VOTES FOR WOMEN ARE EVERYWHERE
MICHIGAN NOW ON THE LIST OF SUFFRAGE VOTERS.
Jane Addams To Speak On Movement In Emporia May 8-9. -- Now Addressing Chicago Theaters.
(By Miss Mary E. Dobbs.)
"Votes for women" is in the air. Everywhere you hear it. The recent action of the Michigan legislature places another state in the list of those voting on the question this fall.
The executive of the Kansas Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which met in Topeka last week invited the officers of the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association to meet with them in the discussion of plans for the suffrage work. The conference was most profitable to both.
Jane Addams of Hull House, Chicago, is a staunch advocate of equal suffrage. She is now speaking for the movement in Chicago between acts in some of the theaters.
Kansas Equal Suffrage Association expect her as one of the speakers at the state convention at Emporia May 8-9. An effort is made to bring her here for an address.
Jane Addams Would Vote.
This is what Jane Addams, Chicago's most useful citizen, says.
For many generations it has been believed that woman's place is within the walls of her own home, and it is indeed impossible to imagine the time when her duty there shall be ended, or to forecast any social change which shall release her from that paramount obligation.
This paper is an attempt to show that many women today are failing to discharge their duties to their own households properly simply because they do not perceive that as society grows more complicated it is necessary that woman shall extend her sense of responsibility to many things outside of her own home if she would continue to preserve the home in its entirety. One could illustrate in many ways. A woman's simplest duty, one would say, is to keep her house clean and wholesome, and to feed her children properly. Yet if she lives in a tenement house, as so many of my neighbors do, she cannot fulfill these simple obligations by her own efforts because she is utterly dependent upon the city administrations for the conditions which render decent living possible. Her basement will not be dry, her stairways will not fireproof, her house will not be provided with sufficient windows to give light and air, nor will it be equipped with sanitary plumbing unless the Public Works Department sends inspectors who constantly insist that these elementary decencies be provided.
Different in the City.
Women who live in the country sweep their own dooryards, and many either feed the refuse of the table to a flock of chickens or allow it innocently to decay in the open air and sunshine. In a crowded city quarter, however, if the street is not cleaned by the city authorities, no amount of private sweeping will keep the tenement free from grime; if the garbage is not properly collected and destroyed a tenement-house mother may see her children sicken and die of diseases from which she alone is powerless to shield them, although her tenderness and devotion are unbounded. She cannot even secure untainted meat for her household, she cannot provide fresh fruit, unless the meat has been inspected by city officials, and the decayed fruit, which is so often placed upon sale in the tenement districts, has been destroyed in the interest of public health. In short, if woman would keep on with her old business of caring for her house and rearing her children she will have to have some conscience in regard to public affairs lying quite outside of her immediate household. The individual conscience and devotion are no longer effective.
Along Traditional Lines.
If women follow only the lines of their traditional activities here are certain primary duties which belong to even the most conservative women, and no one woman or group of women can adequately discharge unless they join the more general movement looking toward social amelioration through legal enactment.
The first of these, of which this article has already treated, is woman's responsibility for the members of her own household that they may be properly fed and clothed and surrounded by hygienic conditions. The second is responsibility for the education of children:
(a) That they may be provided with good schools;
(b) That they may be kept free from vicious influences on the street;
(c) That when working they may be protected by adequate child-labor legislation.
Woman's Duty to Children.
The duty of a woman toward the schools which her children attend is so obvious that it is not necessary to dwell upon it. But even this simple obligation cannot be effectively carried out without some form of social organization, as the mothers' school clubs and the mothers' congresses testify, and to which the most conservative women belong because they feel the need of wider reading and discussion concerning the many problems of childhood. It is, therefore, perhaps natural that the public should have been more willing to accord a vote to women in school matters than in any other, and yet women have never been members of a Board of Education in sufficient numbers to influence largely actual school [curricula]. If they had been, kindergartens, domestic science courses and school play grounds would be far more numerous than they are.
More than one woman has been convinced of the need of the ballot by the futility of her efforts in persuading a business man that young children need nurture in something besides the three r's.
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