Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1914-12-01

sons OF your daughters step from your
door. you have turned them into the
influences of the streets. Isn't it part
of your duty to see that that street
Is fit for your children to be in?
OF course the statement of the anti
speaker that woman suffrage has not
helped the liquor question, is riddled with
facts to the contrary. although the suf-
frage question is an issue by itself. In
every state where women have voted the
tendency has been toward prohibition,
and now the winning of four states for
prohibition, ought to settle the question:.
for the present, at least. In California a
clause preventing the manufacture of
wine in the state, the giving wine to any
than medicinal purposes killed the bill.
The California law is an infinitely more
drastic law than our Maine law, and it is
said that the clause was inserted in order
to assure its defeat.
We challenge the speakers statement
that the laws are better for women in
the non-suffrage states, than they are in
the equal suffrage states. They are diff
/ ferent. The exigencies which have arisen
in Massachusetts are unknown in Colora-
do, therefore there are no laws in Colo
RADIO which duplicate some of the Mas
sachusetts laws. but the laws in the
equal suffrage states are as remedial for
the conditions which exist in those states
as are the laws Of Massachusetts. for
Massachusetts, and In many cases, bet
ter. Furthermore the laws have been
passed more quickly in the equal suf-
frage states. than in the male suffrage
states. The men of Massachusetts had
been voting 300 years before they limited
the woman's working day. Three of the
equal suffrage states have an eight-hour
day for women, and two others have a
nine@hour day. only Massachusetts, can
say as much. 1t took Massachusetts 20
years of agitation to put nine-hour law
upon her books while Utah. with the help
of women got it in two.
One would think to hear the anti
suffragists talk that every woman had a
home and a baby. and was considering
leaving the one and neglecting the other.
The baby, at the longest, only remains a
baby q years; what is she to do then?
Turn all her accumulated experience up
on herself? Play auction, and go to aft
ernoon teas. or try to use her experience
toward making the city better place
for other mothers children. who are just
beginning to leave the home?
The anti's ignore the women who are
! forced into industry to earn livelihood,
they ignore the unmarried women who
have no homes, they ignore the mothers
who have brought up their children and
have time and experience upon their
hands. They lump the whole sex into
one heap-mothers whose duty it is to
bear and rear citizens. The speaker in
Augusta said at the end of her address.
the community is made up of rows and
rows of homes SO 1t is, but they
are also made up of saloons and
houses of prostitution and disreputable
dance halls. and ramshackle tenements,
and gambling hells, and places where
people exist who know not the meaning
of the word %home." Is the mother of
the home of our anti-suffragist doing
her full duty when she ''conserves' her
own home and does not seek to better
the conditions of the municipality in
which she lives, or is she rather to be
encouraged to enlarge the circle of her
llCluuGS the otuti.
There can rightly be no question of sex
antagonism in this subject of woman suf-
rage. Men and women are working to-
gether for the common good of humanity.
but under the existing laws one of the
two Is working with but worn out tools.
Man has taken the only effective weapon
himself and has left for woman those he
has thrown aside That shesuses them
as effectively as she does is to her credit
but that she is obliged to use them is to
his shame.
Children are denied the ballot because
they have not yet acquired sense; idiots
are denied it because they have no sense:
lunatics are denied il because they have
lost what sense they had: and criminals
are denied it because they have put their
sense to bad use; and women are denied
1t. why?
Respectfully
Florence Brooks Whitehouse.