The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1920-04-01
A PRIYILEGE--A REspONsIRILITY

the ballot. We wonder if after all this fuss
and feathers extending over period Of fifty
years or more women really were fighting
for the thing they really wanted or just for
the thing they thought had been denied them.
We wonder if it wasn't the pleasure of the fight
rather than the value of what they we're fight
ing for which actuated them.
We believe that we have a right to feel this
way about it as we have been rather consistent
in the fight and have aided to the best Of our
ability to give the women what they wanted
regardless of whether or not they were going
to appreciate it. Somehow we are disappointed
in the women The report of the vote cast at
the last primary election in Kenosha showed
that twenty-eight or thirty women were inter
ested enough in being qualified voters to go
to the polls and take advantage of the privilege
given them. Of course it can be argued that
it was a sort of a mean privilege, sort Of a
cUrtailed franchise but the responsibility of
citizenship back of it was just about as great
as could ever be crowded behind the privilege
of voting. 1t is possible that the women all
over the country are not like the women of
Kenosha. It can be said without any danger
of successful contradiction that if the women
in the nation show no more interest in the
privilege they have been fighting for and
which they are about to get than the women
of KenOsha have shown in accepting RESPONSE
bilities placed upon them the long fight has
been for an ideal rather than for practical
something which is going to be a great reform
ing element in the nation. There has never
been a time when the women of Kenosha did
not hold it in their power to designate the
make up of the board of education. There
has never been time when the women Of Ke-
no Ja+a
school Office. They have shown rivalry at times
but this rivalry was of personal nature rath-
er than the inpersonal interest in the advance
ment of the schools Of the city Twenty-Five
hundred women in Kenosha-probably more
could have voted for school board candidates
at the last primary. Possibly two per cent of
this number accepted the privilege What is
the excuse Of the rest of them, or do they rest
on the perogative of woman not to make
excuses?
Politics is mighty practical thing It is
not a question of the within of some people, it is
not fad. 1t is something that goes right on
year after year and the people who are most
successful in the prosecuting of it are the peo-
pie who keep eternally at it. They keep right
on working and right on voting regardless of
the character Of the opposition. They know
what it means to keep up the morale in the
ranks and they know that means getting out
and voting whenever the pools are open to the
voters. Women have this very thing to learn.
If the women of Kenosha are going to have
any great influence in the elections in this CITY
in this or any other year there has got to be a
morale developed among the women which will
compel them to get the habit of going to the
polls and voting. All this fuss and fight is not
worth while to give the ballot to fifty or a hun
dred Kenosha women. Of course it is there if
the rest of the women want to 90 and take it
but if they show a willingness to have Just the
ideal without the practical working out Of the
plan all the trouble and fuss has been for moth
ing
If women pay little or no attention to the
privileges already given them by statute it is
not to be believed that the enlargement of that
privilege will get any greater response from
them after the novelty of it all is over The
women must learn and learn quick that the
celebration of the suffrage victory is not the
end of it ALL There is the responsibility which
comes with victory and this is a responsibility
which must bear heaviest on women who have
urged suffrage for women upon the nation.
These women will be expected to see that the
women accept the thing that has been given to
them The leaders have been fighting men in
the past, they must now fight with their own
sex to get results they have painted in such
rosy pictures.
Women are entitled to equal suffrage but
with it must come equal responsibility for the
carrying forward of the political life of the
nation If the women fail to accept the privi-
lege given to them it is certain that the ballot
to women will be only something else for the
practical politician to exploit for his own adj
vancement. Kenosha women have chance to
show how they are going to meet this issue in