Saturday, July 27, 2019

Women Respond to Writer Who Said Women Should Get the Vote, July 25, 1919

From the front page of the Brevard News, July 25, 1919. Two women respond to Bohancus’ article explaining women shouldn’t get the vote, in this blog July 19, 1919, “Foolishness of Suffragettes and Why Women Shouldn’t Want to Vote.”

Bohancus Still Subject of Argument

Editor Brevard News:

You will please allow a constant reader of your valuable paper a few words on the subject of woman suffrage.

I agree with our congenial but misguided friend that he has the right to hide behind the name Bohancus. Such a name serves well the purpose for which it was adopted.

The writer who assumes this high-sounding name makes quite a number of statements but fails absolutely to produce any well-founded argument against woman suffrage. He tries to scare us with the statement that we must contend with a crowd of drunken women at the polls, if women are allowed to vote. This statement hardly deserves an answer. Our women do not drink themselves drunk. We fail to see how the mere casting of a ballot should be so demoralizing in its influence as to produce such an undesirable condition.

“Man will not respect the woman who votes” is a note upon which Bohancus delights to dwell. When confronted with the question “Why will men not respect women who vote” he makes this brilliant answer, “For the same reason a rooster flogs an old hen for crowing.” This is a fair sample of his argument. Now Bohancus, I believe you have admitted that women are just as intelligent as men and that they are just as much interested in the public welfare. Having admitted that they know, fully as well as men, how to crow and when to crow, why not cast aside your selfish aristocratic, rooster-like disposition and let ‘em crow? Yes Bohancus, there are some good women who are opposed to equal suffrage. We may always expect to find a few who are reluctant to leave the well beaten path no matter how sound the reason for making a change. Millions of good women are already voting, not many hears hence millions more will be doing likewise.

“Be not the first by which the new is tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”
--A.P.B.

-=-

Club Woman Writes Again

Editor Brevard News:

It is not the proverbial desire of the woman to have the last word that prompts me to once more tax your patience and that of your probably over weary readers. But there is one part of Bohancus’ latest letter to which it seems right to refer, because his inference is, in a sense, misleading and failure to reply might, in some minds, be accepted as an admission that his argument (if one can call it that) is unanswerable.

In the main, Bohancus’ letter is simply a re-statement of his former one, and a little more added to it. He answers some questions, evades some, and gives us his opinion on certain questions. New, shurely, we must all concede his right to his opinions, even as we cheerfully concede his right to use any pen name that he considers appropriate and melodious.

If, for instance, Bohancus is firmly convinced that his sex in general is possessed of the same degree of reasoning ability, and the same sense of logic that are commonly attributed to roosters, he has an inalienable right to think so. We can not all agree with him, but it is no business of ours if that is his opinion. And if, after explicitly stating that there is no logical connection between poodles and ballots, he does still connect them as he assures us he does, why that also, is no business of any one but himself. He is similarly entitled to hold all the other opinions expressed in his letter. In so far as Bohancus’ personal opinions go, they are his own concern, and why discuss them in public? When, however, a man states his opinion and lays it down as a fact, that is a different matter. When Bohancus says, “Give them the ballot and men lose respect for them,” he is stating something as a fact when in truth it is noting but his individual conviction. There are at present only six states in the Union where women have no vote whatever. In our own southland in six states, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana, women have either primary suffrage, municipal suffrage in charter towns, or vote upon educational questions, issue of school bonds, etc. And the women vote too, as the politicians have learned. According to Bohancus then, there are only six states in the Union where the men respect their wives, mothers, and sisters!

But the main point which calls forth this reply is his reference to those suffragettes, who for lawlessness and bad behavior have been dealt with by the law.

May I remind your readers that the number of women who have been engaged in these wild and silly demonstrations is small, exceedingly small in proportion to the total population of women in America. Allowing, for the sake of argument, that there have been 1,000 of them (tho the number is nothing like as large) and comparing that with the number of women in the United States, we find that less than one woman in 25,000 has been guilty of lawless behavior in the interests of equal suffrage. And in the south I do not know of one single instance of such behavior. The overwhelming majority of suffragists disapprove of violence and disregard of the law, and thru their National Association, they oppose militant methods, both by example and precept. It is no more fair to hold the great body of American women who advocate equal suffrage responsible for the acts of the small number in Washington to whom Bohancus refers, than to withhold respect from the men in North Carolina because the I.W.W. in the West were outrageously lawless. And certainly American women have no more to do with silly and turbulent English suffragettes, than American men have to do with the Bolsheviki in Russia. In closing, may I remark that while most of the women, like Bohancus himself have not consulted the drunken “galoots” as to what they think of equal suffrage, we quote the following from an article by Chief Justice Walter Clark of this state as an authority for the statement that this class of citizens are opposed to it.

“The fight against suffrage for women, has been financed, organized, and kept on foot by the liquor interests. This has been shown by legal and legislative investigation, and by proofs too well known to be detailed here. While we have prohibition in North Carolina, there is a large element who are making profit out of its violation and too many officials who are lax in the enforcement of the law. These well know that if women vote, the prohibition law will be more effective.” And he again says, “It is significant that all the whiskey drinkers and gamblers, the vicious and the immoral element are opposed. And invariably this is true of every office holder who has a rotten record, tho the women pay part of the salary.”

Perhaps Judge Clark’s statements can be disproved, but until they are, most people will accept them as true.
--Club Woman

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