Why We Do Not Approve

Of

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

Because: We feel that the ballot makes absolutely no difference in the economic status of woman. Whether she votes or not, her charities, great and small, will continue, professions will extend diplomas to her intelligence, and trade will grant recompense to her ability. As for the protection of the ballot to working women, it will protect them no farther than it protects men who, in spite of their voting power, find themselves unable to cope with labor conditions by legislation and form themselves into unions outside of law and law making.

Because: Our hospital Boards, our social and civic service work, our child welfare committees and countless other clubs and industries for the general welfare and uplift need women who can give nonpartisan and unselfish service, the worth of which service would be greatly lessened by political affiliations.

Because: Behind law there must always be force to make it effective. If legislation was shaped by a majority of women over men we should soon have, not government, but chaos.

Because: It is an attested fact that politics degrade women more than women purify politics.

Because: We believe the interests of all women are as safe in the hands of men as in those of other women.

Because: Thorough investigation of the laws of suffrage states shows that non-suffrage states have by far the better and more humane laws, and that all laws are more strictly enforced than in suffrage states.

Because: Women make little use of suffrage when it is given them. School suffrage has been a lamentable failure, the women vote averaging scarcely two per cent in any state.

Because: The energies of women are engrossed by their present duties and interests, from which men cannot relieve them, and there is great need of better performance of their present work rather than diversion to new fields of activity.

Because: The suffrage movement develops sex hatred which is a menace to society.

Anti-Suffrage Leaflet, c. 1914, from the collection of Denison Library, Scripps College.