The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1913-11-06

4 luCuLlllSu Will IuG
N movement, have taken up a
great deal of space in the
newspapers, but from different
causes. One, an Englishwoman,
had difficulty in landing in this
country, because of the record
she had made in her home for
various crimes, and for which
she had suffered various terms
of Imprisonment, which were more
or less enlivened by her tactics.
The other was a woman, high-born
and highly bred; educated beyond
the standard of most rich women; of
a family that had been proud in the
days when Family was always spelt
with a capital f. Married to man
who had proven himself worthy to
be the husband of so fine a woman,
and the mother of some splendid
looking children.
The EngIishwoman had outlived
most Of her joys and many sorrows;
her husband was dead, her children
grown, and "the Cause" was a call
to her late in life-when the woman
of another time would have taken to
knitting socks and slippers for the
poor, and to seeing that the cat was
in at night and the canary bird COW
cred up.
Mrs. Pankhurst has been in posi-
tiCn to know what politics can do or
undo for people. She has lived
under conditions which have made a
class hatred grow stronger with each
generation, because of the fact that
it was SO hard for the liberal and
brOadminded to alter the conditions
under which Great Britain had lived
SO long, and which was so satisfac-
tory to the gentry and the upper
classes. The women of England of
all classes, have suffered more
through the unfair political status,
than have the women of any other
civilized country.
The law of entail, which means
that the possessions ana the title
shall go to the eldest born, has bro
ken many a mothers heart, and
made bitter feuds in many families
of the titled ones; it has also made
it possible for more incompetent men
to be made into political tyrants, than
any other means.
The cOmmoner was affected by
this, in that it put the reigns of gov
eminent largely in the hands of men
who were not willing to have the old
traditions broken, and who were in
tent on squeezing all they could from
their tenants. Of late years the de-
sire to throw this off has been grow
ing, and if the education Of the Eng
lish women had been along the lines
Of the American woman, for as long
a period, there would doubtless have
been changes before now.
The people of the South will recall
the evolution which the War of Sc
cession made in the negro. He
wanted, all at once, the things which
he knew by sight, but did not under
stand the meaning, nor use, nor
value Of. And many tragedy re-
suited, for both the black and the
white. There had been abuses, many
of them, and no one realized this
more fully than the Southern man
and woman. But to take a people
who had had no responsibility and
no training for responsibilities and
expect them to realize the value or
the Importance of the things they de-
manded, was absurd. The negroes
first demanded, then they resorted
to outrages of all sorts, aided and
abetted in many instances by
Wretched whites who expected to
make, and did make, political capital
out of them.
The Suffragettes in England are
just as unreasonable; for many years