Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-09-13
MILlTANCY REVIVED

NOTES have been achieved by women, yet
1t appears that the militants who march
under the banners of Miss Alice Paul and
Mrs. o. II. z. Belmont still feel that they
must be tireless and sleepless in a holy war
for further guarantees Of equal rights "The
fight" cried Miss Paul at a meeting where
1t was decided to continue the National
Woman's party as a thing apart, aggressive
and exclusive, 'is just begun -
The fight for what? Militant leaders, who
have begun to talk with the ardor of re-
vivalists, do not say in explicit terms. The
world had come to suppose that the fight
had ended. But Miss Paul and her friends
have new set of grievances. They are
unhappy because women were not appointed
to membership in the Federal Coal Commits
sion, because women have no seats on the
Railway Labor Board and because men still
continue to fill ''all the high -salared posi-
tions In public life.' Are we, then, on the
eve Of an agitation for women senator's,
women representatives and President
whom the country would have to address
as Her Excellency? Or have the militant
suffragists been so long in the field that the
prospect of peace and warm fresides is in.
tolerable to them?
Life moves in cycles. Certainly the male
of the human species cultivated habits of
TYRANNY in the days Of his undsputcd politi-
car authority. But he has never ceased to
be naive. He was never the power that he
imagined himself to be. If he ever began
n passionate agitation for equal rights on
his own account women Of all lands might
have reasons for long regret. We can tell
Miss Paul something. We can tell her why
the President didn't ask women to serve on
his various federal commissions. Work done
or attempted by these boards is gruelling
hard and thankless. 1t is wearing Mr..
Wilson did not ask women to serve because
OF the habit of mind that would make II i'm
possible for him to ask a woman to change
a fiat tire or stoke furnace. The feminine
militants are not frank. If they yearn to
share the rough work of the world they
should say so explicitly. One may doubt
that they want to share the stresses that
men bear without complaint or questioning.
Life, as we said moment ago, moves in
cycles. Biologists say that war is inter-
minable beneath all the surfaces of existence.
Here and there in the feminist world there
appears to be a dawning desire for ven
geance against that half of the human race
which for while was in some ways domi-
nant. Once, it Is said, in the very early
twilight of creation, women ruled Do they
wish to rule again with the authority said
to have been snatched from them at the be-
ginning of things-to be magistrates judges,
senators, bosses, presidents, miners, public
executoners?
If some such hope stirs in the mind of
any feminist then there is trouble ahead for
the ladies. For they may lose heavily,
even while they appear to win. They will
aIy tbot h,,
been theirs through all generations as the
unquestioned rulers of a subject world of
men. The subjects Of women do their fight
ing for them and bear the wounds. They
go out and hunt food and dig coal and bring
back the fruits of their labors in all the
various forms that range between food and
diamonds Like the serfs of old. they must
not sit while any representative of the ruling
class stands. They get out and get under
while their rulers gaze in royal abstraction
at the landscape. They take the blows, pay
the bills, run the locomotives and dig in the
mines. Do Miss Paul and Mrs. Belmont
intend to picket and demonstrate some more
for the right to share these labors?
When the suffrage amendment was passed
women were accorded recognition that was
their right. 1t was a formal sort of recOg-
milton. They were given an instrument with
which they may work out oil their purposes.
and yet they were not asked to share the
routine hardships of political responsibility.
More could not well be asked And, be-
sides, II ever there was u dominant sex that
sex was feminine. The crudcr mind of the
male has always manifested a sort of pride
in its chains. II women are wise they will
not try further to change a condition that.
it stands, is almost wholly to their ad-
vantage. If the National Woman's party
continues to wage the war" of which Miss
Paul speaks it will not fight upward 1t
will fight downward to place amid the
obedient slaves Of the sex it represents
down to levels from which, in the future,
it may not easily escape.