Editor Advertiser:

I ask permission for space to quote some of the noted leaders of the ministry and well-known editors in regard to suffrage. Also the privilege of citing some of our state laws relating to women and children.

Rev. Lyman Abbott, editor of the “Outlook” writes:

“It is claimed that women must be given the suffrage to protect themselves from the injustices inflicted on them by men. I confess that this claim arouses my indignation. To set class against class is bad, to set race against race is worse, to set religion against religion is even more perilous; but to set sex against sex is a degradation so deep that political polemics can no further go.”

This is a state question, no national, and it must be due to the lack of proper information to say that women need votes for protection, with reference to the laws of our state:

(a) The father may appoint a guardian of the estate of a minor, but he cannot by will deprive the mother of the custody and education of the children.

(b) The husband is compelled to support the family or can be imprisoned. Wife under no compulsion. (In some of the equal suffrage states the wife has been made equally responsible for the support of the family and subject to sentence.)

(c) Child labor law: Minors under fourteen cannot be employed in any mining or manufacturing establishment, and cannot be employed in any business whatever during school hours.

(d) The Workmen’s compensation law covers women and children.

(e) A woman living separate and apart from her husband can convey her property without his signature, but a man cannot convey his property without wife’s signature, unless she is at fault.

(f) A married woman can engage in a separate busines[s] and claim all profits therefrom, but a man by law is compelled to share with his wife.

(g) In West Virginia a woman can sue for alimony without suing for divorce. In Ca[l]ifornia under woman suffrage a man can sue for alimony.

(h) If a man borrows money, defaults in payment, judgment[t] is entered against him and his real estate is sold, after his death his window [widow] can still claim her one-third interest in the land sold, but if a woman’s property is sold for her debts the husband’s interest in the land is cut out.

(i) If a man dies and his estate is in debt the creditors cannot deprive his widow of her one-third interest, but in Ca[l]ifornia under woman suffrage the creditors can even seize property owned by the wife.

(j) Woman are exempt from jury duty. In equal suffrage states they are not exempt.

(k) The law cannot regulate wages. It is unconstitutional.

(l) Age of consent for girls in West Virginia fourteen years. Penalty death or from seven to twenty years imprisonment. The juvenile delinquency law protects girls from fourteen to eighteen years by punishing any person contributing to their delinquency, penalty heavy fine and one year in prison.

(m) If a woman commits a crime in the presence of her husband it is a legal presumption that she was forced to do it by her husband, and many times is excused on these grounds.

Are we not forced to admit that the above laws are replete with justice for women?

Rev. Dr. James Buckley, the able editor of the “New York Christian Advocate,” writes:

“I regret to see women engage in the movement because it indicates a failure to discern the natural place of women in order of creation, the place of eternal superiority and supremacy. If the public work is ill done by men the remedy is to do it better not to shift the weight to shoulders already heavy-laden and whose task they do not propose in any respect to lighten.”

“Taxation without representation is tyranny” a suffrage slogan stolen from the American Revolution, where it related to national representation in parliament. Taxation without votes is an entirely different matter. Aliens, mi[n]ors, estate in trust, men in army and navy, men living in the District of Columbia pay taxes without votes as well as women, as the price of protection to life and property. Six million men voted for the present president. Nine million voted for other candidates. Ten million over twenty-one years of age did not vote at all. If votes are the only representation the nineteen million men who had their choice, ignored in the election of the highest representatives of the nation ought to stop paying taxes. Many thousand of tax paying women are anti-suffragists.

“What makes a city full of power?
Not wealth’s display nor titled fame,
Nor fashion’s loudly boasted claim.
But women rich in virtue’s dower,
Whose homes though humble, still are great,
Because they make men for the state.”

Mary Simms Keller