The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-11-21

N Few of the average male voters of
 today realize that the bitterest things
 said about woman in her contest Tor
 the ballot could be duplicated 10 times
 over in the denunciation hurled against
 the common man in his struggle to
 gain the vote. which he was denied
 in the early days of American hs-
 tory.
 The Plymouth and Massachusetts
 co,onists allowed only church mem-
 bers to vote, and excluded from their
 list Quakers, Catholics and Baptists.
 In the Virginia colony the franchise
 was only given to certain men pos
 sessed of a specified amount of landed
 property.
 The New York colony excluded Cath
 olics and Jews; in fact, at the time
 oe the ratification of the constitu-
 tion of the United States no state had
 full manhood suffrage,
 When the question of woman suf-
 frage is seen in it's proper perspective
 as an inevitable product of growing democracy, as a part of common hu-
 manity against superiorities, royal, feudal and masculine, it will be more clearly understood why. in the end.
 women will penetrate the sacred DOT ta1s of masculine government. just as l the common man did, in respect to | royal government.
 "One hundred years ago. says Prof
 Charles A. Beard of Columbia univer- sity, the cry was not votes for wcmen but votes for men, In New York petitions pre- pared and speeches made showing the injustice of depriving the nonland- holder of the right to vote, and if they had not been availing, more than nine-tenths of the voters in New York city would today be without the right to vote for governor and senators. In 1891 and 1926 the land qualifications
 were swept away. In Virginia the
 merchants. bankers, lawyers and other persons who did not happen to hold landed property prayed that the con stitutional convention of 1929 would give them the ballot, saying: "Experi- ence has but too clearly evinced what indeed reason had always foretold, by how frail a tenure they hold every other right who are denied this, the highest prerogative of free men, In Rhode Island the advocates of votes for men, defeated no less than 10 times | in their appeal for manhood suffrage
 
 | started revolution which frightened the imperious holders of the ballot into granting the suffrage to their brother | men"
 In short. about 100 years ago the same gentlemen, who, in their wis
 dom, now spurn the appeal of the women, would many of them have been
 in the position of suppliants them selves
 Mrs. Norman deR. Whitehouse. who, as chairman of the press and publicity work of the New York state cam paign, was the large factor in keep ing suffrage uppermost in the minds. the eyes and the ears of the public, is a southern woman, born in New Orleans and a sister of Mrs. Felix BaIdridge of Huntsville. A letter lately received from Mrs. Whithouse, en- closed a request from a hamlet in Ala bama, which had merely been ad- dressed to her in New York, without house number or street, which goes to show that in the most remote, most unsuspected places, people are keeping up with the movement. that they read of the campaigns and know the names, if not addresses of the leaders, and are anxious to know more of suffrage. If you would familiarize yourself with the sometimes unpronounceable names of some of the smaller towns in Alabama, take the chairmanship or the literature committee, which dis tributes. thousands of pieces every month in every nook and corner Of the state. Requests come for suf- frage data to be used in all sorts Of ways Of course, the most frequent inquiries are for debates and for school essays, club papers and the like, but a confidential note was struck the Ehe wanted to convert his wife. and without her knowing what he was about He was a doctor. he said, and he realized that pure water. pure milk, garbage disposal and health measures generally surely concerned women, and he agreed with Dr. Harvey Wiley in advocating the direct method of get ting women's opinions on such mat ters.
 Mobile has been slow in waking up to the suffrage issue. but there are a great many believers there, men and women, who have had the courage to face the ridicule and indifference in cident to the establishment of any thing new, especially in an ultra con servative community. Mrs. Martin Hol- brook, the president of the local as- sociation. is untiring and devoted in Ter efforts to stir the inactive into an active force. At a meeting lately held at the Battle House the following