Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1922-03-27
WOMEN: AN UNKNOWN QUANTITY
IN ENNSYLvANlA'S POLITICS

IN PENNSYLVANIA POLITICS
Mrs. Warburton's indorsemsnt Of Pin.
ehot Shows That They Are Not
Vet Ready to Be sossed
TyAKE the average organization politician
L even few feet outside his familiar ter.
ritory, away from the narrow routine Of his
home grounds, and he will be almost as
helpless as a man stone blind. The world
beyond his own political circle. the world
that Is filed with questionings and fresh
aspiration and new and challenging ideas,
will be to him as strange and disquieting as
n foreign land.
Bosses Of the ordinary typo are able only
to repeat formulas. They can answer no
question that hasn't been answered before.
Women, for example, have had the vote for
about year and a half. Yet factionist
leaders do not yet know what to expect.
They are numb with anxiety.
At first the party bosses assumed that
women wouldn't vote or take any interest
in politics. Later they decided that the
women would take orders from the men OF
their families. Then there was an organized
effort to brbe feminine voters with candy
by the box! This interesting experiment
was attempted on a very large scale. espe-
cially in the country and in small towns OF
Pennsylvania. County chairmen laden with
bonbons were sent forth tremulously to
whip the women into line They re.
turned downcast. Though they had talked
~ ~ ND
on the center tables the women had appeared
slightly irritated. And they were uncon-
vinced.
Women party workers were sent into the
field. But at once It became clear that
housekeepers resented the appearance on
their doorsteps Of suave and leisurely ladies
who assumed to tell them how they should
think. In that attitude Of mind the women
voters Of the State proved themselves to be
essentially different and far richer in per-
sonal pride than their husbands and their
brothers, who as a rule aren't ashamed to
have heelers make up their minds for them.
When Mrs. Barclay Warburton was
elected vice chairman Of the Republican
State Committee the Wares and their asso-
ciated leaders sighed a sigh of great relief.
That, thank God, was done! The Repub-
lican women Of the State, said leader to
leader, were at last hitched safely to the
wheels Of the party machine.
But it seems now that woman's tradi-
tional independence of mind Is to assert
itself powerfully once again. Mrs. War
burton, speaking, 10 doubt, for her asso.
ciates as we'll as for herself, has published
an unqualified Endorsement Of Clifford Pin
chot for the governorship. The very name
of Pinchot is enough to make the average
party boss rage.
PiAchot! Wasn't Pinchot one of those
Progressives? Didn't he attack and expose
Ballinger and make something of scandal
in Taft's Administration? Didn't he com.
NIT the objectionable sin of doing his own
thinking and dislocating the party machi-
merry? Isn't he an independent? Hasn't he
always refused to Go Along?
We know what the engineers Of the
party machines will say now. They will
say dolorously that ''you never can tell what
women will do
They will be wrong.
You can often tell what women will do.
In every issue involving public morality
they will be about ninety times more con-
scientious than the casehardened and hard
boiled bosses to WHOM we are accustomed to
deliver control of public affairs.
"I do this" says Mrs Warburton, re-
ferring to her explicit Endorsement Of Pin
chot, because, having given careful con-
sideration to the policies and declarations
Of other candidates, ] can most conscien-
tiously indorse the honest and efficient
record the unfinching courage and the tire
less devotion to the pubic's service of Gif-
ford Pinchot.'
Now, Mr.. Pinchot may emerge from the
primaries as a first -cass candidate. Some
earnest people may differ from Mrs. War
burton in the estimate of his executive
qualities. But he is honest, he has courage
and it Is true that he has tried consistently
to serve the public first and his party after
ward.
All this. however, Is for the time being
aside. The interesting thing to observe Is
the disposition Of the Republican women's
leaders Of the State-with whom the League
of Women Voters IS pretty sure to agree
to disregard factional traditions, to speak
their own minds and to do their own think
ing without troubling to ask whether their
decisions will be approved in the thickening
twilight of the Republican State Com.
mttee.
In Mrs. Warburtons statement of prin-
ciples are clearly reflected the qualities Of
L IL. .L.k