The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-09-06

Miss Agnes Ryansin the Womans Jour
nal recently discussed much talked of
phase of equal suffrage in California. She
says:
.Anti-suffragsts are trying TO
frighten the public by calling equal suf
frage menace TO the popular pocket
book. From their headquarters in Wash
ington they have sent out report based
on a three months investigation of equal
rights in California made by Miss Alice
Hill Chittenden, president of the New
York Anti-Suffrage association. The
press calls the report "a bitter indictment
of the manner in which California has
been governed since women were given
the right to vote in that state
miss Chittenden says: Creating the
milleniunn with the ballot and regardless of
the staggering cost, has been California S
beautiful dream since woman suffrage
carried the state 10 months ago. Chill
oren are not to be separated from their
parents because of poverty. The state
is to subsidize the home. School teachers
are to be pensioned. Old people are to
receive an annual income. Prisoners are
to be paid for their work in the jails A
regime of ease and comfort is to dawn
in the Golden state And then everybody
in the community will be happy except
the taxpayers, WHO must become paupers
or criminals before they can draw divi-
dends on their Investments in California 5
Utopian scheme
This investigators s report would carry
more weight II it We're more accurate and
restrained. For instance. California
women were enfranchised on October 10,
1911. That is not 10. but 20 months ago.
It is nearly 10 months since the women
of Kansas, Arizona and Oregon won the
vote. We grant that the suffrage VIC
tories come so fast that it is hard to keep
track of them. Suffragis do not claim
that the millennium will come with the
ballot and certainly not in 10 or 20
months, and it is doubtful If Miss Chit
tenden herself believes that suffragists
anywhere are working toward "a regime
of ease and comfort" Ease and COM
fort are more In the line of anti-suffrage
Il ideals and appeal to them more power
fully than to their opponents. With Olive
Schreiner suffragists lay the decay and
fall of nations and empires to ease and
comfort and instead of aiming to be eX-
empt from labor they claim all labor for
their province.
"Granting that the appropriation for
governing California for the coming year
is $20000,O00 the investigator herself says
that this is only 5000, 900 over the amount
appropriated two years ago. when women
did not have the vote. According to this
the state was going down hill financially
before its women were enfranchised..
But is it not worth 100000 to set in mo-
tion the advanced legislation described in
the Woman's Journal of June A. under
the title, 'Californias Fine Records? The
rev child labor law and the health GER
tificate law alone are worth good part
6,f we a n he
that the children of state and the pub
uc health are assets.
Further, is this investigator sure that
the women did 1t? The male population
of California Is 1322,97S; the female pop
ulation, 1,05451 GU s. Census for 1870.
There are, therefore, 26S 4N more men
than women in the state. Moreover. ac-
cording to the anti-suffragists, the women
do not vote when they have chance,
and they have more influence without
the franchise than with 1t. 1t grows more
and more difficult to take anti-snf-
frage argument seriously"