The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-02-20
The Anti-An Appreciation
By PATTIE RUFFNnR JACOBS

Without difference of opinion there would be no progress, without struggle no growth so the anti is almost. if not quite, as essential to the suffrage move ment as the suffragist herself.
 The real enemy of progress Is indif- ference, not opposition.
 Whenever a movement is born, apathy is the chief obstacle to be overcome for to the vast majority of minds it is all so new so strange so impossible, that if is not recognized at all; for them it sim ply does not yet exist. Gradually people begin to notice it, and two elementary sensations are aroused, namely ridicule and fear. Because it is new and strange and therefore impossible, it must be something to make fun of or something to dread. At this stage of movement s development indifference is supplanted by ridicule and islander, which may be harder for the pioneers of new move ment to bear, but for the cause itself 1t is generally recognized and has ad- vanced much further does any cause meet opposition, and the more vigorous the opposition the more encouraging are the prospects for the movement thus op- posed.
 The woman suffrage movement is to- day in this last hopeful stage of evo- luton, for indifference is being overcome, fidicule and islander are less in evidence, and opposition has arrived.
 The anti like the suffragist, has out grown torpidity; slowly, reluctantly. but inevitably. she will follow her more pro s.krx ts.11x1 IL sion,'' into the press, into the public hall yea. she will even desert the home long enough to visit the legislative councils Slowly, reluctantly she has been follow ing her for the last hundred years into office, store and factory, into high school college and university. into the profess sions. and jast as inevitably she will fol- low her to the polls
 There Is one vital fundamental differ ence between the two types of women; the suffragist looks forward, thinking Of her duty to her descendants and to her needed service to the human family in the world home; the anti looks back ward, thinking of her duty to her ances- tors, and has not yet learned that the walls of her home have been extended.
 To the anti. man is not the matter-of- fact person working beside her in the busy world he is knight errant who dedicates poems to her, who places her upon a pedestal far above the worlS-a- day tkrong. To her, woman is not an active force in the worlds industrial ized society; she is a timid clingins being, still sheltered and protected against all exploitation.
 To her. the child is not the sweated little victim of mills and factories, the urchin of the street, the buffet. of inn pious fortune: he is a healthy. happy, well-fed boy, safely guided and guarded by a devoted mother (who does not go out of the home to worls), and shielded by strong, courageous father (who does).
 The anti sees things as she wishes them to be, and not as they are; and because she is devoid of sympathetic under standing of present conditions she places her trust in the past
 . She is still deeply attached to the stage coach, and views with alarm and suspi- cion the growing use of railway and au- tomobile.
 Before another century has elapsed the suffragist and her friend the anti, will have passed into history; the strug- gle for sex equality will have been won and the new generation will have new problems to confront it. But when some historian writes of the present age. of the women who helped lift humanity one step higher by lifting womanhood to level of human equality, let the services of the anti who furnished the antagonism