The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1912-09-06
BY ESTHER GRIFFIN WHITE.

amendment in Ohio was more or less
expected.
The work was not organized syste-
matically.
| And was sporadic.
The rural communities were almost
| unit for it and certain urban cen
tiers.
| But the larger cities, where the for
| eign element predominates, gave ma
| jorities against it.
/ And for some reason the brewery
| interests sought it's defeat.
| Possibly because the w. G. T. u,
I whose basic principle of organization
is the total elimination of the liquor
! traffic, is a supporter of woman's
suffrage.
In any event, it's chiefest reason for
defeat lay in the lack of organization
of it's sponsors.
| They had nothing like that which
exists in this state where the Fran
chise League of Indiana has branches
in twelve of the thirteen congressional
districts and about fifty counties with
many local branches answerable to
the county and district organizations,
all of which work together.
| Nothing can be effected without or
ganization.
That is what women have learned
but must still learn.
No matter what the merits of the
respective platforms of a party, it's
/ the one which has the most systematic
| organization that wins out.
| That's the reason that the dominant
parties almost always triumph over
their seeding bodies.
The former generally retain the
machine" and since it has been per-
fected through long years of expert
mentation it's workings are not entire
ly impaired by the slipping of one or
two cogs.
1t at once proceeds to tighten up it's
weak spots and begin operations more
strenuously than ever.
! If the women want to win out in
the separate states they will have to
get together and perfect an organiza-
ton.
This is what was done in Indian
apolis in April last when the first con-
vention of the Franchise League of
Indiana was held and with far greater
success than it's originators thought
possible.
The next convention will find the
League in even far better form.
There are a lot of false estimates
floating about concerning the great
state of Ohio, the home of presidents.
1t is regarded as enlightened above
the average.
But it's not.
A state in which voters hold their
civic responsibilities as lightly as was
shown to be the case in the famous
expose made by Judge Blair in the
celebrated Adams County cases, could
not be expected to do other than be
''forninst" woman's suffrage.
The average of civic morality in
Ohio is low.
The men don't want to be bothered
They know they will if the women
vote.
They don't want the latter mixing
up" and spelling their various graft
berths.
And the average of civic morality is
not any lower than the average of in
telligence.
! Ohio has not the efficient public
school system that prevails in Indiana.
Nor the just laws which govern the
property rights of women in this
state.
/ Indeed in the latter phase of its
commonwealth activities it is primi-
tive
i Married women have little right in
the management or disposition OF
either their property or children.
/ Laws which Indiana women would
chafe under if existent here and
which are not the legal procedure in
Indiana because of the herculean eff
forts of Robert Dale Owen to have
them erased from our statute books.
That's the reason the women of the
state put memorial to this great man
in the state house grounds in Indi.
annapolis a year or so ago.
Ohio, in short is, in it's average
crude, reactionary, illiterate and pre-
JUDGED, and decades behind the times
i 1t may, however, be hoist by its own
petard.
For it adopted that amendment in
its constitution which provides fol
the initiative and referendum, and un
der it's operations woman's suffrage