Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1913-02-13


tition who are now glad to head 1t. SIN
million women in this country need tiit
interest on the part of women. twenty
| five years ago, there was only one
man in the schools who signed our pc
tition. The other day, l went into the
| High school in Auburn and every
member of the faculty, except one, 8
man, signed the petition
We ara told we cannot protect the
| home if we have the ballot. How car
we protect the home without the bal
! lot? / believe every woman in this
great audience, if she studied the ques
ton, would believe just as we do. You
can always count upon the women oil
Maine when it comes to deciding moral
or economic questions
! Mrs. Peasley declared there could be
no dissension in the home with equal
suffrage. I'm my blood runs the same
| blood as flowed in the veins of my rev.
| dictionary ancestors, she said. and
feel the same spirit to go forth to
| battle in the cause of justice as they
did"
Mrs. Agnes M. jerks.
Mrs. Agnes M. jerks of Concord, y. H.,
was the last speaker for the proponents.
She declared that the whole question be-
fore the committee is whether the Eegis-
lature is willing to trust the voters who
had elected them she did not think that
there was any such feur A great many
European countries have granted equal
suffrage and in II where women vote the
infant mortality is the lowest of any sim
liar section in the world, while in this
country the infant mortality is almost
beyond belief. In one Massachusetts city
alone there are 1000 children under the
age of II in the sweated industries In
the New York tenement districts 5000
children have been Iost-that is, there is
no school or other public record OF them
Mrs. jerks gave a very vivid deserip-
ton of the miseries of child labor in the
tenements of the large cities, quoting with
much effect one little boy aged five who
had appeared before an investigating
committee When ne vas asked how
long lac had been working he gazed at his
duestioner in absolute surprise, replying:
"Why, I've worked ever since | was
you may ask" said the speaker what
has all this to do with you, but the people
living in beautiful, rural Maine owe a
moral responsibility to those ovcrworked,
downtrodden women and children of the
tenements and one that must be paid
some time, some way
Mrs. jerks argued that it is unfair to
the women of the East to allow their
Western sisters to vote-and to the men
of the East as well. All permanent
change has resulted in progress; it is al
ways inexpedent to do wrong and always
expedient to do right. She told of the
recent movement in Australia to pay de-
pendent mothers and their children mon
ely from the state and of other uplift
work in various parts of the world. Isn't
il the purest sophistry to say that these
things can be done by indirect methods?
Everyone engaged in this sort of work ia
vors woman suffrage. You may as well
tell man that he can shoot as well with
out a gun as with one as to tell women
they can better conditions without the
direct power of the ballot The ballot
means to a man that he is free and not a
bond and it means just exactly the same
to women.
Mrs. jerks declared that women are
coming to have a larger feeling of moth
erhood and to realize more than ever be-
fore that they are responsible for the lit
tie ones from the time they are born
until the die, and they want the aid in
meeting this responsibility that the bal
lot alone can give them.
Politics interfere with women in their
homes every minutes of their existence
some not being able to even get the air
they need to breathe. In the high cost
of living, moral, economic questions-ev-
erywhere is the touch of politicians. The
white slave traffic that is estimated
to have enrolled 100000 women in this
country and to demand 10000 recruits
annually is a part of modern politics.
"You needn't tell us, declared the
speaker, .for we know whereof we
speak. We are trying to control tubercu-
loss and other diseases aud why not
control the awful diseases and misery of
this traffic. 1t cannot be done until wo-
men have the right to vote, for it has too
much of grip on politicians under pres
ent conditions"
In closing. Mrs. jerks pointed out the
fact that the general conditions in Maine
are very much the same as in other
states where equal suffrage has been
granted and in foreign countries. She
urged that this State should he the next
to join the ranks of those who have plac-
ed their women on an equal footing with
the men and given them the power to do
the things which are so much needed and
for which they are best fitted.
Mr.. Allen thanked the committee for
the courtesy and attention it had shown.
Senator Hersey declared that good
example had been set to the Legislature
in the brevity of the speeches and in the
way the speakers had stuck to their text
Representative Gathering at
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