The editor of Pictorial Review believes in Equal Suffrage. This declaration of opinion is no snap judgment, but is made after careful consideration of the pros and cons of the most momentous question before the nation today.
We have yet to hear an argument against woman suffrage that doesn’t apply with equal force against man suffrage. After all the half of the human race to whom we trust the management of our homes and the bringing up of our children might just as well be entrusted with National Housekeeping and National Housecleaning. Why should the ballot for women lead them to neglect their home duties any more than the ballot for men leads them to neglect their business? We believe when all is said and done, that if we recognize women to be human, it follows as a matter of simple justice that they have as much right to a voice in governmental affairs as the men.
We say these things with a lively appreciation of the fact that woman suffrage will be no panacea, that there will still be political jobs and jobbers, that the problem of good government will not be immediately solved by extending the suffrage; but we also believe that it will be a step in the right direction and a help toward obtaining better laws and better government. We recognize also the danger of giving the ballot to unprepared voters. The nation has had one lamentable experience in this line. But we give the ballot to the ignorant man, and why not to the unprepared woman? There is this saving grace—that in every State in the Union where American women have the right to vote they have most diligently set out to prepare themselves to use it intelligently.
Woman suffrage is not only coming; it is coming fast. At the November election three more states granted women the ballot, thus making nine states in which there is genuine democracy. One great political party has already declared for equal suffrage. In five states, including New York and New Jersey, all political parties have equal suffrage planks in their platforms. Labor organizations in twenty states have endorsed equal suffrage by overwhelming votes. The movement cannot be stayed.
So the pertinent question is not, “Will they vote?” Rather it is, “How will they vote?” To answer that question Pictorial Review sent Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Edwin Theiss to the states where women have been voting, where they spent many weeks watching the workings of woman suffrage. They saw the women preparing for the presidential election. They saw the women vote at that election. They saw them—note this—keep right on working after election. Mr. and Mrs. Theiss report that the women of the West are as busy with politics as other women are with church sociables, bridge whist and pink teas. Women everywhere are banding together to study civic questions. The very air is resonant with the hum of political activity. And the things the women are working for are such measures as juvenile courts, eight-hour laws for workers, prohibition of child labor, better schools, mothers’ pensions, workingmen’s compensations, pure food, clean cities, better health and marriage laws and other issues that make for better children, better homes and a better nation.
Mr. and Mrs. Theiss have found by 10,000 miles of travel and months of observation just how the women vote and what they vote for. And in the following article they begin a series in which they will show something of the working of equal suffrage in America.