Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-03-31
A NEW ERA FOR WOMEN
Is BEGINNING AT PARIS
Universal Suffrage May Yet BE Accepted as
Constructive Principle in the Process
Of World Reimbursement

relation to women's place in the new
ordered world civilization will have to
revise virtually all of its inherited opn.
ions.
The acknowledgment by the Peace
Conference of women's right to repre-
sentation on its subsidiary committees
and in the councils to be established
under a league of nations is not in the
least surprising. Such recognition comes
in obedience to an overwhelming drift of
popular opinion abroad. When the
world has moment or two for cool and
rational observation it will perceive that
the causes of feminsm have been car
ried forward with amazing swiftness by
the war.
Universal suffrage must be regarded
now as an imminent reality. And,
though it will represent an experiment
as great as the institution of democratic
government, it is to be regarded not
merely as a movement in political evo-
luton but as departure certain to have
profound effects upon the moral, ethical
and spiritual life of the times imme-
diately ahead.
Only those who think in routine forms
have supposed that it was restlessness
or curiosity that prompted women to agi-
tate for the vote. The demand for the
franchise represents nothing but the un-
spoken and sometimes subconscous de-
sire of women everywhere to meet life
upon even terms and to face the prob
e A. -
equipment They have been driven out
into the world by the force of economic
evolution. Often enough they have had
to take their children with them into the
fight. Many of the tasks that occupied
them in the old fashioned seclusion are
now performed in factories. The pres
sure of living costs, the demands and
opportunities of industry have made
their places at home less secure and less
inviting.
The war quickened the efforts and the
imagination of women everywhere and
brought them responsibilities as heavy
as those that usually fall to men. Their
desire for voice in legislation, for in
| fuence in the places where laws are
| made that regulate their own lives and
| the lives of their children is not the re-
suit of the sort of perversity which
standpat politicians love to talk about.
| 1t represents, rather, definite effort for
| preservation.
If equal suffrage is wrong then mod
ern industrialism is wrong. For one
must be the direct result of the other
Anti-suffragists have insisted that
when women vote many of the qualities
Of heart and mind and spirit that they
contribute as dominating moral forces to
modern civilization must suffer deterio-
ration by the contacts of matter-of- fact
competition in the places where life is
hard and unsheltered.
In England it has been found that as
women have acquired independence and
the status. of industrial entities" they
have not been slow to revolt against
many of those domestic institutions
which were founded upon their earlier
humility and their habits of isolation at
home. Where this trend will lead no one
knows. A society which complacently
accepted all the conditions that made
women's competition with men impera-
tive can only hope for the best.
That best may be far better than even
the most optimistic suffragists have
dared to vision for themselves. The ulti-
mate contest, when it comes in politics
and in the common life of peoples, will
be between the inherent spirituality and
conservatism of women and the cynical
materialism that mars much of the gov.
ernmental and political philosophy of the
present days. 1t will not do to say that
what is best in this instance is certain
Of defeat and despoliation. The quail
ties that are good and great have habit
of surviving in this world against all
tides.
All women are naturally conservative
and in their own narrower circle theil
lives are consecrated to right principles
Much of the strength of America
comes as a spiritual gift from the small
homes in which women have ALWAYS
served with their unbelievable patience
and their love of decent and aspiring
things and their gifts of tenderness
One must be practiced in cynicism who
will suppose that such ancient attributes
as these can be destroyed by contact
with busy world. Isn't it more logica
to believe that the spirit of womanhooc
may rise more splendidly to the chal,
lenge, that it is unconquerable upon ar
ancient mission?
~ Women SO far in their advent in roll