Daily Kennebec journal., 1917-02-07
Editors Letter Box
"Women Are Neutral PEOPLE?


Editor Kennebec Journal:
At the hearing on Woman Suffra ge
at the State House on Thursday, a
note was struck by one of the speakers
of the Opposition which at the time
seemed so strangely discordant and out
of place that l felt impelled to analyse
Its raison d'etre and I ask place in
your columns to state my conclusions.
The speaker said, women are a
neutral people-We ask to be permit
ted to preserve our neutrality"
L glanced from the group Of women
opposite me wearing the red rose of
the Opposition to the vast assemblage
crowding gallery and floor Of the
House. Three-quarters of the crowd
was composed of women and there was
hardly one who did not wear either
the suffrage yellow or the red of the
anti -suffragists and l asked myself
what is the ground for the statement
that women are a neutral" people.
They did not look neutral to me,
Haunting their party colors.
Later. looking up the word neutral
in the Standard, l found these defini-
tions: THE state of being neuter; of
being neither good nor bad: neither
acid or basic: Indifferent; inactive;
having no decided color but being blu
ish or grayish," and | began to pom
der. If this is the ambition of the
Ladies of the Opposition" l thought,
surely the suffragists can assure them
! that they may attain their desires un-
| molested as far as the suffragists are
! concerned. But why, if anybody is so
! 1IrfOrflinatl % 10
! an ambition she should want to "prc-
| serve" it or why she should imagine
! for a moment, that she might not be
permitted" to preserve it 1 cannot
understand. Surely, if such is her
temperament she could preserve her
| neutrality" quite as well as an anti
voter as she could as an anti-suf-
| fragist
| My mind travelled to the big wo-
| men of the country. The women who
would scorn to be neutral in any
| thing. Jane Adams in her work for
| the poor In the settlement Of Hull
| House; Katharine Davis and her con-
| secrated labor among the outcast wo-
! men at the Bedford Reformatory and
! the imprisoned men In Sing Sing;
| Julia Lathrop and her efforts in behalf
of the children the country over; Mrs.
| Raymond Robins who chooses to live
in the congested quarter of the city of
F, Chicago where 10000 people live in the
! radius of square mile, because she
| can be closer to the working girl,
! whose problem she is striving to solve;
| and Florence Kelley and her splendid
| contribution to remedial legislation for
women and children in Industry.
l thought of the Child Labor Com
mittee and it's 1886 members, of whom
| the large majority are women, the two
million children toiling in the United
| States, and the passionate devotion
and unfailing labor of this committee
for the Child Labor Bill passed by the
further legislation; of the Woman's
Trade Union League, differed entire
| ly by women, which with the Consum-
ers' League and other women's or
CARNATIONS is working for the uni
Nersal hour law for women and chill
dren; of the fighting power behind that
| legislation and of the conference of
| the New England states in Boston, in
May. in behalf of that law; of the re-
| fusal of the Maine Association OPP
posed to Woman Suffrage to affiliate
on the ground that it was non-parti-
san (neutraD. OF the Consumers
| League which is largely differed by
women. and of the Casey Bill for a
| Federal Department of Labor for wo-