South High School - Tiger Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

Page 15 text:

-, 1 Q v, K- ' 1J V'h,if -x I' P J .. 1 'N ' i e! Qs The T1 QP 'ig N this was considered inelegant, indelicate, and showed great lack of refinement. No colleges were open for woman, and if she did read and broaden her mind, she was called a Blue stockingf, Certain popular letters of a clergyman to young women and girls advised in this tone: Do not appear strong either in mind or body, delicacy and dependence upon man's strength is requisite in woman -and much more of the same nature that to-day seems absolutely silly, but was then written in good faith for the upbuilding of womanhood. No woman dared speak from the platform or pulpit. The great suffrage leader, Susan B. Anthony, being a teacher, dared to rise at a teachers' meeting to make a remarkg it was shocking, and she became in consequence almost an outcast among teachers. STUDENT VIEWS ON SUFFRAGE THEIR JUST DESERT HE women have made such an advance that they will not backslide. In many instances, women have given more thought to better community life than some of our most noted men. Women are more interested in children, also. Now that these mothers have equal rights, I think they will help check the crime which is participated in chiefly by men and boys from the ages of fourteen to twenty-five years. When suffrage is considered in a broad sense, women have justly earned what they received. JOSEPH MUNSEN. SUFFRAGE AS SALVATION No one can long endure routine. This is what home making becomes if no foreign interest is introduced. Suffrage will lift women out of the mire of disinterest, selfishness, and laziness. Men have long complained that woman has made her recreation card playing, tea drinking, and keeping up with Mrs. Jones , yet when women attempt to change this condition by creating another and higher diversion, they object. Nothing will so sharpen woman's intellect. She will become a better companion of her husband, for both will have something in common outside of home and friends. Women will come to understand their husbands. Voting takes little time and is an infrequent occurrence. CHARLOTTE WINGET. SUFFRAGE AND DIVORCE No, women do not neglect their homes to vote, or to attempt political meetings any more than does the man who attends his clubs and political meetings. It is certainly more educational for the women to take part in politics than to go to bridge parties and matinees. The statement that the number of divorces would increase is unsound. ln Colo- rado, before equal suffrage was granted, the average number of divorces per year was 937. For three years following the bestowal of equal suffrage, the average number of divorces was 517. ALMA SMITH. Page I I

Page 14 text:

, .. t' :iff 1 n . .I-'l,-':4Ie.'.2.-1 V' f' 1 if - The T1 em 1: . 5 1:-.f 'F,'J ,K ' 5 'I' ' I rt 1 1 iw ii 3 N l ' L 5 Q fd X 3' 4 f f f. -. 'fliiig 7 q s . , 1 X ' 3112. :ir it tr s , , r 4, O 'rife- The same year Alice Paul led a group of women, copying the English methods, and picketed the White House. The following year Oklahoma, South Dakota and Michigan joined the suffrage ranks, and 19,000,000 women had political equality with men. The same year the House of Representatives passed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, but Congress adjourned without the Senate concurring. All the efforts of the suffragists were now bent on passing this amendment. In lVlay, 1919, the House again passed the Amendment by the required two-thirds majority, and June 4th the Senate did the same. The suffragists succeeded in forcing twenty-nine special sessions of the legislatures to ratify, and in August, 1920, Tennessee, the necessary thirty-sixth state, ratified, and women were enfranchised. For seventy-two years many women had sacrificed time, energy, money, health, even life itself for this cause. The time was a brief one in which to accomplish so great a revolution. Their reliance was on the Might of Right, and their only arms were arguments. In this they set an example for all future revolutions to follow. WHY WOMEN SOUGHT THE VOTE BY DR. ETHEL EDGERTON HURD T is difficult for the young people of to-day to appreciate the conditions under which women lived previous to the awakening of a few, and the beginning of the long struggle for the ballot which has only just ended. Men have always been better than the laws they made, else the lives of most women would have been miserable indeed. The law gave women no property rights at all. If a young woman inherited from her father any sum of money or any real estate or other property, as soon as she pronounced the 1 will of the marriage ceremony, it all became the property of her husband, the law gave him full charge of it, and her consent to its use or disposal was not required. From that moment he had also full control of her, he owned even the clothes she wore, he could whip her if he used a whip NO larger than his thumbw, he could dictate all purchases for the use and wear of the family, just what should be served at meals, and if he chose, just how it should be cooked, he had absolute control of the children in every way-their dress, their education, everything pertaining to their growth, he could will them away so she had no control of them even after his death. She had the use after his death of one-third of his property, provided he died without a will, but she could not make a will, so at her death all property went to the children or to his people in case there were no children. A woman was not thought capable of mastering a liberal education, if she had the very elements of mathematics, and could read and write she was considered highly educated for a woman, to this must be added music and dancing at some finishing school or Female Seminary, for the more wealthy. Anything more than Page 10

Page 16 text:

if Q .IW at 'W ffffaviig - 2 A ' X Q J? . .c. p The T1 er J .ei 4. Q -sxx A PESS1MIST'S VIEW You can't argue with a woman. Result: the nineteenth amendment passed. Other results are too numerous to mention here. . Now that the women have the right to vote, they are going to pass many wonder- ful laws. Of course, the wonderful men's vote will not count at all. Woman suffrage has done little or nothing toward the bettering of laws and conditions of the present or past. The more the women get the more they want, and they get, too, because you can't argue with a woman. , What will become of us poor, ignorant men? ULEN SCHMIDTZ. SUFFRAGE AND JAPAN Mr. Harrison Collins, an alumnus of South High, now residing in Japan, was asked to write for the Tiger on suffrage in Japan and on any other question hound up with it. His comments in the following letter, written from the standpoint of an American living in a foreign country, are of immense interest: Hiroshima, Japan, January 15, 1921. Dear Southsiders: My nine years in Japan have seen marked changes in the attitude of these people toward almost everything in life. The awakening of women is one of these changes. But hers is but one phase of a very much larger problem. Only comparatively few of the men have the vote. The government, despotic in nature, is often the plaything of the all-powerful military class. So reform in this country, including the emanci- pation of women, can have none of the good fortune that it has had in democratic America. Political freedom for these people is a slow up-hill tight, and it is doubtful whether they can ever win thru without help from the outside. The only help from outside that will avail is a league or association of world peoples that can unhorse the military despotism in Japan. With the fall of Japanese militarism would rise freedom for Japanese men and also women. So you see, the possibility of Japan's sharing in the blessings of the glorious Suffrage Amendment depends, like most other good things in the world to-day, on you and your attitude toward these things. Women here as at home constitute by far the 'Lbetter half, the half that conserves the good and presses on toward the better. But these women are sadly handicapped both by history and the state of the world in which they End themselves. Will you not help them to stand erect? Es- pecially to you girls who are now enfranchised do your poorer sisters send their piteous call. Will you not answer that Macedonian cry? HARRISON COLLINS, January, '08. Page 12