EQUAL SUFFRAGE DEPARTMENT
Editors:—Mrs. Julia Lucky, President of Equal Suffrage league, and
Mrs. Sara H. Hood, Secretary.
KNOXVILLE OFFICERS.
President—-Mrs, C. E. Lucky.
Vice-President—Miss Ada Fanz.
Corresponding Secretary—Miss Margaret Craft
Recording Secretary—Mrs. M. K. Purnell
Treasurer—Miss Mary Trigg Jackson.
Mrs. L. Crozier French has been invited by Mrs. John I. Cox and other
ladies of Bristol to give a lecture at
that place Wednesday evening, March
12, on the woman question.
A number of the members of the
Knoxville Equal Suffrage league went
to Washington to be in the suffrage parade. We are anxious to hear how they
fared at the hands of the hoodlums.
Both of the editors of this department are now absent from the city.
Mrs. Lucky is in Florida and Mrs. Hood
went to Washington to help represent
Tennessee in the equal suffrage parade.
Mrs. French will give a tea to the
Knoxville Equal Suffrage league and their friendds Monday from four to six. Thise members who went to Washington will be the guests if honor and will tell of the suffrage parade. All friends of equal suffrage are incited (sic.) to come to the tea. Gentlemen friends will be most cordially welcome.
Mrs. L. Crozier French is an applicant for the position of juvenile judge for Knox County. A number of letters
have been written bo Governor Hooper
asking him to appoint her. The representatives from Knox county have been
requested, by a number of prominent
citizens, to introduce a bill making
women eligible to the position.
The Tennessee Mothers' congress holds
the annual convention in Nashville
March. 28 and 29. Mrs. Robertson is anxious that every mother's association in Knoxville should send it full quota of delegates. This assocaition has two bills before the present legislature, the mothers' pension bill and a billrequiring all schools to have a kindergarten as a part of of educational system.
There is talk of a bill being introduced to
niake women eligible to be members of
boards of education. Not
until 1907 were women forbidden to be
members of school boards. It seems
strange, that when the western and eastern states
were putting women in important places
in their schools, Tennessee should take
backward st......
...longer, slower and more toilsome than
the direct way.
It cost hundreds of New York teachers
six years of arduous work to secure an
equal pay law; and the law applies
only to one city in the state. After
equal suffrage was granted in Wyoming
and Utah, state-wide laws were passed,
without effort on the teacher's part,
providing that when the women teachers
did equal work they should get equal
pay (Revised Statutes of Wyoming, Section
614(?); revised Statutes of Utah, Section;) and the same rule prevails by
custom in the other enfranchised states.
The New York antis, constantly threw
cold water upon the effort of the teach-
ers for equal pay until after it had suceeded
now turn around and point to
the law as proof that women can perfectly well get anything they want without a vote. But what is the comparative
cost in time and labor?
It took Massachusetts women 55 years
to get an equal guardianship law. In
Colorado the first legislature after women were enfranchised granted it. Mrs.
A. J. George, of Massachusetts, in her
recent lectures in Michigan and other
states against equal suffrage, has been
boasting of good laws of Massachusetts,
including equal guardianship. She omits
to mention, that for six years the "Massachusetts Association...(missing) Further extension of suffrage (missing) en" of which she is a member. (missing) under its official imprint a (missing)
opposition to equal guardianship
boasts of the equitable property laws of
Massachusetts, but does not mention
that they are the fruit of more than half
a century's effort by the suffragists, with the antis all the time declaring that the
laws were "more than just, to women,."
that women already had "all the rights
they wanted," etc.. etc.
What a vast amount of time and toil
hundreds of women have had to put in
"haggling with prejudice for penny
worths" of reform which they could have
secured without a twentieth part of the
exertion if they could have had had
''the little mechanism of the ballot," as
Jane Addams call it!
What a vast amount of time and toil
women have had to put in just to get
that little mechanism! What a saving
of time it will be to the century's very
best women when they get it and no
longer have to struggle for it! Even
the near approach of equal suffrage has
begun to save women's time. In New
York and Pennsylvania this year it was
not thought necessary to have the legis-
lative hearings which heretofore have
consumed so much time and energy of
suffragists and antis alike. Why? Be
cause all parties had put suffrage planks
into their platforms. When every state
has adopted equal suffrage women can
put into direct work for the public good
all the force that they now have to expend
in getting the tool to work with;
and the saving will be beyond computa-
tion.-
A.S.B. in Woman's Journal
