Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-12-08
SUFFRAGE BRING
WOMEN JURORS?
More Leisure to Properly Per
form Civic Duty Says
Dorothy Dix

In an address which he made a
few nights ago to the Grand Jurors
Association, Judge Mulqueen said
that his reason for voting for woman
suffrage was that the women might
relieve the men on Grand Jury cases:
This, Judge Mulqueen declared, would
correct many evils.
A Daniel! A second Daniel, come to
judgment!
Judge -4ulqeen is right. One of the
blessings that woman suffrage would
bestow on the country would be to
render q large body of citizens ell
gible for jury service who would not
only have the ability but the leisure
in which to properly perform that
ckic duty.
When the average man is drawn
for the jury, it calls for such sacri-
flee that he evades serving If he can
possibly do so. II he is clerk his
employer lets him off with mutterings
and grumblings. and he has always
the fear of someone supplanting him
in his situation while he is gone.
If he is business or professional
man, his absence from the store or
office for a week or more may cost
him thousands of dollars, and no
matter how he tries to follow the in
tricacies of a case, in the back of his
mind is always an anxious worry over
the probable mistakes that his en-
ployes are making while he is gone.
WOMEN COMPETENT, WILLING
AND HAVE TIME TO SPARE
1t is not because men are lacking in
civic conscience that they are loath to
serve on juries, but simply because In
the fierce competition of the struggle
for existence they can't afford 1t. The
average woman is not so hard
pressed. She has plenty of the time
that is not money, and she would be
glad to do her bit for her country by
relieving men from having to serve on
juries.
In every community there are num-
bers of well off, middle-aged women,
locally renowned for their hard horse
sense and their kind hearts; women
who are wise in the knowledge of the
human heart, and ripe in experience,
women to whom everyone who knows
them goes for counsel and advice.
These women have raised their own
families and their hands are idle. They
would make ideal jurors who would
bring an unhurried, unworried atten-
ton to the consideration of a case sub
mitted to them that is impossible to
men worried and troubled about their
own affairs
1t has always been a cynical little
legal jest that the right of trial by
jury, WHICH 10 LHe OllenQeT
against the law "the right to be tried
by jury of his peers" did not per-
NIT women on juries.
Men universally assert that they
have never been able to learn even the
a, b, of feminine psychology, and
that womankind is q riddle beyond
their guessing.
Realizing this, men juries generally
just throw up their hands and give
the problem up when they are called
upon to deal with a woman criminal.
and let her go scot free. This gives
US those travesties of justice that dis
grace our courts, where, after the
prosecutor has spent weeks of time
and thousands of dollars in proving q
woman guilty of some crime, the jury
brings in verdict of mot guilty. in
the face of overwhelming evidence to
the contrary.
A woman jury would correct this
evil. A woman jury would have no
traditions of gallantry to uphold. nor
would it be affected by the beauty of