1. Because travelling in trains is not a natural right.

2. Because our great-grandmothers never asked to travel in trains.

3. Because woman’s place is the home, not the rain.

4. Because it is unnecessary; there is no point reached by a train that cannot be reached on foot.

5. Because it will double the work of conductors, engineers and brakemen who are already overburdened. 

6. Because men smoke and play cards in trains. Is there any reason to believe that women will behave better? 

    That in 1869 Miss Jex-Blake and four other women entered for a medical degree at the University of Edinburgh?

    That the president of the College of Physicians refused to give the women the prizes they had won?

    That the undergraduates insulted any professor who allowed women to compete for prizes?

    That the women were stoned in the streets, and finally excluded from the medical school?

    That in 1877 the British Medical Association declared women ineligible for membership?

    That in 1881 the International Medical Congress excluded women from all but its “social and ceremonial meetings”?

    That the Obstetrical Society refused to allow a woman’s name to appear on the title page of a pamphlet which she had written with her husband?

    That according to a recent dispatch from London, many hospitals, since the outbreak of hostilities, have asked women to become resident physicians, and public authorities are daily endeavoring to obtain women as assistant medical officers and as school doctors?

1. Because pockets are not a natural right.

2. Because the great majority of women do not want pockets. If they did they would have them.

3. Because whenever women have had pockets they have not used them.

4. Because women are required to carry enough things as it is, without the additional burden of pockets.

5. Because it would make dissension between husband and wife as to whose pockets were to be filled.

6. Because it would destroy man’s chivalry toward woman, if he did not have to carry all her things in his pockets.

7. Because men are men, and women are women. We must not fly in the face of nature.

8. Because pockets have been used by men to carry tobacco, pipes, whiskey flasks, chewing gum and compromising letters. We see no reason to suppose that women would use them more wisely.

1. Because no woman will leave her domestic duties to vote.

2. Because no woman who may vote will attend to her domestic duties.

3. Because it will make dissension between husband and wife.


4. Because every woman will vote as her husband tells her to.


5. Because bad women will corrupt politics.

6. Because bad politics will corrupt women. 

7. Because women have no power of organization.

8. Because women will form a solid party and outvote men.

9. Because men and women are so different that they must stick to different duties.

10. Because men and women are so much alike that men, with one vote each, can represent their own views and ours too.

11. Because women cannot use force.

12. Because the militants did use force.

 1. Because man’s place is the armory.


 2. Because no really manly man wants to settle any question otherwise than by fighting about it.


 3. Because if men should adopt peaceable methods women will no longer look up to them.


 4. Because men will lose their charm if they step out of their natural sphere and interest themselves in other matters than feats of arms, uniforms and drums.


 5. Because men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them particularly unfit for the task of government. 

Lovely Antiques, breathing in every line

The perfume of an age long passed away,

Wafting us back to 1829,

Museum pieces of a by-gone day,

You should not languish in the public press

Where modern thought might reach and do you harm,

And vulgar youth insult your hoariness,

Missing the flavor of your old world charm;

You should be locked, where rust cannot corrode

In some old rosewood cabinet, dimmed by age,

With silver-lustre, tortoise shell and Spode;

And all would cry, who read your yellowing page:

            “Yes, that’s the sort of thing that men believed

            Before the First Reform Bill was conceived!”

With apologies to Lord Tennyson.

(“The grant of suffrage to women is repugnant to instincts that strike their roots deep in the order of nature. It runs counter to human reason, it flouts the teachings of experience and the admonitions of common sense.”—N.Y. Times, Feb. 7, 1915.)

Oh, that ‘twere possible

   After those words inane

For me to read The Times

   Ever again!

When I was wont to read it

   In the early morning hours,

In a mood ‘twixt wrath and mirth,

   I exclaimed: “Alas, Ye Powers,

These ideas are fainter, quainter

   Than anything on earth!”

A paper’s laid before me.

   Not thou, not like to thee.

Dear me, if it were possible

   The Times should ever see

How very far the times have moved

   (Spelt with a little “t”). 

(“Our laws have not yet reached the point of holding that property which is the result of the husband’s earnings and the wife’s savings becomes their joint property….In this most important of all partnerships there is no partnership property.”—Recent decision of the New York Supreme Court.)

Lady, share the praise I obtain

            Now and again;

Though I’m shy, it doesn’t matter,

I will tell you how they flatter:

Every compliment I’ll share

            Fair and square.

Lady, I my toil will divide

            At your side;

I outside the home, you within;

You shall wash and cook and spin,

I’ll provide the flax and food,

            If you’re good.

Partners, lady, we shall be,

            You and me,

Partners in the highest sense

Looking for no recompense,

For, the savings that we make,

            I shall take. 

(“The Latin man believes that giving woman the vote will make her less attractive.”—Anna H. Shaw.)

They must sacrifice their beauty

Who would do their civic duty,

            Who the polling booth would enter,

            Who the ballot box would use;

As the drop their ballots in it 

Men and women in a minute,

            Lose their charm, the antis tell us,

            But—the men have less to lose.

With apologies to James Whitcomb Riley.

(“The result of taking second place to girls at school is that the boy feels a sense of inferiority that he is never afterward able to entirely shake off.”—Editorial in London Globe against co-education.)

There, little girl, don’t read,

You’re fond of your books, I know,

But Brother might mope

If he had no hope

Of getting ahead of you.

It’s dull for a boy who cannot lead.

There, little girl, don’t read.

(“No brass bands. No speeches. Instead a still, silent, effective influence.”—Anti-suffrage speech.)

We are waging—can you doubt it?

   A campaign so calm and still

No one knows a thing about it

   And we hope they never will.

          No one knows

          What we oppose,

   And we hope they never will.

We are ladylike and quiet,

   Here a whisper—there a hint;

Never speeches, bands or riot,

   Nothing suitable for print.

          No one knows

          What we oppose,

   For we never speak for print.

Sometimes in profound seclusion,

   In some far (but homelike) spot,

We will make a dark allusion:

   “We’re opposed to you-know-what.”

          No one knows

          What we oppose,

For we call it “You-Know-What.”

(“I hold it as a fundamental principle and so do you, that every people has the right to determine its own form of government. And until recently 50 per cent. of the people in Mexico have not had a look-in in determining who should be their governors, or what their government should be.”—Speech of President Wilson.)

Wise and just man—for such I think you are—

How can you see so burningly and clear

Injustices and tyrannies afar,

Yet blind your eyes to one that lies so near?

How can you plead so earnestly for men

Who fight their own fight with a bloody hand;

How hold their cause so wildly dear, and then

Forget the woman of your native land?

With your stern ardor and your scholar’s word

You speak to us of human liberty;

Can you believe that women are not stirred

By this same human longing to be free?

    He who for liberty would strike a blow

    Need not take arms, or fly to Mexico.

(The law compels a married woman to take the nationality of her husband.)

I.

In Time of War

Help us. Your country needs you;

   Show that you love her,

Give her your men to fight,

   Ay, even to fall;

The fair, free land of your birth,

   Set nothing above her,

Not husband nor son,

   She must come first of all.

II.

In Time of Peace

What’s this? You’ve wed an alien,

   Yet you ask for legislation

To guard your nationality?

   We’re shocked at your demand.

A woman when she marries

   Takes her husband’s name and nation:

She should love her husband only.

   What’s a woman’s native land?

 

(“My wife is against suffrage, and that settles me.”—Vice-President Marshall.)

I.

My wife dislikes the income tax,

   And so I cannot pay it;

She thinks that golf all interest lacks,

   So now I never play it;

She is opposed to tolls repeal

   (Though why I cannot say),

But woman’s duty is to feel,

   And man’s is to obey.

II.

I’m in a hard position for a perfect gentleman,

   I want to please the ladies, but I don’t see how I can,

My present wife’s a suffragist, and counts on my support,

   But my mother is an anti, of a rather biting sort;

One grandmother is on the fence, the other much opposed,

   And my sister lives in Oregon, she thinks the question’s closed;

Each one is counting on my vote to represent her view.

   Now what should you think proper for a gentleman to do?

Father, what is a Legislature?

A representative body elected by the people of the state.

Are women people?

No, my son, criminals, lunatics and women are not people.

Do legislators legislate for nothing?

Oh, no; they are paid a salary.

By whom?

By the people.

Are women people?

Of course, my son, just as much as men are.

(“I am opposed to woman suffrage, but I am not opposed to woman.”—Anti-suffrage speech of Mr. Webb of North Carolina.)

O women, have you heard the news

       Of charity and grace?

Look, look how joy and gratitude

       Are beaming in my face!

For Mr. Webb is not opposed

       To woman in her place!

O Mr. Webb, how kind you are

       To let us live at all,

To let us light the kitchen range

       And tidy up the hall;

To tolerate the female sex

       In spite of Adam’s fall.

O girls, suppose that Mr. Webb

       Should alter his decree!

Suppose he were opposed to us—

       Opposed to you and me.

What would be left for us to do—

       Except to cease to be?

(“The women of this smart capital are beautiful. Their beauty is disturbing to business; their feet are beautiful, their ankles are beautiful, but here I must pause.”—Mr. Bowdle’s anti-suffrage speech in Congress, January 12, 1915.)

You, who despise the so-called fairer sex,

    Be brave.    There really isn’t any reason

You should not, if you wish, oppose and vex

    And scold us in, and even out of season;

But don’t regard it as your bounden duty

To open with a tribute to our beauty.

Say if you like that women have no sense,

    No self-control, no power of concentration;

Say that hysterics is our one defence

    Our virtue but an absence of temptation;

These I can bear, but, oh, I own it rankles

To hear you maundering on about our ankles.

Tell those old stories, which have now and then

    Been from the Record thoughtfully deleted,

Repeat that favorite one about the hen,

    Repeat the ones that cannot be repeated;

But in the midst of such enjoymens, smother

The impulse to extol your “sainted mother.”

(“Every true woman feels——”—Speech of almost any Congressman.)

I am old-fashioned, and I think it right

   That man should know, by Nature’s laws eternal,

The proper way to rule, to earn, to fight,

   And exercise those functions called paternal;

But even I a little bit rebel

At finding that he knows my job as well.

At least he’s always ready to expound it,

   Especially in legislative hall,

The joys, the cares, the halos that surround it,

   “How women feel”—he knows that best of all.

In fact his thesis is that no one can

Know what is womanly except a man.

I am old-fashioned, and I am content

   When he explains the world of art and science

And government—to him divinely sent—

   I drink it in with ladylike compliance.

But cannot listen—no, I’m only human—

While he instructs me how to be a woman.

(“Three bills known as the Thompson-Bewley cannery bills have been advanced to third reading in the Senate and Assembly at Albany. One permits the canners to work their employés seven days a week, a second allows them to work women after 9 p.m. and a third removes every restriction upon the hours of labor of women and minors.”—Zenas L. Potter, former chief cannery investigator for New York State Factory Investigating Commission.)

Let us not to an unrestricted day

Impediments admit. Work is not work

To our employés, but a merry play;

They do not ask the law’s excuse to shirk.

Ah, no, the canning season is at hand,

When summer scents are on the air distilled,

When golden fruits are ripening in the land,

And silvery tins are gaping to be filled.

Now to the cannery with jocund mien

Before the dawn come women, girls and boys,

Whose weekly hours (a hundred and nineteen)

Seem all too short for their industrious joys.

If this be error and be proved, alas

The Thompson-Bewley bills may fail to pass!

(“I hate a woman who is not a mystery to herself, as well as to me.”—The Phoenix.)

If you want a receipt for that popular mystery

            Known to the world as a Woman of Charm,

Take all the conspicuous ladies of history,

            Mix them all up without doing them harm.

The beauty of Helen, the warmth of Cleopatra,

            Salome’s notorious skill in the dance,

The dusky allure of the belles of Sumatra

            The fashion and finish of ladies from France.

The youth of Susanna, beloved by an elder,

            The wit of a Chambers’ incomparable minx,

The conjugal views of the patient Griselda,

            The fire of Sappho, the calm of the Sphinx,

The eyes of La Vallière, the voice of Cordelia,

The musical gifts of the sainted Cecelia,

Trillby and Carmen and Ruth and Ophelia,

Madame de Staël and the matron Cornelia,

Iseult, Hypatia and naughty Nell Gwynn,

Una, Titania and Elinor Glyn.

            Take of these elements all that is fusible,

            Melt ‘em all down in a pipkin or crucible,

            Set ‘em to simmer and take off the scum,

            And a Woman of Charm is the residuum!

                        (Slightly adapted from W.S. Gilbert.)

Men are very brave, you know,

That was settled long ago;

Ask, however, if you doubt it,

Any man you meet about it;

He will say, I think, like me,

Men are brave as they can be.

Women think they’re brave, you say?

Do they really? Well, they may,

But such biased attestation

Is not worth consideration,

For a legal judgment shelves

What they say about themselves.