because Of his success, can ride
in her limousine, educate her children
in private schools and thinks that she
is performing her duty to herself, to
her family and to society by making
herself unapproachable by adherence
to old fashioned ideas of social
standards.
Even the national leaders of that
social set to which that woman would
most like to belong are, according to
Mr.. Mcdowell, finding new duties to
occupy their leisure time and these
are in social service. These women,
he said, who live almost entirely to
themselves, cannot maintain their po-
sition long unless they recognize the
needs of those seven million women
who have to work for living.
Vice and virtue, the speaker point
ed out, are the chief opponents of
suffrage. Vice opposes it because it
fears thai Judgment and opposition of
women who would like to vote that
they might exert a stronger influence
against the temptations to boys and
girls. Virtue opposes suffrage through
a mistaken idea that it is beneath the
dignity of the woman to vote. CIT
is, said the speaker, emo more de-
grading FOR woman to vote than it
is for her to express an opinion as to
The quality of the milk She buys, the
air that her children breathe and the
kind of food she gets from the
grocer"
"Theso amiable, misinformed per-
sons" said Mr.. Mcdowell, occupy
the same position as the judge Of the
high court in one of the eastern states
one hundred years ago. He gave it as
his opinion that if the privilege Of the
ballot was extended beyond the eldest
son of the family, as was then proposed
the country would be ruined. He was
just few hundred years in advance
Of Louis XIV who met the demand for
the vote on the part of the common
people by saying, eco back to your
plough shares. | am the state. :"
The old idea was that the family
was a unit and that the individual
possessed no rights.
In Mr.. McDowell's audience there
were a great many women who earn
their own living
"of the twenty million school
children in America said Mr.. Nc.
Dowell, "the majority leave school
before they pass the sixth grade. The
condition which brings this about, he
explained, can be met by universal
suffrage and instead of allowing the
affairs of the nation to be ruled by
sixty-fve per cent of one-half of the
adult people, he contended that the
right to vote should be given to the
other one-half of the people and in
this way it would be possible to couu-
terbalanee the effect of the bad vote
in the Up4ted States.
In SUPPORT of this statement he ex-
planned that only sixty-fve per cent
Of the men in this country vote and
that they comprise but one-half of the
adult population.