NAWSA SUBJECT FILE McCulloch, Catharine W. 19th. District--James M. Kittleman, Rep., Berwyn. He stood for Woman Suffrage in Chicago Charter Convention. 24th District.--Joseph Carter, Rep., Champaign. 31st District.--Leland P Smith, Dem., Chicago. 31st District--Matthew Mills, Rep., Chicago. 33rd District.--Thomas Campbell, Rep., S. Rock Island. 34th District. William T. Hollenbeck, Rep, Marshall. 37th District.--Clayton C. Pervier, Rep., Sheffield. 39th District.--William M. Scanlon, Rep., Spring Valley. 43rd. District--Maurice P. Rice, Dem., Lewiston. 45th District--James F. Morris, Dem., Springfield, Some of the other candidates have in other years expressed their belief in woman suffrage but as no suffrage bill has been allowed to come to a vote in the House of Representatives, during the last ten years, they have not evidenced their belief by going on record. As they also failed to answer the letter sent them as noted above, or answered unsatisfactorily, no recommendation concerning them can be safely made. In districts where no worthy candidate is presented by either the Republican or Democratic party, the friends of woman suffrage should choose from the Prohibition or Socialist tickets such candidates as they may trust to work for woman suffrage. No other question on any party platform is of as much importance as the enfranchisement of one-half our people. Vote for the best woman suffrage candidates. Catherine Waugh McCulloch, Legislative Supt. for Ill. Equal Suffrage Ass'n To the Editor--Please send copy of paper containing the report to Mrs. C.W. McCulloch, Evanston, Ill. REPORT The Illinois Equal Suffrage Association sent letters to the Republican and Democratic candidates for Congress and the Legislature, asking each his attitude on the question of extending further suffrage rights to women. The letter reminded them that the women of Australia, Finland, Norway, Isle of Man, New Zealand, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho have practically full suffrage rights, while in Kansas, Sweden, Denmark, Cape Colony, Canada and the British Isles they have municipal suffrage and certain smaller suffrages. They were asked: "Will you, if elected, vote for and help all measures designed to secure woman suffrage? Or would you prefer a measure with some limitations, such as the ownership of property or education, or a limitation as to the officers for whom women might vote? To just what extent are you willing to apply to women the principles of our government that taxation without representation is tyranny, and that the consent of the governed is the only proper source of governmental power." These letters were not sent to Prohibition or Socialist candidates, as the platforms of these parties declare for woman suffrage. From the letters sent us or from their previous records, we have concluded that the following named persons would support a properly framed woman suffrage measure. Candidates for Congress 1st. District--Matthew L. Mandable, Dem., Chicago. 6th. District--Frank C. Wood, Dem., Oak Park. 8th. District--Phillip M. Ksycki, Rep., Chicago. 10th. District--Western Starr, Dem., Wilmette. 16th. District--James W. Hill, Dem., Peoria. 17th. District--John A. Sterling, Rep., Bloomington. 19th. District--William B. McKinley, Rep., Champaign. 21st. District--H. Clay Wilson, Rep., Springfield. 23rd. District--Frank S. Dickson, Rep., Ramsey 24th. District--John Q. A. Ledbetter, Dem., McLeansboro. 24th. District--Pleasant T. Chapman, Rep., Vienna. Candidates for Illinois Senate Only the even numbered districts elect a Senator this year 6th. District--William M. Brown, Rep., Chicago. He voted for the suffrage bill in Senate, 1907, and for municipal suffrage in Chicago Charter Convention. 6th. District--Joseph A. Weber, Dem., Chicago. 10th. District--Henry Andrus, Rep., Rockford. 12th. District--John C. McKenzie, Rep., Elizabeth. He did not answer, but has previously introduced a suffrage bill in the Senate, and voted for the one of 1907. 16th. District--John P. Moran, Dem., Fairbury. 20th. District--Edward C. Curtis, Rep., Grant Park. He did not answer, but previously introduced a suffrage bill in the Senate, and voted for the one of 1907. Representative 11th District--James J. O'Toole, Dem., Chicago. 22nd. District--Martin B. Bailey, Rep., Danville. He did not answer, but previously supported a suffrage bill in the Senate. 24th District--Henry M. Dunlap, Rep., Savoy. He did not answer this letter, but fathered the suffrage bill of 1907 and forced it to a vote, securing twenty favorable votes to nineteen against. He voted for it. 28th. District--James A. Henson, Rep., Decatur. He voted for the suffrage bill in Senate in 1907 28th. District--Thomas S. Davy, Dem., Lincoln. 32nd. District.--Orville F. Berry, Rep., Carthage. He did not answer this letter but has fathered suffrage bills previously and voted for the one of 1907. 42nd. District.--R. S. Jones, Rep., Flora. 46th District.--Albert E. Isley, Dem., Newton. Of the nineteen Senators who voted against the suffrage bill in 1907, the only ones of those whose terms expire, who succeeded in securing a renomination are the following named persons: Ira M. Lish of the 16th district, Stanton C. Pemberton of the 34th, Frank W. Burton of the 38th, George D. Chaffee of the 40th, Robert J. McElvain of the 44th and W. C. Potter of the 50th. If each of these six could be replaced with a believer in woman's enfranchisement, suffrage measures could probably pass the Senate. Candidates for House of Representatives Each District elects three. Friends of woman suffrage can cast all three votes for a desirable candidate. 5th. District.--Morton D. Hull, Rep., Chicago 18th. District--Charles F. Black, Rep., Mapleton. CHRONOLOGY Of the Woman's Rights Movement in Illinois The old English common law relating to woman's rights was practically unchanged in Illinois during the first half of the nineteenth century. Under it, married women had no right to their children, to their earnings, to their personal property, to the income from their real estate, or to their own personal liberty. Husbands had full control. Women were not admitted to the professions nor to higher schools of learning. They did not vote or hold office. Not only were these rights of women denied by law, but what was worse, many wrongs against women were not recognized nor redressed. The age of consent was ten years. No holier crusade ever enlisted nobler heroes than this which sought to gain the denied rights of women and to redress their wrongs. Many exhausted workers have died in the ranks but their places have been filed by younger women of unflinching courage and the cause moved on. Although the early progress was heartbreakingly slow, notice, that there have been no backward steps. No law giving women greater liberty has been repealed. Illinois men believe that Illinois women deserve all they have received up to date. 1855 First local suffrage Association in Illinois organized at Earlville. Moline, our oldest living club, was not organized until 1877. 1860 Dr. Hannah Tracy Cutler and Mrs. Frances D. Gage campaigned Illinois asking for suffrage and equal property rights. 1861 Mr. Pickets of Rock Island introduced in the Legislature the property rights bill. A petition about woman's rights resulted in an indecent report from a committee of the Legislature. Dr. Cutler asked the Legislature to make mothers joint guardians. For several years the abolition of slavery engrossed the attention of many woman's rights workers. They were promised their freedom if they would help free the slaves. The Sanitary Commission also absorbed much time and money. Double agricultural, industrial and financial burdens were borne by women whose husbands, sons and brothers went to war. The negroes were finally freed, but Illinois women were left in the same legal position they were before the war. Their improved abilities, their sharpened wits, their successful achievements made their desire for liberty greater. 1868 In the fall, preliminary state organization effected. 1869 February in the Library Hall, Chicago, The Illinois Equal Suffrage Association was organized with Mary A. Livermore, President. Myra Bradwell was refused admission to the Illinois bar. She appealed to U. S. Supreme Court. A wife's wages were secured to her own use by Illinois law. 1870 Although the Constitutional convention refused to submit a woman's suffrage proposition, Judge J. B. Bradwell and Judge C. B. Waite secured the omission of a clause forbidding women to hold office. Ada H. Kepley of Union College of Law, Chicago, now the Law Department of Northwestern University, was the first woman in the world to be graduated from a law college. 1872 Catherine V. Waite filed a petition for mandamus to compel election officers to allow her to vote, but she was refused. Fathers and mothers were made equal in inheritance from a deceased child. As Myra Bradwell was held by U. S. Supreme Court to be ineligible to practice law, she and Alta M. Hulett then secured the passage of the law admitting women to all occupations and professions. 1873 The statute was passed recognizing women's eligibility to hold school offices. 1874 Ten women were elected County Superintendents of schools. "Curtesy" was abolished. Spouses' interests in each other's real estate were made a dower right for each. 1875 Women were allowed to be Notaries Public. Myra Bradwell secured the word "persons" in the law concerning notaries. 1876 Elizabeth Boynton Harbert was elected President of Illinois Equal Suffrage Association; re-elected until 1884, and then later, twice, one year each. Mrs. Harbert's idea for a "Sane Fourth "carried out at Evanston was the forerunner of the present Sane Fourth reform. Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson was the first woman admitted to American Medical Association. 1877 Woman's Kingdom in Inter Ocean with Mrs. Harbert editor for seven years, helped woman's cause. Mary H. Krout later was editor. 1879 The mammoth petition for suffrage for women was signed by 180,000 persons, but it was kicked about scornfully in the Legislature. This made Frances E. Willard more zealous for suffrage. The W. C. T. U. had many suffrage workers. Ten small Illinois cities allowed women a straw vote on the license question, but the men who elected the aldermen controlled. Helen Schuhardt was held by the lower court ineligible to be Master in Chancery, but the Supreme Court later reversed this decision; a Master's position was appointive. 1884 Mary E. Holmes was elected President of Illinois Equal Suffrage Association for five years and again for seven years, 1890 to 1897. 1887 Age of consent was raised from 10 to 14 years. Catherine V. Waite, the Superintendent of Legislative work, sent her resolution for suffrage amendment to Speaker Elizah M. Haines. She was Superintendent until the election of Mrs. McCulloch in 1890. 1888 Large suffrage conventions were held in the northern half of Illinois by Senator M. B. Castle, for twenty years Chairman of Executive Committee, Mary E. Holmes, Julia Mills Dunn, Helen M. Gouger, and Judge C. B. Waite. Many organizations were effected in this year and during the rest of Mrs. Holmes's presidency. 1891 Senator Charles Bogardus fathered a measure for full suffrage in the Senate. Hon. G. W. Curtis, of Lena, in the House, secured 54 votes, a majority of those voting, but not enough. Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace Mrs. Holmes and Mrs. McCulloch held six weeks of conventions in southern Illinois, even to Cairo. Senator Thomas C. MacMillan secured, 29 votes in the Senate for the School Suffrage Bill and Dr. H. M. Moore got 83 votes in the House. It passed. Four times the Supreme Court has decided what are its various constitutional limitations. The Child Labor Law passed. 1893 Senator Charles Bogardus made an excellent report to the Senate on the petitions, saying that there were more for woman suffrage than for all other subjects put together. Twelve anti-suffragists signed a petition. Mrs. Altgeld, the wife of the Governor, came on to the floor of the Senate and personally thanked the Senators who on second reading had voted for our bill. Senator R. W. Coon secured the necessary 26 votes in Senate for the passage of the township suffrage bill 1894 Dr. Julia Holmes Smith was appointed to fill an unexpired term on the Board of Trustees of State University, the first woman. Mrs. Lucy L. Flower, who had been elected before, took her seat second. Mrs Florence Kelley was appointed Chief Factory Inspector. No other State has thus honored women. Governor Altgeld appointed several women to important positions. 1895 First big suffrage hearing with twenty women speakers. Senator R. W. Coon secured 23 votes for the township suffrage bill. 1897 Senator George W. Munroe labored faithfully to pass our bills. 1898 At special session about taxation Senator Munroe introduced bill to exempt women's property from taxation until they could vote. 1899 Governor Tanner appointed Mary M. Bartelme Public Guardian of Cook County. She was reappointed by Governors Yates and Deneen. Senator Isaac M. Hamilton forced two of our bills to a vote. Suffrage petitions from 25,000 labor union men of Chicago were well received. 1901 Joint Guardianship Bill passed Senate with 34 votes and House with 119. Senator Niels Juul and Rev. John Hughes fathered the bill. Rev. Kate Hughes worked for it constantly. Supreme Court decided tax cases in favor of Teachers' Federation. At this session and the many following sessions suffrage amendments, township suffrage bills and larger suffrage bills were introduced every session by difference Senators, among them being Senators D. A. Campbell, O. T. Berry, E. C. Curtis, John McKenzie, and James Gibson. Petitions were presented, literature mailed, letters poured in from constituents, eloquent speeches were made and the tone of Illinois newspapers grew more friendly. At one hearing Iva G. Wooden had pasted the petitions on muslin a yard wide and draped 75 yards of them from the galleries and through the aisles of the House. 1902 Illinois Federation of Women's Clubs endorsed a tax-paying woman's suffrage bill. 1903 At an Executive Mansion reception, Mrs. Yates, the wife of Governor Yates, asked two of the suffrage officers to stand by her in the receiving line. Since then Governor Deneen's wife has often invited the suffrage officers and speakers to her receptions following the suffrage hearings. 1904 Illinois Federation of Woman's Clubs endorse municipal suffrage bill. 1905 Age of consent raised to 16 years. 1906 Ella S. Stewart was elected President of the Illinois Woman Suffrage Association. Illinois Federation of Woman's Clubs endorsed woman suffrage in the proposed Chicago charter. 1907 Ellen M. Henrotin, chairman of delegates from women's organizations aggregating a member of 100,000 women urged municipal woman suffrage in the Chicago charter. It was defeated in convention by only one majority. Though this charter passed the Legislature no woman worked for its approval and it was defeated by the voters. 1909 Jane Addams was chairman of the committee which went before the charter makers the second time. They agreed to submit a separate woman suffrage measure which in the Legislature received more votes than most of the separate measures. Senator Charles Billions secured twenty-five votes for the full state wide municipal suffrage bill. Ten hour law, law against pandering and law as to providing seats for women employees passed both houses. 1910 Ella Flagg Young elected Chicago Superintendent of Schools and later President of National Educational Association. At special legislative session Senator Martin Bailey and Representative R. P. Hagen introduced bills to allow women to vote at primary elections and under a commission form of government. Summer suffrage auto tours covered seven-eighths of Illinois counties. Jane Addams was elected President of National Conference of Charities and Corrections. 1911 Municipal Suffrage bill passed the Senate with a vote of 31 to 10; thanks to Senator Wm. M. Brown and other friends. Representative Homer Tice secured two roll calls in the House, on the first of which we had 74 friends and on the last 67. We needed 77 there to pass the bill This is the first time in many years that the House has gone on record. Ten hour law for women extended to more occupations. Automobile tours in the counties not touched in 1910 find similar enthusiasm. 1913 What will be done by this Legislature? Will it do as well as did five other State Legislatures in 1911? Wisconsin, Kansas, California, Oregon and Nevada submitted the question to the voters. Six other states already have fully enfranchised their women: Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington and California. Illinois will continue her progress when the voters demand it insistently. CATHARINE WAUGH MCCULLOCH The Illinois Equal Suffrage Association, 934 Fine Arts Bldg., Chicago, sell this leaflet at $3.00 per thousand. It Is Constitutional The woman suffrage bill before the Illinois legislature would extend the franchise to women for certain officers not mentioned in the constitution of Illinois and for certain propositions. As these officers specified in the bill are not mentioned in the constitution, they need not be elected by the voters prescribed by the constitution. These officials are the creation of the legislature which also has power to describe whether they shall be appointed or elected and if elected, the qualifications of their electors. The Supreme Courts of various states have decided that the legislature has unlimited power in prescribing restrictions on the right of franchise and in making extensions of this right in elections of statutory officers not named in the constitution. Belles v. Burr, 76 Mich. 1; Wheeler v. Brady, 15 Kan. 26; State v. Cones, 15 Neb. 444; Destine v. Dubuque, 7 Iowa, 286; State v. Board of Elections, 9 Ohio Cir. Ct. 134; Wood v. Quimby (R. I.) 40 Atl. 163; Hanna v. Young (Md.), 35 Atl. 675; State v. Dillon, 32 Fla. 545-566; Morrison v. Springer, 15 Iowa, 342; Woodley v. Town Council of Clio, 44 S. C. 374; Wilson Wilson v. Florence, 39 S. C. 397; Wilson v. Florence, 40 S. C. 290; Town of Valverde v. Shattuck, 19 Col. 110; Kimball v. Hendee, 57 N. J. 307; Landis v. Ashworth, 57 N. J. 509; Chamberlain v. Cranbury, 57 N. J. 605; Harris v. Burr (Ore.), 52 Pac. Rep. R. 20; Commonwealth v. Reeder, 171 Pa. 505; Buckner v. Gordon, 81 Ky. 669; State v. Hingley 32 Ore. 440. The Illinois courts have also upheld such power of the legislature. People v. English, 139 Ill. 631; Plummer v. Yost, 144 Ill. 68; Ackerman v. Henck, 147 Ill. 514; Dorsey v. Brigham, 177 Ill. 256; Davenport v. Drainage Com., 25 Ill. App. 92; People v. Welsh, 70 Ill. App. 641; People v. Nelson, 133 Ill. 565. These Illinois cases sustain the power of the legislature to extend the suffrage to women in the election of officers not named in the constitution. Not only have our courts upheld such power of the legislature, but the legislature continues to exercise such power, and the persons named by the legislature continue to vote, without question, for such officials. Some of the Illinois decisions refer to the extension of the limited school suffrage to Illinois women by the law of 1891. Others refer to the drainage acts of 1885 and 1889. The drainage act of 1885 provides that adult owners of land shall petition for the drainage district, and that every adult owner of land shall be a voter. Under this law women petition and vote; and bonds issued by these districts, organized by the help of women's votes, are held good in commercial circles and by our courts. Davenport v. Drainage Commissioners, 25 Ill. App. 92. The legislature, by the sanitary district act of 1889, provided a modified system of cumulative voting, whereby the elector must vote for five-ninths of the candidates for positions as sanitary district trustees. This method was not known to the Constitution. The validity of this act was established by our Supreme Court in Wilson v. Board of Trustees, 133 Ill. 443. The legality of such measures is therefore well settled in Illinois. Among the twenty-five or more states where school suffrage is allowed to women they often also vote on propositions affecting schools. Some states like Iowa, Michigan, Montana, Kansas and Louisiana allow women to vote on all matters relating to bond issues and taxes. Such rights have also been allowed women taxpayers in New York towns and villages and in several municipalities of Delaware and South Carolina. Pennsylvania women by petitioning for or against local improvements have practically a voter's privilege. Kansas women also have municipal suffrage. It is true that in many of the states complete suffrage for women can only be secured through the constitution. Thus it was that women in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Washington gained all the voting privileges accorded men. So although full suffrage can only come to Illinois women through the constitution, the present bill is within the power of the legislature. When the Charter Convention of Chicago was asked to approve municipal suffrage for Chicago women, opinions were submitted by some of Chicago's leading lawyers and jurists stating that the legislature had such power. Among those making such statements were Philip Stein, John Barton Payne, Gwynn Garnett, S. S. Gregory, Wallace Heckman, Clarence S. Darrow, Eugene E. Prussing, John C. Richberg and Frank H. McCulloch. The Law Committee, of which John P. Wilson was chairman, reported after argument that the legislature did have such power. So it seems rather wearing to be obliged to prove over and over again this point which probably no one really doubts. CATHARINE WAUGH McCULLOCH. SHALL MEN HAVE THE BALLOT? Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, Evanston's Justice of the Peace, at a dinner of the Forty Club when that organization of literary lights gave its annual ladies' night banquet at the Blackstone Hotel, Chicago, Tuesday evening, responded to the toast, "Shall Men Have the Ballot?" She said: "For many years we women have patiently beseeched legislators to let us vote. Now to have the tables turned so that we women may decide whether men shall be allowed to vote, is a great responsibility. We will see how you like it to have your requests for the ballot treated as ours have been. In the first place, we women will assure you that in due course of time and when the matter is reached on our calendars we will give the question of man suffrage our most respectful consideration. "I suppose you men want a little further extension of your present limited school suffrage privileges. What! Not the whole suffrage? Not the suffrage for all men. Why not take things more gradually. This is so sudden! Be satisfired to take small steps at the beginning of your suffrage career. "Really Mr. Chairman, I have my doubts whether you sex as a whole has the intellectual strength necessary for voting. I once saw a man idiot. That, however, is not a universal condition. But taking your sex as a whole you never produced a Frances E. Willard, a Susan B. Anthony, a Jane Addams, an Ellen Terry, a Carrie Nation, a Madam Qui Vive or a Hetty Green. When you do this, it will be time for you to be begging the ballot. "Do you object to being taxed without representation? Why, we women represent you. When I vote, I represent my brother, my father-in-law, my four brothers-in-law, my three sons and my one husband. Do you claim that men's interests will be neglected if women alone vote? Just trust us to legislate better for you than you could for yourselves. Think how we let you vote now, for trustee of the state university. That is nice. "Then you gentlemen of the Forty club must remember that you are not authorized to speak for all your sex. There is only a mere handful of you here demanding the ballot. Wait until all men everywhere unitedly and constantly day and night, clamor for it. We should not forcibly enfranchise the whole male sex while many are indifferent. Not indifferent, do you say? Let me prove it to you. Where the ballot has been granted to men they do not appreciate it and do not unanimously use it. In the far- famed city of Chicago at an ordinary election only about one-half of the men entitled to register and vote do so, and this in spite of the fact that the newspapers patriotically sandwich all their articles with brief reminders, the fervid orator begs the voter to go to the polls, the billboards notify him with gay posters, my old schoolmate, Mr. Campbell, carries him many an exhorting letter from anxious candidates and the brass band tries to charm him. But most of this is thrown away. One-half the men generally stay at home. At the time of judicial elections it is even worse, when three-fourths of the men neglect to vote. "In the other famous city of the world, the home of Mr. Nesbit, Mr. Kiser, Mr. Mahin, Mr. J. C. Shaffer, Mr. J. Mack Glenn of your club, and various persons who are in Who's Who, in that world-renowned city of literature and education, where 4,500 men are entitled to vote, at the high school election two weeks ago the total vote was only 129. Do those residents deserve to vote? Should we not punish all men, even those who do vote, because of the neglect of the indifferent? "Then Mr. Chairman, a really great obstacle to men voting is that they are too emotional. I have observed it at football games and political conventions. I have seen men of otherwise good character forget it all at a Democratic state convention. Just because they were unseated by the Hopkins, Sullivan, O'Mally crowd they howled like demons. Then remember how, at the last national Republican convention, men cheered for 53 3 5 minutes at the name of a famous man of letters, an editorial writer on the Outlook. "The Democrats, to go them one better, kept their lungs at work whooping, cheering and howling for the 'Peerless Leader' 1 hour, 21 minutes, 5 2-5 seconds or thereabouts. "No woman's convention ever acted thus and I have just returned from looking in at the D. A. Rs., and they are earnest, and I was several days in session with the N. A. W. S. A. and they are not meek. But neither crowd of women was as emotional as men. When men can control their enthusiasm and their disgusts and act like perfect ladies then let them ask to vote. "To let men vote would more than double the ignorant vote, for fewer men than women in Illinois can read and write. It would treble the foreign vote, for twice as many men as women come here from other lands and it would quadruple the criminal vote, yes, quintuple, sextuple and decentuple it, for there are more criminals among men than among women. "Here is a sad objection. Man suffrage might make family trouble and cause divorces if a husband would not vote for his wife's party. Better let the women do all the voting and stop the strife. Or it would double the vote with double expense and no change in results, for every husband would vote as his wife directed. What would be the use? You say that this is inconsistent with the last objection, about spouses voting different tickets? "Oh, well, who cares for consistency when opposing extensions of suffrage? "There are a great many pairs of objections to man suffrage utterly inconsistent; but they are so time-honored in the case of women we must not neglect them. "For example, men would pass blue laws and interfere with women's pet vices—gum chewing and hat pin wearing, and men would let women go their own evil way unmolested. "Here is another pair: Men now, without the ballot, have the greatest power over women through their sweet influence on us women, and men deserve no power, because the order of creation was in the ascending scale and the last created creatures were the most perfect and should rule over those first created. Woman was created last. "Here is another pair: Men are now so absorbed in business and family cares they would have no time to vote and its opposite—men would become so frantic about voting and so crazy for office they would forget their families and race suicide would result. "Then we fear for men's health if they undertake the heavy labor of voting. 106 boy babies are born to 100 girl babies, but so few of the boys survive, that of centenarians there are only 70 men to 100 women. The sex which does all the heavy housework of the world and the bearing and rearing of children can do this serious labor of voting for you. Be content in your man's sphere with your newspapers, banks, etc., and do not bother your handsome heads about voting. You are sweeter and dearer as you are. We women could not respect and love you if you tried to vote and to be womanly. Nature or we women have fixed your God-given sphere just outside of politics. "Well, I must yield somewhat, and say that if all men were like you who are here tonight—intelligent, refined, law-abiding, and, above all, so handsome —(yes, we women are often flattered about our looks to make us forget our rights)—if other men were as well dressed as you and as attractive to us women who decide this question, we women would let you vote. But we dread the vote of the ignorant man, the Hinky Dink and Bathhouse John crowd, the bad man, and, most horrible, the vote of the man who has no tact and who lacks that indefinable thing the highest earthly attribute of man that is called charm. "What are books, clothes, intelligence, morality, manners, family? Nothing to us, if a man lacks charm! So as you men, or rather the other men, do not all have charm, they should not vote. Better think how you can be charming to us than to fritter your time away voting. "Do you affirm that all these arguments against men voting are bosh? Well, that's what I have suspected for many years when they were used against me and my sister women. But if they are good enough to disenfranchise women, why not to disenfranchise men? "But now, I will be serious. Do not feel so deeply grieved, dear men; I was only teasing you. Come now, let us reason together. Men can not be legislated for as wisely by women alone, as by men and women together. If only a few public-spirited men want to vote, those few ought to have the chance. You should not be reproached with having produced no Harriet Beecher Stowe or Florence Nightingale. You have had a Shakespeare, a John L. Sullican and a Rockefeller, each eminent in his line. Even if you cannot be identical with woman and perform her every duty, you can at least be made politically equal. Identity and equality are not the same thing. "You should not be governed without your consent, you should have a jury of your peers, not all women, and you should be represented if you are taxed. Then, when you men can vote as well as we women, we will have a government 'of the people, for the people and by the people.' "So in spite of all my foolish objections at first, I shall answer your question, 'Shall men vote?' by saying emphatically, 'Yes!" WOMAN SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS GIVING FULL SUFFRAGE TO WOMEN We believe that the Woman Suffrage Amendment to the Constitution of the State of Illinois should be presented to the Legislature of 1915 and to each succeeding Legislature until it is adopted. Catherine Waugh McCulloch Mrs. Medill McCormick Miss S. B. Breckinridge Miss Edith Abbott S. Grace Nicholes Mary Bartelme Mrs. William B. Owen Harriet E. Vittum Florence Bennett Peterson Marion Drake Virginia Brooks Washburne Mrs. Mary H. Wilmarth Annie Hamill Monroe Mrs. Frederic C. Bartlett Mrs. Francis D. Everett Mrs. W. I. Thomas Mrs. Carl Evald Mrs. Eugenia M. Bacon Jane Addams Louise DeKoven Bowen Mrs. Margaret Noble Lee Mrs. Ellen Henrotin Mrs. Harlan Ward Cooley Mrs. Albert P. Allen Mrs. Flora S. Richardson Sarah B. Tunnicliff Mrs. Ella S. Stewart Mrs. G. M. Mathes Mrs. M. P. Boynton Dr. Anna E. Blount Mrs. H. C. Carter Mrs. Martin Kent Northam Helen Hood Mary E. Doyle Mrs. Edward W. Bemis Amelia Sears Mrs. M. L. Purvin Mary O'Brien Porter Mrs. John Bass Mrs. George M. Clayberg Rachel M. Erwin Carrie Ashton Johnson Mrs. Ira Couch Wood Anna Nicholes Mrs. Dunlap Smith Mary E. Childs Mrs. Avis W. Hotchkiss Estella H. Boot Mrs. Hannah Solomon Mrs. Henriette Frank Inez Rodgers Deach Annabel Cleveland Test Rose L. R. Murfey Mrs. R. R. Bailey Mrs. Oliver Watson Mrs. L. K. Torbet Flo Jamison Miller Mrs. Charles Hamill Mrs. John N. Bensley Mrs. Robert F. Palmer Miss Marie Rozet Mrs. George Packard Mrs. Charles H. Zimmerman Marie Leavitt Ada L. Schuchardt Marie Schmidt Kate A. White Frances G. Forman Mrs. Henry M. Dunlap Mrs. Frank S. Goodman Mrs. Ella Adams Moore Mrs. Mary R. Kern Miss Mable Dodson Mrs. Kempter B. Miller Mrs. Ellen K. Mann Miss Beulah L. Taylor Mrs. Bertram W. Sippy Ida M. Lane Dr. Kate I. Graves Mrs. S. S. Graves Annette D. Fitch Anna L. Wright R. E. Blount SHALL MEN VOTE? Remarks of the Hon. Mrs. Libertas et Justitia, Chairman of the Elections Committee in the Oligarchy-of-Women State at some time past or future, after hearing arguments from the leading men of the state urging the enfranchisement of men. "Gentlemen, your arguments have been very entertaining. Never has your cause been more elequently presented. We women will assure you that in due course of time and when the matter is reached on our calendars we will give the question of man suffrage our most respectful consideration. "I suppose you men want a little further extension of your present limited school suffrage privileges. What! Not the whole suffrage? Not the suffrage for all men? Why not take things more gradually? This is so sudden! Be satisfied to take small steps at the beginning of your suffrage career. "Really, gentlemen, I have my doubts whether your sex as a whole has the intellectual strength necessary for voting. I once saw a man idiot. That, however, is not a universal condition. But taking your sex as a whole you never produced a Frances E. Willard, a Susan B. Anthony, a Jane Addams, an Ellen Terry, a Carrie Nation, a Madam Qui Vive or a Hetty Green. When you do this, it will be time for you to be begging the ballot. "Do you object to being taxed without representation? Why, we women represent you. When I vote, I represent my brother, my father-in-law, my four brothers-in-law, my three sons and my one husband. Do you claim that men's interests will be neglected if women alone vote? Just trust us to legislate better for you than you could for yourselves. Think how we let you vote now, for school trustees. That is nice. "Then you gentlemen must remember that you are not authorized to speak for all your sex. There is only a mere hand-ful of you here demanding the ballot. The men who do not come to the legislature asking the suffrage are really opposed, or we count them opposed. Wait until all men everywhere unitedly and constantly, day and night, clamor for it. We should not forcibly enfranchise the whole male sex while many are opposed or at least indifferent. Not indifferent, do you say? Let me prove it to you. Where the ballot has been granted to men they do not appreciate it and do not unanimously use it. In the far-famed city of Chicago at an ordinary election only about one-half of the men entitled to register and vote do so, and this in spite of the fact that the newspapers patriotically sandwich all their articles with brief reminders, the fervid orator begs the voter to go to the polls, the billboards notify him with gay posters, the postman carries him many exhorting letters from anxious candidates and the brass band tries to charm him. But most of this is thrown away. One-half the men generally stay at home. At the time of judicial elections it is even worse, when sometimes three-fourths of the men neglect to vote. "Do those people deserve to vote? Should we not punish all men, even those who vote, because of the neglect of the indifferent? "Then, Mr. Chairman, a really great obstacle to men voting is that they are too emotional. I have observed it at football games and political conventions. Men of otherwise good character forget it all at a convention. When they were unseated they howled like demons. Remember how, at the last national Republican convention, men cheered for about 53 3-5 minutes at the name of the former sporting editor of The Outlook. "The Democrats to go them one better, kept their lungs at work whooping, cheering and howling for the Peerless Leader' 1 hour and 21 minutes, 5 2 5 seconds or thereabouts. "No woman's convention ever acted thus and I have seen the D. A. R's., and they are earnest, and I have been in session with the N. A. W. S. A. and they are not meek. But neither crowd of women was as emotional as men. When men can control their enthusiasms and their disgusts and act like perfect ladies then let them ask to vote. "To let men vote would more than double the ignorant vote, for fewer men than women can read and write. It would treble the foreign vote, for twice as many men as women come here from other lands and it would quadruple the criminal vote, yes, SHALL MEN VOTE? quintuple, sextuple and decentuple it, for there are more criminals among men than among women. "Here is a sad objection. Man suffrage might make family trouble and cause divorces if a husband would not vote for his wife's party. Better let the women do all the voting and stop the strife. Or it would double the vote with double expense and no change in results, for every husband would vote as his wife directed. What would be the use? You say that this is inconsistent with the last objection, about spouses voting different tickets? "Oh, well, who cares for consistency when opposing extensions of suffrage? "There are a great many pairs of objections to man suffrage utterly inconsistent; but all time-honored. "For example, men would pass blue laws and interfere with women's pet vices--gum chewing and hat pin wearing, and men would let women go their own evil way unmolested. "Here is another pair: Men, now, without the ballot, have the greatest power over women through their sweet influence on us women, and men deserve no power, because the order of creation was in the ascending scale and the last created creatures were the most perfect and should rule over those first created. Woman was created last. "Here is another pair: Men are now so absorbed in business and family cares they would have no time to vote and its opposite-- men would become so frantic about voting and so crazy for office they would forget their families and race suicide would result. "Then we fear for men's health if they undertake the heavier labor of voting. 106 boy babies are born to 100 girl babies, but so few of the boys survive, that of centenarians there are only 70 men to 100 women. The sex which does all the heavy housework of the world and the bearing and rearing of children can do this serious labor of voting for you. Be content in your man's sphere with your newspapers, banks, etc., and do not bother your handsome heads about voting. You are sweeter and dearer as you are. We women could not respect and love you if you tried to vote and to be womanly. Nature or we women have fixed your God-given sphere just outside of politics. "Well, I must yield somewhat and say that if men were like you who are here tonight--intelligent, refined, law-abiding, and above all, so handsome--(Aside: If we flatter them they may forget about their rights.)--if other men were as well dressed as you and as attractive to us women who decide this question, we women would let you vote. But we dread the vote of the ignorant man, the bad man, and most horrible, the vote of the man who has no tact and who lacks that indefinable thing, the highest earthly attribute of man, that is called charm. "What are books, clothes, intelligence, morality, manners, family? Nothing to us if a man lacks charm! So, as you men, or rather the other men, do not all have charm, no man should vote. Better think how you can be charming to us than to fritter away your time voting. "Do you affirm that all these arguments against men voting are bosh? Well, that's what I suspected many years ago when they were used against me and my sister women. But if they were not good enough to have disfranchised women, why not to disfranchise men? "But now, I will be serious. Do not feel so deeply grieved, dear men; I was only teasing you. Come now let us reason together. Men can not be legislated for as wisely by women alone, as by men and women together. If only a few public-spirited men want to vote, those few ought to have the chance. You should not be reproached with having produced no Harriet Beecher Stowe or Florence Nightingale. You have had a Shakespeare, a John L. Sullivan and a Rockefeller, each eminent in his line. Even if you cannot be identical with woman and perform her every duty, you can at least be made politically equal. Identity and equality are not the same thing. "You should not be governed without your consent, you should have a jury of your peers, not all women, and you should be represented if you are taxed. Then, when you men can vote as well as we women, we will have a government 'of the people, for the people and by the people.'" CATHARINE WAUGH MCCULLOCH. This Leaflet for Sale by FLORENCE BENNETT PETERSON Chairman of Literature for Mississippi Valley Suffrage Conference 1320 Glenlake Ave., Chicago Some Questions for Woman Suffragists From a Mere Man. Do you want the ballot? Do you want it as quickly as possible? The right of women to vote in Illinois for any officer mentioned in the Constitution of the State can be obtained only by the consent of the male voters. The Legislature has now given the male electors the opportunity to vote upon the question whether or not a convention shall be called to propose a new Constitution. If the vote for a convention be in the affirmative and a convention be called its members will decide what suffrage provisions to put into the proposed Constitution which must later be submitted to a vote of the men of the State. If the men voters elect to have a constitutional convention then the members of that convention may draft something favorable or something unfavorable to women. Would not favorable action be more likely if women were given the right to vote for members of the constitutional convention, and the right to be members? No provision can be made for the election of members of such convention until the legislative session of 1919. They will not be elected until after that time. In the meantime our Constitution may be amended so as to permit women to vote for and be members of the constitutional convention and to vote upon the question of the adoption or rejection of the draft of Constitution which the convention may present. Ought not the women of the State to have a voice in the making of any new Constitution under which they are to be governed? The only way to give them any such power is to amend the Constitution in advance and give them the ballot. This can be done if the present Legislature will pass the pending resolution for a Suffrage Amendment which will then be voted on in November 1918. Are you afraid to submit the question of woman suffrage to vote in 1918? If so what can happen to make its chances better three or four or more years later? The suffrage movement has never had such a favorable impetus as it has just now. During the last two months North Dakota and Ohio have given women the Presidential ballot; Indiana has given the right to vote for Presidential electors and all officers not mentioned in the Constitution and for members of the constitutional convention; New York, Maine, North Dakota and Oklahoma have submitted suffrage amendments; Minnesota, Wisconsin and Missouri have taken action which indicates that they will give women the right to vote for Presidential electors. Arkansas has given women the right to vote at primaries which in that one-party State amounts to practically the same thing as a vote at the election. Favorable votes have been given in one house of several other states. Victory is upon you. Why hesitate to take it? But suppose that you are fearful. Can you ever win by inaction? Is there any better way to make suffrage propaganda than to have a suffrage campaign? How else can the indifferent or the unconvinced be so well found out and persuaded as by putting all to the test of an election? If education and appeal must be given what furnishes so good an opportunity as an election upon the very question to be decided? Is it not wise to push for the ballot in Illinois just as fast as possible? More than 876,000 women voted in our State at the November election. While their interest is fresh and favorable action is being taken in all neighboring states is it not an opportune time to work for the suffrage amendment to our Constitution? Are you urging your State Senator and Representatives to vote for this Amendment? FRANK H. MCCULLOCH, 112 W. Adams Street, Chicago. Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, Superintendent of Legislative Work for the Illinois E.S.A., urges men and women of all parties to send up to the Legislature letters and petitions in behalf of the pending bill to give township suffrage to women. Women as veterinary surgeons may soon be heard of in Russia. Mlle. Dobrowilska, daughter of a large landed proprietor in the government of Cherson, recently finished her studies in the Veterinary College at Zurich, and is now at Odessa, preparing for the regular State examination. The authorities say that they are willing to give Mlle. Dobrowilska the requisite diploma when she has passed her examinations. She has already been offered a position. [*Feb 25 1893*] Mr. Lex or The Legal Status of Mother and Child Catharine Waugh McCulloch Mr. Lex or The Legal Status or Mother and Child By Catharine Waugh McCulloch Chicago : New York : Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company 1899 Copyrighted 1899 by Catharine Waugh McCulloch To Mothers, Some Of Whom Now Suffer Through Unjust Laws; To Fathers, Many Of Whom Are Kinder Than The Laws And Are Probably Ignorant Of Or Indifferent To Possible Injustice; To Legislators, Who Have The Power To Change Laws. PREFACE. In the following pages the form of fiction is used in order to place more vividly before the reader the injustice which results from laws which make fathers sole guardians and custodians of their children. The incidents related are all paralleled in real life. The court decisions described are based on statutes and actual decisions of courts. The authority for all statements of law can be found in the table of citations appended. The numerals in parentheses through the text refer to the citations in the table bearing the same number. Lack of space prevents the presentation of authorities from every State, and so only Illinois authorities are cited. But as three-fourths of our States make fathers the sole guardians and custodians of children, and deprive mothers 6 Preface. of such authority, the courts in these States, in circumstances similar to those narrated, render similar decisions. This makes the question of parental authority of more than local importance. These laws originated many years ago under military despotisms, when fathers alone were strong, educated, responsible, possessed of property, and skilled in war. The welfare of the children, the good of the State, seemed to require that the ignorant, dependent, helpless mothers should not be invested with authority over their children. But the conditions which gave rise to these laws no longer prevail. Mothers are today responsible, cultivated, discreet, experienced, and, under the changed conditions of society, are entirely capable of sharing with fathers in the guardianship and control of their children. The laws should be so changed as to allow mothers such power. Other laws relating to women have changed, as law-makers have slowly recognized women's increasing ability and power. All our States now allow Preface 7 women to devise and bequeath their own property; three-fifths of our States allow them to possess, manage, and convey their own real and personal property; nearly all the States allow them equal rights under the divorce laws; four States grant them complete rights of suffrage; one grants them municipal suffrage and twenty-three, school suffrage; some States have so far recognized mothers' obligations to the family as to make them liable for family expenses; and about one-fourth of the States recognize in some way the authority of mothers over their children. It must not be forgotten that, though women have petitioned for more equitable laws, these great changes have only become possible through men's generosity, when they were persuaded that the good of women, of children, of the home and of the State demanded improved conditions. So there is ground for believing that men will continue to make alterations in laws as soon as they are convinced of 8 Preface the necessity. Laws should be changed so that fathers and mothers may be joint guardians and custodians of their children with equal responsibility and authority. If this book shall in any degree help mothers to a clear vision of their own responsibilities; if it shall convince fathers that mothers, deprived of power, can never do their full duty toward their children; or if it shall induce legislators to change unjust laws, its purpose will be accomplished. CATHARINE WAUGH McCULLOCH. Chicago, January, 1899. MR. LEX. MR. LEX. Mr. and Mrs. Lex and their five children lived in a small flat in Lake View, an outlying section of Chicago, about two blocks away from the grocery store which Mr. Lex managed. He had not always been a grocer, but prided himself on having an education superior to his employment and surroundings. He had been educated for the profession of law, and at the time of his admission to the bar had been considered a clever, bright young fellow but somewhat conceited and overbearing. His wife had been very proud of him as she fondly pictured his future successes. But, after ten years of waiting for clients, he at last decided to give it up. Either his nervous, irritable manner, or lack of thoroughness, or one or two great blunders, or lack of tact, or all combined, had conspired to bring him few clients and little income. 11 12 Mr. Lex During these early years of waiting for success, his wife had devoted to family expenses the money which her father had bequeathed to her. Little children had been coming into the home, and increasing needs had greatly diminished her inheritance. It had not been large in the first place; for her father had devised the bulk of his property to his son, his theory being that, as husbands support wives, daughters need but little. Mrs. Lex's mother protested against this injustice, and urged that the property she helped him to earn should be divided equally between her son and daughter. But, as is generally the case, the title to everything was in the husband's name; so he was not obliged to heed his wife's protests, nor did he. So Mrs. Lex learned early, as her first lesson on the legal status of mother and child, that her own mother, because she had nothing in her name, could not give or bequeath to her any of her own savings or earnings, although the statutes of Illinois even then provided Mr. Lex 13 that married women might control their earnings and convey (1) or bequeath them (2). She also learned that, although our laws concerning inheritances make no difference as to sex when the father dies without a will, yet he can make a will disinheriting his child. Of her inheritance, a little grocery store was the only thing now left, and Mrs. Lex had finally induced her husband to go into that, since ten years of the practice of law with few clients and the exhausting of her own funds had brought them to poverty. So he descended, as he called it, into a grocery store; but he never forgot that he had learned something about law, that he was a lawyer, and that he had sworn to support the constitutions of the United States and of the State of Illinois and faithfully to discharge the duties of the office of attorney and counsellor at law. His subsequent conduct showed that he kept his vow even when it necessitated breaking others holier and higher. The oldest son, John, helped in the 14 Mr. Lex store. He was not quite sixteen years old. Mary was fourteen, Jennie was eleven, Rob was nine and Daisy six. Mrs. Lex, though a pretty girl at eighteen, when she married, was now, at thirty-five, a faded, careworn woman with much of her early hope gone. She had economized and worked hard, caring for the family, with no help except for a few weeks when her children were very young. To sew, wash, bake, and clean for a family increasing from two to seven in ten years had been no small task, but she could have endured these physical burdens cheerfully if her husband had been as tender as he was when they were first married. Now he grumbled, he argued, he scolded; when he was asked for money he always objected, and declared that he furnished the family all the law required. As to food, that could be got out of the store, and as to clothes, he chose what he thought best. His wife gently hinted that with the same money she could do better, but he told her the law never Mr. Lex 15 provided that she should dictate in what manner his money should be spent by selecting things herself. So he put Rob into long trousers when he was nine, though Rob complained that he could not run well . He chose green, checked green, for John's last suit of clothes, the one color above all others that John abominated and that made him look ghastly. When Mrs. Lex said that John would enjoy better a suit of brown or gray he told her that it was his place to choose colors. She keeping house at home, with no salary, had not a cent of money. But he was getting some money now from the customers at the store and could be more arrogant than when the money came through his wife. When he took Mary down street he bought a pink felt hat trimmed with yellow chrysanthemums and a carmine bird. He purchased also a purple jacket and a blue dress. Everything was of durable material, he said, and he liked a variety of color. When Mrs. Lex beheld pretty Mary in this array, 16. Mr. Lex she again urged that she could better select the clothes, and he again told her they must submit to his selections. A neighbor had once informed her that she could by what she needed at any store, have it charged to her husband, and he would be obliged to pay for the article. So she bought a neat gray jacket for Jennie, who had had no winter coat for three years, and had it charged to her husband. When the bill came Mr. Lex refused to pay it, and so he was sued, the dry-goods firm claiming that this was a family expense for which he, a parent, was legally liable. Mr. Lex defended his own suit, asserting that this was not a family nor a necessary expense. Jennie could wear the plaid green-and-red shawl she had worn for the past three years. Mrs. Lex whispered to him that she herself needed it to wear under the thin, old one which had been her only wrap for years, but he hushed her into silence. He said, "This jacket is not needed for the family; 'it in no way conduces to Mr. Lex 17 the welfare of the family, generally,' (3) It is 'for personal adornment, largely to gratify vanity; and though it may be incidentally worn in the family, its primary and important use is for display in general, society.' Therefore, in accordance with the decision of the Supreme Court (3) this could not be a family expense for which I would be liable." The lawyer for the firm objected, "This decision quoted from was made in reference to a diamond ring, a purchase very different from that of a child's cheap jacket." Mr. Lex replied: "The principle is the same, and should apply here. Besides, I gave my wife no authority to make this purchase and, in fact, had really forbidden her. The merchant did not show any authority; and as 'a tradesman who sells goods to the wife upon credit of her husband takes the burden of proof of showing such authority' (4) I am not liable. Only I, the father, the legal guardian of the children, should decide upon such matters." The Justice was a stickler Mr. Lex 18 for legal points, and so decided in Mr. Lex's favor. But the dry-goods firm now turned on Mrs. Lex and threatened her with arrest for obtaining the cloak under false pretenses. Jennie, who was in tears, begged them not to arrest her mother, and became so frightened that she stripped off the modest jacket and handed it over to a representative of the firm. Mrs. Lex did not try to buy any more clothes and her husband did not let her forge that his choice must prevail. She thus had another lesson concerning the legal status of mother and child. She discovered that it was very different from that of father and child. Mr. Lex devised unusual and humiliating punishments for the children, and grew angry when his wife expostulated. He showed her that the Supreme Court of Illinois had said in relation to the punishment of a child, "The authority to govern must rest in some one, and the law has placed that power in the Mr. Lex. 19 hands of the father as the head of the family." (5) So Mrs. Lex tried to submit. About this time the father vegan to be interested in the spiritual welfare of his children, and directed them to go no longer to the neighboring Presbyterian church, which they had always attended, but to go to the Adventist's church two miles away. They all objected, but to no avail. He explained: "Choosing the church where you worship is the privilege of your legal guardian, which position I alone hold. No one else has the right to interfere." Who dares the contradict this ex-lawyer? Besides, he was right. So, when they went, they had to go to the church of his choosing, which was no light cross, considering the clothing they wore. He also insisted on periodic family dosing of sulphur and molasses, and in spite of his wife's objections prescribed for the children certain injurious articles of diet, declaring that the law laid on 20 Mr. Lex him the duty of nurturing his children. and that these things were needed by the children for their nurture. Mrs. Lex wanted the children to wear flannel in winter, but he said they must be toughened. Little Daisy had always been delicate, and this winter she coughed. Rubbers might have protected her feet, but the father would not buy rubbers, "because they make the feet perspire." One cold, damp Sunday he took her walking without rubbers and of course without flannels. That night she had croup. Mrs. Lex begged her husband to call a physician, but he said Daisy did not need a doctor, and he as her legal guardian would not allow one to be called. So Mrs. Lex dared not call one; and besides she had no money and she remembered the cloak episode. She tried all the home remedies but with little effect. By the next morning Mr. Lex made up his mind to call a doctor, who appeared only in time to see little Daisy gasping her last. Mr. Lex 21 You can imagine the grief of the mother, and as she was human she did reproach the father and told him he was responsible. He said, "It is a mysterious dispensation of Providence. I have often been sicker myself and pulled through, and I had expected Daisy would. If I had called a physician quicker she might have died sooner Physicians use poisons half the time, anyway. It will always be a comfort to me that I have kept the law and have chosen for this child what I considered best." Cousin Jane, a widow, had a cemetery lot at Graceland, and offered to give them a portion in which to lay the little body. Mrs. Lex thankfully accepted her generosity, for this would be so near she could occasionally visit the spot. But Mr. Lex was astonished at his wife's presumption. He said "Do you suppose the law gives you the right to select the burial place for my child? I am the guardian of that child, alive or dead, and I shall take her to Oakwoods." 22 Mr. Lex The mother pleaded that she and the children could not visit the grave there. and begged that Cousin Jane's offer be accepted. She even went to see the Justice of the Peace and asked why she could not have the body buried as she wished, near home. The Justice sympathized with her, but said her husband had the right to bury the body of the child where he chose, as he was the legal guardian of the child's person. In what a bitter school was she learning about the legal status of mother and child! Her big boy John was the next one about whom she worried. He was nearing sixteen, and was shooting up into a tall lad. He was busy all the time in the store, and Mrs. Lex urged her husband to give him less of the heavy work unsuitable for a growing boy. She thought he ought not to lift heavy barrels of flour and sugar. Mr. Lex again reminded her that such matters were beyond her control, for he, the father, had the authority to designate his son's duties. One day John grew suddenly Mr. Lex 23 pale when lifting one of these barrels, and his mother, who was at the store getting the day's supply of groceries, flew to his side and asked the trouble. "Something seems to have given way," he faintly said, and Dr. Jones, who happened in at the time, examined him and said that the severe strain had injured John internally so that he could never again do heavy manual labor. It is not necessary to describe their respective feelings nor the father's legal quotations nor the mother's despair. A few weeks later, when John was better, though he never could be cured, his mother defied the father sufficiently to go to a small dry-goods store, where she secured for John a place as cashier at five dollars a week. The business manager was an old friend. There was grumbling from the father, but he relented sufficiently on payday to collect John's wages. The proprietor had intended to pay John, but the father explained that John was only a minor and that, under the law, his wages belonged to his father. So for some 24 Mr. Lex weeks he collected five dollars per week, justified by the consciousness that he was living up to the law. Later the dry-goods firm made a rule not to pay wages until a month had passed, and so twenty dollars of John's unpaid wages accumulated, when the lad was dismissed to lessen expenses. Mr. Lex was having a slight attack of rheumatism which had kept him at home several days, and Mrs. Lex did not want to arouse his unusually irritable temper. So she asked the dry-goods firm for the twenty dollars John had earned, but was refused. The family needed this money sadly, and in her perplexity she went in to see the nearest lawyer, who said she should sue the firm for the money. She began suit. The matter came before the same Justice who presided at the cloak trial. It was proved that the dry-goods firm owed twenty dollars for the services rendered by John, and that she was his mother. The attorney asked her, "Are you widowed or divorced or deserted?" She Mr. Lex 25 said, "No, my husband is at our home a few blocks distant." Then the attorney argued as follows: "The father of this minor, his guardian, is the only one entitled to collect John's wages. (6) Even a step-father has a right to a minor's services before the mother. (7) It is only when the father is divorced or dead (8) or incapacitated by insanity (9) or has abandoned his family (10) that the mother can take his position." The Justice, in the face of this correct legal statement, could do no less than decide that, as Mrs. Lex was not the boy's guardian, she was not entitled to his wages and must pay the costs of the suit. He added kindly, however, that he was sorry for her but that law, not pity, must guide him in his decisions. This was another lesson in relation to the legal status of mother and child. The condition of her daughter Mary now began to distress the mother. Mary was troubled, and was very different f rom the happy girl of a few months 26 Mr. Lex ago, but she gave no reason for the change. Young as she was, she had frequently helped in the store; and there, away from her mother's watchful eye, an evil man had often talked and laughed with Mary and had then walked home with her after the store closed at eight in the evening. It was the old story. He pretended to love her, and, as she had none too much love from her irritable father and weary mother, to her affectionate heart the love proffered by this handsome man of twice her years was very welcome. She had never been warned or instructed by the unthinking mother, and it was an easy task for the skillful villain to make her his victim; then he suddenly ceased talking of love and ceased coming to see her. At last Mary told her mother. Mrs. Lex was agonized. She could scarcely believe that Mary was approaching maternity. Mary, not yet fifteen, still in short dresses, with two braids down her back! Mary, only yesterday playing with dolls, now under the shadow Mr. Lex 27 of the gravest responsibility and the most cruel shame! Mrs. Lex dreaded to tell her husband, but, knowing his profound respect for law, she felt sure there must be some punishment for this great wrong. She went to the Criminal Court Building to see the State's Attorney, and asked if he could not send the villain to the penitentiary. He asked Mary's age at the time of the wrong. She has just passed the anniversary of her fourteen birthday. "That's bad," he said. "Girls over fourteen are considered by our lawmakers old enough to consent to their own ruin. (11) Villains know this, take advantage of the law and the girls' ignorance, and as a result our hospitals have many mothers under fifteen. But did he use violence? Was this done 'forcibly and against her will'? (12) If so, the wrong would be called rape, and he might be sent to Joliet to the penitentiary for a year or two, as he could if she had been under fourteen." Mrs. Lex replied: "He did not use 28 Mr. Lex physical force but the persuasion of a lying, treacherous tongue." The State's Attorney then read to her out of an old law book that a woman has hands with which to beat, nails with which to scratch, teeth with which to bite, feet with which to kick, and a voice with which to make an outcry, and should she fail to use all these natural weapons of defense to the utmost, she would not be presumed to have objected seriously to her own ruin but to have consented, and the wrong would not be a crime, not a penitentiary offense. Alas, Mary had not been taught to fight; she was no Amazon; she was only a loving, gentle, lady-like little girl. The State's Attorney was a busy man, ad Mrs. Lex was but one of many mothers with such tales; but he sympathized with her, and took time to advise her that the man would be liable in an action in bastardy and, if proved guilty, might be compelled to pay as much as five hundred and fifty dollars during the next ten years. (13) Mr. Lex 29 But he added that sometimes jurors did not allow five hundred and fifty dollars, as they were men and might be expected to have a little sympathy for an erring brother man. Then two hundred or three hundred dollars was all that would be paid. These payments were not supposed to be for punishment but only for the support of the child. If the child died, the payments would be stopped. (14) The sum of one hundred dollars would be paid the first year and fifty dollars each succeeding year; or if the whole sum was less than five hundred and fifty dollars, the payments would be proportionately smaller. This would be the father's only contribution to the support of the child. (15) "No father, " continued the State's Attorney, "is obliged to support an illegitimate child except to the extent of this allowance. (16) An illegitimate child cannot even inherit property from his father. (61) The rest of the funds necessary to support the illegitimate child must come from the mother, and he can inherit 30 Mr. Lex property only through the mother. If the child should be an idiot or infirm of body and thus be too helpless to support himself, the mother's liability for his support would continue after he became of age up to the time of his death, when the funeral expenses must be paid by her." "However, Mrs. Lex," said the State's Attorney, "you might get more money out of the man if you should sue him for damages resulting from loss of the daughter's services. Then you need not trouble with a proceeding in bastardy." The State's Attorney recommended that, if she began such a suit, she should employ young Smith, an honest, hardworking lawyer, who would not be bought off. Mrs. Lex said that if the man could not be sent to the penitentiary it was a shame, but that no money could right the wrong done Mary, and she would scorn to ask for it. Later she remembered his advice, but now she awaited the future in despair. In a few weeks Mr. Lex found out his daughter's Mr. Lex 31 condition and his anger was frightful. He stormed and raved and turned Mary out on the street; and when Mrs. Lex begged to have her stay, he locked Mrs. Lex in her room. He told her no law compelled him to keep an obnoxious child under his own roof, especially when she was past the age of twelve years. (17) He might be made liable for her support, perhaps, but he was not obliged to keep her at home. Poor Mary tottered along the street, scarcely seeing where she was, and went right into the arms of Cousin Jane, she who had offered the cemetery lot at the time of the death of Daisy. Cousin Jane had her own little cottage on a side street about two blocks away, where for years she had done plain sewing for several wealthy families near Lincoln Park. She took Mary home with her, notified Mrs. Lex next morning as to Mary's whereabouts, and said she would give the poor girl a shelter. Mrs. Lex was very grateful. She was troubled, however, as to how 32 Mr. Lex the expenses could be borne during Mary's approaching sickness. Cousin Jane really could not afford to do everything. Then Mrs. Lex remembered what the State's Attorney had said about damages. If she had a few hundred dollars, she could pay Cousin Jane for actual outlays and be indebted to her only for her great kindness of heart. So Cousin Jane was authorized to employ Lawyer Smith, who was recommended by the State's Attorney, and he sued the seducer for damages in the name of Mrs. Lex, the mother. We pass briefly over the occurrences of the next year. Mary's baby was born before she was fifteen, and Mary stayed on with Cousin Jane, helping with the sewing. Mr. Lex never saw or asked about her, and Mrs. Lex said nothing. When he heard about the suit he told Mrs. Lex she would be sorry for it, and she was, later. Young Smith rushed the case to trial and, to the astonishment of almost every one, got a verdict for twelve hundred Mr. Lex 33 dollars. Now Cousin Jane could be paid, they thought. But the angry defendant insisted upon appealing the case, his attorney contending that twelve hundred dollars was a preposterous amount; as Justice Gummere, of New Jersey, had held that one dollar would be sufficiently large damages for the loss of a child, and Judge Ferris, of Ohio, had held that children were not assets but liabilities. In an unusually short time the Appellate Court decision came. In the opinion, the Court said: "This sort of an action is based on the theory that Mary's ability to labor has been damaged through the seduction, and this is a wrong done to the one who is entitled to her services or wages the father and not the mother (18). The father has the exclusive right of action. Not even the daughter herself could maintain an action for her own seduction. Even when a father has turned his daughter out on account of pregnancy, he is held to be the proper person to bring suit. (19) From the year 1842 (20) our 34 Mr. Lex highest courts have upheld the right of the father to sue for damages resulting from the loss of his daughter's services through seduction (21). The Supreme Court has affirmed the right of a near relative of an orphan, the right of a master or a guardian (22), but has never yet sanctioned a mother's bringing such action, and never would if it did not affirmatively appear that there was no father entitled to the daughter's services. A case exactly similar came before this court (23) in which the court said: 'It was therefore incumbent upon plaintiff in the court below to prove that, at the time of the alleged seduction, she was entitled to or had the right to command her daughter's services to her own use. Ball vs. Bruce, 21 Ill., 161; Doyle vs. Jessup, 29 Ill., 460. This we think she failed to do. The presumption is that the daughter was born in lawful wedlock and that her father is still alive. If so, the right of action is in the father and not in the mother. The right of the mother to the custody of her minor child does not arise during Mr. Lex 35 the lifetime of the father unless so ordered by a court in a proper case.' Hobson vs. Fullerton, 4 Ill. App., 284. The decision in this Hobson case is decisive in the case at bar." The Court also said: "Sympathy might lead us to decide differently, but we are bound by law and precedent. 'It has long been considered a standing reproach to the common law that it furnished no means to punish the seducer of female innocence and virtue, except through the fiction of supposing the daughter was a servant to her parent and that in consequence of her seduction the parent had lost some of her services as a menial. It is high time this reproach should be wiped out.' Anderson vs. Ryan, 8 Ill., 588. Some States have made seduction a criminal offense, and have thus shown a proper horror of such great wrong. But in Illinois there seems little redress for such evil. It is considered merely a misdemeanor, a misbehavior, a breach of manners. Even the bastardy act, which provides for the payment of 36 Mr. Lex money for the support of the child, is not the imposition of a penalty for any immoral or illegal act but a civil remedy." (24). The Judges evidently recognized the injustice of such a decision even if convinced of its legal correctness, for in conclusion they said, "Judges can merely enforce laws as they are. Until the Legislature of Illinois makes some change, such wrongs will often go unpunished . There is now, in this case, no punishment for the wrongdoer. He cannot be punished for rape, for the wrong was not done forcibly or against her will, and Mary was over fourteen. Neither she nor her mother has a right to bring this suit, and the father refuses. It is now too late to begin proceedings in bastardy. This is a case where there is clearly a wrong but no remedy." Mr. Lex had been very angry that his wife had anything to do with "that abandoned girl," as he called Mary; and he now rejoiced in her final defeat because it must impress on her forcibly Mr. Lex 37 her own powerlessness and his full authority over their children. The State's Attorney wrote, asking her to call at his office. When he saw her he expressed great regret that the case had terminated so unsuccessfully. He said, "If only you had told me your husband was living I should never have advised you to begin proceedings, but I thought you were a widow. I have watched this matter with great interest, and now almost feel as though I were responsible for your failure and the heavy legal expenses incurred. I, too, have daughters, and it cuts me to the heart to think of what you and your little girl have suffered. I have here one hundred dollars which I want you to accept for legal expenses or other debts incurred through Mary's trouble. Do not count it a gift but the collection of a fine which I have imposed on myself for belonging to a sex which has wrought such misery." The State's Attorney cleared his throat, turned his back, and asked his clerk to show her out before she could 38 Mr. Lex collect words in which to express her gratitude at this gift. He had so placed the matter before her that she could accept the money with humiliation. She took the money to young Smith to apply on his bill, but he said, "I like to try cases just for the experience it gives me; and I have learned so much during the pendency of the suit that I feel that you owe me nothing. I have settled for the printing of abstract and briefs for the Appellate Court and for the costs, just for the experience too, and now here is a receipt in full." Mrs. Lex said he was too generous, but he said, "It is only a form of selfishness. Perhaps my little baby girl may need a friend some day, and this method will be surer to secure friends for her than accumulating government bonds. I wish you to feel that you and Mary ought to be ready to help my daughter or any other troubled girl if in need." Mrs. Lex said she would never forget his generosity nor that of the State's Attorney, for to her they would ever be Mr. Lex 39 the ideal, nineteenth century, chivalrous gentlemen. This made young Smith look so red and fierce that the office boy, at a distance, thought he was angry; but Smith controlled himself, and the office boy heard nothing violent. Mrs. Lex's sad heart was comforted by the sympathy of these two noble men, who tried to show her kindness because the law showed no justice. She flew about with the money to physician, nurse, and druggist, and every bill was paid except the debt they owed Cousin Jane. That would never be paid now, for Cousin Jane had died a few days before, and their best friend was gone. When her will was read it appeared that she had no nearer relatives and that she had devised the tiny cottage to Mary, and had given all her money savings, four hundred dollars, to Mrs. Lex. Young Smith had made the will, and had probably encouraged Cousin Jane to such a disposition of her estate. Mary had become a skillful needlewoman, and she continued to hold all 40 Mr. Lex Cousin Jane's customers. So she and her baby were sure of food and shelter. Mrs. Lex was grateful for the four hundred dollars, for she knew the many needs that the coming winter would bring which she could now supply. There would be flannels and warm shoes for every one and soft new clothes for the tiny little stranger she was expecting in her own family; and perhaps she could hire the washing and ironing done a few weeks till she was strong. Mr. Lex asked her for the money, and she refused to give it to him as she had a legal right to do. But he spread abroad the news of her legacy, and she was requested by Messrs. Snuff & Co. to pay her husband's tobacco bills; by the downtown store to pay for that horrible pink hat of Mary's, bought three years before; by the druggist to pay for medicines bought and used by Mr. Lex, and by various other creditors to pay bills incurred by her husband for family expenses, including a bill for trousers for himself. Mr. Lex 41 She refused to pay and was sued. Every creditor got a judgment against her. It was urged that these items were all family expenses and necessities. She protested that tobacco for her husband was not a family expense nor a necessity. But Snuff & Company called in a dozen men from the street who all swore that tobacco was a necessity and that it was an ordinary family expense. The Justice said: "The wife's liability for family expenses is not limited to necessities, it applies to 'all expenses of the family without qualification as to kind or amount, and does not depend upon the wealth, habits, or social position of the party. The husband is the head of the family. He determines primarily what is needed for it' (25). Mrs. Lex will be liable out of her own funds for the tobacco." (26) She objected to paying for the medicines, but the Justice told her that the Appellate Court (27) had decided that a wife must pay for her husband's medicines. 42 Mr. Lex She objected to paying for John's green clothes,--so much abhorred,--and said she never selected them. The Justice said it made no difference. "The wife is not expected to choose family supplies. The husband determines primarily what is needed for the family. He may buy and contract debts all in his own name for the support of the family. It is not necessary that his wife's name be known or her consent be given to bind her for goods purchased by him for the family or for an individual member of it. The Appellate Court has twice (28) passed directly on this question. The clothes are family expenses, and she must pay for them." Her lawyer, young Smith, urged that John's wages, the twenty dollars which had been unpaid for three years, should be set off and allowed against this demand. Surely John's wages ought to pay for his clothes. But the Justice explained, "While the father lives at home he alone can collect a minor's wages; and as he is not a party Mr. Lex 43 to this suit nor claiming this set-off, the set-off will not be allowed. But a special statute (29) makes both mother and father liable for a child's support, and a creditor can sue either one, even the one who is not eligible to receive the minor's wages. This statute is a step in the right direction, recognizing the mother's responsibility in the home, as a partner who must bear her share of the burden of family expense. Perhaps the law should also allow her a partner's right to a share in family funds with which she might pay such expenses. But as it does not at present I can only enforce law as it is, not as it should be." "In other words," said Smith scornfully, "a mother is eligible to all duty, all burden, but ineligible to receive benefit in the shape of wages and ineligible to direct the expenditure of her own funds." Smith protested that she ought not to pay for her husband's trousers, as they were of no use to her. But the Justice said it had been frequently held 44 Mr. Lex that a wife must pay for her husband's clothes. (25) Smith argued: "This four hundred dollars is exempt, the statute providing that four hundred dollars worth of property is exempt." But the Justice said, "Only one hundred dollars is exempt for her, a wife, as the three hundred dollars exemption can be claimed only by the head of the family. " (30) Smith protested that Mrs. Lex really was the head of the family, as all the family's funds had come through her and because she owned even the little store in which Mr. Lex carried on the grocery. But the Justice replied: "Even if the business were the wife's and the husband acted but as her clerk, "this did not divest him of his legal functions as the head of the family. He has not abdicated nor forfeited his headship. Nor is that question to be determined merely by ascertaining whether he or she contributed the greater sum to the support of the family.' (31) 'There was no notice Mr. Lex 45 that any anomalous relations existed in the family constituting the wife the head of the family. Where the wife lives with the husband, he must be regarded as the head of the family.' (32) Our Supreme Court made this statement in a case where the wife and husband and her children by a former husband lived together on the wife's premises, where all the property belonged to her. Although in reality her husband was living with her, still, legally, she was living with him and he was the head. The ownership of property makes little difference as to headship. The parent seems to need no other qualification than that of masculinity to make him head. Mr. Lex has that. He is the head. The rule is that the husband is the head of the family." (33) "In case of the husband's insanity (34) or death (35), or his abandonment of her (36) the law esteems the wife the head. As Mr. Lex is sane and living and still cleaving to his family, Mrs. Lex cannot be the head. So only one hundred dollars is exempt from the necessity of paying these claims." 46. Mr. Lex So the three hundred dollars was used to pay for the tobacco she abominated, the clothing she never had selected, and the medicine she never had used. These lessons as to the legal status of mother and child were becoming expensive. A few weeks after this little Dora was born, and the poor mother had heart and mind too full to think much about law. Besides, another grief had come to her through her daughter Jennie. Some time before this Mr. Lex had decided that a different education was needed by Jennie that that afforded by the public school, and so he sent her to a certain church school, where she was taught deportment and embroidery and little else. Mrs. Lex begged him not to send Jennie to this school, where the teaching was so opposed to the faith in which the family had been reared. Mr. Lex thundered out, "It is my duty as that child's guardian to select Mr. Lex 47 her school and to decide as to her tuition, and I shall not be deterred by your foolish whims." So Jennie was less with her mother than formerly and less influenced by her. At last, when she was nearly fourteen years old, she announced that she was soon to be married. Mrs. Lex told her that she was too young, that the lover was a dissipated man, and that it could never be allowed. Mr. Lex, hearing the discussion, was so annoyed at his wife's presuming to act as though she had authority over the girl, that he declared: "I am the one to give or refuse consent to my child's marriage (37). If you oppose it, that is a sure sign Jennie ought to marry the man, and I will consent. I shall be glad to get one eater out of the house, now that you have so improvidently added to the family another daughter." So Jennie, with her father's consent, was married on her fourteenth birthday. If she had waited four years until she was eighteen, she need not 48 Mr. Lex have had the consent of either parent or guardian. How bitter to Mrs. Lex was this lesson of her own powerlessness to prohibit this unfortunate marriage! Her husband's consent was all that the law required, and he seemed heedless as to the great responsibilities and burdens undertaken by his little fourteen-year-old daughter, now a wife. Mrs. Lex thought the State ought to prohibit entirely such early marriages, and that if the consent of any parent was required, a mother, who knows best the peril to such a child in marriage, should be authorized to consent or prohibit as well as the father. Nothing has been said concerning little Rob, who was now about twelve years old. He was so bright that his mother thought he might be a physician some day. She had lately taken a boarder to get money to pay for Rob's school clothes, but Mr. Lex collected the money from the boarder, as he was legally entitled to do, (38) and said that Rob must work in the store; that he had Mr. Lex 49 sent him to school for sixteen weeks already this year, which was all the law required, (39) and the rest of the year he must work. Mrs. Lex was glad enough that the State assumed some control over the child's education, but thought the required time was too short, and she looked and longed for some chance for Rob. Just then Providence intervened in the form of another relative. Cousin Rose, who lived in Michigan, wrote to Mrs. Lex, saying that if Rob could stay with her for two years to take the place of a son, who had just died, he could go to school and be well cared for. Mr. Lex said he could not go. Mrs. Lex said he ought to, for the sake of the education and the support. She was also afraid Rob would become a loafer, like John and his father, if he stayed with them, while in the Michigan home with her cousin he could learn to be an intelligent, industrious Christian gentleman. Mary now advised her mother to send Rob anyway. So she asked Mary to take 50 Mr. Lex him to Michigan, but Mr. Lex discovered Rob's absence the day of their flight and, dashing off, grabbed the boy at the railway station just before he boarded the train, and took him home, meanwhile calling Mary all the names which he felt she deserved, and telling her never to come near his family again. But Mary was not easily scared, for he had already done his worst to her. So she tried the plan a few weeks later and this time successfully. Mr. Lex knew that his wife had no legal right to do as she had done, for his alone was the right to decide upon the home for his children, but he was too lazy to exert himself more than to swear vengeance and threaten that by next week he would drag Rob home by the nape of his neck, but he didn't, and Rob was safe. Little Dora during this time had not been a happy baby. Perhaps her mother's troubles had influenced her prenatally towards sadness, and perhaps the prevalent irritation at home had so distressed the mother that Dora nursed sorrow. Mr. Lex 51 Mr. Lex considered her an unwelcome intruder, and said she cried so much he could not sleep. So he told his wife that Dora must be boarded out somewhere; that, according to the theories of some social reformers, strangers could do better for the child than the mother. He said that Mrs. Lex was too nervous to care well for her and that tomorrow he would take her to a baby farm where she could receive excellent care at a dollar and a half per week. Mrs. Lex pleaded that Dora was only six months old and just beginning her first summer, when it would be dangerous to put her on artificial food. "Just let her stay six months longer." But her husband said, "No;" he knew what was best, and he began to tell her more about his legal rights. Tomorrow the child must be ready for the baby farm. He would take her at noon. All that sad night Mrs. Lex debated as to what was her duty. Her own lack of control over her children never seemed more unjust. Mr. Lex chose 52 Mr. Lex the food and clothes for the children, punished them, medicated them, selected their schools and church, collected wages, selected the burial spot for the dead, decided about the duties of the living, consented to marriage, and now wanted to tear her baby away from her. His guardianship had resulted so injuriously to the other children that she feared the result to the baby. John would never again be strong, and was now a dissolute loafer; brave Mary, driven from home, worked very hard supporting her illegitimate child; Jennie had a drunken husband and a helpless, imbecile baby; and Daisy was in her grave. Only bright Rob was safe. He was still in Michigan. Why could not she go there too? Yes, she would go, she would run away just as soon as her husband left for the store after breakfast. She got money from Mary for the trip. She started, but found that the Michigan Central train she wanted to take did not leave till twelve o'clock. So she waited. Fatal delay! Mr. Lex 53 She saw her husband enter the station with an officer of the law. She was arrested for the abduction of a child, put into the Harrison Street Police Station, and the baby taken from her. She sent for young Mr. Smith and asked what this horrible charge meant. He explained that she was accused of stealing a child and that, if proved guilty, the maximum punishment was confinement in the county jail one year and a fine of two thousand dollars (40). Next morning at the hearing before the magistrate, Mrs. Lex admitted that she was trying to take Dora out of the State, but urged that Dora was too young to be put on artificial food and would die if left to the mercies of a baby farmer. Mrs. Lex was much excited and distressed. Mr. Lex calmly and in correct legal phraseology explained to the Court that he, her father, was the only person who had the right to select the child's home. The mother could not have that privilege. He said: "Although Dora is young, 54 Mr. Lex courts have frequently gone so far as to 'take nursing infants from the arms of innocent and unexceptionable mothers and place them in the hands of fathers to be reared by adulteresses with whom the fathers were living,' (41) because the father is the child's natural guardian and prima facie entitled to custody. (42) A father is entitled to the custody, nurture, and tuition of his child. (43) Even if Mrs. Lex had secured a divorce from me for my own fault and had been granted the custody of the child, this would not give her absolute power over the child. She would not then be in the position of the father. She could act only under the court's direction as any other appointed guardian might. Under the circumstances of divorce, even, our Supreme Court has said when the mother had attempted to take the child out of the State: 'This cannot be tolerated, and must be guarded against.' (44) Many circumstances might curtail the mother's guardianship under order of court, even her remarriage (45). But a father's remarriage Mr. Lex 55 has never been held sufficient to divest him of guardianship." Mr. Lex concluded with this surprising bit of legal information: "Even taking Dora to ride in the street car down to the station contrary to my desire was illegal, as our Supreme Court has decided that a mother has no authority to give permission for a child to have a ride, because the mother is not entitled to disposing power over the person of the child. (46) Of course, I desire to show clearly my own absolute authority over the child, but I also intend to benefit my child. I desire to separate Dora and her mother, as my wife is too emotional to bring up a child." She seemed emotional then. She was sobbing. The baby too seemed emotional. Though in her father's arms, she was crying vigorously to get to her mother. To quiet the child the Police Magistrate allowed Mrs. Lex to take her for a few moments, after which he announced his decision. He said: "The law is clear that Mr. Lex, as the 56 Mr. Lex natural guardian of his child, is entitled to her custody. It does not appear that he is a drunkard or licentious or cruel or a lunatic or unfit to care for her, and even if he was, this Court would have no authority to appoint a new guardian to act in the place of him, the natural guardian. Mrs. Lex is legally guilty of abduction, but there is no desire to make this matter unduly severe nor to subject her to the heavy penalty incurred. As there is no objection, the charge will be changed to that of disorderly conduct and she will be fined one dollar. The child must go to the place selected by the father." Then Mrs. Lex, instead of being grateful for the small fine, was guilty of contempt of court; for she vowed that she would not let Dora leave her. She said: "That is a cruel, unjust decision. No one would be guilty of so deciding against the beasts of the field or the fowls of the air. Who would take the nursing colt from his mother and give him to his father to rear, saying the father was his natural guardian? Mr. Lex 57 Who would take the brooding mother bird from her little ones? Better be a beast or bird than a human mother if one desires justice. Mr. Lex is not the natural guardian of this baby, but I, the mother, am. Everything this child is, I, under God, made her. Everything she possesses I gave her." She continued to speak excitedly, her voice shrill and at times broken with grief: "What has her father, he whom you call her natural guardian, done for her? Has he given of his own blood and bone and muscle to form her body and to nourish her from day to day, diminishing to just that extent his own strength and vigor? Has he washed and dressed and soothed her not only during the day but through the night as well? Not one of these things has he done, but I, the mother, have done them all. What blasphemous presumption then for him to claim to be the natural guardian! I am the God-ordained, natural guardian of this baby, law or no law. This is a question of morals, and I shall not let 58 Mr. Lex my baby go." She spoke with the courage of despair. The Judge seemed strangely moved, but Mrs. Lex was a little hysterical and evidently had forgotten that the Harrison Street Police Court was a court not of morals but of law. Mr. Lex, however, remembered and pointed to the section of the statute giving him sole control. That strengthened the Magistrate's courage, and he directed the bailiffs to take the child. Then ensued a distressing struggle. Mrs. Lex clung to Dora with all the force of her weak arms, and the baby clung to her, crying with fright. It took some time for the bailiffs to get the child away. They tried to be gentle, and did not want to tear the child into pieces. The Judge was so sympathetic he wiped his eyes and did not fine her for contempt of court. Neither did he fine the baby, who was also vigorously expressing her contempt of court. He was so compassionate! Almost everyone in the room sympathized with Mrs. Lex. The flashily dressed Mr. Lex 59 girls from Custom House Place said they were glad they had no such husbands; the thieves and pickpockets waiting their turn, the professional bailors, and the lawyers all showed signs of emotion. A stony-hearted bootblack, whose dirty face showed several streaks where the rare tears had washed away the grime, piped up indignantly, "I'll give my pile towards buying the tar for that father if some one else will come down with the feathers." But the law was on the side of Mr. Lex. Sympathy was on her side, yet it was not then sufficient for Mrs. Lex. When at last the bailiffs had torn the child away the mother fainted. Her lessons on the legal status of mother and child were wearing on her. Mr. Lex then turned the baby over to the representative of the baby farm, and took his wife home. For hours she seemed utterly stunned, but rallied a little when, next day, after Mr. Lex had gone to the store, she had a note from Mary asking her to come to her at once. 60 Mr. Lex What miracle greeted her eyes? There, in Mary's little cottage with Mary and Mary's child, sat Dora, hungry Dora. What did it mean? Mary explained that she had sat in the court room veiled in black, had heard the decision, had followed the baby farmer to her place, and soon had appeared in the back yard, where a dozen little ones were wailing in chorus. When the attendant stepped inside, Mary seized Dora and was in the alley before the attendant again appeared, and Dora had been with Mary all night. "Now mother, " she said, "this is the safest place in the world for Dora. Father hates me so bitterly he never walks on this street. He keeps the law and makes you miserable. I am going to break it to make you happy, or rather keep a higher law than man's, that is God's. When God gave you food for Dora, it was just as though He commanded from the heavens, 'Feed your child.' You should obey this law. You can easily come over here after breakfast, lunch, and dinner to nurse Mr. Lex 61 her; father won't miss you for he will be at the store, and I'll do all the rest if you can trust me." Trust Mary! Yes, she could! And she said such grateful, loving words as warmed poor Mary's heart. Mary said to her then: "I can appreciate now, since my boy is growing older, how mothers love their children. At first I was too young to realize my disgrace. Then later, I felt resentment toward my child as though he were the cause of my shame. But now I am learning that he is a blessing instead of a punishment. He is a constant warning and protection against similar wrongdoing on my part, should I ever be tempted, and a constant inspiration to make the most of my life for his sake. I am beginning to dread the ignorance his frequent questions may soon discover and I am beginning my studies just where I dropped them in the grammar school. In this city, as he grows up, he can secure a good education free; and should he want more after the high school is passed, he and I 62 Mr. Lex can work for that. I shall not let him feel that his birth makes it impossible for him to succeed, but I shall tell him of Alexander Hamilton, Henry M. Stanley and many others who each began life under a cloud as he did and conquered a place in the world by ability and industry." Now that Mary had begun, she told about other thoughts which had been filling her mind as she worked alone. "Sometimes I think there was a mistake in our Creator's planning and that both parties to such a wrong should have a child sent to them, not as a public curse to bring them deserved shame, but as a holy blessing to purify their lives. I have even thought with pity of the father of my boy, who has no soft baby arms around his neck, no tender baby lips pressed to his cheek, no slender, satin-smooth fingers clinging to his hand, no soft yielding little body to press close to him, no child with awakening mental and spiritual powers to lift him up. Perhaps if he had he would not have grown so wicked as he Mr. Lex 63 now is. So, appreciating now the blessing of a little child and knowing how much you must love your baby, I got Dora for you." It seemed strange that the baby farmer neglected to count her babies for several days, and then neglected to report the loss for several weeks, and that then Mr. Lex was ashamed to tell and Mrs. Lex felt under no obligation to disclose Dora's hiding place. But Mr. Lex knew he was legally right, and that eased his conscience. Dora got along well in Mary's plain and quiet home. One day Mary said: "Mother, I don't think the laws are fair. Here you have always been good, and yet you have suffered so much through father's having sole authority over your children, while I, who was a bad girl, may God forgive me, have my baby safe, no husband to torture me, no father to torture him and I think I am having a better time than you are. You, the mother of legitimate children, ought to have as much joy in and authority over your children, as I, the mother of an illegitimate child." 64 Mr. Lex "Why, Mary," said Mrs. Lex, "I never thought of making such a comparison between the authority of the mother of an illegitimate child, and of one born in lawful wedlock. But what you say is true." "Then too," continued Mary, "although I work so hard for small pay; though the neighbors ignore me and churches might not welcome me; yet I am not a slave like you. But if I should now marry my boy's father, the boy would be legitimated and his father would at once have sole control over him. Some weeks ago his father did ask me to marry him. If he had come three years ago, I would gladly have done it, but now I see what he is. I dared not give my boy such a father. I said no. I think he wanted to share in my little home here since his fortune has all been dissipated. So I am more free than you, at least during the first ten years of my child's life. Then the law begins its injustice to me. The father of my child, who never shared in his care during the child's early years, Mr. Lex 65 who could not be forced by law to pay over five hundred and fifty dollars for his support during these ten years if the verdict were the highest possible, and who, as an actual fact, never gave one cent for or saw my child, can, when the ten years is past, step up up the Circuit Court with a petition for the custody of my child, alleging that I am unsuitable (47). I am afraid a man judge and men jurors would all decide that I was unsuitable because I was wrong once." "Don't worry about that," said Mrs. Lex comfortingly, "he won't love your child enough to want him." "But," said Mary, "then the boy will be nearly ready to earn wages; and whether he loves him or not he might covet his services; and what solace would I have during my old age, I who have faced scorn and poverty for my child? That is a cruel law; and if it is not changed before my boy is ten, I will move to Colorado, where women are politically equal to men. But I believe there must be changes here. 66 Mr. Lex Things have changed since 1845. Then the father of an illegitimate child might demand possession of the child and upon refusal be no longer liable on the bond he had given for its support." (48) Mrs. Lex doubted the possibility of ever changing these laws, but admitted that her respect for man-made laws was diminishing. Mary urged her mother to get a divorce so she could have the custody of her children decreed to her. The daughter perhaps felt more indignant toward her father just then because he had collected some of the money due her from one of her best customers. He had sued the customer and had secured the usual judgment, the Justice stating that the earnings of minors (she was not yet eighteen) belonged to the father. It was a bitter experience to see her money go into the pockets of the father who had turned her out of the house. As a result she and her child had been reduced to very plain fare for two weeks. Mr. Lex 67 Young Smith said to her later that he wished she had told him and let him fight it. He claimed that her father's expelling her from the home amounted to her emancipation from her liability as a minor. And yet there was a law (49) by which children even when of age were obliged to support poor parents; and if Mr. Lex had not got the money away from her by one method, he might have got it by the other. But Mary was young and could earn more money, and her trouble did not make her meek but inspired her to retaliation. She asked Smith about the divorce so her mother could have control of the children. He said Mrs. Lex had no legal ground. Mr. Lex was not licentious, nor a drunkard, nor a bigamist, nor had he struck her, nor attempted to take her life, nor deserted her; (50) nor could she even bring a suit for separate maintenance as they were still under the same roof. So, with the hope of securing the control of her children gone, Mrs. Lex continued to bear her burden. 68 Mr. Lex Some weeks after this either the unexplained loss of Dora, never confided to his wife, or some hereditary trait caused Mr. Lex to act so strangely and wildly that the neighbors thought he was insane, and were so frightened that they had him sent to the detention hospital. At the trial of his sanity among other eccentric freaks which were related were his actions toward the members of his family in exercising his authority as guardian entitled to the custody and control of the children. Mr. Lex defended himself with considerable skill. He admitted that recently he might have done a few things to the neighbors which the law did not allow, but said that in his relations with his family he had followed the law strictly. He read from the statutes and cited one case after another from the reports. Lawyer Smith spoke on the other side and very severely. He said: "No man who was sane would think of enforcing those laws so strictly. They have come down to us from an ancient Mr. Lex 69 time when conditions were different, when women and children were kept behind walls for their own protection from bands of roving destroyers, when the mailed and armed father was the chivalrous guardian of all. To him, the strongest, the owner of property, the warrior, was full authority given. "At the time these laws originated no one contemplated that a father might be as improvident and as incapable as was Mr. Lex, nor could anyone have foreseen the changing position of woman and her gradual development into a stronger person more fitted to rule her children then was the shut-in woman of centuries ago, who never went beyond her walls, could not read, and thought but as a child. These laws, under which Mr. Lex acted, originated long ago and have not been changed to keep up with the spirit of the times. Many do not realize their possible injustice because many husbands and fathers have kind hearts and never think of living up so strictly to their ancient legal rights. If only for one day every 70 Mr. Lex husband in Illinois should do these things done by Mr. Lex, there would be such a rebellion against their authority by all women that we men would find less complaining in Tophet." At this point several married men present nodded significantly. Mr. Smith said, in concluding his speech: "In the coming Legislature, of which I expect to be a member, I shall do all that one man can to repeal such unjust, cruel laws and to bring equal rights to women. So long as one woman can be made to endure such wrongs as Mrs. Lex has borne, all under the sanction of law, then the happiness, the liberties, the rights of all women are endangered. I shall want these laws changed for man's sake too. Uncontrolled, irresponsible power is often the greatest curse to him who wields it. Let us, as men, put away from us such opportunities for cruelty and injustice and give mothers equal power with fathers. But with theses laws as they now stand no sane man should think of Mr. Lex 71 enforcing them. That Mr. Lex did is sure proof of his insanity." Mr. Smith did speak sharply, but the jury seemed to agree with him and soon returned with a verdict that Mr. Lex was insane, and the Judge had an order entered for his commitment to the asylum. The Judge said: "In view of all the facts the verdict of the jury seems a right one; but my young friend Mr. Smith is a little too severe in his objections to the law relating to the father's unlimited control over the child. It is true the State makes the father guardian and custodian. Yet the State retains some supervision, and there are many statutes for the child's benefit limiting paternal control, as it existed under the old common law; for example: the statutes forbidding certain employments (51), forbidding the giving of tobacco to minors under sixteen years of age (52), compelling sixteen weeks' school attendance (53), prescribing penalties for willful cruelty (54), for endangering life or health (55) and for abandonment 72 Mr. Lex donment of a child under one year of age (56). In addition to this restriction on paternal authority, the father cannot apprentice the child without the mother's consent (57), nor remove the family from the homestead without her consent unless he has furnished another home (58), nor dispose of the custody and tuition of his child by will if the mother be suitable and desirous of acting as guardian (59), nor deprive her of her child's custody if he is a lunatic. (60). "It is being more generally recognized that the mother is intimately connected with the child. In a recent decision, Allaire vs. St. Luke's Hospital, 76 Ill., App. 540, the Court held that the child before birth was a part of the mother and not a separate entity. Public opinion approves considering a very young child a mother's special care, and many fathers, recognizing the mother's peculiar fitness for deciding matters affecting a child's welfare, never think of exercising their own legal authority. Even when there is a Mr. Lex Mr. Lex 73 contest between the parents, and judges have the discretion to award the custody of a child to whichever of the parents seems best fitted for the duty, judges often select the mother for very young children. Perhaps the discretion of men judges may occasionally lead them to grant the custody to unworthy fathers, but with the thought before them that the child's good is the end sought, judges have often felt free to recognize the mother's ability. In view of this progress there is ground for hope of greater extension of mothers' privileges." The Judge seemed much interested in this matter, although it did not directly affect the case at bar. He went on to say, "Some of the annoyances which Mr. Lex has caused were the fault, not of law, but of industrial conditions. "If Mrs. Lex had been in the store receiving pay for groceries, she would have had some ready cash with which to purchase supplies and to exercise her judgement; and if at the same time Mr. Lex had been forced to do housework 74 Mr. Lex at home and care for the children with no salary, he might have been obliged to submit to her judgement in many things. But it was not so. Mrs. Lex, like nine-tenths of the women in the United States, did all her own work and had no wages. Without money she was powerless to carry out her own wishes. Women must have some financial resources before they can ever stand equal to their husbands in the control of their children. If women continued financially dependent, they would still be inferior. "As to the specific acts done by Mr. Lex, none of them were criminal, none of them would be sufficient ground for a divorce. Apparently they were all sanctioned by the law of this State. All men must be ashamed that the severest portions of these laws have not been changed and the burdens of the so-called weaker sex lightened. Mr. Lex has been law-abiding to the point of atrocity and insanity. He must go to the asylum." This was a blow to Mr. Lex. To be Mr. Lex 75 incarcerated in an asylum for supporting too well the constitutions and law he had sworn to uphold when he was admitted to the bar, dazed him. When Mrs. Lex visited him at the asylum, he seemed scarcely to know her. The physicians told her he had been irresponsible for a long time. Then she forgave him all, and remembered him only as te tender, loving husband he had been years ago. In a few months he died and the only mourner was the woman whom he had so cruelly wronged. Mrs. Lex now carries on the store. John, who is now trying to form better habits, is her helper. Rob is now back in Chicago finishing at the high school. Jennie has been divorced from her drunken husband, the Court allowing her to keep the two children, one of whom is an imbecile. She is embroidering for the Woman's Exchange, and is helping Mary sew. Mary took them all into her little cottage. Mrs. Lex, John, Rob, Jennie and her two children, little Dora and Mary's child now comprise the family. 76 Mr. Lex Timid Mrs. Lex is now less timid; and one day she startled Mary by saying: "I have thought many times about what the Judge and Mr. Smith said at your father's trial. The laws ought to be changed, but I don't believe they will be until the majority of women, seeing what sad things are possible under the law, work for and demand changes. I fear that men alone will not so clearly see the need. some men surely know about these injustices; for they are judges, jurors, police magistrates, constables and hear many of these sad cases; and yet they seem too fond of power or too indifferent to our sufferings to make the necessary changes. To the individual woman, as to me, they often try to be merciful, but the law forbids their being just, and they forget that the law unchanged makes it possible for every woman to suffer as I have suffered. Very few women have learned in the bitter school of experience as I have about the legal status of mother and child. Yet, as all women may become mothers, there is a chance that Mr. Lex 77 all may suffer. I do not pretend that my wrongs are the only ones. I know that wage-earning women receive less than men for the same work; that many schools of technical training are still closed to women; that custom keeps women away from many remunerative employments, and that home women do not have wages. "All this injustice should cease. Yet my sufferings have been from another cause. The law gave me no control over the children who were part of my being, when I, next to God, was their creator. So I think especially of this. Nor am I the only woman who has suffered from this cause. Many women have confided their troubles to me, and I find that in many homes mothers and children are being wronged through the fathers' ignorant yet unlimited, domineering control. While my wrongs were greater than some of theirs, yet I was in no way better fitted to endure them. I was only an average woman. If I had been unusually brilliant and had been able to win fame 78 Mr. Lex and fortune with pen or brush or voice, I could have helped myself and my children better. Or if I had been very beautiful, admiring men, jurors and judges, might have strained a point in my favor, especially if I had also been fascinatingly wicked. "My love for my children, which grew to be the strongest force in my life, even that did not make me noticeably different from the majority of mothers. I did no more for my children, sacrificed no more for them, than the majority of mothers do or are willing to do. I was only an average mother. So I believe other women, all mothers, would feel as I do and be glad to help. Cousin Jane and Cousin Rose, who knew our troubles, felt for us; and other women, if they should learn about such things, surely would not be so indifferent as men have been, but would unite with us in securing permanent changes." "But mother," said Mary, "what can you and I do? We work so hard every day that we have no time left for any Mr. Lex 79 thing else. Would I, the mother of an illegitimate child, be listened to in any woman's club or church? I could not even use correct English, I, a mother before I was fifteen years old. I would not be good enough to speak from the lofty standpoint of unassailed virtue nor would I be bad enough to make an interesting, horrid example. My story, ruined before fifteen, supported child ever since, is too commonplace to win attention. If I could relate a thrilling tale of vice, of years of evil, I would still be welcomed cordially to the beautifully-kept reformatories of the most charitable, and the kind ladies of the Board might enjoy hearing my experiences. They would feel very complacent about having furnished me a comfortable place in which to die, and would be so busy at that that they would have little time to change laws. So I am not good enough and not bad enough to be an attractive or popular speaker. And you timid little mother, with your weak voice and bent back and shabby clothes, would they listen to 80 Mr. Lex you, especially if some one should tell that you were once imprisoned for stealing a child and found guilty? No, women generally would not listen. If they thought they were to discover such sad things, they would shut their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears for fear their own comfort with indulgent husbands would be disturbed." "You are bitter, Mary," said Mrs. Lex, "but women's hearts are kind. You and I cannot speak or go to meetings, that is true; we have no powerful friends, no gift of language; but the time is coming when women of education and wealth and leisure and social prestige will take up the cause of women, other women, all women. Just now some of them are more interested, apparently, in 'society,' clubs, Hindoo philosophy, whist, or the heathen or drunkards, criminals or incompetents. They are busy studying, entertaining, reforming, curing. They are only sleeping on the question of women's needs. They will wake up soon to the injustice possible to all their sex, and will begin Mr. Lex 8I a work greater than that of charity or of philanthropy. They will begin to secure justice. Then mothers will be equal to fathers." TABLE OF LEGAL CITATIONS. Abbreviations used: R.S.--Revised Statutes of Illinois. 162 Ill., 361.--Volume 162 of the Illinois Supreme Court Reports, page 361. Ill. App.--Illinois Appellate Court Reports. Am. & Eng. Ency. of Law.--American and English Encyclopedia of Law. First Edition. 1. Chap. 68, Sec. 9, R. S. 2. Chap. 148, Sec. 1, R. S. 3. Hyman vs. Harding, 162 Ill., 361. 4. Garfield vs. Scott, 33 Ill. App., 319. 5. Smith vs. Slocum, 62 Ill., 358. 6. Barrett vs. Riley, 42 Ill. App., 260. McMahon vs. Sankey, 133 Ill., 648. Magee vs. Magee, 65 Ill., 255. 7. Capek vs. Kropik, 129 Ill., 515, Koster vs. Miller, 149 Ill., 200. 8. Bradley vs. Sattler, 54 Ill. App., 506, 156 Ill., 608. 9. Temple vs. Freed, 21 Ill. App., 239. 10. Woodyatt vs. Connell, 38 Ill. App., 481, Chap. 68, Sec. 16, R. S. 11. Chap. 38, Sec. 237, R. S. 12. Chap. 38, Sec. 237, R. S. 13. Chap. 17, Sec. 8, R. S. Mr. Lex 83 14. Chap. 17, Sec. 14, R. S. 15. Vetten vs. Wallace, 39 Ill. App., 390. 16. Glidden vs. Nelson, 15 Ill. App., 297. 17. Chap. 68, Sec. 24, R. S. 18. Ford vs. McKay, 55 Ill., 119. 19. 21 Am. & Eng. Ency. of Law, 1009 and 1016. 20. Grable vs. Margrave, 4 Ill., 372. 21. White vs. Murtlandt, 71 Ill., 251. Garretson vs. Becker, 52 Ill. App., 255. Bayles vs. Burgard, 48 Ill. App., 371. 22. Ball vs. Bruce, 21 Ill., 162. 23. Hobson vs. Fullerton, 4 Ill. App., 284. 24. Scharf vs. People, 134 Ill., 240, and cases there cited. Maynard vs. People, 135 Ill., 430. Coleman vs. Frum, 4 Ill., 378. 25. Hudson vs. King Brothers, 23 Ill. App., 122. 26. Argument of E. H. & N. E. Gary in Walcott vs. Hoffman, 30 Ill. App., 79. 27. Cole vs. Bentley, 26 Ill. App., 260. Walcott vs. Hoffman, 30 Ill. App., 77. 84 Mr. Lex 28. Hudson vs. King Brothers, 23 Ill. App., 122 Glaubensklee vs. Low, 29 Ill. App., 413 29. Chap. 68, Sec. 15, R. S. 30. Chap. 52, Sec. 13, R. S. 31. John V. Farwell & Co. vs. Martin, 65 Ill. App., 57. 32. Clinton vs. Kidwell, 82 Ill., 427 33. Barrett vs. Riley, 42 Ill., App., 260. Tyler vs. Sanborn, 128 Ill., 144. 34. Temple vs. Freed, 21 Ill. App., 239. 35. Bradley vs. Sattler, 156 Ill., 608. 36. Chap, 68, Sec. 16, R. S. 37. Chap. 89, Sec. 13, R. S. 38. Parker vs. Parker, 52 Ill. App., 333. 39. Chap. 122, Sec. 313, R. S. 40. Chap. 38, Sec. 2, R. S. 41. Miner vs. Miner, 1 1 Ill., 50. 17 Am. & Eng. Ency. of Law, 364. 42. People vs. Porter, 23 Ill. App., 196; Umlauf vs. Umlauf, 128 Ill., 383. Perry vs. Carmichael, 95 Ill., 530; Wright vs. Bennett, 7 Ill., 587; Bedford vs. Bedford, 136 Ill., 361. 43. Chap. 64, Sec. 4, R. S. Mr. Lex 85 44. Miner vs. Miner, 1 1 Ill., 51. 45. 17 Am. & Eng. Ency. of L., 365; See opinion of Chief Justice Breese in Miner vs. Miner, 1 1 Ill., 43. 46. Pierce vs. Millay, 62 Ill., 134. 47. Chap. 17, Sec. 13, R. S. 48. Wright vs. Bennett, 7 Ill., 587. 49. Chap. 107, Sec. 2, R. S. 50. Chap. 40, Sec. 1, R. S. 51. Chap. 38, Sec. 42, a. R. S. 52. Chap. 38, Sec. 42, f. R. S. 53. Chap. 122, Sec. 313, R. S. 54. Chap. 38, Sec. 53, R. S. 55. Chap. 38, Sec. 42, d. R. S. 56. Chap. 38, Sec. 42, h. R. S. 57. Chap. 9, Sec. 2, R. S. 58. Chap. 68, Sec. 16, R. S. 59. Chap. 64, Sec. 5, R. S. 60. Chap. 86, Sec. 5, R. S. 61. Stolz vs. Doering, 112 Ill., 239. REVELL'S POPULAR RELIGIOUS SERIES Issued Weekly, $13 per Annum Entered at Chicago Post Office as Second Class Matter No. 185. January 31, 1899 Bridget's Sisters A Play By Catharine Waugh McCulloch BRIDGET'S SISTERS OR The Legal Status of Illinois Women in 1868 BY CATHARINE WAUGH MCCULLOCH FOR SALE BY ILLINOIS EQUAL SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION 934 FINE ARTS BLDG., CHICAGO TWENTY-FIVE CENTS Copyright 1911 by Catharine Waugh McCulloch (Dramatic and all other rights reserved) INTRODUCTORY NOTE An incident very similar to the one shown in this play occurred in the life of Mrs. Myra Bradwell about the year 1868. She was garnished by a saloonkeeper to pay a debt due him by a drunkard whose wife had left with Mrs. Bradwell for safe keeping some of her hard-earned wages. When Mrs. Bradwell was forced by law to pay these savings to the saloonkeeper she and other public-spirited women secured the passage of a law making a wife's wages her own property and no longer the property of her husband. These same people were active in the organizing of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association and the two matters are here linked together. The Mrs. Bradley of the play is in no way like Mrs. Bradwell, for Mrs. Bradwell's legal education would have made it unnecessary for her to ask so many legal questions as did Mrs. Bradley and Mrs. Bradwell and her husband, too, had long been suffragists. Mrs. Bradley represents the home-loving type of woman. The other women in the play represent the different types of women, who, with a common sisterly spirit, saw their own duty toward their helpless women neighbors. The men of the play are average men, no one of whom desires any harm to women in general. A discussion of the legal situation, however, arouses some of them to action. The legal condition of women before this time and the gradual changes which followed are briefly shown in a note at the close of the play. C.W. McC. Bridget's Sisters (A Play in Two Acts) Time—November 1868 - Place—Chicago, Ill. Persons MARY BRADLEY......A Home-Loving Woman JOHN BRADLEY......Husband of Mary BRIDGET O'FLANNIGAN......A Washerwoman PATRICK O'FLANNIGAN......A Drunkard, Husband of Bridget MR. SUMMONS......A Constable MR. COMMON LAW......A Justice of the Peace, Talkative But Accurate MR. VULTURE......A Saloon Keeper MR. SHARP......His Attorney, Only Insisting on His Client's Legal Rights MRS. PIOUS } MRS. ADOREMEN } Various Employers of Bridget MRS. TAKERIGHTS } MRS. EQUITY } MRS. BITTER } Act I. SCENE: In late afternoon in November. Front hall in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Bradley. A large clock is in the hall. Mrs. Bradley enters talking with Bridget, who, with her shawl over her head, is ready to go home. MRS. BRADLEY: You have had a hard day's work at washing, Bridget and I will pay you more than your regular price of one dollar. I will make you a little present of fifty cents more. BRIDGET: (Taking the money) May all the Saints bless your swate soul! You are always so generous to a poor body, and I thank you kindly. (She courtesies, then takes the money to the clock and puts it in an envelope there). 5 MRS. BRADLEY: (Smilingly) Well, Bridget, how much is there now in this bank of yours? BRIDGET: This makes $15.00 here in the clock and I can soon get every one of my darlints some warrum shoes and woolen underclothes. I must buy yarn so I can knit some stockings for their father, too. Sure mum, I can not save much from my wages. I use every cent other people pay me for food to eat and for rent, and sometimes Pat gets away my pay when he is raging drunk, and that's pretty hard. MRS. BRADLEY: Your husband will never get that $15.00. The old clock tells no stories and you know you can trust me never to tell anyone. BRIDGET: Yes, I know you are the truest friend I have, and I laugh inside every time I think about how old Pat is fooled. MRS. BRADLEY: (A sound of the baby crying a little startles her) Oh, there is baby, not quiet yet. Excuse me, Bridget. Let yourself out by the front door. It locks itself. I must have baby fast asleep before his papa comes to dinner. Goodbye. (She hurries out and is heard humming to the baby while Bridget talks) BRIDGET: "Tis a rich woman I am with $15; more than I have seen for many a day. Perhaps I might buy little Pat some shoes to-night on my way home. How cunning the little darlint would look. It might soften up the heart of old Pat himself. Mostly he has been a good husband and niver lays on me the weight of a finger or gives me a cross worrud when he is sober. But he is hardly ever sober. I have begged that old saloon keeper, Mr. Vulture, not to sell him another droop, but the tears of a poor woman don't count. (Wipes her eyes) I could stand Pat's batings (?) all right, for he says the law is, that a husband can bate his wife if he uses a stick no thicker than his thumb, and tho Pat has a thick thumb I must obey the law. But what I can't endure, and it's worse than the batings is to see the blessed children hungry or cold. Well, well, I ought to stop thinking about my troubles and remember my blessings. It is good I am strong and can work for the five children. Bless their bright eyes! How lucky I am to have 6 five of them to love me. Yes, I will get those shoes for little Pat. (She rattles some money out of the envelope into her hand and puts the envelope back into the clock. She goes out) (Mrs. Bradley is humming more softly, then stops. Mr. Bradley enters a moment later. Mrs. Bradley runs in to meet her husband) MR. BRADLEY: Good evening, Mary. Has this been a blue Monday for you? Or is washday one glorious carnival of rest? (He takes off his outer clothes, combs his hair and brushes his clothing while talking) MRS. BRADLEY: Well, not exactly a day of idleness, John, but a happy day. Baby is in bed and dinner is ready and I am at peace with the world. We can have a lovely evening with our music and that new book. You can read to me while I wash up the dishes. Washday is never a hard day for me, because Bridget is so competent, and so very grateful, too, for all I try to do to help her. Poor Bridget! I am so comfortably situated here, looking after this pretty little home, with a chance to enjoy the baby every day, and all day long, and knowing that you are coming home at night, cheerful, ready to help me if I am tired. When I compare my lot with poor Bridget's, who works away from home day after day, to earn enough to feed and clothe her family and yet can not be with them to enjoy their cunning ways, I think I am the most fortunate of women, and through the gratuity of my generous and loyal husband. (At the last of this sentence she takes him by his coat lapels and gazes fondly at him) MR. BRADLEY: But, Mary, you legally deserve all you get. (Laughing) The law only provides that I furnish you with clothing, shelter and food, and that is about all you do get. You put in all your time, bring up the baby, and make this home so delightful, that you do not really receive any gratuity. You only receive what the law would really force me to give you. (He puts on his slippers) MRS. BRADLEY: It is lovely of you to say that: but poor Bridget deserves it just as much as I. It's a pity that the law don't bring her the things you say the law brings me. I believe you 7 put in a lot of extras that no law would mention. Bridget's case, of course, is an exception. Most of us women are taken care of tenderly by devoted husbands and we need never bother our minds about law or rights. I have all the rights I want, with my dear baby, my chivalrous husband and my comfortable home. Other women are also contented. MR. BRADLEY: Oh, Mary, I have my doubts about that. What about those suffrage women in New York and Massachusetts. Have they not been discontented for the past twenty years? There must be some trouble somewhere. MRS. BRADLEY: I read about some women who are talking about their rights all the time, just like men. Yes, some are even so foolish as to want to vote. I can not imagine how any woman with a loving husband like mine could ever have any use for the ballot. MR. BRADLEY: I am afraid you will make me egotistical if you keep praising me for the few little things I do. (Patting her on the shoulder) (A knock is heard at the door, Mrs. Bradley goes to the door, a hum of voices is heard and she comes in followed by Constable Summons) MRS. BRADLEY: (Distressed) Oh John, dear! This man is a constable. He says that he has some papers to serve on me. I am being sued somewhere, and I tell you I don't owe anybody a cent. My books are in perfect order and I always pay cash. CONSTABLE: Excuse me, ma'am, you don't quite understand. You are merely garnisheed in a case where Mr. Vulture has sued Bridget O'Flannigan's husband. MRS. BRADLEY: But what in the world have I got to do with a saloon keeper, Mr. Vulture? I never drank a drop of intoxicating liquors. You know I didn't, John. Tell him, John, that I never touch the stuff. MR., BRADLEY: Why, Mr. Summons, of course my wife never drinks. What is this all about anyhow? CONSTABLE: Why, I think I heard the Justice say when he issued this summons that O'Flannigan owed Vulture $50.00 for drinks, 8 and that there is some money due him from Mrs. Bradley. MRS. BRADLEY: Indeed there is not, for Patrick O'Flannigan never did a stroke of work for me. If he was like his hard-working, industrious wife he might be of some value to somebody; but he is so good-for-nothing I do not believe anybody ever owed him a cent. CONSTABLE: This was something about Mrs. O'Flannigan, I think. You have some of her wages here. MRS. BRADLEY: But this is not his. He will never touch a cent of Bridget's wages. I have given her my word of honor, and he will never have her money as long as I live. Will he, John? MR. BRADLEY: Certainly not. CONSTABLE: Well, I can't say how the case will come out, Ma'am, but you will have to come to court and explain things to the Justice. Sorry to trouble you. Good evening. (Constable goes out) MRS. BRADLEY: Did you ever hear of such an outrageous, wicked constable! The idea of thinking he could threaten me into paying over Bridget's money! That money is saved in the clock and will stay saved. Must we have a lawyer? MR. BRADLEY: No, I think not. My poor little wife, I will go down with you to court and see what there is to this. I know the Justice. He is a kind hearted man and wants to do the fair thing. We need no lawyer to see the legal rights of the question. It is plain enough that Bridget's money is her's and not Pat's. MRS. BRADLEY: Of course. There cannot be any legal right for Mr. O'Flannigan and Mr. Vulture to take the money that Bridget earned here. It would be wicked. I am perfectly disgusted with that justice and the constable and the saloon keeper, and, of course, with Patrick O'Flannigan. It is terrible. Only a minute ago we were so happy together, looking forward to our lovely quiet evening by ourselves, and now this trouble comes. Why is it that innocent people get mixed up with other people's troubles? If we behave ourselves that ought to keep us free from outside suffering. But come on out to dinner and you can think up something , I know. You are so clever. You can argue with the judge and explain what is right. You can save that $15.00 for Bridget and her children. 9 SCENE II Court room of Mr. Common Law, a Justice of the Peace. The Justice sits behind a table which has a half dozen large calf bound law books. Mr. and Mrs. Bradley are near one end of the table, and at the other end are Mr. Vulture, the saloonkeeper, and Mr. Sharp. Woman patrons of Bridget sit behind the Bradleys, Mrs. Adoremen, daintily dressed in the height of style for 1868, Mrs. Pious in Quaker clothing, Mrs. Equity, sensibly dressed, Mrs. Bitter, plainly dressed, and Mrs. Takerights, plump, handsome and richly dressed. Bridget is seated near them, knitting a stocking, and throughout the proceedings seems peacefully unconcerned. The people come in one by one and the constable hunts up chairs for them.) JUSTICE COMMON LAW: Case No. 1209, Vulture vs. O'Flannigan. Mary Bradley, garnishee. Are the parties present? (Mrs. Bradley and Mr. Vulture rise) BOTH: Yes, your honor. JUSTICE: Well, put on your case. who are your witnesses, Mr. Sharp. SHARP: My only witnesses are Mr. Vulture and Mrs. Bradley. JUSTICE: You may rise and be sworn. Lift up your right hands. (Repeats rapidly). You do solemnly promise by the ever living God, that the testimony you shall give in the cause now on trial shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the whole truth, so help you God. (They both bow the head and sit down) MR. SHARP: I offer in evidence the record of the judgment in favor of Mr. Vulture against Patrick O'Flannigan, case No. 1167 on your Honor's docket and the execution which was issued thereon, with the constable's return upon said execution showing no property found and no part satisfied. Now, Mr. Vulture, you may take the stand and tell the court about this case. VULTURE: Well, your honor, Mr. O'Flannigan has been buying drinks for a long while at my saloon and the bill ran up to 10 $50.00 and I sued him, your honor remembers, and got a judgment. MR. SHARP: That's all right, but tell now about the garnisheeing of Mrs. Bradley. MR. VULTURE: Well, I heard one of the O'Flannigan children say on the street one day: "My mother is going to buy us all some new shoes when she gets her money from Mrs. Bradley," and so I says to the youngster, "How much money has Mrs. Bradley got of your mother's?" and she said, "Oh, lots - maybe a million dollars. Enough to buy shoes, anyhow." So I guess she may have enough to pay this bill. SHARP: That is all Mr. Vulture. (Just then the door opens and Patrick O'Flannigan stalks in. He is sober but mad) PATRICK: And what is a respectable woman like Bridget O'Flannigan doing here. JUSTICE: Order, please, your wife is interested in this law suit and you must not disturb the proceedings. PATRICK: (with a reverential bow) Excuse me, your honor but cannot some one tell me what a court has to do with Bridget. JUSTICE: Yes. This is a suit to secure some of Bridget's wages to pay a liquor bill due Mr. Vulture. PATRICK: Is that ould sneak after Bridget's wages? JUSTICE: Yes, that is what it means. PATRICK: Well, he isn't her husband I guess and he will find I am the only one who owns Bridget and her wages. He's an old varmint. JUSTICE: You must not talk that way or I shall fine you for contempt of court. Sit down and be quiet. (Pat sits meekly down across the room away from Bridget). Do you wish to cross-examine the witness, Mr. Bradley or Mrs. Bradley? MR. BRADLEY: Did Mrs. O'Flannigan ever buy any thing to drink in your saloon? MR. VULTURE: No. 11 MR. BRADLEY: Has not Mrs. O'Flannigan been to you frequently and asked you to refuse to sell any liquor to Mr. O'Flannigan? MR. VULTURE: Well, yes, I suppose she has, but he is the head of the family and is the best judge whether he wants to drink. How could we ever make money if we stopped for crying women? MR. SHARP: That is all; you may step down. Now, Mrs. Bradley, you may take the witness stand. (Mrs. Bradley goes to the witness chair vacated by Mr. Vulture) MR. SHARP: Do you know Patrick O'Flannigan and his wife Bridget? MRS. BRADLEY: I know Bridget O'Flannigan: I never have such acquaintances as Patrick O'Flannigan (Very stiffly) MR. SHARP: You know that he is her husband? MRS. BRADLEY: Yes, she has told me so. MR. SHARP: Does Mrs. O'Flannigan wash for you on Mondays? MRS. BRADLEY : Yes. MR. SHARP: Have you paid her all you owe her? MRS. BRADLEY: Well, in a way, yes (Evasively) MR. SHARP: Explain what you mean. Have you not in your possession money belonging to her? MRS. BRADLEY: Well, not exactly in my possession. SHARP: Is there not some in your house? MRS. BRADLEY: Well perhaps there may be some in our house belonging to her, but I would not attempt to have any control over it. I have never touched it or counted it so I really do not know anything about it. MR. SHARP: Do you know where it is? MRS. BRADLEY: Well, I suppose I do. MR. SHARP: How much is it and where is it? MRS. BRADLEY: (To the Justice) Judge, do I need to tell all these things to this man? THE JUSTICE: Yes, you will have to answer and tell the truth. 12 MRS. BRADLEY: But, Judge, that money was earned by Bridget belongs to her, and these people have no right to it. She has worked so hard to keep the children fed. Her husband does almost nothing for them, and she needs this money for the children's clothes. All these other women give washing to Bridget. (The other women stand as though eager to testify) They are ready to testify how industrious and honest she is. JUSTICE: Bridget's character has nothing to do with the case. You must answer the question, Madam. MRS. BRADLEY: (Tearfully) Well, then what was the question? MR. SHARP: How much of Bridget O'Flannigan's wages is now in your house and where is it? MRS. BRADLEY: (Faintly) I suppose about $15.00 and it is in the clock. MR. SHARP: Louder, please. MRS. BRADLEY: Fifteen dollars, I suppose, and in the clock. MR. SHARP: That is all, Mrs. Bradley. Thank you. That is our case, your honor. JUSTICE: That is all, Mrs. Bradley. You may step down. Have you any witnesses, Mr. Bradley? MR. BRADLEY: No, your honor, but I wish to discuss the question of justice and law and protest against this attempted outrage. JUSTICE: Very well. You shall have an opportunity in due time. Now, Mr. Sharp, do you wish to make an argument? MR. SHARP: (Rising) Your honor, I have proved that O'Flannigan owes us $50.00, that we have a judgment for that amount and that the execution issued thereon has been returned no part satisfied. We have also proved that Mrs. Bradley has $15.00 of Mrs. O'Flannigan's wages now in her control and in her house. (Bridget motions Pat to come over where she is. She whispers something to him at which Pat slaps his leg and bursts out laughing. JUSTICE: Order there, Mr. O'Flannigan. MR. SHARP: (Continuing) The good old common law, which was the protection of our fore-fathers still protects the rights of creditors 13 in Illinois. A man cannot purchase drinks, refuse to pay and then cheat an honest merchant when he has sources of income like this. Mr. Vulture is only doing what any business man would. He is trying to make his customers pay their bills. MRS. BRADLEY: How can you say this when Bridget was never a customer? She never bought a thing there! MR. SHARP: You do not understand, Madam, the glorious principle of the unity of the married pair. When they go to the marriage altar they are made one. If Patrick is a customer Bridget practically is also, for she must pay the bill. They are one now in the eyes of the law. In this marriage between Bridget and Patrick they are one. Bridget's wages are Patrick's. MRS. EQUITY: (Calmly) Are Patrick's wages also Bridget's? MR. SHARP: Well hardly, madam. MRS. EQUITY: Why not when they are one? MR. SHARP: Because Bridget is not that one. Patrick is it. So your honor as this $15.00 of wages earned by Bridget belongs to Patrick. I ask that it be turned over by Mrs. Bradley towards the payment of a part of this judgment. We can garnishee others later for the rest of it. JUSTICE: Mrs. Bradley, have you anything further to say? MRS. BRADLEY: (In tears) My husband will speak for me. MR. BRADLEY: (Stepping forward to the Judge) Your honor, this is a case which must appeal to the heart of the Court. One of the greatest attainments of a Judge is to know when not to be too severe. This hard working devoted mother is trying single-handed to save some money for her children's winter necessities and even for her husband's stockings. With no help from her husband, she is trying to keep the wolf from the door. Every cent she earns from these other patrons of hers, she must spend daily for food and fuel and rent. She has only this little ahead for the cold winter. I have read about a wife's separate estate being hers and surely Bridget's wages ought to be her separate estate. The law of 1861 helped things, some, I have heard. 14 JUSTICE: You mistake the meaning of separate estate. This term does not apply to a case of wages. The law of 1861 only made some changes in the so-called separate estate which a father might put into a trustee's hands for the benefit of the daughter before the daughter's marriage. Other states are trying the same experiment but it amounts to little except as to the saving of the principal. All the income a wife will use anyway in her home. That law of 1861 did not even change the old rule that the produce of a wife's lands belonged to the husband. You know the law of curtsey gave to the husband the use of his wife's lands during his life, if a living child was born. So when the husband can still control the wife's products and income from land, he must continue the ownership of the more personal and intimate produce of her toil, her wages. MR. BRADLEY: But Judge, look at it from another point of view. This $15.00, earned by many days of hard work, is a trust fund which my wife has held sacred for the use of this noble, self-respecting woman. You would put my wife in a very uncomfortable position and force her to be untrue to her trust. Decide this case solely with the thought of doing righteousness. Let this poor woman have her $15.00, and your decision will be approved in the highest court of morals. (Mr. Bradley sits down) JUSTICE: Have you, Mr. Sharp, anything to say in closing? MR. SHARP: (Rising) Your Honor, this is not a court of morals. This is a court of Law. Your honor needs no reminder that we must not be swept away by emotional appeals. You understand better than these kind-hearted but misguided people, that even a justice-court must be run according to legal principles, like a court of law and not like a soup kitchen. There is no precedent in law for the forcing of a charitable contribution from my client out of money legally belonging to him. (He sits down) THE JUSTICE: I must say that this is a very difficult question to decide. I wholly agree with Mr. Bradley that as a question of righteousness and morals the wages earned by this hard-working woman ought to continue to be hers to be used by her for whatever cause, or whatever necessity she has, but I am reminded by the plaintiff in this case that I cannot allow my decisions 15 to be governed by sentiment. I must decide this question according to law. At this time of the century, 1868, there is scarcely a state in this union where the judge would not hold as I am about to hold, that a wife's wages absolutely belong to her husband, The wife's wages absolutely belonged to the husband from the time of the old English common law. There is no method except by changing that law, whereby we could prevent these wages from coming into the hands of the husband's creditors. MRS. BRADLEY: May I interrupt, Judge? Not all of the $15.00 is really wages, what I agreed to pay her, but some of it is presents. Sometimes I made her a gift out of my pin-money and that was not wages. Surely this part you can save her away from the saloon keeper. JUSTICE: I am very sorry to hurt the feelings of gentle and tender-hearted ladies like Mrs. Bradley, and I shrink from giving over to Mr. Vulture the money Mrs. O'Flannigan planned to use for winter clothes. It is edifying to see the motherly affection bestowed on offspring, even in the lowest walks of society. But, Mrs. Bradley, even if the whole of the $15.00 had been a gift from you to Bridget, my ruling must be the same. I must administer the law as it is, and not as it ought to be. All the wife's personal property, her clothing, even her wedding gifts, everything of this sort, whether coming to her by gift or bequest or her own personal labor, belongs to the husband. In return for this the husband, of course, is expected to support the family. In this very case the law presumes that Patrick is supporting the family, a very violent presumption, I see, and one evidently incapable of legal enforcement. Even the children are absolutely his in all our States and in most of them he can will the guardianship of children away from the mother to strangers. The father is legally the sole parent when it comes to the question of rights. The mother is only allowed duties in connection with her children. MRS. BITTER: Judge, do you not think these are very wicked laws? JUSTICE: As a man and a human being, I might agree with you but as a justice, I am not called on for opinions of what ought to be. I must enforce law as I find it. This matter about Bridget's wages I cannot evade. I must enforce this law as it 16 stands. The Legislature is the only power to change laws. Women cannot control their own property until the Legislature removes some of their legal disabilities. MRS. EQUITY: How can we get the Legislature to change those wicked, immoral laws? JUSTICE: Well, that's a conundrum. When I have been obliged to enforce these unjust laws, I have often wondered why the wronged women did not resort to riot and bloodshed as men have often done to avenge their wrongs. Perhaps it is because the blow comes to each woman singly and she is ignorant that she has companions in misery. Then, too, ages of masculine domination has broken the spirit of most women, and, with due respect to you generous women, many women are too selfish and narrow to care for sister women's sufferings. MRS. BRADLEY: We never imagined before that any law could be so cruel or any man mean enough to take advantage of it. MRS. ADOREMEN: No, indeed, all the men I ever knew were so chivalrous. They would pick up your handkerchief, open doors, give you compliments, stand up when you entered the room, kiss your hand, and always show such delicate attention. MRS. BITTER: I wager that when Bridget begged Mr. Vulture not to sell whiskey to Pat, Mr. Vulture never kissed Bridget's hand. MR. ADOREMEN: Well, perhaps not. Of course God made different orders of society and we should not all expect the same treatment. Some women don't have tact. They don't know how to handle men. You must not ask men to do things which interfere with business or pleasure. If you don't antagonize men I have always thought men were so nice. MRS. PIOUS: Perhaps some men were foreordained to be nice, but I am positive some of them elected to be otherwise. Now, Judge, the thing for us Christian women to ask in this situation is: What ought we to do to help Bridget in this and future calamities? We must help other women as well, for many others will be in similar trouble. JUSTICE: These laws ought to be changed and I do not quite see how you women can make changes now. If you had 17 a vote, the Legislature would be quick to listen to the petitions of women constituents. Then they would hurry to make necessary changes in the old common law to please women voters. You really need the ballot if you are in earnest. If you only want to play at philanthropy, never mind about voting, for without the ballot you can play at it longer. MRS. ADOREMEN: But Judge, I have always felt that the men know best what we women needed, and that we would show lack of faith in our own husbands if we insisted on controlling our own property. (Sentimentally) I felt perfectly willing to trust my husband to control my property when I had already given myself to him. MRS. BITTER: ( Aside) She had nothing when she married. JUSTICE: Very touching. I am sure, Madam, but Bridget's husband seems hardly worthy of such confidence and devotion. Great masses of women voters could not fail to inspire more Legislative respect for women than any one woman, however beautiful and charming, could gain through chivalry. Chivalry is good for poetry and during courting days, but alas, it is poured out most freely on those who need it least. In the eyes of her Creator, Bridget needs not only justice and rights, but chivalry also, and yet—well, Mrs. Bitter explained it pretty well when she said Mr. Vulture did not kiss Bridget's hand. Those honest hands, roughened with heavy work, deserve the greatest honor, but do not get it. Those who receive no favors need the ballot to secure for them the barest rights. MRS. EQUITY: I suppose Abigail Adams had some such thoughts when she asked her husband, John Adams, to secure the rights of women in the new United States government. A class politically disfranchised must be legally, socially, and industrially helpless. JUSTICE: To protect the negroes, the ballot will soon be given them by a fifteenth amendment to the United States Constitution. Naturalized foreigners too are seeking the ballot for the same reason. When women are voters, I shall not be obliged to enforce such unjust laws, for the great mass of women will be so true to their sex that some of these iniquities will be changed. (Bridget and Pat whisper and motion to Mr. Bradley 18 and then tell him something while Mr. Bradley and the Judge continue to talk) MRS. BRADLEY: (Hopefully) Judge, you see the right so clearly you surely will not make me give this money over? JUSTICE: (Sadly) I must be true to my oath of office and administer the law as I find it, though I am sorry to grieve these kind women. I must decide against you. Even should Mr. Vulture garnishee the rest of Bridget's employers for her daily pittance I should be forced to decide the same. You must give Mr. Vulture the $15.00. MR. BRADLEY: Your Honor, I should like to call Bridget O'Flannigan as witness as she has some important evidence which might change your opinion as to the practicability of such a decision. JUSTICE: Well, this court is always ready to change opinions if the law and evidence justify a change. We will hear from Bridget. SHARP: I object, your Honor. Bridget has not been sworn and besides the case is closed. JUSTICE: Well, Sharp, you are a stickler for the fine points of the law. I did not say the case was closed. If, before I enter judgment, I hear of other evidence, on my own motion, I will call the witness. Bridget, you may be sworn. Hold up your right hand. SHARP: I object, your Honor, to receiving the testimony of this witness. She is admittedly the wife of the defendant in the original proceeding and she is legally incompetent. MRS. ADOREMEN: (In amazement) Why, Mr. Sharp! Are you not a little inconsistent? A moment ago you did not want the Judge to believe Bridget because she had not been sworn and now you won't let her be sworn. MR. SHARP: I am only standing on my legal rights to protect my client's interests. Your Honor knows the benefit of this good old common-law rule that wives should not be allowed to testify in suits where their husbands are parties. The sacredness of marital confidences must be respected. MR. BRADLEY: But this evidence was in the possession of Bridget 19 alone. Patrick never told her. There is no marital confidence about this. MR. SHARP: Your Honor knows that I am merely stating the rule of law, well established in hundreds and thousands of cases. The wife cannot testify in such a case, can she? JUSTICE: Well, Sharp, you have the law with you and I cannot let Bridget testify. BRIDGET: It's all the same to me, your Honor. (Mr. Bradley whispers to the constable and gives him a large key. Constable goes out) JUSTICE: I can see no other way out of this, Mrs. Bradley. You will be obliged to pay that money. (Mrs. Bradley sobs and turns to Mrs. Adoremen and Mrs. Pious who weep also. Mrs. Bitter and Mrs. Takerights whisper vigorously as though angry. Bridget remains placid. A knock at the door is answered by Mr. Vulture. He returns) MR. VULTURE: Your Honor, a man wants to speak to you a moment in the next room. JUSTICE: Excuse me, I will just step to the door a moment. I will enter judgment when I return. (As the Justice leaves Vulture and Sharp follow and the women are much excited.) MRS. BITTER: That's the way men always stand up for men. The Judge's soft words are nothing but bosh. He is against us. For ages men have humiliated and domineered over women legally or illegally. They all defend each other in being cruel and selfish to women. When I think of the wrongs women suffer I almost feel as Caligula did when he wished his subjects had one neck, so he could enjoy wringing it at one time. I feel like revenging myself on the whole sex. MRS. PIOUS: Dear sister, do not be uncharitable. Remember that unlimited power in the hands of anyone is liable to abuse. If women had unlimited power over men, they, too, might have become equally unjust. Remember, too, that our martyred Lincoln said he favored those sharing in the government's privileges who assisted in bearing its burdens, and he included women. He said, too, the nation could not be half slave and 20 half free. He was a prophet of God and a man, and he believed in women suffrage. So do not hate all men. Pray for your enemies. MRS. BITTER: My whole life has been a struggle to forgive my personal enemies, but I feel no call of conscience to forgive the enemies of my whole sex. MRS. TAKERIGHTS: How would the ballot help us? Don't you think women themselves are to blame for not taking what they want instead of humbly begging? MRS. BITTER: A lot you know about it, with that jolly husband of yours. You lead him around by the nose. Most of us are worms of the dust, ground down under man's heel, with not enough spirit left to do more than wish we were serpents with fangs. You know how hard I work and my husband is in comfortable circumstances, partly through my hard work on the farm and yet I cannot get the clothes I should have. Why, I take things, too but it makes me feel mighty mean. I can hardly ever have my own butter and egg money, and I absolutely must pick my husband's pockets of a quarter every night to get money for new baby clothes. MRS. TAKERIGHTS: I did not mean taking our rights that way. If I needed money out of my husband's pockets, I would help myself in broad day-light, right under his nose. I go to the same cash-box he does without any timidity and I never hear a grumble from my husband. MRS. PIOUS: Sister. God has certainly given you a good husband but is he quite normal? How did you ever learn to manage him? MRS. TAKERIGHTS: I never would manage him, but I gave him to clearly understand in our first year of married life that I was a real partner and would expect the rights of a partner. Father trained me in the economical use of money and talked over his business with me. So when I married his young partner I expected just as much respect, and I got it. MRS. BITTER: Well, your ownership of your father's two-thirds of the place doubtless raised the market value of your opinions. Those who have, receive more, and those who don't have, get 21 their crumbs stolen away just as Bridget's scanty savings must go to Vulture. And to think that whenever the rest of us hire Bridget, we shall see the constable on our door steps with his hand outstretched for that day's wages. We can all take out turns at being garnished. (Scornfully) MRS. ADOREMEN: (Sweetly) What was it that kind old Justice said about our voting? If some of the men believe in it, I should not feel so timid about it. Men see so clearly. They have such logical minds. Sometimes they like to talk with women of good sense better than with butterflies. MRS. EQUITY: He said the suffrage was what we needed to protect the moral rights of women which were as yet unrecognized by law. The question of money, wages, share in family income which we are discussing, it, to my mind, only one phase of the whole question. That brilliant Myra Bradwell never had trouble with her noble husband and his expenditures, but I am told that our Illinois Supreme Court will refuse her admission to the bar. Miss Doctor has just been refused entrance to the medical school and there is not a college in the State which will admit women. I sent my girl to Oberlin College in Ohio. The equal rights of women in every department has long appealed to me, and I believe woman suffrage will help us. MRS. PIOUS: You are right about there being other wrongs to women. Our women's church society tried to help Mrs. Mater get her two little children. She was the one whose husband took the children and deserted her to live with that bad woman in the next town. This Justice told our committee the father was the sole guardian of the children, could choose the family home and had a legal right to do this cruel thing. He said if she did not want to be parted from the children she must tag along, and if she did not, her husband could get a divorce on the ground of her desertion. But the husband had the children. MRS. BITTER: I know another thing worse. You remember little Maggie Mueller whose parents died of cholera two years ago. Well, she is ten years old and for these two years has been out at the poor house. I knew her mother and go out about every six months to take her something. This time I found she had 22 been wronged by the poor-master and the child does not know enough to appreciate her condition, nor had she ever complained to any one. She is so young. I went to old Judge Precedent for whom Maggie's father had worked. If Maggie had a father or a brother, that poor-master would have been shot, and as Maggie was the ward of the State, the State should do a father's part. I wanted that poor-master legally hung. The old Judge was polite enough and sorry, but he said that Maggie was past the age of consent, which was ten years and as I had no proof that she had protested or complained, the law presumed that ten-year old Maggie consented to her own ruin. So there could be no punishment for the man who wronged her. The old Judge has a heart, though, for he went out to the store with me and bought a handsome fifty-cent doll for me to give her. This was as bad as asking bread and getting a stone. I asked justice and got a doll. MRS. EQUITY: We women should raise that age of consent. We cannot save Maggie, but we can save other girls. MRS. BRADLEY: That is the very worst thing I ever heard. Yes, we women ought to vote to help the women and children. I am ashamed to say I have criticized Miss Anthony, Lucy Stone, and the other women who went around lecturing and organizing women suffrage societies. I feel now that we must all be Bridget's sisters and help her. MRS. PIOUS: We ought to follow the example of Miss Anthony and Lucy Stone. My time has been so limited to religious work I have neglected God's suffering ones here, but I have learned how to work in an organized way. Tho my parents were Quakers, I have been in the regular woman's mission work of this church here and have there learned the strength which can come from organized womanhood. Let us now and here organize ourselves to get the ballot for Illinois women. We pay $1.00 a year dues just as we do in our foreign missionary society. The foreign heathen are not much worse off than poor Mrs. Mater and Maggie and Bridget. We should have an Illinois Equal Suffrage Association. The Legislature will meet in January next, 1869, and we must have changes made. MRS. EQUITY: That's right, and we will all join if you will be president. 23 Here is my dollar. MRS. PIOUS: All right, just to get a preliminary organization started. We must call a meeting for a permanent organization next February in Library Hall and have some of these brilliant women of the east help us. Here is my dollar. MRS. BITTER: I want to join this, too, and here is my dollar. Don't ask me how I got it. I am afraid my husband won't like it, but I shall have to endure that. You tenderly sheltered women, who had kind husbands, good education, money or experience in other organizations, you are for the most part the only ones who will dare to belong to this Equal Suffrage Association. Mrs. Bradley, you helped Mrs. Livermore in starting the Sanitary Commission here in Chicago. You be the treasurer. Stop crying, now is the time for work. MRS. BRADLEY: Well, if you insist, but I am not worthy to be a treasurer of anything. To think of me being obliged to go to that clock and hand over Bridget's $15.00 to that Vulture! Oh, Bridget, will you ever forgive me? BRIDGET: (Cheerfully) Oh, yes, indeed, there is no trouble between you and me. MRS. BRADLEY: (Still tearfully) How can you keep so self-controlled. I am wondering what you will do for your poor children. BRIDGET: The Lord will provide, mum. MRS. TAKERIGHTS: Well, she is religious. Here, Bridget, is a little money the Lord probably provided me to give you. Here is my dollar, Mrs. Bradley for the new society. I believe after all I ought to help the other women who haven't my nerve. My father's training and money has helped me and I'll pass on the help to others. No one beats me and I wonder now why I never used my own freedom for anyone but my ownself. It's nothing but ignorance of such possibilities which keeps us women quiet. MRS. ADOREMEN: Let me be a member for the humblest work. I never before realized that we women must stand together like sisters. I thought each one of as individuals could ogle out of men anything we wanted. I did that with poor dear papa when 24 he lived and when my husband did not please me, I wept sweetly. That brought him around. I could tell how long to keep it up by peeking around the corner of my handkerchief. But now when I hear you brave women talk about our duties to other women, I am ashamed of having selfishly played the baby-act. I must try from this day to be a grown-up woman, and be of some real use. Bridget must be the sister of all of us. Poor Mrs. Mater and poor Maggie are also sisters. They could not cajole men as I have. MR. BRADLEY: May I join, too? CHORUS: Yes, indeed! A man's dollar is as good as a woman's. We will take every man we can get. We call it equal suffrage. MRS. EQUITY: You men already have political influence and so you will be the most valuable members to help change laws. PATRICK: Then I'll join, for I think the law and this court is beneath contempt. It's bad enough the way I treat Bridget, but I am her husband and have some rights, but I'll be bumped before I have every saloon keeper in town jumping onto Bridget's wages. I'll help stop it by joining. I can help stop Bridget's suffering by joining the equal "sufferin" people myself. MRS. BRADLEY: But you cannot afford to pay your $1.00 dues. Patrick. PATRICK: The lawyer said I had resources in an industrious wife and she will help out on the dues, I know. BRIDGET: Indade, Patrick darling, I will, and here's a dollar I earned from Mrs. Equity yesterday. Here, Mrs. Bradley is Patrick's dues. Just as soon as I can afford it I shall join too. PATRICK: Bridget, I will get to work and the first dollar I earn I will pay back, and as far as one man can help, I will help to make things better. I will settle that Vulture bill myself and then keep out. Yes, we will both be members, Mrs. Bradley. MRS. BRADLEY: Poor Bridget, you cannot afford it with the loss of the $15.00 too. How brave you are, Bridget. That awful lawyer Sharp will keep on getting your wages and the $15.00 is gone. (She weeps) BRIDGET: Don't cry another drop out of your swate eyes. (The 25 Judge comes on and stands looking at the group silently) (The women's backs are turned) MRS. BRADLEY: But do you not understand? You are a great loser by the Judge's decision. He is coming back in a minute to enter judgment, and that means Vulture will get your money. You are very brave. BRIDGET: Them's brave who are in no danger. Vulture will never get that money. MRS. BRADLEY: But the Judge said he would. BRIDGET: The Judge don't know what he is talking about. I defy the Judge or Vulture to ever get it. JUSTICE: (Going on the bench) Here, my poor woman, you must not talk that way in a court room against the judge. I am forced to decide against you. BRIDGET: I was not talking against the Judge, but only saying Vulture would never get that money. JUSTICE: But he must have it, for I am going to write down in this big book, my docket, that Mrs. Bradley must pay that $15.00 over to him. We have spent a good deal of time on this little case. MRS. EQUITY: Yes, Judge, but the time has been well spent. While you were out we talked over what you said and made a preliminary organization of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association. MRS. PIOUS: Yes Judge, you showed us our duty as Christian women and had it not been for the peril which threatened Bridget and which will threaten her every time she washes for anyone of us until that $50.00 liquor bill is paid, if it had not been for you we would not now be bound together like sisters to have these laws changed. We want the ballot given to women so we can with our ballots help protect our helpless sisters. You are the one who has influenced us to be bound to each other for this great task, and we thank you. JUSTICE: I appreciate, Madam your kind words. I must unofficially congratulate your new organization and ask to be a charter member. But officially I must enter judgment ordering Mrs. 26 Bradley to pay over the money. Vulture is legally entitled to it. BRIDGET: How does you honor think he will get it? JUSTICE: Just as easy as can be. He will walk along to the Bradley home, Mrs. Bradley will go to the clock and get the money. BRIDGET: Begging your Honors pardon. You are mistaken. Mrs. Bradley will not get any money out of the clock. She can't find any. Won't that be a joke on Vulture? MRS. BRADLEY: What do you mean? (Mr. Bradley and his wife whisper and she smiles) JUSTICE: Where then has Mrs. Bradley kept your money? BRIDGET: She hasn't it anywhere. JUSTICE: Stop your nonsense and tell me plainly who has your money and what does this all mean? BRIDGET: It's no nonsense, but the truth. Well, that night before the constable came I took out the money to get little Pat new shoes and when I got to the store I decided to spend it all. Clothes and shoes are a safer investment than money. Lucky I did. PATRICK: Good for Bridget. JUSTICE: Where are those clothes? BRIDGET: On the bodies of the youngsters, your honor. With the yarn I bought I am knitting socks for Pat. JUSTICE: Why did you not say this long before? BRIDGET: Well, first Mr. Sharp wouldn't let me and then I wanted to enjoy a little Irish joke on Vulture and him a stealing the information from my children. I did not want to be talking much before learned men. JUSTICE; (Dryly) You do not seem much abashed now. Well Mr. Sharp, this puts a different face on the whole matter. SHARP: I cannot see that it alters the legal situation. We have no evidence but what the money is still in the clock. MRS. BRADLEY: But Bridget says it is not there and that she took it. (The constable enters and gives Bradley the key) CONSTABLE: I can tell your Honor. I ran to Bradley's home just 27 now to look and the envelope with Bridget's name on it is empty. WOMEN: Oh, thank you, Mr. Summons. SHARP: Still we have no evidence. JUSTICE: Constable, you be sworn. You cannot object to him Sharp. SHARP: (Angrily) Oh, I don't care. (He and Vulture go out slamming the door violently) JUSTICE: You solemnly promise by the ever living God that the testimony you shall give in the cause now on trial shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? CONSTABLE: I do. JUSTICE: Tell what you found. CONSTABLE: I searched carefully in the hall clock and found no money. I found this envelope with Bridget's name, but it was empty. MRS. BRADLEY: So, Judge, you can't make me pay over the money can you, when I havn't it? JUSTICE: No Mrs. Bradley, I can legally discharge you now and make all of Bridget's friends happy. Altho' this case, by reason of the peculiar circumstances is decided in your favor, I should have been obliged to decide otherwise if Mrs. Bradley had had the money in her possession. Of course, your new association will help change the laws, but until it does everything stands as I have previously stated. It's a pity tho we have wasted so much time on this suit. BRIDGET: Oh your Honor, it was not really wasted. You showed these comfortable richer women how we poorer ones needed the help. The grand ladies that they are, they have been just like sisters to poor old Bridget. Then your Honor, I never get much fun in life and I enjoyed the whole trial beyond words. For once we got ahead of old Vulture. PATRICK: I'll help you better after this, Biddy darling. A good wife and mother deserves the best any man can do for her. You shall have a little pin money for your own. When you want 28 independent money all your own to spend just as you please for me and the children, why you shall have it. I shall make you a grand present. No matter what the law says, after this, I will make you a present of your own wages. CHORUS OF WOMEN: Generous Patrick. JUSTICE: Court is adjourned. Now on to the State House. 29 CHRONOLOGY Of the Woman's Rights Movement in Illinois The old English common law relating to woman's rights was practically unchanged in Illinois during the first half of the nineteenth century. Under it, married women had no right to their children, to their earnings, to their personal property, to the income from their real estate, or to their own personal liberty. Husbands had full control. Women were not admitted to the professions nor to higher schools of learning. They did not vote or hold office. Not only were these rights of women denied by law, but what was worse, many wrongs against women were not recognized nor redressed. The age of consent was ten years. No holier crusade ever enlisted nobler heroes than this which sought to gain the denied rights of women and to redress their wrongs. Many exhausted workers have died in the ranks but their places have been filled by younger women of unflinching courage and the cause moved on. Although the early progress was heartbreakingly slow, notice, that there have been no backward steps. No law giving women greater liberty has been repealed. Illinois men believe that Illinois women deserve all they have received up to date. 1855 First local suffrage Association in Illinois organized at Earlville. Moline, our oldest living club, was not organized until 1877. 1860 Dr. Hannah Tracy Cutler and Mrs. Frances D. Gage campaigned Illinois asking for suffrage and equal property rights. 1861 Mr. Pickets of Rock Island introduced in the Legislature the property rights bill. A petition about woman's rights resulted in an indecent report from a committee of the Legislature. Dr. Cutler asked the Legislature to make mothers joint guardians. For several years the abolition of slavery engrossed the attention of many women's rights workers. They were promised their freedom if they would help free the slaves. The Sanitary Commission also absorbed much time and money. Double agricultural, industrial and financial burdens were borne by women whose husbands, sons and brothers went to war. The negroes were finally freed, but Illinois women were left in the same legal position they were before the war. Their improved abilities, their sharpened wits, their successful achievements made their desire for liberty greater. 1868 In the fall, preliminary state organization effected. 1869 February in the Library Hall, Chicago, The Illinois Equal Suffrage Association was organized with Mary A. Livermore, President. Myra Bradwell was refused admission to the Illinois bar. She appealed to U.S. Supreme Court. A wife's wages were secured to her own use by Illinois law. 1870 Although the Constitutional convention refused to submit a woman's suffrage proposition, Judge J. B. Bradwell and Judge C. B. Waite secured the omission of a clause forbidding women to hold office. Ada H. Kepley of Union College of Law, Chicago, now the Law Department of Northwestern University, was the first woman in the world to be graduated from a law college. 1872 Catherine V. Waite filed a petition for mandamus to compel election officers to allow her to vote, but she was refused. Fathers and mothers were made equal in inheritance from a deceased child. As Myra Bradwell was held by U.S. Supreme Court to be ineligible to practice law, she and Alta M. Hulett then secured the passage of the law admitting women to all occupations and professions. 1873 The statute was passed recognizing women's eligibility to hold school offices. 1874 Ten women were elected County Superintendents of schools. "Curtesy" was abolished. Spouses' interests in each other's real estate were made a dower right for each. 1875 Women were allowed to be Notaries Public. Myra Bradwell secured the word "persons" in the law concerning notaries. 1876 Elizabeth Boynton Harbert was elected President of Illinois Equal Suffrage Association; re-elected until 1884, and then later, twice, one year each. Mrs. Harbert's idea for a "Sane Fourth" carried out at Evanston was the forerunner of the present Sane Fourth reform. Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson was the first woman admitted to American Medical Association. 1877 Woman's Kingdom in Inter Ocean with Mrs. Harbert editor for seven years, helped woman's cause. Mary H. Krout later was editor. 1879 The mammoth petition for suffrage for women was signed by 180,000 persons, but it was kicked about scornfully in the Legislature. This made Frances E. Willard more zealous for suffrage. The W. C. T. U. had many suffrage workers. Ten small Illinois cities allowed women a straw vote on the license question, but the men who elected the aldermen controlled. Helen Schuhardt was held by the lower court ineligible to be Master in Chancery, but the Supreme Court later reversed this decision; a Master's position was appointive. 1884 Mary E. Holmes was elected President of Illinois Equal Suffrage Association for five years and again for seven years, 1890 to 1897. 1887 Age of consent was raised from 10 to 14 years. Catherine V. Waite the Superintendent of Legislative work, sent her resolution for suffrage amendment to Speaker Elijah M. Haines. She was Superintendent until the election of Mrs. McCulloch in 1890. 1888 Large suffrage conventions were held in the northern half of Illinois by Senator M. B. Castle, for twenty years Chairman of Executive Committee, Mary E. Holmes, Julia Mills Dunn, Helen M. Gouger, and Judge C. B. Waite. Many organizations were effected in this year and during the rest of Mrs. Holmes's presidency. 1891 Senator Charles Bogardus fathered a measure for full suffrage in the Senate. Hon. G. W. Curtis, of Lena, in the House, secured 54 votes, a majority of those voting, but not enough. Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace Mrs. Holmes and Mrs. McCulloch held six weeks of conventions in southern Illinois, even to Cairo. Senator Thomas C. MacMillan secured, 29 votes in the Senate for the School Suffrage Bill and Dr. H. M. Moore got 83 votes in the House. It passed. Four times the Supreme Court has decided what are its various constitutional limitations. 1893 The Child Labor Law passed. Senator Charles Bogardus made an excellent report to the Senate on the petitions, saying that there were more for woman suffrage than for all other subjects put together. Twelve anti-suffragists signed a petition. Mrs. Altgeld, the wife of the Governor, came on to the floor of the Senate and personally thanked the Senators who on second reading had voted for our bill. Senator R. W. Coon secured the necessary 26 votes in Senate for the passage of the township suffrage bill. 1894 Dr. Julia Holmes Smith was appointed to fill an unexpired term on the Board of Trustees of State University, the first woman. Mrs. Lucy L. Flower, who had been elected before, took her seat second. Mrs. Florence Kelley was appointed Chief Factory Inspector. No other State has thus honored women. Governor Altgeld appointed several women to important positions. 1895 First big suffrage hearing with twenty women speakers. Senator R. W. Coon secured 23 votes for the township suffrage bill. 1897 Senator George W. Munroe labored faithfully to pass our bills. 1898 At special session about taxation Senator Munroe introduced bill to exempt women's property from taxation until they could vote. 1899 Governor Tanner appointed Mary M. Bartelme Public Guardian of Cook County. She was reappointed by Governors Yates and Deneen. Senator Isaac M. Hamilton forced two of our bills to a vote. Suffrage petitions from 25,000 labor union men of Chicago were well received. 1901 Joint Guardianship Bill passed Senate with 34 votes and House with 119. Senator Niels Juul and Rev. John Hughes fathered the Bill. Rev. Kate Hughes worked for it constantly. Supreme Court decided tax cases in favor of Teachers' Federation. At this session and the many following sessions suffrage amendments, township suffrage bills and larger suffrage bills were introduced every session by different Senators, among them being Senators D. A. Campbell, O. T. Berry, E. C. Curtis, John McKenzie, and James Gibson. Petitions were presented, literature mailed, letters poured in from constituents, eloquent speeches were made and the tone of Illinois newspapers grew more friendly. At one hearing Iva G. Wooden had pasted the petitions on muslin a yard wide and draped 75 yards of them from the galleries and through the aisles of the House. 1902 Illinois Federation of Women's Clubs endorsed a tax-paying woman's suffrage bill. 1903 At an Executive Mansion reception, Mrs. Yates, the wife of Governor Yates, asked two of the suffrage officers to stand by her in the receiving line. Since then Governor Deneen's wife has often invited the suffrage officers and speakers to her receptions following the suffrage hearings. 1904 Illinois Federation of Woman's Clubs endorse municipal suffrage bill. 1905 Age of consent raised to 16 years. Ella S. Stewart was elected President of the Illinois Woman Suffrage Association. 1908 Illinois Federation of Woman's Clubs endorsed woman suffrage in the proposed Chicago charter. 1907 Ellen M. Henrotin, chairman of delegates from women's organizations aggregating a membership of 100,000 women urged municipal woman suffrage in the Chicago charter. It was defeated in convention by only one majority. Though this charter passed the Legislature no woman worked for its approval and it was defeated by the voters. 1909 Jane Addams was chairman of the committee which went before the charter makers the second time. They agreed to submit a separate woman suffrage measure which in the Legislature received more votes than most of the separate measures. Senator Charles Billings secured twenty-five votes for the full state wide municipal suffrage bill. Ten hour law, law against pandering and law as to providing seats for women employees passed both houses. 1910 Ella Flagg Young elected Chicago Superintendent of Schools and later President of National Educational Association. At special legislative session Senator Martin Bailey and Representative R. P. Hagen introduced bills to allow women to vote at primary elections and under a commission form of government. Summer suffrage auto tours covered seven-eighths of Illinois counties. Jane Addams was elected President of National Conference of Charities and Corrections. 1911 Municipal Suffrage bill passed the Senate with a vote of 31 to 10; thanks to Senator Wm. M. Brown and other friends. Representative Homer Tice secured two roll calls in the House, on the first of which we had 74 friends and on the last 67. We needed 77 there to pass the bill. This is the first time in many years that the House has gone on record. Ten hour law for women extended to more occupations. Automobile tours in the counties not touched in 1910 find similar enthusiasm. 1913 What will be done by this Legislature? Will it do as well as did five other State Legislatures in 1911? Wisconsin, Kansas, California, Oregon and Nevada submitted the question to the voters. Six states already have fully enfranchised their women : Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington and California. Illinois will continue her progress when the voters demand it insistently. CATHARINE WAUGH McCULLOCH RHODE ISLAND Legislation Recommended 1. A law providing for equal guardianship by both parents of the persons and property of the children. 2. A law requiring jury service for women with exemption for mothers of young children in addition to the usual exemptions allowed men. 3. A just civil service law. 4. A law abolishing common law marriages. 5. A law requiring health certificates to be furnished before marriage. 6. A law prohibiting evasion of marriage. We suggest that you consider presenting to your legislature a law requiring that women be equally represented at all party conventions, and on all partisan committees and boards elected by the voters. We also suggest that you consider the desirability of having the National League add to its program a recommendation for an adequate community property law. We suggest that you stress the matters in italics. NATIONAL LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS STANDARDS RECOMMENDED 1923 by the COMMITTEE on UNIFORM LAWS concerning the LEGAL STATUS of WOMEN Chairman Catharine Waugh McCulloch 112 West Adams Street, Chicago Vice-Chairman Esther A. Dunshee 76 West Monroe Street, Chicago WOMAN'S FORMER LEGAL STATUS Eighty years ago the Old English common law relating to a woman's rights prevailed almost unchanged in the United States. Women were not admitted to the higher schools of learning nor to the professions. Custom prevented their entering the higher salaried occupations. They could not vote or hold office or serve as jurors. Not only were these rights denied by law but what was worse, many wrongs against women had no legal redress. The age of consent was generally ten years. Under this common law, married women had additional disabilities. They had no proper right to their children, to their own earnings, to the income from their own real estate, to their own clothing or to their personal liberty. Their husbands had full control. To gain the denied rights of women and to redress their wrongs, was the holy crusade which the early suffragists began in 1848. WOMAN'S PRESENT LEGAL STATUS About nine-tenths of woman's legal rights have been won. Practically all professions and all schools supported by public money are open to women. Almost every occupation has been opened to women. They vote and are eligible to office. They actually hold many official positions which are not high salaried. They vote but are not adequately represented on partisan committees or in party conventions. They serve as jurors in about a half of the states. The right of married women to an equal control of and responsibility for their children is recognized in thirty-five states. Generally they control the income from their own property and their own wages earned outside the home but have no control over any income or wages of a husband. See Chart on Legal Status of Women in the United States by Miss Esther A. Dunshee and Mrs. Jennie B. Wilson's book on the same subject, also leaflets published by the National League of Women Voters , Peru, Indiana. WOMAN'S FUTURE LEGAL STATUS The National Convention at Baltimore recommended on the Legal Status of Women the following name standards: 1. Removal of all common law disabilities of married women. 2. Equal guardianship by both parents of the persons and property of the children. 3. Eligibility of women for jury service with exemption for mothers of young children in addition to the usual exemptions allowed men; abolition of unit vote of jurors in civil cases. 4. Just civil service laws in all municipalities and states now under the spoils system, and improvement of existing laws to provide a strict merit system of appointment and promotions without regard to sex. 5. Abolition of common law marriages, minimum marriage age for women, without consent of guardian, to be 18 years, for men, 21 years; health certificates to be required; causes for divorce to be the same for men and women; statutes to prohibit the evasion of marriage laws in other states. 6. Abandonment of wife and child to be made a criminal offense for which extradition may be demanded. 7. Removal from women of all legal disabilities such as inability to hold office, to be notaries, or to sign legal petitions. 8. Women voters should be adequately represented at all party conventions, and on all partisan committees and boards elected by the voters. 9. Remove specific legal disabilities of women by specific laws, not "Blanket Laws." See Pamphlets published by National League of Women Voters "Specific Bills for Specific Ills" and "What Has Been Done," noting sixty valuable legislative measures. The National Committee on Uniform Laws Concerning the Legal Status of Women also recommends legislation on two additional matters. 1. An equal interest of spouses in each other's real estate and a half interest and control by each spouse of all property acquired after marriage by either or both of the spouses with power in each spouse to devise and bequeath one half interest in this property. 2. Competency of each spouse to testify in any suit at law or in equity where the other spouse may be a party. See next page for recommendations for legislation in your state. THE WOMAN'S COLUMN. 189 trie Light Company put the lights in front of the church in the form of the letters "W.C.T.U.," made of perhaps twenty or twenty-five lights in each letter; and they had the letters W. and T. made of white lights and the letters C. and U. of yellow ones. It was very interesting. I was put in charge of the overflow meetings, and the first morning Miss Willard sent Lady Henry Somerset and me to open them. Lady Henry made a splendid speech, declaring woman's ballot to be the great need of the hour. I followed on the same line. It was in the Church of the Unity, of which President Eliot's son of Harvard College is pastor. As I was chairman of the committee for the overflow meetings, of course I kept suffrage going for that week, and also had one evening devoted wholly to the Franchise department, with Mesdames Hoffman, Grubb and Snell, and Miss Griffin, of Alabama, and Miss Ripley, of Nebraska, and myself as speakers. I tell you, it was lively! The overflow meetings were crowded, three times a day on every day save one, and I selected speakers who always gave a "dig" for suffrage. In fact, the overflows were the biggest kind of suffrage meetings. I have not enjoyed myself for years as I did at Denver. I worked as hard as I did at Boston last year, but was much less tired. I wish I could see you and tell you of some of the magnificent things Lady Somerset said. RECENT VOTING OF ILLINOIS WOMEN. CHICAGO, ILL., Nov. 29, 1892. Editor Woman's Column : You have printed several items in regard to the voting of our Illinois women this fall, but it would take all your space to chronicle the varieties of interpretation put upon the law by little judges and clerks all over the State, who, by their own instinct, decided, with the gravity of a Supreme Court, that women could or could not vote in this way or in that way. In some places, women were furnished with the little old-fashioned ballots. In others, with the larger Australian ballot, the first kind being found in Chicago, the latter in Cook County outside of Chicago. In still other places, where women's right to vote was not denied, the officials refused to furnish any ballots, and the women printed or wrote their own. Places still less progressive refused furnish the ballot-boxes. As far as we can learn, some women voted in every place where it was allowed, going out singly or in groups, with or without their children. In one Chicago precinct, some of the women were giving their babies an airing while they were assembling the women in their block, and so one baby went to vote. His mother picked him out of his baby-cab as she went in. While she was engaged in scratching her ticket, a chivalrous judge of election said: "Mrs. McC-------- , let me hold your baby." Of course she did not accept the offer, but this little incident gives an answer to that burning question, "What shall be done with the babies when the mothers vote?" Why, let the judges of election hold them! But there were many places where women were refused, either because the judges of election thought the State University was not a public school and the trustees thereof not public school officers, or because it was held that the Australian ballot system did not apply to women, or because it was not specially stated that ballots and boxes should be furnished the women, or because the Attorney General refused to give his opinion either way as to the constitutionality of the law, or because a clerk in the Secretary of State's office said women ought not to vote, or because other senseless objections had beclouded their mental vision. Then the women wanted to know what to do, and we advised them to prosecute every mother's son of those who refused to let them vote. If one thousand cases concerning the disfranchisement of women went to our Supreme Court, it would look as though we meant business. But--alas for our sex!--we have too little "spunk." If women were assaulted or robbed, they would not go around asking people to contribute to pay a lawyer to attend to their case, on the ground of its being a public matter, but they would be sufficiently interested in their own case to pay a little themselves. But about the question of voting they feel differently, and write us letters asking if we will not do all the law work on their case for the good of the cause, or contribute money out of our personal funds to pay their lawyers. We are sorry not to be able to accept all these invitations for gratuitous work, but we really think each community ought to look after its own officials, and see that they are properly punished for breaking the law. Most of the women of the State will have no further opportunity to vote for two years, and will have ample time to recover from the corrupting (?) influences of their biennial trip to the polls. We are preparing for legislative work by asking our Governor-elect Altgeld to recommend suffrage legislation in his message to next winter's Legislature. We understand that personally he is an equal suffragist. CATHARINE WAUGHI MCCULLOCH, Supt. Legislative Work, Illinois E. S. A. ONE SOUTHERN GIRL'S EXPERIENCE. A Southern woman, one of the most active workers for the equal rights of women in the United States, lately gave in a private letter to one of the editors of the Woman's Journal a graphic account of the difficulties under which she and her sisters do their suffrage work. She says: Our leisure moments--well, there are no such. We do all our own work except laundering, and you can imagine what this is on a place where everything is built far apart and in the inconvenient style of fifty years ago. We have a mite who grazes the cows, and occasionally we find a milker, but they come too irregularly to be any comfort. An old man on the place will work for you one day in the week if he has three drams ahead, when he will be very courtly, but the rest of the time he is more or less satanic. He is an old family servant, and does as he pleases, as a matter of course. With churning and cooking and house-cleaning for a great old-fashioned steamboat of a house, and stock to feed, you can see that we have not much spare time. Often it is from pea-picking and hay-raking and wood-gathering to the parlor, or to suffrage work. Last summer, when we had to save all the horse's hay for the winter to keep it from rotting in the field, one of my sisters remarked doggedly that she had done everything but mall rails and plow," and I think it was about the truth. I am glad to know of the Southern calls for sample Journals and COLUMNS. If the women who have more leisure had half this woman's pluck, persistency and zeal, equal rights would soon be won. A WOMAN MANUFACTURER. On Clinton Street, in Syracuse, N. Y., is the Becker Manufacturing Co. It is a business owned and managed entirely by an intelligent, fine - looking American woman. Some fifteen years ago her husband failed in business, and his health would not permit him to open another. Then this enterprising woman put her wits to work to see what she could do towards assuming the burden of family support. In a small way she began to supply hand-knit goods to wholesale merchants. The business grew in her hands, and to-day she is a prosperous manufacturer, with a thousand women in her employ. With the exception of the office workers and those who receive and execute orders, all these women perform their work in their own homes. The goods manufactured include every style of knit goods in use, and each article is made by hand. Mrs. Becker gave me the life history of some of her employees. One is an invalid, and lying in her bed she knits baby's hoods from morning until night. Another has a drunken husband, who fails to provide the family support. Not all, however, are poor women. More than one lady, she said, comes in a carriage to deliver her work, and wears a sealskin and diamonds. But while she has all these luxuries, she is a pauper in her own home, and does this work to earn a little spending money. Mrs. Becker sells her goods almost entirely to wholesale houses, and does an immense business. She has not only solved the problem of family support, but she is giving her children collegiate education, and owns a business growing larger and stronger every year.-- Mrs. Carrie Lane Chapman, in Woman's Journal. Miss Lucy E. Anthony, of Somerton, Pa., has been put in charge of the lecture bureau of the National W. C. T. U. One hundred women students of the State University at Columbus, O., after holding a mass meeting, lately walked out of the building on account of the poor sanitary condition of their rooms. They say they will not return until the matter is set right. Mrs. REBECCA AYRES LADD, who died at Springfield, Mass., Nov. 27, at the age of 74, was the first woman elected upon the Springfield School Board, and at that time the new departure was regarded as a doubtful experiment. She was warmly commended for her services by the mayor and aldermen. Mrs. Ladd took an interest in public matters, and was an active worker for the Home for the Friendless, the Women's Christian Association, and other charitable causes. THE WOMAN'S COLUMN Mrs. Louise C. Purington, M.D. has been reappointed National Superintendent of Franchise for the W.C.T.U. One of the worst quarters in Philadelphia has been repaired and made profitable by a woman who leased the property, procured city water and started a library. This moral and hygienic reform has paid all expenses, six per cent. interest to the owner, and three per cent. profit for the lessee. At a meeting of the Social Science Club of Kansas and Western Missouri at Topeka, recently, a resolution presented by Mrs. Geo. Winans, of Junction City, Kan., was adopted, asking Mr. Geo. Pullman to have the smoking compartment in sleeping cars removed, in consideration of the comfort of travelers. This resolution will be presented, it is said, to every women's organization in the country for signature. Four thousand more women have registered to vote for school committee in Boston this year than last--ten thousand in all. Whenever the registration of women falls off a few hundred, the fact is published and commented upon all over the country. Will the papers that have made so much of an occasional slight falling off in the women's vote in past years, please give equal publicity to the large increase this year?--Woman's Journal. A number of members of the Hartford (Ct.) Equal Rights Club have sent congratulations to Mrs. Mary A. Lease on the proposal to elect her to the U.S. Senate; so the newspaper statement that Mrs. Lease has received words of cheer from many men, but from no woman, is evidently erroneous. The suffrage clubs of Connecticut seem to be flourishing. A new one has lately been organized at Litchfield by Judge and Mrs. Hickox; there is a large and active club at Seymour, with Miss Sara Winthrop Smith at its head; and the clubs of Hartford and Meriden are always active. MRS. MARTHA D. STRICKLAND, of Michigan has been admitted to the bar in Tennessee. The Memphis Appeal-Avalanche of Nov. 30 says: "In the United States Circuit Court yesterday a very pleasant episode occurred, marking the admission to the bar of a woman lawyer. Mrs. Strickland came to Memphis as a member of the Association for the Advancement of Women, a fortnight ago, and is the guest of Judge and Mrs. J.M. Greer. The convention, it will be recalled, assembled in the United States Court-room, the use of which had been courteously extended by Judge Hammond. On the afternoon of Nov. 18, Mrs. Strickland delivered a lecture upon Parliamentary Law as a Science and an Art.' Judge Hammond was in the audience, and was so much impressed with the handling of the subject by Mrs. Strickland that he subsequently suggested that she apply for a license to practice in the Federal Courts during her stay in Memphis. This Mrs. Strickland did yesterday, through Judge Greer, who asked that Mrs. Strickland be granted a license. The request was complied with, and the first woman attorney in Tennessee was sworn in by Clerk Clough." A GOOD SUGGESTION FROM ROCKFORD. ROCKFORD, ILL., Nov. 28, 1892. Rockford people had the pleasure of listening to a very interesting suffrage contest last Friday evening by the students of the high school. Our Equal Suffrage Association offered two prizes of $10 and $5 last spring for the best two essays on the subject "Why shall women be given the ballot?" Nine high school students entered the competition. Miss Ida Patterson was awarded the first prize, and Miss Alice Hall the second. The papers were all so excellent that it was with great difficulty the judges made the decision. It was truly surprising to see how much interest was manifested in this contest, and how much thought and study was spent on the essays. The contest reflected great credit on the contestants, the high school, the Equal Suffrage Association, and, in fact, on the whole city. We can only hope that this is the first of many such contests. Let every suffrage association offer similar prizes. They can do no better or more effective work. CARRIE ASHTON JOHNSON, Secretary Illinois E.S.A. A WOMAN FREIGHTER. The Theresa is one of the many great schooners that ply between San Francisco and the ports on the opposite side of the Bay. There is nothing peculiar in her appearance; she is built like the other great schooners which cross and recross that beautiful harbor. Her crew is only an ordinary crew, and her captain much like the captains of other sailing-vessels. Her sea-life, also, for aught I know, has been uneventful. And yet the Theresa has a peculiar interest, and, for the past three years at least, a unique history. Her owner and able manager is a woman. The father of Mrs. Lewis founded this large shipping business, and carried it on for nearly twenty-two years. Over three years ago he became a helpless invalid; and, the entire family being dependent on the business for their support, it was given into the hands of an agent. This soon proved disastrous; for the agents either frank and caused their patrons to complain, or they proved dishonest and withheld part of the profits from the owners of the vessel. It was at this juncture that Mrs. Lewis determined, as she expresses it, "to go on deck herself." As her father's bookkeeper she had gained some knowledge of the business, and from the first she was wonderfully successful; yet, to use again the words of the plucky little woman herself, it took her a long time "to get used to bossing a gang of sailors." Although Mrs. Lewis does not sail the Theresa in person, the captain is in all things subject to her orders; and a sailor who drinks, or in any way neglects his duty, is at once discharged. While the schooner is in process of loading, Mrs. Lewis is invariably present on the wharf, and her orders are clear and explicit, and are firmly adhered to in spite of obstreperous stevedores and belligerent truckmen. When the sun is shining, as only a California sun can shine, the task is pleasant enough, even though it is to keep a tally of raw hides. But when billows of fog are rolling in through the Golden Gate, or the wharves are swept by wind and rain; when, in short, her task is far from pleasant, Mrs. Lewis is just as certain to be there. Often the freight list is so large that the little freighter is obliged to charter another schooner; after applying for which, she must hurry back to the wharf to oversee the loading of the second vessel, and then take the train to Benicia, Port Costa, Selbys or Vallejo, as the case may be, and "when her ship comes in," there is the little owner on the wharf again, ready to superintend the work of unloading. During the five months that Mrs. Lewis was confined to her bed by a severe accident, Miss Dillingham, her sister, a young girl of seventeen, took entire charge of the business, and managed it extremely well, in spite of her youth and inexperience. With the exception of these five months, Mrs. Lewis has left no detail of her large business entirely to others, whether it be the collection of bills, the negotiation for a tug-boat, the purchase of stores for the schooner, or the superintendence of repairs at the dry-dock. EVELYN HIBBARD. THAT DANGEROUS "FIRST." Boonville, N.Y., Dec. 5, 1892. Editor Woman's Column: In your issue of Dec. 3, it is stated that this is the first year women have been eligible to vote for school commissioner, or to hold that office in New York. The first statement is correct, the second is not. We have in our own county (Oneida) two women now serving as school commissioners, Mrs. Tibbitts and Miss Laura Mayhew. This county has four school commissioner districts, and at the last election women were candidates in three of them. The fact that women were eligible and were already serving as school commissioners was one of the arguments made in favor of women's voting for those officers last year. L.A.C.R. Eighteen organizations of women, aggregating hundreds of members, have already joined the local Woman's Council which was formed in Memphis just after the meeting of the A.A.W. in that city, and other societies of women have the matter under consideration. Wives and Daughters, the admirable monthly published at London, Ontario, by Mrs. Cameron and Miss Wetherald, appears in a beautiful new dress, with heavy paper and handsome type. It is devoted to the interests of women, and is a strong advocate of equal suffrage. It is ably edited, and has departments of varied interest. It was Wives and Daughters that originated the phrase which has gone the rounds of all the suffrage papers, and has given so much delight to their readers, "the boshiness of Bokiness." The paper costs only 25 cents a year, and is worth many times the money. Subscribe for it McCulloch & McCulloch Lawyers 231 South LaSalle Street Chicago We Are Pleased To Announce That Hathorn W. McCulloch Has Been Admitted To Membership In The Firm. Frank H. McCulloch Catharine Waugh McCulloch Oscar A. Ross Jacob E. Replogle Hugh W. McCulloch Grover C. McLaren September 1, 1927 C W Mc Culloch [*1944*] Zelophehad's Daughters A Dialogue, Not a Quiz Not Copyrighted Any one is welcome to quote. No movie rights reserved. APOLOGY A grandson reminded us that if we prepared a Quiz on only one book of the Bible yearly, if we were to complete our task we must live until we were 145 years old. So we planned to hasten and put into one booklet the questions on Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. We were encouraged by kind words from friends like Mrs. Wendell Green who called our last, with story attached, "a carefully documented outline of an ancient story, in which social, economic, legal and religious problems are etched against a romantic background with an undertone of humor and with an undertone of challenging implication." When the Quiz on the last three books of the Pentatuch was ready for printing, tho much was omitted that belongs to the Church ritual and to criminal law often mentioned in current literature, it did seem long. So the story of the Daughters of Zelophehad gathers up only some of the ethical teachings of the Great Lawgiver. If you underline accurate citations from the Bible with a true-blue pencil and make no error, you will receive "Honorable Mention." We admit that the names of the husbands of the Daughters, Akar, Bekar, Cekar, Dekar and Ekar are not given in the Bible nor does the Bible tell us of the various conversations of the Daughters, as noted in this Dialogue. But why should not the girls have talked about the great Jewish Lawgiver, about their family property and their future husbands? Their marriages remind us of our own fifty-four years ago because ours was different. We were not honored by the presence of Moses and Eleazar, but the knot was thoroughly tied by that modern prophet, Rev. Anna Howard Shaw. Here is another difference. Moses said that the Daughters could choose their own husbands while in our case, the man did the choosing and the woman followed the example of the many men of Manasseh and was "willing." THE SENIOR McCULLOCHS, 2236 Orrington Avenue, Evanston, Illinois. May 30, 1944 ZELOPHEHAD'S DAUGHTERS A Dialogue in four scenes Time: about 1452 B.C. Place: Tent of Zelophehad in the Wilderness Authorities: Num. XXVI, 33; XXVII, 1-11 XXXVI, 11; Jos. XVII, 3-6 and I Chron. VII, 15 beside many verses from the Pentatuch. Speakers: The five daughters of Zelophehad --motherly Mahlah, daring Noah, curious Hoglah, attentive Milcah, and petted Tirzah. Scene I Milcah. This tent is the only home we ever knew, and how we do miss father. Tirzah. More than you missed mother Hoglah. On no, but you two were too young to remember her. Father made a pet of you, Tirzah, and was so proud when you had learned all the Ten Commandments. Noah. we older daughters were taught largely by our parents but Mahlah has been a real mother and teacher of you younger girls, Milcah and Tirzah. Mother used to say that if the first child were carefully taught, she would be one of the best teachers of the younger children. You, Mahlah, have proved she was right for you faithfully trained all of us. If ever we are sinful or ignorant, you can not be blamed, and you can wash your hands over the head of a heifer. Mahlah. Our parents were happy that you girls not only remembered the Decalogue but many other statutes of Moses, our great lawgiver. We were not taught much that Moses said about awful crimes and the proper punishments, for if we are good and kind we shall not merit severe scourgings. Let us now repeat some of our Lawgiver's maxims. Milcah. Follow not the multitude to evil. Tirzah. As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Noah. In reaping your fields, let some fall for the poor. Hoglah. Did our Lawgiver always find obedience and cooperation? Mahlah. Alas, no. One said, "Hath the Lord only spoken by Moses?" Again one said, "Why do you take so much upon yourself?" Some hankered for the flesh-pots of Egypt and for its cucumbers and onions and melons and garlic. During our years of wandering Father told me about many criticisms and some rebellions. Noah. Moses said that ten times they had tempted him with their complaints. Hoglah. Was Moses tyrannical or egotistical? Mahlah. Never! Although he is wiser than any other man of our people, he is the meekest of men, and when some did evil he asked God to punish him for the wrong doing. He had no pride in himself. He said that the Lord would raise up a prophet greater than he to whom our people must hearken. His only desire was that we should be just and kind to each other and never worship idols. Noah. Here are his very words: "What doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways and to love him and serve him with all thy heart and will all thy soul. He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow and loveth the stranger." Tirzah. He said that we must love our neighbors as ourselves. Hoglah. He said that if there was a poor man, "Thou shalt not harden thine heart nor shut thine hand but thou shalt open thine hand unto him." That means that we must not be tight-fisted. Tirzah. He also said the tithe of the land was holy unto the Lord. Milcah. He told us not to go up and down as talebearers. Mahlah. What did he say about following the bad fashions and manners? Noah. "After the doings of the land of Egypt shall ye not do and after the doings of the land of Canaan shall ye not do." Hoglah. He said also, "If ye shall despise my statutes, ye shall flee when none pursueth you." Was not the punishment for a rebellious son, a glutten and a drunkard terrible? Mahlah. Not any worse than being a drunkard and otherwise depraved. What was a Nazarite forbidden to do? Hoglah. "He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink." Mahlah. Good advice for everyone. Noah. The priests too should be sober for the Lord told Aaron, the highest priest, "Do not drink wine or strong drink nor thy sons with thee when thou goest into the Tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die." "That ye may put difference between holy and unholy, between clean and unclean." Hoglah. Was that order given because of the "strange fire" offered just before by Nadab and Abihu? They died, you remember. Noah. Firey wine is raging and has in it something which could make a blaze. Few of our people not born in Egypt ever saw wine. Hoglah. Yes. Moses once said "I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Ye have not drunk wine or strong drink." Where could Nadab or Abihu have found any strong drink? Noah. Some enemy might have wanted to weaken our fighting forces and our priests and cleverly brought in a bottle in the leg of his boot. Tirzah. Here is a good rule, "Remove not the ancient landmark." Milcah. Here is another, "Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord." Mahlah. How as Miriam punished when she and Aaron opposed Moses? Hoglah. She had leprosy but was not Aaron just as guilty? Why did he escape punishment? Mahlah. He was a priest and perhaps that explains it, or maybe he said, "The woman, she tempted me." Noah. I pitied Miriam. Her cleverness in girlhood saved Moses in the ark of bulrushes and when they crossed the Red Sea she led the orchestra. Probably she was coming down with sickness when she was rude to Moses and that made her irritable. Mahlah. Now a few more axioms which the Lawgiver told us to keep in our hearts. Milcah. What hath God wrought? Mahlah. Those are good words to remember, but they came from Baalim, not Moses. Do you recall other sayings of Baalim? Hoglah. The words that God putteth into my mouth, that shall I speak. Milcah. He also said, "Let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be like his." Mahlah. These are good. Shall we repeat more from the Lawgiver? Tirzah. The Lord will not fail thee nor forsake thee. Hoglah. I have set before thee life and good, death and evil. Milcah. Be strong and of good courage. Noah. One shall chase a thousand and two put ten-thousand to flight. He must have meant that the one must be right. Tirzah. "Be sure your sin will find you out." Mahlah. "Ye shall not oppress a hired servant" but pay him on time. "Ye shall not oppress a widow or fatherless child nor a stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." Noah. Probably Moses contrasted the cruelty of the Egyptians with the kindness of Jethro in Midian where Moses was an exile, a stranger, a wanderer. Mahlah. For four hundred years those Egyptians evil entreated our oppressed ancestors. So Moses led out our fathers with a high hand. He might have forgotten his own people for his foster mother, the princess could keep him in luxury. But his heart was with the Israelites. He even felt kindly toward the descendants of Lot and of Esau, very distant relatives. Noah. Distant, yes. the Esau tribe were about seventeenth cousins and the descendants of Lot about twenty-first cousins. Mahlah. Well, we would not fight them or take booty. With other peoples our soldiers would divide booty with those on the home front who stayed with the stuff. Hoglah. When we really enter the Promised Land given to our ancient father, Abraham, it will be good to get our own land back again. Tirzah. I want to go soon. Our spies said that the land was flowing with milk and honey and the spies brought back great bunches of grapes. I want to raise grapes and flowers and bees. Father said that I could have land just to raise such things. Milcah. I told father that I wanted to keep cows so I could have plenty of milk for all of us, on my part of the land and he liked that. What will you, Hoglah, raise on your land? Hoglah, I must raise grain for we will enjoy real bread made of grain such as mother described, baking it out of fine flour of wheat instead of from manna. Perhaps Milcah will lend me her oxen to tread out the corn, and I won't muzzle them. Milcah. I shall be glad to help. Now Noah what will you raise? Noah. The place has hills as well as plains and valleys which you girls will use. So I can take hills and raise sheep. I could offer a little lamb for the scape-goat to carry away our sins. Then, too, the other sheep would furnish us meat and wool. The wool we could weave into warm garments. What will Mahlah raise on her one-fifth of father's land? Mahlah. Alas. I fear that none of us will be allotted any land when we enter. Uncle Helek and Uncle Hepher said one day. "We brothers of Zelophehad will have more land than we expected for we get the land of our dead brother Zelophehad. Noah. That is our land. Father intended that we should use it for various purposes just as we liked. Milcah. We must have our own land. Tirzah. Let the uncles be satisfied with their own land. Mahlah. Uncle Helek said that it was an old custom that when a man left no sons, the brothers, like our uncles should inherit. Noah. Good for uncles if true. Sisters even though we should rise up before the hoary head and honor the face of an old man, how can we honor old men who want to take our land? Let us go to Moses at once. Hoglah. That good Lawgiver will surely refuse to give our land to others. Mahlah. we will go but be brave if disappointment should await us. (They leave the tent.) A loud voice behind the scenes reads "It is written in Numbers XXVII 'Then came the daughters of Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, the son of Joseph and these are the names of the daughters, Mah- lah, Noah, and Hoglah and Milcah and Tirzah. And they stood before Moses and before Eleazar the priest, and before the princess and all the congregation at the door of the Tabernacle. And Moses brought their cause before the Lord." SCENE 2. A few hours later. Milcah. It is good to be home again in our tent. That Lawgiver appreciated our trouble at once. He is not only a great judge but a great man. Tirzah. I could not understand every word. Will you, Mahlah, tell me plainly what happened? Mahlah. You saw the Lawgiver with the priest and princes and the congregation which gathers to hear his decisions. I told him that our father Zelophehad had died in the wilderness but that he had not been of those that were against the Lord and we daughters expected our father's share of the land as there were no sons. Hoglah. You were so wise in asking the question, "Why should the name of our father be done away from among his family because he had no sons?" And then you gently pleaded "Give us therefore a portion among the brethren of our father." Noah. I nearly said "Who dares to take our land?" Tirzah. Explain to me fully what the Lawgiver said. Mahlah. First he did what everyone should do in difficult matters. He asked God's help to decide wisely. He was anxious to be just, for this is his last decision before he leaves us. Then he said, "The daughters of Zelophehad speak right. The inheritance of their father shall pass them." He said further, "If a man die and have no son, then the children of Israel shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter." This judgement will now benefit all Israelitish women. Milcah. The Lawgiver was very wise to make this new decision. It is just and merciful. Where is Hoglah? When did she leave us? Calling, "Hoglah, Hoglah." Hoglah. Much talking outside made me curious. What do you suppose our uncles and great uncles are doing? They and the chief fathers of the families of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, asked the Lawgiver to change his decision and let them have our land. Noah. What reason could they give for such injustice? Hoglah. They said that if we, the daughters of Zelophehad, married outside the tribe of Manasseh it would be confusing at the Year of Jubilee. If some of our descendants were not pure Manassehites, the leaders would be confused as to whom the land should be restored. Noah. They are trying to confuse matters now. Surely the Lawgiver will not reverse his decision and forget what God told him. Did he change? Hoglah. No. He said, "Let the daughters of Zelophehad marry to whom they think best." Mahlah. That was amazing for never before have women chosen their husbands. They have waited until chosen by men. Hoglah. There was more to the decision - that we must choose in the tribe of Manasseh. Tirzah. I don't like that. I want to marry one of those big Anakims or at least a Zamzummin. Noah. How unwise. A terrible giant might break you to pieces for you would look to him like a grasshopper. Tirzah. I would smile on the big fellow and wind him around my finger. I would use tact. Mahlah. She is bewitching enough to do that very thing. Noah. This marrying into the tribe won't be so bad. Our own War Board reported that we had 2,750 families and 52, 700 persons in our tribe of Manasseh of whom 32,500 were over 20 years of age and able to go to war. I don't know whether they included women but among such a multitude in the tribe of Manasseh there must be 500 men not married and so each of us could take her choice among 100. Milcah. I never wanted an Anakim but one of those Edomites gave me the gladsome eye. He might be interesting. Noah. Forget him. Choose from your 100. Milcah. I don't know 100 men or boys. Since father died our uncles would not let us play with any boys except their sons, our first cousins. Hoglah. Would it not be dangerous to choose a stranger, a second or third cousin you had never known? Tirzah. But much more thrilling than to marry some one you had seen daily for all your lifetime. It will be dull. Noah. So, though we can choose, our uncles have managed that we only know first cousins, their own sons not over ten or fifteen of them at all suitable. But it might be worse. Mahlah should have the first choice. Mahlah. Cheer up. Our uncles must have thought we would make good wives. I will choose a first cousin whom I know well, Akar. Hoglah, Don't choose him. He has dim eyes and his walk is unsteady. Mahlah. That is not his fault. He was born that way. I can help him. Hoglah. That's just like you, choosing one that no one else would want. Choose Cekar instead. He is healthy, of a ruddy skin, kin and so comely. Mahlah. No. He will not be my choice. Hoglah. What is there against Cekar? Is he not the best and most friendly of all? Mahlah. He is all you say but this is why I dare not choose him. He wants some one else. Hoglah. He could never get anyone better than you. Let me persuade him. He often does what I ask. Mahlah. I have discovered his secret. He only wants you. You are a generous girl to offer the man you like best to me. Thus you disclose your own choice of Cekar. Hoglah. I did not intend to betray myself but I do think that he is the very best of all. Milcah. I choose Dekar. I told him long ago about the cows that I would take care of and he said that he likes cows and he would like to help. A man who likes animals would be good to children, too. When I marry I should like all my boys to have Dekar's qualities. Tirzah. You want boys. I wish I might have 5 girls like us, so they could have good times together. How we shall miss each other if we marry. Could not Mahlah keep father's tent for all of us when we five wanted a quiet talk without men around? Would you use a piece of your land for that? Mahlah. Of course, if the rest of you want me to do so. Milcah and Tirzah. Yes. Then we could come back often and ask your advice. That will be good. Noah and Hoglah. I approve but Tirzah has not chosen her husband. Tirzah. The very best of our cousins is Ekar but it is too selfish of me to choose him. I will wait and see who is chosen by Noah. Noah. You need not wait long. I choose Bekar. Hoglah and Milcah . That is not a good choice. He always wants his own way and keeps arguing and quarreling with you. He is stiff-necked. Noah. But I am stiff-necked too. He might argue with some of you timid girls and wear you down. But I am made of sterner stuff. Then it is always interesting to talk to a person who knows enough to say more than "Yea, Yea." Perhaps he likes a woman with a mind of her own. Hoglah. I did notice that he always hunts you for a little conversation and keeps away from the "Yea, Yea" girls. Mahlah. But suppose you talk about the sheep you want to raise on hilly land and he does not like the land and he opposes sheep, and wants swine? No, he would not forget the Lawgiver's objections to filthy swine. But suppose he insisted on grain and pigeons? Noah. That's easy. I would say kindly, "Bekar, raise all the grain and pigeons you want, on your own land, but I shall raise what I deem best on my land. If the Lawgiver thinks I have sense enough to choose a husband he certainly would let me choose between sheep and pigeons." Tirzah. What a good answer. That's just what I can say to Ekar if ever he is stung by my bees. Noah. Most women must submit to husband's plans because they have no land of their own. Of course, as I am fond of Bekar I will want to humor many of his little notions, especially when it makes no difference to me. So I might let him raise a few pigeons in one little corner if he wanted to sell some and have a little money of his own. But on great questions about my own land, I shall decide. Milcah. What would you do if he should be angry and run away? Noah. Few men run away from wives who can feed and clothe them. Mahlah. Now that we sisters have made our choices, let us go to the Lawgiver. There is a sound of several people talking near here under the next palm tree, and considerable noise in the grove farther away. Will you Milcah go out and see who is there? (Milcah goes out.) Noah. I thought we were all alone. Hoglah. Perhaps some of our cousins are curious as to why we five slipped away. Do you believe they thought that we were making our choices of husbands? (There are many voices. Milcah returns.) Milcah. What a cause for laughter. Who do you suppose were under the nearest palm tree? Akar, Bekar, Cekar, Dekar, and Ekar. They were shouting to hundreds of young men in the grove farther away, "You can't talk to the daughters of Zelophehad. They are discreet women. They never talk to strangers." Then the men in the grove called back, "We are not strangers. We are their cousins, the descendants of Manasseh." Noah. Surely Bekar and the rest of or men could not have been slow of tongue at such presumption. Milcah. Nay, sister. they manfully objected and said, "You can not see them. We shall protect the daughters of Zelophehad. We are nearest of kin." Noah. That was a fitting reply. What happened next? Milcah. Then our five men saw me and each one said that he had something private to say to one of us. I told Dekar not to worry. Hoglah. Well, be swift in words. What did they want? Milcah. Laughter almost chokes me. I can hardly speak. But they are coming near to the door of the tent. Akar is calling "Mahlah, choose me!" Bekar is saying, "Noah, please choose me!" and Cekar calls "Hoglah, may I speak to you?" Dekar just smiles for I gave him a look but Ekar is anxious about Tirzah and wants her to choose him. Can I refrain from mirth? Mahlah. The men we were about to choose for husbands do not seem unwilling. So let us go with them and seek the blessing of Moses and the priest. (They leave.) A voice reads solemnly from Num. XXXVI 10-12 and Deut. XXXIV. "Even as the Lord commanded Moses so did the daughters of Zelophehad. For Mahlah, Tirzah and Hoglah and Milcah and Noah the daughters of Zelophehad were married unto their father's brother's sons, and they were married into the families of the sons of Manasseh, the son of Joseph, and their inheritance remained in the tribe of the family of their father. Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountains of Nebo to the top of Pisgah. And the Lord showed him all the land unto the utmost sea. So Moses the servant of God died there in the land of Moab. And he buried him in a valley and no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day - and there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses whom the Lord knew face to face." Scene 3 A year later about 1451 B.C. Noah. How glad I am that all of us sisters can gather in father's tent when we come from our separate tents where we now live with our husbands. Hoglah. What subject Mahlah did you want us to consider today. Wars are still being fought tho every city which does not resist is an open city. Mahlah. Now various parts of the Promised Land are being allotted to our tribes by our war leader Joshua. He has been making many wars and now so many people are asking him about their land, that he may forget what Moses decreed about our land. Noah. Joshua has had the spirit of wisdom since Moses placed his hand on his head and how could he forget? Mahlah He may have been far away warring when the Lawgiver decided. But Eleazar, the priest, was there and we should remind him and the princes, some of whom still live. Milcah. I am afraid of those princes. I never talked to any but plain men. Noah. They need plain talk if they forget. Tirzah. Why must we go? Could not our husbands talk for us? They are very kind. Men have so much influence on men. Mohlah. We must be brave enough to ask for our own rights. We must make sure that it is written down in the new book of records so all can see. Sisters, we have this duty we must perform for ourselves. We not only must save our land but the land of other women. Be courageous. Remember "The Eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms." All. You are right. We shall go with you. The women leave the tent and a voice is heard. In the Book of Records it is written "There was also a lot for the tribe of Manasseh" - (The heirs were named) "These were the male children of Manasseh, the son of Joseph, by their families. "But Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh had no sons but daughters, and these are the names of his daughters, Mahlah, and Noah, Hoglah, Milcha and Tirzah. And they came near before Eleazar the priest and before Joshua the son of Nun and before the princes saying, "The Lord commanded Moses to give us an inheritance among our brethren. Therefore, according to the commandment of the Lord he (Joshua) "gave them an inheritance among the brethren of their father. And there fell ten portions to Manasseh; because the daughters of Manasseh had an inheritance among his sons." Scene 4 Hoglah. Mahlan and Noah, how bravely you faced those princes and Eleazar and Joshua. You spoke for us but many other women I never knew, all Israelites, have since said to me, "You five daughters helped all of us women whose fathers left no sons for it is written down again just about as Moses wrote it before he died. "The daughters of Manasseh had an inheritance among his sons. That brings justice to more than you five. It includes all of us Jewish women in like condition." Mahlah. Your words bring us joy. As we begin or new life among strangers, some of them heathen, we must follow the teachings of our wise judge. Then our Israelitish people will survive the idolatrous nations near us who burn their children in the fire, who add drunkenness to thirst and who practice the abominations and lewdness which lead all to death. Noah. Moses said, "Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them and that thou enquire not after their gods saying "How did these nations serve their gods? Even so will I do likewise." Sisters it would be a small value if after all the battles our brave warriers wage and win, that the wicked ideas of the enemy should later conquor our minds. To win the wars and lose the peace would be displeasing to God. We must remember many statutes. Mahlah. We have much to remember. Many times Moses told us to give one tenth of our income to the church. Noah. Would it be unkind to remember that, when our ancient father Jacob was an exile without anything, he promised God that if God would prosper him, he would repay God by giving back one tenth. But Moses went further and said that every man should give as he was able, according to the blessing of the Lord that hath given it to him. Same idea. Mahlah. In Moses' farewell address, he warned us to remember or we should regret the trees and fruits that the locusts consume. Noah. Is it not strange that Moses spoke so often about kindness to the poor? He must have had everything he could want during his first forty years when he was the adopted son of the princes. Milcah. He said "When thou cuttest down they harvest and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it. It shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow." Hoglah. He also said that people with plenty should not be niggardly and should allow another person to eat his fill of grapes but not put any away in a vessel. He allowed one to come into standing corn of a neighbor and pluck the corn with his hand but not to use a sickle. Why was that? Noah. Moses did not want wanderers to be greedy. But he did think they might have a little taste and he wanted no one to suffer. What a wonderful mind he had at one hundred and twenty years of age. "His eye was not dim nor his natural force abated." Hoglah. I will never forget that day when he put some of our people on Mount Gerizim and the others on Mount Ebal. Then he had the Levites speak with a loud voice cursing various persons who would do wicked things and all the people on Mount Ebal after each curse would say, "Amen." I am glad that all of us Manassehite were on Mount Gerizim to say "Amen" to all the blessings on the people who observed the commandments of God. Noah. I can almost hear those tremendous Amens now. Mahlah. We sisters shall sometimes have children of our own who never knew of our four-hundred years of bondage nor of our forty years in the wilderness and never saw our leader Moses who was the Lawgiver and prophet and judge. The many causes he heard and decided will be statutes for our Jewish people for many generations. He directed that these laws be written upon stones very plainly and they will be carefully preserved. But they will be far away from most of us, and our children may never see them. How can they know what we know? All together. And ye shall teach them your children when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up. Noah. Moses also told us "Write them on the door posts of thine house and upon they gates. Bind the words upon thine hands and have them as frontlets between thine eyes." Mahlah. You sisters have truly kept these in your hearts, and your children can learn and obey. Though the heathen in the land we are entering may die in their sins, yet they could learn from us to abhor idols and practice the justice, order, cleanliness, purity and mercy we were taught and thus they would be saved. As we sisters separate and each goes to her own special allotment in the Promised Land will Noah lead us in the gracious words Moses told Aaran to use in blessing our people? Noah leading. "The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace." Lights go out and the girls leave. Loud voices recite in chorus. We the women in many lands who have lived in the thirty-four centuries after Moses, unite in saying "Honor and praise to the great Jewish Lawgiver who was the first among the leaders of all nations to ordain law, order and justice and whose statutes protected the poor, the fatherless, the widows and all women as no heathen king ever attempted. He tried to organize a holy people. Thanks and praise from millions of women in many generation to the courageous daughters of Zelophehad who led the way for brave women in succeeding ages to demand rights in property, guardianship of children, education, a share in choosing rulers, and a chance to help make a more just and peaceful world. 29. May the apparent equal justice of your civil service laws by evaded if a head of department prefer a man rather than a woman who may have had higher marks? Are war veterans preferred? How does this work out in practice? 30. Are any women on the Boards of Control of State commissions and of State and Country charitable institutions? Must women matrons, keepers, physicians, or nurses by employed in the State and County and City institutions having the custody of women and girls? 31. Are women received as jurors? 32. What is the sum total of the legal discriminations against women? Can they be best abolished by one general law "removing women's legal disabilities" or by separate laws amending each section of the statutes where discriminations occur? 33. Does your law prohibit night work of women and girls? Have you an eight hour law? 34. Does your law provide sanitary regulations for factories and shops where women are employed? 35. What is the "age of consent?" 36. What is the minimum punishment for rape, for bastardy, for seduction, for pandering? 37. Is there any adequate law against taking indecent liberties with young girls? 38. What is the duty of patriotic citizens in such matters? Extra copies of this leaflet for study clubs can be secured by sending 25 cents for 25 copies or $1.00 for 150 copies to the Literature Headquarters of the National League of Women Voters, Peru, Indiana. National League of Women Voters Committee on Uniform Laws Concerning Women Chairman, Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch 112 W. Adams Street, Chicago ASK YOUR ABLEST LAWYER to address your organization, and give him these questions beforehand so he may give you definite instruction on all these laws in your State. Questionnaire on Woman's Legal Status 1. Do spouses have an equal interest in each other's real estate and a half interest and control by each spouse of all property acquired after marriage by either or both of the spouses with power in each spouse to devise and bequeath one half interest in this property? 2. What share has a wife in the surplus of property, real or personal, accumulated by their joint efforts after marriage, or is it a custom for a husband to take this surplus in his own name? 3. Does the law secure to a wife any portion of the family income free from husbandly dictation unless she earned it outside the home? 4. If a wife has separate property, has the husband an authority over it or its rentals, and can a wife's separate property be levied on for family necessaries ordered by her, and if the necessaries are consumed by the family can she secure re- payment? 5. Does a wife own her wages earned outside the home? Can she by law enforce payment for her services performed in the home for husband and children? 6. Does the wife after marriage own her clothes and other personal property owned by her before marriage? After the husband's death, is she given the "family clothing" by law? 7. Has a husband any other control over his wife's personal property or liberty except that which comes from his general control over the family pocketbook? 8. Is the wife entitled to a voice in the choice of the family home? Is there a joint head-ship of the family in both husband and wife? 9. What is the punishment for wife or child desertion and is it a criminal offense for which extradition may be demanded? 10. Have common law marriages been abolished and does the law provide that the marriage must be entered into with due legal ceremonies? 11. Does your law provide for a health certificate before a marriage license is issued? 12. Does your law prohibit the evasion of marriage laws of other States? 13. What are the marriage ages for men and women? 14. What are the legal causes for divorce, and are they the same for both spouses? 15. Is a wife legally responsible for the support of the children and her husband? 16. Has she a right to share in the children's earnings? Do parents inherit equally from each other and from a deceased child? 17. What is the minimum amount for Mother's Pensions? 18. Is a father liable for some family expense for wife or child, if the expense is one of which he disapproves? 19. Is a wife entitled to a share in the guardianship and control of the children, so that her wishes may guide in the choice of church, school, clothing, medicine and work? 20. Can a father will away from a mother the custody of their unborn child? Has any father done this? 21. Are husband and wife legally competent to testify for or against each other in any action at law or in equity when either one is a party? 22. May a wife make contracts or enter partnerships without her husband's consent? 23. Are the public schools, from the lowest grade to the State university, open to girls on the same terms as to boys? Are women represented on the Boards of Control of these various schools? 24. Are women employed in the higher positions in these schools? Do the salaries paid the women average as high as the salaries paid the men? If not, what ratio do they bear to the salaries paid men? 25. Are any of the County Superintendents of Schools women? 26. Are the professional schools open to women? From which are they debarred? 27. Are women admitted to the bar, and other professions? 28. To what elective offices are women eligible through special enactment, and to what because of lawmakers' omission of words "male" or "men"? Are these positions salaried? What positions are being held by women? NATIONAL LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS Committee on Uniform Laws Concerning Women WIFE AND HUSBAND AS GUARDIANS Twentieth century laws make a wife and husband joint and equal guardians of their children with equal powers concerning their custody, nurture, tuition, welfare, services and earnings. In case of the death or incapacity of either parent, the surviving parent succeeds to these rights and duties. Few States have statutes as comprehensive as is the bill shown on page three of this pamphlet, but the legislatures have shown their recognition of the principal of equality. There are thirty-four States and the District of Columbia in this list: Arizona, Revised Statutes, 1913, Sec. 1110 and 1122. Arkansas, Statutes, 1921. California, Civil Code, 1915, Sec. 197. Colorado, Revised Statutes, 1908, Sec. 2912. Connecticut, General Statutes, 1902, Sec. 206. District of Columbia, Code, 1911, Sec. 1123. Florida, Laws, 1921, Page 198, Chapter 8478 (No. 83). Idaho, Compiled Statutes, 1919, Sec. 4681. Illinois, Revised Statutes, 1919, Chapter 64, Sec. 4. Indiana, Acts, 1921, Page 216, Chapter 97. Iowa, Annotated Code, 1897, Sec. 3192. Kansas, General Statutes, 1909, Sec. 3966. Kentucky, Acts, 1910, Page 93. Maine, Revised Statutes, 1903, Page 617, Chapter 69, Sec. 2. Massachusetts, Supplement, 1902-1908, Page 1277, Chapter 145. Michigan, Public Acts, 1921, Page 303, Sec. 4. Minnesota, Revised Laws, 1905, Sec. 2834. Missouri, Session Laws, 1913, Page 92, Sec. 1. Montana, Laws, 1915, Page 90. Nebraska, Revised Statutes, 1913, Sec. 1632. Nevada, Session Laws, 1913, Page 27, Sec. 6153, 6154. New Hampshire, Laws, 1911, Page 110, Chapter 104. New Jersey, Laws. 1921. New Mexico, Laws of N.M., 1921, Chap. 50, Page 115. New York, Wadham's Constitutional Laws, 1909, Page 550, Sec. 81. Oklahoma, Supplement to Revised Laws, 1918, Sec. 6530. Oregon, Married Woman's Act, 1880, Section 2. Pennsylvania, P. and L. Digest, 1907, Page 4875, Sec. 23, qualified by Session Laws, 1917 and 1919, Page 445. South Dakota, Session Laws, 1921, Page 446, Chapter 325. Utah, Compiled Laws, 1917, Sec. 7815. Vermont, Laws, 1921, Page 79, Sec. 3635. Washington, R. and B.'s Code, Volume 2, Section 5932. West Virginia, Laws of 1921. Wisconsin Laws, 1921, Page 199, Chapter 147. Wyoming, Compiled Statutes, 1920, Chapter 446, Sec. 7015. There are eleven other States which have recognized the wife's authority in a small degree by making her the guardian of her child after the death of her husband. This removes the husband's ancient right to select the child's guardian by deed or will regardless of the wishes of a surviving mother. Among these somewhat modern States are: Alabama, Code, 1907, Sec. 4339, child under fourteen. Louisiana, Revised Civil Code, Article 216, Page 2189. Mississippi, Code, 1917, Sec. 2401, also sec. 1964. North Carolina , Constitutional Statutes, 1919, Sec. 2157. North Dakota, Compiled Laws, 1913, Sec. 4424, child under six months. See Laws, 1919, Page 93. Ohio, General Code, 1912, Sec. 10928. Rhode Island, General Laws, 1909, Page 1170, Sec. 5. South Carolina Code, 1912, Sec. 3783. Tennessee, T's and S's Code, 1896, Sec. 4258 (2492), 3362 as modified by Public Acts of Tenn. 1921, Page, 38, Sec. 9, Yer. 468, 469. Father natural guardian. Texas Civil Statutes, 1914, Sec. 4068. Virginia, Code, 1919, Sec. 5320. In all of the forty-eight States, in cases of litigation, courts consult, "the best interest of the child," and can remove an unworthy or incapable parent from the guardianship. Courts do this even though no guardianship statute may so provide. A joint-guardianship law is, however, needed in the ninety-nine cases out of a hundred where the court's power is not invoked but where the husband as "natural guardian," according to the old common law continues to exercise supreme authority. Three States still leave on their statute books the old guardianship laws of the dark ages which allow husbands absolute power to will away the custody of the child. The severity of these laws is sometimes mitigated by unusual circumstances. Delaware, Code, 1915, Sec. 3916, "The father may be deed or will name a guardian for his child." Georgia, Park's Civil Code, 1914, Volume 2, Sec. 3021, 3033, "He may appoint by will." Other sections are obscure. Maryland, Bagby's Annotated Code, 1912, Volume 2, Page 2092, Sec. 179, Page 2081, Sec. 146 and 148. CATHARINE WAUGH McCULLOCH 112 West Adams Street, Chicago For sale by Literature Headquarters of the National League of Women Voters, Peru, Indiana. 10 copies, 10 cents. 200 copies $1.00. Suggestion for a Model Guardianship Law An act concerning the guardianship of the persons and property of minor children, and to make uniform the laws in reference thereto. Section 1. The wife and husband are the joint natural guardians of their minor children and are equally charged with their care, nurture, welfare and education and the care of management of their estates. The wife and husband shall have equal powers, rights and duties, and neither parent has any right paramount to the right of the other concerning the custody of the minor or the control of the services or the earnings of such minor or any other matter affecting the minor. If either wife or husband dies or is incapable of acting, the guardianship devolves upon the surviving parent. Neither parent shall forcibly take a child from the guardianship of the parent legally entitled to its custody. Section 2. In case the wife and husband live apart the court may award the guardianship of a minor to either parent, and the State where the parent having the lawful custody of the minor resides, shall have jurisdiction to determine questions concerning the minor's guardianship. Section 3. This act shall be known as the Uniform Parental Guardianship Act. Section 4. This act shall be so construed as to make uniform the laws of those States that enact it. Woman Suffrage hearing March 7th, 7:30 P. M. Before the Committee of the Whole In the House of Representatives Springfield, Illinois *List of Speakers Introduction of the Speakers.....Miss Jane Addams Evidence that Women want the Ballot.....Miss Anna Nicholes Chairman Legislative Committee State Federation of Women's Clubs Equal Suffrage in Illinois and other States,................Mrs. Ella S. Stewart President Illinois Equal Suffrage Association Increasing Interest in Equal Suffrage Among Club Women Mrs. Eugenie M. Bacon, Decatur, Ill. Former President Illinois Federation of Womans Clubs Public Sentiment Throughout the State.......Miss Harriet Grim Organizer Illinois Equal Suffrage Association The Ballot for Women and Moral Reforms.....Mrs. Mary H. Kuhl President Illinois W.C.T.U. The Ballot for Women and Public Health ....Dr. Anna Blount, Oak Park, Ill. The Attitude of College Women toward the Ballot Dr. Sarah Jansen President University of Chicago Alumnae Club Some Objections Answered...........Mrs. Grace W. Trout President Chicago Political Equality League The Mother's Need of the Ballot.........Mrs. J.S. Blackwelder Former President Chicago Womans Club The Ballot and the Farmer's Wife Mrs. Henry M. Dunlap, Savoy, Ill. President Illinois Domestic Science Association The Ballot as a Protection for Women of the Underworld Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin Member of the Chicago Vice Commission The Ballot and Tax-paying Women Mrs. Elvira Downey, Clinton, Ill. *List of Speakers The Ballot and Business Women......Mrs. Mattie Peck Bank President, Thompson, Illinois The Ballot and Immigrant Women......Miss Grace Abbott Supt. League for the Protection of Immigrants, Chicago The Ballot for Women and Municipal Advance Mrs. M.H. Wilmarth President Womans City Club, Chicago The Ballot for the Silent Women......Mrs. Coonley Ward The Ballot and Women Officials....Mrs. Catherine W. McCulloch Justice of the Peace, Evanston, Illinois The Ballot for Women and Public Institutions Mrs. Hannah Solomon Ex-President Illinois Industrial School for Girls The Ballot for Women and Church Interests Rev. Rowena Morse, Chicago The Ballot for Women and Educational Interests Mrs. Carrie Alexander-Bahrenberg, Belleville, Ill. Trustee of the Illinois State University The Ballot for Women in Industry...Mrs. Raymond Robins President Illinois Woman's Trade Union League The Value of Equal Suffrage to the Small Town Mrs. Clara J. Farson, St. Charles, Ill. The Ethics of Equal Suffrage Rev. Kate Hughes, Table Grove, Ill. *Two years ago at a similar hearing on Equal Suffrage twenty-six speakers occupied exactly an hour and twenty minutes. We again promise that each speaker shall occupy only three minutes, and we hope to demonstrate that women representing many interests throughout the State are supporting the cause of Equal Suffrage. the good men woke up, rushed to open the window and the women's rejoicings resounded from ocean to ocean. More women have climbed up through the New York window into the full protection of the great citadel than could have entered three or four of the ordinary windows. The generous and just men on the inside of the citadel have discovered that from the twelve rooms where women have entered, much help is coming to batter down the great front door from the inside. The sisters from the seven sleeping porches are also promising what they will do when they wake up in 1920 and vote for presidential electors. The citizens from the twelve rooms with completely open windows and those from the seven rooms with the sleeping porches have figured that they control about 200 electoral votes and that if additions keep on until 1920 a majority will be easy. Some of the forty-eight rooms have portions of their windows controlled by separate groups. Columbus in Ohio and a dozen other scattered groups allow women the municipal advantage of a single pane of glass. Though the opening is small, it allows the women a hurried look within and causes some ventilation for everything within which needs ventilating. How slowly and with what infinite labor and patience have these changes come. No other class who desired to enter the great front doors of privilege and honor has been so rebuffed and so delayed. No other class has been chased from front doors to back doors, to basement windows, to coal holes, to room windows, to porticoes or has needed to climb up by ropes into safety and shelter. A generous and hearty welcome has been given to every class except the women who are physically least able to endure this continuous and arduous labor. The mothers of the race should have been welcomed and urged to enter. A new danger is here. A great war is upon us. The mothers are the first bulwark of the great citadel. In torture and suffering each mother has borne a soldier. Even on the battle field this soldier may never know worse agony. The mothers were not cowards then, nor will they be in the horrors before them. War's heavy burdens will fall on them, the "weakest." As in primitive ages when men would only hunt or fight, women were the agriculturists, the weavers and the home defenders, so today the mothers expect to hold the plow, tend the spindles, mine the ore, feed and clothe the nation and its allies, nurse the wounded, bury the dead and bring forth more sons for soldiers and more daughters to plow, and to nurse, to bury and to beg for equal rights and fuller protection. Shall those who control the citadel ask so much from its women and yet refuse their prayers for every right, every privilege, every immunity? The nations of the world beholding the great sacrifices of money, food, ships and human life offered for freedom's sake, may well wonder why those who control do not speedily accomplish the one freedom at home which needs no bloodshed or sacrifice, the free opening to women of the great front doors. Women claim these rights for all the reasons they formerly gave and also now for this reason, that their wishes may be observed in the conduct of this war. They still behold in the tall, bronzed, stalwart soldiers, choice men of the nation, only their own little sons who must be suitably clothed and fed, and not with embalmed beef. Women have demanded that proper arrangements must be made for health and sanitation. Women have insisted that army camps must be surrounded by "white zones." Mothers who are risking their sons' lives protest against risking their souls' salvation. Women today are unitedly calling to those who control affairs, "Our sons must not be corrupted. Foul diseases are worse than death." These cries of the mothers are being heard. The demands of women in eighteen states where they may vote for president are more influential than formerly. What the great government has not yet done for women for the sake of simple justice it may now do to make them more efficient helpers in the great war. Congress meets in regular 5 session in December. The hour may be close at hand when women will not be relegated to the precarious and varied window climbing methods, but at last be welcomed into the great governmental citadel and all its forty- eight spacious rooms, through the wide open front doors of a federal suffrage amendment. So glorious and abundant an entrance for women will fling a message to all the countries of the world, "We not only believe in freedom for all, but we practice it." PUBLISHED BY POLITICAL EQUALITY LEAGUE Evanston, Illinois $1.00 per 100 DOORS AND WINDOWS BY CATHARINE WAUGH McCULLOCH Once upon a time there was a great fortress called Our National Government, which protected well those who were within its citadel. It was built by all the people, the sheltered ones within and the unsheltered close at hand. The great front doors were the constitution and the federal laws presiding over by congress, which devised the keys for opening these doors. These keys were called constitutional amendments and United States statutes. Tickets of admission through these great front doors into all the privileges and rights of the inner circle had been for many years granted to all white males of certain age and condition. Men of foreign birth desiring admission were not immediately welcomed but were put on a five years' probation before the United States statute key would be turned. Then after the legal formalities, their final naturalization papers were their admission tickets into the great citadel and also into the splendid forty-eight rooms labelled Wyoming, New York, Maine, Texas, etc. Indian men who desired similar privileges needed a different sort of national key to unlock the front door which barred them from entrance. So congress made a "renouncing- tribal-relations" key, whereby every Indian who forswore allegiance to his own tribe could become a "United States" citizen in the technical legal sense. To be sure, in a real and practical way all Indians were native-born citizens, even of a thousand or more years' residence. They were really more native born than most of the other inhabitants who had been on the continent only 200 or 300 years. But legally an Indian only became a United States citizen, entitled to enter the great front doors after congress had prescribed the legal method and he had complied with the conditions. There were great numbers of south- ern people who voluntarily left the protection of this citadel over fifty years ago for that of another citadel labelled Southern Confederacy. When that failed them, congress made special keys called "reconstruction acts," coaxed them to return home, assuring them that they would always find the latchstring out. So they, too, entered through the front door and enjoyed all the privileges granted the most favored residents of the forty-eight rooms. About this time it was discovered that there were millions of black people living and working near the citadel, ignorant, poverty stricken, resourceless and inefficient. It could not be said that they knocked at the front door. They scarcely knew enough. But the benevolent congress seeing how much they needed every powerful protection made keys called the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments which could also unlock the doors into every one of the forty-eight rooms. So entered the negro men through the wide-flung doors of the great front entrance. There was a small group of other men who had been expelled and put into prisons because they broke the rules of the citadel. They were criminals. They wanted to return. So the great ruler from within gave some of them a special key called "executive pardon." Such former criminals bearing this evidence of presidential clemency found also a safe entrance through the great front doors into full citizenship. Then came a band of fresh-faced youth, the romping youngsters of yesterday, now grown, 21, and the big doors, wide open, welcomed them to every privilege of their fathers. They renounced nothing, they forswore nothing, they were forgiven nothing. The glorious key of 21 years opened every door. So the foreigners, the Indians, the confederates, the negroes, the pardoned criminals and the boys of 21 1 have been received in a dignified and lordly manner through the great front doors of our national citadel and today are enjoying all the rights, privileges and immunities of every one of the forty-eight rooms. The moment any one of these classes becomes a United States citizen of 21 years of age he then by the rules of all the forty- eight rooms can demand every privilege and right of a citizen. For many years there have been other great groups begging an entrance to this citadel of national protection. These were groups of women. These women knocked before the negroes. They were told the slaves' condition was serious and that women ought to wait. the negroes' hour had struck. So the women waited and even helped secure the negroes their abundant entrance. They were good waiters. They were women. The law of the sea, that chivalrous mandate, "Ladies first," had no recognition at this entrance. The rule seemed to be "Every sort of man before women." Women asked to use the negroes amendment keys, but were told that this great front door was no "Ladies' entrance." then they asked for an amendment key like the negroes', the Susan B. Anthony amendment, and for forty years they were refused. Some of them at last found a back door through which they hoped to enter. It was labelled "Judicial construction." Women in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and New York made separate attacks at this back door guarded by the United States supreme court. The women claimed that they had always belonged inside with other citizens and that it was only an inadvertence in judicial construction which had kept the entrance open only to males. But the supreme court at the door it guarded was as unyielding as the congress at the great front doors. The Judges claimed that mere citizenship was not the only essential; that maleness was also an important requisite for entrance into the protective citadel. The supreme court said that women, being so near the walls, had much protection already. No foreign citadel dared send its members to attack them. The women answered back that they had helped construct the citadel itself, and even were part of the outside bulwarks protecting the great fortress. Such protection as women received they deserved and more. Though they had sought shelter near the walls, they were not protected as they should be from the winds of unequal taxation, nor from the tempests of unjust laws often beating upon them fiercely, nor were they always protected from Judicial decisions which dripped down upon them from the eaves and often thoroughly soaked them. The women said they were not protected from the gray wolves or greed and graft, the rats and mice, of public inefficiency and wastefulness, the vultures of disease or the tigers of vice. The women made good arguments but the accompaniment of yelps and squeaks and roars of those who attacked them unceasingly seemed to drown their voices. The supreme court members were old men and perhaps asleep or busy and they made no further response than to keep the doors shut. There were, however, generous and just men within the citadel who began to understand these pleadings for help and protection from without. Some descendants of the scriptural unjust judge were also there and, remembering the importunate widow, feared her ghost would walk. It was either the importunate widow's ghost or many of her direct descendants who continued to plead and insist until the men within woke up and began to argue for and against opening the sheltering doors. Thus far the just men and the generous were in the minority and the front doors, the congressional front doors, were still shut, though the parley continued. Along back nearly fifty years ago the men in one great room called Wyoming said, "If the women can't enter the congressional front doors, what's to hinder our pulling them up through a Wyoming window?" Soon a strong man shouted, "Hist there, sisters! Look up! See the rope! Grab it! We will pull you into the Wyoming window." It was done and Wyoming women were sheltered with the brothers fairly and justly. All the women around the citadel rejoiced over what the Wyoming men had done. Then the men in twenty or more other rooms thought of something pleasing for their dissatisfied women. They decided to unlock for one day in the year the little basement or school suffrage Windows under their respective rooms and let the women climb in to repair the foundations. This was much needed, quite fundamental and unremunerative. The women were on their mettle. They worked bravely at this important and modest task. In between times they were put out under the eaves. But they found this small climb in and out the school suffrage windows was strengthening their political muscles and preparing them for longer and harder climbs. The men in a few rooms decided to let the women in through a little bond or tax suffrage coal hole for a slight protection. That was nice. The opportunity to shovel in coal or taxes to keep the rooms above warm had advantages, but alas, this entrance into the tax suffrage coal hole gave the women no control over the coal, once they had shoveled it in, and so was not entirely satisfactory. These little openings called school suffrage basement window fundamental work and bond suffrage coal hole fuel work made the women long for the opening of other great windows, like the great window in the Wyoming room. The Wyoming state amendment window idea at last had a few imitators when the men in the Colorado, Utah and Idaho rooms bravely hung out their ropes and pulled up their sisters into the complete protection they themselves enjoyed. The men in the Kansas room made a little early effort, however, in this direction when they let the women enjoy some municipal suffrage spring cleaning with good results. For fourteen long years after this no large window to any of the great rooms was opened. The women, how ever, were not idle. These heroic descendants of the importunate widow kept up the serenading of the inmates of the forty-four other rooms where they sat in monkish solitude at the forty-four other windows. Those were pitiful serenades outside in the cold and sleet and the serenaders received little comfort from the bouquets the men often threw out, for the flowers were the flowers of the lemon, such as "We keep you out for your own good." "It is too filthy here for nice women." "It is too strenuous for you feeble women to climb up here." The woman's chorus would then sing with emotion about the strenuosity of struggling unarmed with the gray wolves, the rats, the vultures and the tigers when they neded the safety of the great walls they had helped to build The men's chorus would then respond: "We love weak women, we hate the strong; If you want love, you stop that song." That did quiet some women but a juvenile chorus would chant this truthful refrain, "The mothers who're strong Help us kids along. And that's no lie." Sometimes the pleading sisterhood had visits from the favored women citizens from the four rooms with generous men. Even as Lazarus the beggar could go from his last abode of bliss to visit Dives in his heated quarters so the blissful sisters visited and recited their rights, privileges and immunities enjoyed equally with their brothers. These calls made the debarred sisters even more insistent and their serenades continued near every large window, every school suffrage basement window, every tax coal hole and with splendid talent at the great front doors of congress. These fresh appeals at all the windows and at the big front doors began to bring results. Other windows opened one by one and women laboriously climbed up the friendly ropes into seven more windows which opened into the rooms labelled Washington, California, Kansas, Oregon, Arizona, Nevada and Montana, making a grand total of eleven great rooms truly democratic. The Illinois window had stuck very a tightly but some generous Illinois men wanting to lift their sisters somewhat away from the wolves of graft, the rats of wastefulness and inefficiency, the vultures of disease, and the tigers of vice, constructed a fine sleeping porch addition where women could have a look into the inside of the Illinois room and occasionally open up things for ventilation. This was the presidential, municipal and primary suffrage sleeping porch. This was a wonderful protection and soon such porches became the fad, built after the Illinois plan. North Dakota, Ohio, Indiana, Rhode Island, Michigan and Nebraska men built similar porches in harmony with their own window architecture and their women are now this much nearer to protection in the great citadel. Arkansas did not plan one after the Illinois idea entirely, as hers is only a primary vote porch. Upon investigation, the women discovered that as Arkansas is practically a state of but one party and the primaries pick the winners, the partition between this and the full privileges of the big room are nothing but long French windows with the glass out and so unlocked, that the women may go in at will. Indiana, too, nad more than the beautiful porch. Her men gave each woman on entering a stout hammer labelled "Vote for Delegates to the Constitutional Convention." These hammers were guaranteed to knock down the partition between the porch and the Indiana room so that Indiana women could help themselves to their own full enfranchisement. In many struggles when the women have wanted their rights they equipped themselves with the womanly weapons of doughnuts and coffee. But such weapons the men swallowed as though they were sword eaters and there was nothing to show for it. For efficient service coffee and doughnuts would have been greatly surpassed by the Indiana hammer. It might not have comforted the inner man greatly but its coercive power would have been a thousand fold more effective. This hammer was not left long in the undisputed possession of Indiana women. Some sons of evil confederated to contest the legality of the constitutional convention law. The Indiana supreme court decided there would be no convention at this time, but left undecided the question whether or not Indiana women might use this hammer at some other time for a properly constituted constitutional convention. Then appeared a foe from the tribe of Suffering Taxpayers who opposed the Indianapolis omen using the new municipal suffrage porch because of the expense to him of women's ballots. Suffering Taxpayer's personal share of the whole extra expense during his whole life would probably be less than thirty cents, yet such possible financial disaster caused hundreds of pages of briefs and hours of oral arguments, and the supreme court decided to save Suffering Taxpayer this heavy expense. In Ohio the warlike Hivites and Jebusites, known as "The Wets," filed referendum petitions against the women and so did the workers of iniquity in Nebraska, while the Sanballots and Tobias of North Dakota as yet are only threatening the destruction of the North Dakota presidential elector sleeping porch. Windows to other rooms have been opening slightly to the pleadings of the women. In Maine, New York, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Oklahoma, the guardians at the windows concluded that they would allow the men in their rooms to decide whether they wanted their respective windows opened. That seemed simple enough and yet the men who control the constitutional window in many of the remaining great rooms would not even do that much. They have refused to allow the men inside their rooms to decide whether the women may come in. In two of these, North Dakota and Iowa, more deliberation will yet be needed before it is ordained that their own men in North Dakota and Iowa should be allowed to decide this question. In the Maine room so many good men were asleep that Wrong conquered and their window remained closed. In the great Empire room New York, THE NARCOTIC REVIEW Published QUARTERLY by INTER-STATE NARCOTIC ASSOCIATION, Inc. State Bank Building, 75 State St. , Albany, N.Y. EDITOR: A.H. Mather Associate Editors: Frederick Allen, D.D. B. Van Hoosen, M.D. Everett G. Hoffman Wm. D. McNally, M.D. H.A. McIlvane, E.E. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE Annually: U.S.A. $0.50; Canada, $0.75 Per 100, $4.00 AN OPEN LETTER Dear Friends: You have perhaps been wondering why you have not another issue of the Narcotic Review Magazine since it is time for another publication. There are several reasons which we desire to share with you, assured that you will appreciate our problem. First, there is the unreasonably high cost of printing, together with a serious storage of news print. It is almost impossible to get satisfactory work done at this time. Again we regret to report that receipts from our friends have not kept pace with the increased demands upon us. You must realize that the subscription price has never covered the cost of the publication and that with the war demands, our problem is greatly increased. For some time, in response to a growing desire for such a publication, we have been contemplating the publishing of a volume (see enclosed prospectus) containing a complete compilation of the valuable scientific data we have gathered regarding the destructive effects of narcotics in various forms. We desire to place this publication in the public libraries throughout the country and also, the libraries of schools and colleges. This ambitious undertaking will entail a considerable expenditure but we feel that something should be done to offset and answer the publications of the enemies of our cause. We feel sure that this effort will receive your enthusiastic support, and that it will far more than supplant any missing issues of the Narcotic Review. We want you to know that we are expending every ounce of our strength in combating the evils of narcotics, the deadliest enemies of civilization. We will lose this battle unless the forces of righteousness are greatly increased. We are not discouraged but are deeply solicitous of your continued support of the cause. Very cordially, May 1, 1945. THE EDITORS IMPORTANT Our Summer Vacation Address beginning May 1, 1945, will be (Mrs.) Alice Hyatt Mather, Executive Secretary, 236 South Eighth Avenue, La Grange, Illinois. See enclosed self-addressed envelope. NATIONAL CRIME PREVENTION LEAGUE, INC. National Headquarters: State Bank Building, 75 State Street Albany, New York Phones: Albany 4-3781 - Troy 1976 Mrs. McCulloch was admitted to the bar in 1888. She was pioneer in equal suffrage crusades. Five years ago she celebrated her golden wedding anniversary. She was the wife and law partner of Frank H. McCulloch, a native of Mason City, Iowa. Mrs. McCulloch was born in Rockford, Ill. Mrs. McCulloch was an ardent supporter of our cause. -Editor. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, Suffrage Pioneer, Dies at 86 Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, 82, of 223 Orrington 6 av. Evanston, died in Evanston Hospital this morning. HER PRAYER Our Infinite Father to whose shelter we fly, we commend to Thy loving care our husbands, sons and brothers who are serving their country and the cause of freedom on land and at sea and in the air. Keep them brave and strong and true. Grant them a chivalrous courage in warfare and a noble fortitude in disappointment and suffering. Guard them against the temptations which besiege them in their hours of idleness. Cleanse them from the stains of sin, and may they keep themselves unspotted from vice and drunkenness. Save them from wanton cruelty and the spirit of revenge. May they be magnanimous in victory and devoted to building a nobler future for all mankind where no one may suffer from starvation, disease or injustice. May they endure hardness as good soldiers of Christ, and on their return to us, find their own nation, our nation, practicing the justice and freedom for which they fought. Amen VISUAL EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS Posters on the Cigarette (17 in a set -16" x 22") Can be mounted.................................................................................................................$1.00 Still Picture Films - "The Truth About the Cigarette" (86 slides)............................................................. 5.00 This film is widely used and highly recommended. "The Truth About All Narcotics, Including Alcohol and Tobacco: (49 illus.) with Manual ...........................................................................2.50 The Strohm Cigarette Testing Device ("Smoke Bottle") with extra set of glass tubes, printed lecture explaining the demonstration of liquid poison in cigarette smoke, charges prepaid........................................................................5.00 Playet - "C.I. Garette Doomed to Burn" (42 characters) a pronounced success in the schools of Chicago. Per copy.................................................................................................................. . 10 "John Learned to Smoke Behind the Garage," a 15 page booklet, highly illustrated - has saved many a boy and girl from taking their first smoke. Per Copy.................................. .05 Per 100 Copies.....................................4.00 "Brief Statements About Narcotics and Their Injury to the Brain" - a 16 page Questionnaire Booklet on all narcotics (highly illustrated). Single Copies....................... .10 {Per one dozen copies. .................. .50 "Fifty Questions Answered Scientifically" (on the Cigarette) - Per 100 Copies.....3.00 "Fifty Questions Answered Scientifically" (Alcohol). Per 100 Copies............................................................................................................... 3.00 "On the Trail of Marijuana" (100 page Book) highly illustrated - by Rowell - Postpaid........................................................................... .25 Marijuana Warning Cards - Free upon call at headquarters, or upon payment of express charges. Marijuana Seals - One cent each - Per 100.......................................................................... 1.00 Tracts - an assortment - Postpaid, per 100........................................................................... .50 PROGRAMS for "Young People" and for "Adults" are also available. Cigarette Treatment FREE to members of our Associations. Conditions of Membership: Associate Membership.................................................................................................................$2.00 Supporting Membership............................................................................................................ $5.00 Sustaining Membership...............................................................................................................$10.00 to $100.00 Life Membership.............................................................................................................................$1,000.00 to $10.,000.00 Suite 1007, 75 State St., Albany 7, N.Y., U.S.A. Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.