Daily capital journal. (Salem, Oregon) 1903-1919, 1913-04-07
THE PUNISHMENT FITS THE
CRIME.

AIRS PANKH URST is in jail, and
W sentenced to remain there for
three years, for trying to con
vince Englishmen that she, and women
who thought as she did, were entitled to
the ballot OF course, it was no crime
for Mrs. Pankhurst to undertake to do
this, but the methods used were, to say
the least rather violent. In fact, they
were so abnormally strenuous that the
lady who is so violently impressed with
that idea that she would make an ideal
citizen and voter, that she instigated
the dynamiting of the residence of q
leading Englishman She deliberately
and wilfully committed a crime, and o
very grave one, to prove her rights to
the ballot and show how good and re-
liable a law.maker she would be. She
evidently never heard or if she did, did
not heed the old Spanish proverb, "puI
per dulcura, pui per fuerca," " which lib
orally translated would read "more by
sweetness than by force" and tried to
obtain her desires through the latter
Unfortunately for Mrs. Pankhurst,
her offense was committed in England,
and not in America. The phlegmatic
Englishman, somehow, has the anti
quated idea that crime is a crime,
whether committed by man or woman.
lie can understand how insanity
makes crime an impossibility, for there
is no mental guide, but he fails to sec
why skirts should throw around the
wearer the same safeguard as insanity
as it does here in America. And hence
Mrs. Pankhurst having committed a
crime that would make even hardened
anarchist try to blush is getting the
same punishment she would have re-
coived had she been man.
Since her incarceration her followers,
profiting by her example, and not by
her punishment, have undertaken to
start a reign of terror, and show how
they are entitled to the ballot by dyna.
hitting n railroad train, burning build
ings and destroying property. Some
misguided female fanatics on this side
of the pond express profound sympathy
for her and endorse her criminal acts.
They also get hysterical because an
American woman has gone over to Eng.
land, violated the law and finds herself
in jail. They throw up their hands in
holy horror, because this same Ameri.
can woman, refusing to eat the food
provided for her is forcibly fed through
the nose to prevent her starving to
death. Now these Englshmen have but
two courses open to them in the case
One is to pass the grub to the woman
and if she refuses to eat it, let heI
starvc, which would raise n howl Of
protest from the crowd Of American
harrdans, or TO do as they have done
feed her by force, and cause how
equally as doeful from these same an
androus masCulnes.
Hero in America tho battle for female
suffrage was won by appeal to reason
II took years to win the fight, not be
cause the individual man was opposcC
to it, but because II was an innovation
a changing Of a system that has been il
vogue, timo immemorial, and, in which
race long prejudice had to be over
come. American men conceded that Tho
women were fighting for the same prin
ciplo that armed the patriots Of 'I6 II
a struggle for liberty It was anothc
case Of "taxation without representa-
ton" and was as indcfcnsibc wher
applied TO woman, as when men suffer
ed from t. Equal suffrage has come {,
stay, and we arc glad Of IT, II shoult
have como long ago, hut If American
women had undertaken to prove thcil
fitness for the ballot by dynamitinl
buildings, committing arson and mur
der, we fancy, men would have hesitat
ed much longer about giving them the