Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-08-19
A SECOND EMANCIPATION:
A NEW POLITICAL WORLD!
Mans Dictatorship In Politics Ends
with His Gloomy Admission
That Women Are People

wa" SSNatS' o''p !" S'hSs -'e
with His Gloomy Admission
That Women Are People
IITOMEN. it now appears, are people
w Reluctantly, after generations o
agonizcd doubt and hesitation. the ex
allied minds that dominate in the politi
cal institutions of the country have ad
mitted this. But it was in sorrow, n,
one might relinquish priceless in
heritance, that these same minds pu
aside. by n neck and neck vote in tn,
Legislature of Tennessee. n social cQl,
formulated in the Byzantine twilight
and perfected by headmcn in Cherokee,
villages.
National Democratic leaders slipped
into the fight at the last minute t.
claim for campaign purposes the glory
for work done in Republican states.
Ratification in Tennessee means thai
the women of the United States are
equal with men at the polls in every
community.
The world moves-slowly.
The most dependable, the most hu
name and the most conservative half OF
the population has been granted tie
right to exercise its collective intelli-
gcnce and express its collective aspira
tions through the ballot. Yet that
prospect is about as welcome to the rou
tinccrs in politics as the end of the
world would be. They have stunned it
as they might shun the black and
clamorous day of doom.
The ethical significance of universal
franchise in the greatest of republics is
immeasurablc. We are at new be-
ginning in political practice. And no
matter what the elder statesmen may
say and do and think, they know in
their secret souls that life for them will
never be quite the same again.
Autocracy is never dignitied ir the
days of its fall The end of mans ex-
elusive dictatorship in American poll
tics has been altogether inglorious.
The Democrats in Mississippi and the
Republicans in Delaware Alphonsed
and Gastoned in long intervals of dew
astating funk. Republicans in Yer
mont and Democrats in North Carolina
lodged with cquat facility and fed in
panic from the appeals of the national
party managers.
The press agents for Mr.. Cox will
waste none of the opportunities offered
by a final ratification vote in a Demo =
cratic state Assembly. They will not
say that Tennessee was cIubbed to the
bright deed, and they will forget that il
was the consistent support of Repub-
lican states that made ratification in =
evitable. Look at the suffrage map.
Progressive general opinion gave the
vote to women. The more powerful
bosses in both parties always were op-
posed to woman suffrage. They didn't
desire universal franchise for the
same reason that they didn't desire
Hoover in the White House.
Political bosses live pretty loosely in
a cushioned and exclusive world of their
own. They do not welcome invaders
who are not likely to think their
thoughts or play their game. So. if it
were not the ancient habit of women to
forget many wrongs, If forgiveness were
not always ready in them, they might
not have cheered yesterday when the
vote was read in Nashville. They
might have laughed bitterly in the faces
of their new friends.
For women have been granted moth
ing.
What they have they fought for, inch
by inch. with patience and incredible
fortitude.
The war Of the suffragists was always
made BY means of small and pitiful ex
pedients that invariably have been the
recourse of insurgent peoples struggling
to use ideas as weapons Of liberation
professions. hunger strikes. small mar
tyrdoms and an insistent cry repeated
over and over again until the world
had to listen.
Votes for women The heavy handed
carpenters who have been making po-
litical opinion in the United States felt
that the suggestion was somehow i'm
moral when 1t wasn't a symptom Of
mild insanity. Votes for these parad-
ers, these pickets, these women who
ought to be at home instead of out
raising Cain In the streets? No, sir !!
Woman's place was IN the home!
Woman's place is in the home, GER
tainly. And it never seems to have
occurred to the more ruthless opponents
of the votes movement that the women
who paraded and picketed and exhorted
from soap boxes and endured hunger
strikes agreed with them in that par
ticular, and that, instead of trying to
get their pictures in the papers, they
were moved by blazing fury Of pity
for the multitudes Of other women left
defenscless in social and economic con-
hicts that tended to debase and degrade
them and leave them finally with little
prospect of homes fit to stay in.
The rules of chivalry, any good party
man would tell you, could not permit
women to experience the harsh con-
facts of public elections. But the rules
of chivalry never operated in the in
terest of women who have been drawn
from the shelter of old fashioned homes
for cruel exploitation in backward and