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
No comments:
Post a Comment