Civic improvement; Urban women; Women in public life
That all the woman candidates were defeated, and with the biggest
majorities by their least reputable rivals, is another mystery for
which many and various solutions will probably be offered.
But what does stand clearly out of these mists of uncertainty is
that Chicago has struck a heavy, perhaps fatal, blow at the belief
so confidently expressed by every suffragist that the woman voters
in any community would stand together and exert, whether
successfully or not, all their influence in behalf of the causes
that especially interested them as a sex. There is no evidence or
even hint of such solidarity in these returns. The woman vote was a
divided one, and evidently divided along just the lines, good and
bad, with which men have made us familiar.
The stories of women who did and said foolish things at the polls
could all be paralleled by like stories of men, and are without
significance. The important revelation is that the women will not
vote as women—a revelation reassuring or disquieting according to
whether one wants them to do that or not.
Is it possible that Gov. Glynn can have kept a straight face while
he was saying, writing, or dictating the statement that the vote
cast on the Constitutional Convention question on Tuesday “plainly
shows that the people desire a revision of the Constitution”? Who
are the “people”? Can one-fifth of the legal voters of the State of
New York be called the people? At the Presidential election in 1912
there were cast in round numbers 1,600,000 votes. On the
constitutional issue on Tuesday there were cast in round numbers
300,000. There was nothing lacking either in the importance of the
issue or in the opportunity for the voter to express his will.
Certainly, few things are more important than the organic law of the
State, and the polls were open during the statutory hours. Yet more
than four-fifths of the voters did not take interest enough in the
matter to go to the polls.
The women suffragists are welcome to all the advantage they may
gain, and any taunts and gibes they may direct against the male
voters because of Tuesday’s election will be freely forgiven. Women
would have striven in vain to do anything sillier, and had the
administration of public affairs been in the control of babes in
pinafores the ordering of this election on Tuesday would have been
discreditable to their intelligence.
Where limited suffrage prevails as in Des Moines, Iowa, telegrams like
this in the Chicago _Post_ of March 30, 1914, are illuminating. It is
entitled “Women Prove a Factor in Municipal Vote”:
Voters were out early in the municipal election here today and by
noon it was freely predicted in official circles that the largest
total of ballots since the commission form of government became
effective will have been cast when the polls close.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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