Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1914-03-17
URGES BALLOT TO
END WAGE PROBLEM
Prof. Bonn Declares Universal
Suffrage Is Needed to In
crease Pay.

Professor Frank Bohn. Of New
FORK. last night urged the universal
suffrage as a means of raising wages
at a suffrage meeting in the Labor
byceum, South Fourteenth street
under the auspices of the Women's
Political Union of New Jersey.
'If there is q hell on earth" he
said, cit is that home where the
father and mother and five children
are attempting to exist on the $500
q year earned by the father. And yet
$40 a year is the average wage in
this country.
at has been ascertained that $3.50
q year is not enough for man to
keep q wife and two children in New
York" he continued land that at
least $500 a year is needed to keep
family of four and vet less than seven
out Of every eight men get less than
$3.50 a year. This means that those
trying to exist on less than a living
wage must live in old shacks and eat
bread without butter and drink cof-
fee without sugar
J. 81 read in a leading women's maya
zine recently that there are seventeen
million adults under forty years in
this country who had not married.
The reason is that they feel that they
cannot afford to. In what we MAJ
cau@ the middle classes, where the
wage Garner gets s1,500 to $4,000 /
year we find many homes without
children, and at the most one or two,
for the reason that these people see
such q struggle before their children,
nh 10 sEa
send but one boy or girl through col
Iege. The scrmping and saving In
this class is something most terrible.
The wives in this class are 10 bound
about by formalities that they dare
not go out to work to help support
the family.
1.-THE reason WHY the women school
teachers in New York do not marry
Is is because If they do they will be
let go, and go some of them lie to
keep their Jobs after they have mar
ried. Some people think that this
giving of the ballot to women will
spoil the home, that the women ought
10 be home frying the potatoes. There
are too many people in New Jersey
who think as their grandfathers.
He declared that the time was COM
Ing when girls would play baseball
and work side by side with them in
the factories and no one would pity
them. Women he said no longer spin
and weave at home and must now do
this work in factories. He predicted
the day when women would work but
four hours a day In the factories.
when women get the ballot they will
find a remedy for many of the girls
have referred to-
1--WE do not want the cheap board
ing houses, the social centres ana
pink teas the social uplifters are CIV
{ng u.s." declared Miss Melinda Scott,
of Harrison, who organized the Hat
TIimmers' Union in this city and is
now one of the organizers for the
Womens Trades Union League of
New York "What we want" she
continued, sis for these people to get
off our backs and let us improve our
conditions ourselves by means of the
ballot. we don't want charity; what
we want is justice.
"AleXander Hamilton, first secre-
fary of the treasury of the United
States, was the first to suggest start
Ing factories in this country, but the
men Of the country at that time were
mostly farmers and they objected to
the factories, as they thought they
would take labor away from the
farm, but Hamilton said they would
use the women and children to run
the factories and this has been done
ever since in this country.
IF we women secure the ballot,
then we can better secure those laws
which will protect the women indus
trial workers and put q stop to child
labor"
Mrs. Minnie J. Reynolds presided.
and urged all to assist in the cam
paign for equal suffrage. She said
she hoped that next year New Jersey
would vote in favor of votes for wom-
en-.