Milford chronicle., 1917-01-26
VOTES FOR WOMEN!
Jane Adams suffrage Arguments.

Our friends. the "antis," are accus-
toned to say, III women vote. so and
so Will happen. We women with
the ballot can answer. when Women
vote, so and so has not happened.
tney say that there will De less in
/ terest in nome life. This is easily
answered by Australia, where women
vote. which has the highest birth rate
of any country peOpled by the English
race.
1hey say that mothers will neglect
| their children. Women OF New Zea-
land have had equal suffrage since
1893, and New Zealand has the lowest
infant death rate in the world.
Chicago is the largest city in the
world where women vote. Several
gratifying things have happened as
soon as women were given the vote.
Ii made an enormous difference in the
attitude of public officials.
We had long sought to have police
women appointed. Chicago has a
large NUMBER of small parks, which
are used for dancing, as we'll as many
dance halls. On dance evenings, &c.
900 young people in our city go to
dances. We wanted some pOlicewo-
men for municipal chaperOns, to safe
guard young girls against the dangers
that beset them on such occasions.
| The city government would not listen
to us. We cote the right to vote on
July l, and on July Is, the mayor ap-
pointed ten policewomen. Before
September l we had forty, and we are
promised that by january l there
shall be a hundred. We have done
nothing, but the mayor was coming up
for reelection. We have found out
that while it may not be necessary to
vote, it is very important to be able
to vote.
Chicago had a very bad system of
garbage disposal. The method was
to haul it out to a poor quarter of the
city and there leave it to rot. Miss
Mcdowell, a settlement worker, had
made a great effort to have this
changed She went to Europe and
studied the best systems of garbage
disposal. She had a striking set of
slides made, illustrating the cOndi-
tiOns, and got a chance to show them
10 the city fathers of Chicago. She
lectured and tried her best for fifteen
years. I tried, too. and l served as
garbage inspector of my ward at one
time, but though we used our indirect
influence to it's utmost, nothing was
done.
Women were given the right to vote. |
Then the mayor decided that we had
an abominable system of garbage |
disposal The city government ap-
propriated $4,000 to improve it and !
Miss Mcdowell. "Chicago's great gar
bage expert" as the mayor called her. !!
was appointed on the committee that |
was to spend the money. She was |
just the same kind Of expert that she |
had been before; but now, the women |
we're voters.
We had been trying very hard to get |
boys court. for boys of II and up |
wards, too old for Juvenile court, yet |
not full-grown men. A large part of /
the crime in America is committed by !
persons under 25 years of age. If |
we could take care of every boy until /
he is 25. we could then turn him loose |
with little fear that he would go
wrong. In our efforts to get this
boys court we had dinners and
lunches at 2Ill House." and else
where. and invited the city officials,
and sometimes they came and some
times they didn't. After we got the
right to vote the city officials gave
the lunches and invited us. We now
have a splendid boys court and psy-
clinic for these boys. All
sorts of things are being done now,
which groups of women had long urg
ed i'm vain, until women got a vote
LAURA C.. POLLARD.
Member Congressional Union for
Woman Suffrage.