Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
Miss Kate M. Gordon (La.) told of the remarkable work the women of New
Orleans had been able to do with their taxpayers' right to vote on
matters of special taxation. "If the women of one part of the country
more than another need the suffrage," she declared, "it is those of
the South." The Chicago _Tribune_ commented: "As Miss Gordon sat down
all the women clapped, many waved handkerchiefs and the applause
continued several minutes." Mrs. Lilla Day Monroe described the
excellent effects of the Municipal suffrage enjoyed by all women in
Kansas, the only State where it existed in full. She called attention
to the fact that the next day, February 15, would be the 20th
anniversary of its granting by the Legislature. Miss Anna E. Nicholes
of Chicago spoke on The Ballot for Working Women, saying in part:
The women who work in our city have a special claim to Municipal
enfranchisement, inasmuch as they not only help create Chicago's
wealth but are subject to the industrial conditions regulated by
the city voters....
Legislation is becoming more and more industrial in its aspect.
Abating sweating and its evils, inspection of toilets, hygienic
conditions in shops are now matters frequently controlled by our
city fathers. Women are more and more coming into the industrial
field. The 5,000,000 now gainfully employed in the United States
represent one-fifth of the total number of wage-earners and this
number are non-voters. This is a serious handicap to labor in its
efforts to secure humane industrial legislation.... To these
working women this matter of suffrage is an economic question--a
bread-and-butter necessity. It is a fact, acknowledged by many
large employers of labor and stated also by Carroll D. Wright in
Government bulletins, that one of the leading reasons for the
preference of women wage-earners to men is that they can be
secured more cheaply. Employers are frank in acknowledging that
the women work for less, that they are more reliable, more
temperate, less inclined to strike and more faithful.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V — John Shaqi
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