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THE WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE FAD

Equal Rights Getting to Be a Fashionable Thing Nowadays.

Great People Are Backing It Up—Other Matters of Interest Mentioned by Mrs. Peattie.

The cause of woman’s suffrage is being made fashionable. Hitherto, while it has had the advocacy of many persons of influence, intelligence and eloquence, it has not received the personal support of such persons as those who now promise to work for the abolition of the word male from the constitution of the United States.

True, at one time, the cause of woman’s political enfranchisement was particularly popular. This was after the close of the civil war. The tremendous struggle for the emancipation of an alien race. and the sympathies which arose as the consequence of those sufferings, and which for years threw a halo about the republican party, and made it dear to the hearts of the young and the generous-minded, had paved the way for other large actions on the part of that political part. The men who could call the African “brother” were very willing to call their feminine compatriots “sister,” politically as well as in other ways. At that time, when small objections had ceased to assume the proportions of obstacles, and when men had caught a glimpse of what brotherhood meant, it was but natural that those who had borne the brunt of the battle, fighting for consistency’s sake, should desire to make that consistency complete by giving to patriotic and intelligent women the same privileges they had extended to the unmoral slave—the man who had been denied the right to frame life upon principles of his own, and who was, therefore, generally speaking, unequipped with active opinions, either for good or evil. That this mass of slaves should have been actuated by feeling of gratitude rather than revenge, that their naturally affectionate natures should have triumphed over what was primeval and vicious in them, has been one of the mercies extended to this nation, and it makes an episode in history which has not yet had its appropriate monument. That will only come when some man with literary and moral genius writes a chapter of the black man’s emancipation from slavery with esoteric pen.

The coarseness and violence of some of the women who rushed to the defense of woman suffrage, and the effeminancy and nauseating personality of some of the men who stood by them, aroused in the conservative, and in the short sighted, feelings of aversion to the cause, which destroyed its popularity and made it a just.

A cause will grow under persecution, but it will die under ridicule.

If those who were discouraged by the personality of the leaders of the suffrage movement had only paused to reflect that it takes persons possessed of morbid egotism, extraordinary bravery, or fanaticism, to lead a new faith, they might have been patient and kept to their faith, regardless of its leaders. The leader of any principle is never the usual, average person. He or she must be strong in the approval of self, or sustained by a belief in the approval of the diety. Egotism or religion must be the food on which these isolated individuals feed A Napoleon or a Joan of Arc must lead on to victory. Perfect mental balance, sunny considerations of what is expedient, a care for appearances, and mercenary calculations can not be found in the advocate of a new and great principle. The extravagancies of the leaders of a cause are what attracts to them the attention of the world, and impresses upon the mind the peculiarities of the faith.

The Spectator calls attention to the impetus which the suffrage movement is constantly inquiring, and which one cannot deny or be blind to, no matter how he may stand personally, in regard to the matter.

The signing of a petition for striking the word male from the constitution is the manifest result of the growth of public feeling, and at the same time the names signed are many of them of such importance as to give much emphasis and acceleration to the movement. Among those names are Bishop Potter, Mr. [Condert?], Judge Barrett, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, Mary Mapes Dodge, the editor of St. Nicholas; Mrs. Lowell, Hamlin Garland, the novelist, Dr. McGlynn, George B. Forrest Brush, Alice H. Northrup, George W. Turner, Theodore Sutro, Helen Gould, William O Donovan, Daniel Gompers, Mrs. Candace Wheeler, Walter Damrosch and many other distinguished persons.

By and by, perhaps the petition will find its way out west, a little belated, like the fashions in hats, and then all of us, men and women, will talk very much about whether we do or do not approve of removing invidious distinctions between law-abiding citizens.

Many of the strongest opponents of the movement in this part of the country will be among the women themselves. As a class they do not want suffrage. The Woman’s club has occasionally been agitated by the fear that some of its members might compromise it by the advocacy of suffrage. But fortunately for the well-being and harmony of the club, the members are agreed in thinking that acts are more direct value than theories, and self-culture, with altruistic tendencies, appears to be the religion of the club.

Suffrage is not even discussed at the club, though occasionally some inadvertent reference to it awakens applause.

The truth is, the west has got so used to thinking of itself as essentially radical that it frequently shows an extraordinary conservatism from the very effort to restrain itself from too radical demonstrations.

Yet it would not be in human nature for women in this part of the country not to feel interested in the efforts In the east to secure a constitutional groundwork for future suffrage legislation. No class of men in this country could be indifferent to a question involving their enfranchisement, nor can women be expected to be so.

We are trustful creatures, we women, and believe that us a whole the men mean to do what is best for themselves first, and for us secondly, yet, sometimes, when we see what a mess they have made of certain things, we modestly reflect that we could not have done worse.

We are patient, too—perfect Griseldas—yet the continual paying of taxes without representation, the endurance of the penalties, but the enjoyment of the most distinctive privileges of citizenship, [fill?] us with a sense of injustice.

True, we are reminded that with wider privileges must come an increase of responsibility. But if we are willing to assume it the men need not worry. They are not so anxious to protect us from those responsibilities which are without emolument or honor.

However, that sounds rather bitter, doesn’t it?

And I could no more be bitter, where my fellow man was concerned, than I could be bitter toward the sun in heaven. The only excuse a candid woman can make for bitterness toward men is that the right man did not love her. Such stupidity as that a woman never can forgive.’

One of the favorite prophecies of man in regard to the woman with the ballot in her hand is the awful degeneration of woman. But who has not seen women come into the offices and shops and return them.’ As for the women, when were they ever so high of purpose, so honest, so hopeful and so independent as now? When, in fact, were they ever so happy, in spite of troublous times and the threatening outlook?

To return the question of suffrage, the women of this city enjoy a limited exercise of it. It concerns the public schools. And one of the things they might to do is to put a woman on the school board at the next election. There are men on the board who can attend excellently to the practical part of the work. But it need a woman to look after the moral part of it. It does indeed.

Why not elect a women to fill one of the coming vacancies?

There is an effort being made by Mrs. Potter Palmer and some her lieutenants, to interest prominent and wealthy women in the raising of a memorial to the Columbian exposition. The plans are to erect memorial buildings representing science, art and music, which are to be national affairs, but are to be situated at Chicago The woman of America must be the support of the scheme if it is to succeed. One original feature of the plan for raising the money is that those who may not feel able to give outright may have their lives insured for the benefit of the memorial.

The usual Monday evening meeting at the Young Women’s Christian association will take the form of a musicale, of which the following is the program:

Part I

Plano Solo……Selected Miss James

Solo—“Hush a Bye” .….……. Denza Mis Arnold

Piano Duet. .....Rubenstein Mrs Smith and Miss Terrill.

Reading...Miss Shirley

Part II

Piano Solo……… Miss James.

Solo—“Just as of Old"..….. Pease Miss Arnold

Piano Duet—'Sonata Diabell '...Mrs. Smith and Miss Tor[ell?]

After the entertainment the ladies will serve ice cream and cake, which will be sold for the benefit of the sick.

Tomorrow is a general meeting of the Woman’s club. The departments of political and social science and philanthropy and reform divide the program of the day between them Free discussions are to follow the reading of the papers.

“Oh to be in England, now that April’s there,” signed Browning from somewhere off in Italy, where the more torrid spring robs April of those tender charms which make her most beautiful of all the months in the mother country.

April here is not like April in more humid climes, and it is seldom that the average person cares to celebrate her.

Yet, even now, the gray dove hides among the willow fringes by the little Paplo; and the jay always like a large blue bell on the lithe limbs of the cottonwood The winter wheat is brilliant on the hill sides, and in softer tints the young grasses clothe the haylands. The sky is softer than ‘twill be next month, and the storms that show themselves along the horizon, and which one sees through the opening of the hills, accent the beauty of the theater out upon the plains beyond the town. It is, indeed, an amphitheater, rather than a theater, and the world is round as any saucer, with its convex cover of ether and cloud. through which the impetuous April sunshines cordially.

The bloom upon the apple and the cherry trees is beautiful indeed, and the perfumes are the light burden of the winds, which curry also the strange and appealing odors of the fallow ground, dear to the nostrils of the husbandman.

Undulating and ever undulating, away toward the west go to plenteous hills, and front away in secret chambers of sunset and sea come winds. blowing toward the rising place of the stars. So with bursting of bud and scattering of flower, with the significant whistle of amorous birds and the labor of man and horse, with shower, and sun, and chill. April draws to its close here in our Nebraska.

And all the little school maids wear violets in their plaited hair.

ELIA W. PEATTIE.

Purify the blood, tone the nerves, and give strength to the weakened organs and body by taking Hood’s Sarsaparilla now.

INTERNAL REVENUE.

Nearly every workingman in Italy wears a beard on account of the cost of shaving Now it is proposed to aid the barbers by putting a tax on beards.