The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1920-04-02
DO WOMEN WANT EoUALlTya

anti-suffragiSt IN the New YORK Ilmess
and an editorial in the same news.
paper. as a text for an editorial ex.
preston against women suffrage.
The caption under which the Times
Union editorial is published is DC
Women Want Equality and the ed
torial says: 'sThe question as to
whether women really want equality
with men is very important and inter
esting as this time. when 1t seems
practically certain that the nineteenth
amendment to the constitution of the
United States will be ratified by the
required number of legislatures within
short time A woman writer IN the
New York Times recently declared
that women in that state did not want
equality. To prove her statement she
showed that while certain crowd
of women wanted to vote and to hold
office, they also wanted to be consider
ed different from men in practically
every other particular and demanded
special attention privileges, excep-
lions and favors."
Throughout the long editorial in
the Times Union, most of which is the
opinion of the anti-suffragist writing
to the Times, and the opinion of the
editor of the Times, an anti-suffrage
paper, there is absolutely nothing to
prove that women either do or do not
want the vote-like most anti-suffrage
editorials it is merely one persons
opinion.
But facts are very much more po-
tent than opinions. As a matter OF
fact. if. the New York women do not
want the vote, they are certainly a
queer lot. to work as they have work.
ed for something that they do not
want. / spent six months in New
York, when the suffrage fight was at
its height, / visited the great suffrage
parade, which was headed by the late
DR.. Anna Howard Shaw, then nearing
her eighties; forty blocks and more
she marched, and thousands of women
with her, eight deep, down Fifth Ave
nue. from way below Washington
Square clear up to Columbus Circle
I talked to many women in New
York about suffrage, and in every in
stance l found that the business wo.
men, the women of affairs, the women
who was interested in war work, in
philanthropies, in civics was for suff.
rage. The woman who was given
over to frills and friulities, and there
were few of her in that summer of
1917 was usually Indifferent.
To a woman who is familiar with
the woman suffrage question, who has
spent years in its study there is some
thing almost pitiful in the attitude ii
some men and it may be said that a
good many of these men seem to
live in Florida-when it comes to the
vote Tor women.
Nothing so aptly fits their state of
mind as 'ostrich-minded Thy alb
solutely refuse to face the truth. They
discuss suffrage as if it were some
thing quite new, with all the gravity
in the world In spite of the fact that
year after year state after state has
been giving its women the ballot. they
still speak OF suffrage as symbol of
the blue stocking they are probably
old-fashioned enough to use that old
fashioned metaphor.
Suffrage is here. That is the fact
we have to face Only short time
intervenes, and women all over the
United States will be enfranchised
The suffrage has not come through
the state legislatures easily 1t has
come grudgingly And it has not come
because some men and women have
had vision enough to see that this
country needs the women's vote.
AS it is now, politics is being played
unfairly. The western states, many
Of the middle west and some of the
eastern states have had the franchise
for years, and the last presidential
campaign proved most conclusively
that the women voting in one section
of the country and not in another i'm
posed handicap.
Let US take Florida. The men in
Florida have suddenly awakened tc
the fact that there is some danger of
this state going republican, at the
coming presidential election If the
women of the state had the power of
the ballot, that danger would be prac
tically nil, provided the press of the
state gave their columns to urging up
on the women and men of the state
the great necessity that the women
should vote.