My Two CountriesAstor, Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor, Viscountess
General
My Two Countries
Astor, Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor, Viscountess
Reconstruction (1914-1939); Women -- Political activity
We know that if all our children had that, much of the old
world’s misery would dissolve and disappear.
Just take one thing which may seem small, but it’s of vast importance.
Do you believe that if women had been voting as long as men that we
should have allowed almost the most important people in the country to
be underpaid? I mean the teachers. Any woman who has children or who
deals with other people’s children realises what infinite patience,
tact, love and long-suffering it takes to train and teach children
properly. They also realise that they, the teachers and mothers of the
nations, are forming the mind of the nation. And yet _all_ nations have
left teachers in a rut for years and years, and allowed them to toil
for a mere pittance. If women had been voters and organised voters,
this would never have happened!
I urge the League of Women Voters not to disband and go into parties
yet awhile. Naturally, you must vote with parties, and later on
you will very likely get tied up like men into parties, but I don’t
feel that the time is ripe. As women we must have organisation to
educate ourselves, not on party lines, but on national lines. Raise
the programme of all parties; that is what you are doing now. I beg
you to keep on. The Democrats and Republicans will both try to catch
you. Don’t let them catch you napping. Don’t become just fodder
for political cannon. Form your programme and make all the parties
adopt it. Begin in your home towns, begin at once. Get your politics
straight. The only way to get cleaner and better politics is to come
out and work. In Chicago, we hear just now of bombs. Well, I personally
fear bombs in politics far less than I do apathy. If Chicago’s citizens
are thinking first and foremost of money-making, then the politicians
who represent them will be true to type. If they think first and
foremost of higher things, they will get better politicians. You and I
get pretty much what we deserve in life, be it political or otherwise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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