The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-08-19
SUFFRAGE MEANS
 REPUBLICS DOOM Will Blot Out Civilization and Destroy WomanhOod, Says
 Senator Tillman

Washington, D. C., Aug. 19.-Semator TiIlman in an attack on woman .suf- frage in the Senate yesterday alter noon Iamented the spread Of divorce and the decline of morality in tha United States, referred to the Dfggs- Caminettt case as an illustration and said such conditions, if not checked threatened the life of the republic. lEda also defended the "unwritten law"
 We ihad better endure the evils of corruption, in politics and debauchary in our government than .7bring about a condition which will mar the beauty and dim the Iustre of the glorious rvo- manhood with which we have been fa- miliar all our lives" he exclaimed
 Beginning by a reference to Dr. Af~ fred Taylor Bledsoe'e article on f4rhd Mission of Women,' published oriEi- nally in 1871 and which MT Tfl1uau recently put in the Congressional Rec ord, he apologized for the reference to Northern women
 ''I wished to avoidt even the appear ance of harborfng mean thoughts oa uncharitable sentiments toward tha women of the North.
 Some of the very finest women z have ever known were. Northern vFo- fined to any section of our great coun- | try.
 "At the thought of women anywhere, 1 especially of the South, entering thif monstrous and filthy arena Of po1ItIca pr. BIedsoeSs chivaIroues.f sensitive eDfr- it recoiled with horrors He referred to the women of the North. not for 1 what they were but for what ther might become and would become ic they persisted in their deterninatfou to abandon the sphere fn which God had placed them. He lifted the kindly 1 finger of warning; he did not IeveI the brutal pike of censure and condemna- ton.
 ''The woman suffrage idea is fast be- coming a practical issue Vital sta tistice should by all means be gath 1 cred in thosS States where woman suf- frage already obtains. We ought to have records made of the birth rate death rate diVorces and other thfnea affecting the everyday social fife which would in a hundred years say show us whether female sunrage has affected these things fnjuriOuslg- In Rome when the manners and cus-Sl1s | with regard to women began to change l and they were given more pTivlIsEes than they have ever enjoyed before. df- vorces were so largely increased that free love became the rule. The birth rate correspondfngly decreased. as Leckey's history shows.
 Now it is a beautiful dream that female suffrage will purity politics. be- cause our ideals of women are SO high. and we regard them so absoluteiy- aa 1 the sources of goodness and purity that we cannot conceive of their not elevat ting and helping anything they i touch. But the vital and important thing for us to consider is the effect on women themselves
 'fWe can better afford to have de- graded and corrupt politics than de- graded and bad women. To have both | in ever increasing degree would make l the world so unspeakably horrible. as well as so corrupt, that good men and women both would disappear. T shud- | der to think of the consequences Go the iwomanhood of America should sufErage become universal.
 'tI know the demand for suffrage on the part of women is growing too fact for old fogies like me bo stop it e1- tcept, possibly. in the South and New i England, where conservatism is more strongly intrenched than anywhere
 else in. this country