El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1912-12-27
This Is the ChivaIrOus Age
Most ChiVaIrOUs Men Have Given
the Ballot, Not Car Seats,
to Their Sisters.
By Dorothy Dix
MAN who is violently opposed to

I A MAN who is violently opposed to
! ~ woman suffrage has written me
( 4 \ a letter in which he says shat
/ the reason women have to stand up in
/ street cars is because they want 10
( vote, for men viii never show any
! chivalry TO women as long as women
I demand their rights.
1t is easy to answer it by pointing
/ out that ii women had the ballot It
wouldn't be necessary for men 10 give
/ them their seats on the street cars. be-
| cause the women could pass laws that
would force the street car companies to
! put on enough cars to carry every BODY
comfortably, instead of herding people
together, as is now done, in cars that
are packed worse than cattle cars.
Perhaps men don't mind standing or
they don't mind seeing women stand,
or they don't object 10 having their
clothes half torn off them by their
fellOW-vlctimS pushing and squeezing
and climbing over them as they try
TO get out at a station
Her First Reform.
But WOmen'S shoes are not built for
lot Of money and are ruined by being
paved over, and women do object 10
having $50 hats knocked out OF shape
Dy DelnS squeezed into the market
; baskets of the women next to them. So
about the first thing women would do If
they had the ballot would be to enact
laws that would secure to every paSSen-
ger the decent transportation that he
or she pays Tor on street cars
.
world 50 absurd and so utterly untrue
as the way people gIOrlfy the chiValry
of the men OF the past and hOlu them
up as models 10 the men OF the present
who are accused of being brutal and IN
gallant TO women. Look how men
treat women! Chivalry is dead they
cry.
Age of True GaIIantry.
Nonsense Women We're never treat
world as they are today. Men were
never so truly knightly, and as for
chlvalry being dead, why, Just any or
binary business man could make the
whole Of the Round Table look like
plkerS when 1t comes to showing true
The caivaIry of the pasti Consider
1t. please No woman could walk alone
on the streets without danger of being
inSulted by every man she met. She
had to be kept locked up in her
fathers house, as in a jail TO protect
her Now any decent. wel-behaved
girl, who will keep her eyes before her,
can walk the city unmolested at mid
night and travel from one end of the
country to the other without receiving
anything but kindness and considera-
ton from every man she meets
Southern Laws Worst.
It's significant to note in this con
nectiOn that in the south. where men
have the reputation Of being the most
worst, and bear the hardest on them.
In Texas for instance, a married
woman is nothing but a chattel, and
her husband owns even her clothes. If
she is a wage earning woman he can
collect her salary and spend 1t as he
pleaSeS, and if she owns property she
cannot even rent q house without TAX
ing to the agent a written permission
from her husband.
Height of Calamity.
Men have shown their ganantry by
opening up the doors of gainful Occu-
patiOns to women, so that a girl can
make a living for herself if she needs
to. instead of being forced into the
legalized harlOtry of unlOving marriage,
which was the only way a poor woman
had Of avoiding starvation in the past.
The chivalry of the paSti Don't men
ton 1t in comparison with the chivalry
OF today Every man who gives a
woman honest work to do and pays her
an honest price for doing it. who treats
every woman he meets as he would
want some other man to treat his sis
ter. and who deals fairly by his own
wife, could put Sir Galahad in the gal
Iantry kindergarten class.
And in 10 states where knighthOOd is
really In flower the men have given the
women an equal share in government
with them. The man who talks about
women killing chivalry by demanding
their rights doesn't know what the word
chlvalry means. It means more than
giving a woman a seat in a street car.
Give US the ballot. and Wen attend to
the street car business ourselves. And
Wen see that you get a seat that you
don't have to give up to anybody, Mr..
Man.