Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-07-01
Women IN Legislatures
w. L. George in Harper's Magazine.

What effect the entry of the political woman
will have upon the legislatures is not easy tc
say, because what we know Of the female tenn
permanent does not necessarily imply to the
political woman. The comic papers in England
like to make jokes about female members OF
Parliament to print cartoons where they are
shown doing fancy work or powdering their
noses during the debates. | do not think that
the women legislators will be as representative
as all that, and | chronicle with regret the view
that they seldom powder their noses.
No. the woman legislators will not become a
legislator until she has some virile quality. She
will approximate to man, but | think her int1u-
ence in congress will be rather different; she
will probably import, as did Miss Rankin, Ger.
tain emotional atmosphere, which l, for one
human. AS regards the question that interests
the public more-namely, her influence on the
moral tone of politics, this will depend upon the
politics she finds herself in. Thus, in France
she will find herself in parliament inclined to
financial corruption; in such countries as Spain
native rule by sham conservatives and sham
radicals; in America, in an assembly where
financial interests juggle with the law and con-
tinualy conflict with the representatives of pop
ular morality and justice; in England, in a par
Lament where financial corruption is very
slight but where faiths can be seduced by post
of power or lunch with duke.
The woman legislator will be influenced by
the nature Of her temptation, and l think she
will best resist the temptation of money The
type of woman who is interested in politics
does not, as rule, care for money, either be-
cause she belongs to the laboring class and has
few desires, or because she belongs to the rich
class. In England we don't bride people; we
make them rich first, and, as Anatole France
says, the rich exhibit over the poor this moral
superiority, that they neither beg in the street
nor steal bread.
But where her weakness may lie is probably
in the direction of honors and of power. For
thousands of years we have so much encouraged
woman's vanity that self-exaltaton has in many
become habit am credibly told that large
proportion of the titles which have showered
from the Lloyd George government as water
from leaky bath, have been accepted by men
because their wives wanted to be Lady x, And,
whereas it is becoming an act of good form
to refuse the order of the British empire, |
hear of no woman who has declined to be made
a dame.
As to power have during this war, seen
women in minor positions controlling nurses,
directing wages, even running filing rooms, and
always filled with a bitter, earnest delight in
controlling other women. From that point of
view the woman legislator will be corruptible;
she will expose you if you offer her hundred
thousand dollars, but if you offer her a sub
deputy-assistant- dictatorship she may very we'll
vote for you That is, if you make no bargain,
for the art of corruption consists in not seeming
to corrupt; the born corrupter prefers in inocu-
late with the microbes of gratitude and loyalty.