WOMEN VOTERS
STILL PUZZLE
TO POLITICIAN
Doubt as to Where They Stand
in Coming Election.
SUPPORTING MRS. ALLEN;
FIGHTING MISS WATSON
Reported Plan to Have Feminine Voters "Single Shot"
for Legislative Candidate
—Surprises Promised.
For two years, or since the special
session of the legislature ratified the
suffrage amendment in August, 1920,
mere man has been racking his brain
in an effort to determine what the dear
ladies wouid do with their ballots. As
yet, however, no one seems to have
found an answer to the question, and
the politicians are still querying each
other.
"What'll the women do?" is one of
the most popular questions of the day,
and has grown nearly as monotonous in
political circles as has the hackneyed
answer, "Damfino," it never fails to
bring forth.
When women were first granted the
right to vote, a majority of the men
folk agreed that they would not have
any great effect upon politics, as their
male relatives, such as husbands,
fathers and brothers, and in some
cases sweethearts, would control their,
sentiments with regard to candidates
and issues, and in that way maintain
the party lines in just about the same
ratio as existed before suffrage was
granted.
That theory, however, failed to satisfy the mere male, and be has continued
to dwell upon the matter and advance
theory after theory until he has built
for himself a political bugaboo.
As a matter of fact, the first theory
is, with just one exception, correct.
Women voters, at least those who have
made any study of politics, have in
a majority of instances adopted the political faith of their husbands, fathers
or brothers, and are as a rule even
more partisan than men. The great
majority, however, have made absolutely no study of politics or public
questions and will go to the ballot box
with the determination to "vote
straight" just as their men folk do.
The one instance in which the theory
is incorrect is with reference to women
candidates. The women, as all men
know, are perverse creatures and take
a keen delight in doing the unexpected.
In the coming elections they are planning to do the unexpected in both, the
county election and the democratic
primary. In other words, they have
been thinking for themselves and, although their methods of reasoning and
their final decisions sound rather inconsistent and illogical to mere man,
they have decided to do two unexpected
things.
One of these is to explode the time-
worn belief that, a woman is incapable
of grasping politics and will never learn
to plan and scheme for the success of
the candidates she favors. It is also
proposed to explode the belief that a
woman tells everything she knows. The
women of Hamilton county, or at least
the active portion of them, are planning
to elect Mrs. Penelope Johnson Allen
to the legislature, and are now waging
a campaign among women voters in an
effort to get them to "single shot" for
her. The plan has been in process of
perfection for some weeks and mere
man did not learn anything of it until
it leaked out yesterday through a nonvoting woman who had been approached and who did not know that
she was giving a political secret away
when she told a man about it.
Another surprise the women have in
store, and one which is absolutely inconsistent with the election of Mrs.
Allen, is the defeat of Miss Sadie Watson, woman candidate for register on
the republican ticket. The same group
of women who are backing Mrs. Allen
for the legislature are fighting Miss
Watson for the reason that they do
not believe a woman has any place in
public office.
"But," suggested a reporter in conversation with a female politician yesterday, "if Miss Watson has no business in politics neither has Mrs. Allen.
How are you going to reconcile your
position on that?'
