WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 48, 2 July 1913, Page 3

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE.

- The Women’s Suffrage Bill introduced into the House of Commons by Mr W. H. Dickinson was rejected by 266 to 219. Analysis of the Voting. This is how parties voted on the Bill: For. Against. Unionists ... ... 22 133 Liberals ... ... 151 78 Nationalists ... 12 55 Laborites ... ... 34 0 Totals ... 219 266 Allowing for 24 pairs, the Speaker, and the Newmarket vacancy, there were altogether 130 members absent unpaired. Of these 29 were Liberals, 3 Laborites, 13 Xationalists, 3 Independent Xationalists, and 82 Unionists. A Comparison with 1911. On the second reading of the Conciliation Bill (framed by Earl Lytton's Committee) there went into the “Ayes” lobby 148 Liberals, 29 Laborites, 31 Xationalists, and 53 Unionists, while only 36 Liberals,, 9 Xationalists, and 43 Unionists , opposed it. The turnover of the vqtes of. Unionists and Xationalists—induced, in all probability, by the militants’ madness—was responsible, for the do-, feat of Mr Dickinson’s Bill. How the Government Voted. Of the Cabinet, Sir E. Grey,. Sir R. Isaacs, Messrs pirrell, Buxton, Lloyd George, Runciman, and M'Kinnon Wood voted for the second,Reading, while Messrs,jAsqp,ith, Churphill, Harcourt, Hobiiouse,.,. M'Kenna,, Pease, Samuel, and Colonel Seely went with the “Noes.” Mr John Burns was among the abstentions, and did not pair. Of Ministers outside the Cabinet the following voted for the Bill: Aclaud, Griffith, Dr. Macnamara, Masterman, Montagu* Sir Ji/A. Simon, and Ure; against,. T- W. Russell.'and Lambert (paired), iThus 14. Ministers ‘ voted for and 9 against the Bill. . The divisions omithe Suffrage Bill in previous years resulted!

SEX CONFUSION. SOURCE OF SUFFRAGETTE MOVEMENT. The New York correspondent of the London “Daily Mail,” writing of the proceedings in connection with the celebrations of “Mothers’ Day” in Now York, remarked upon the unanimity with which the militancy of the women’s suffrage movement was denounced as marking a decided lowering of women’s ideals the world over. In a manifesto issued by the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, Mrs Arthur S. Dodge, the president, emphatically . proclaimed her conviction that “sex confusion is the source from which has sprung the cry for woman suffrage.’ The keynote of the manifesto was sounded in the following passage:— ■ .1 There is more immodesty in dress, more looseness in conversation, and more impropriety in dancing than has ever been known to American people either in so-called Society or among those who are in other conditions. Behind these revelations of the lowering of women’s ideals and conduct there is the same reason that actuates suffrage distil rba nee.

Mrs 'Dodge especially denounced the costumes worn by suffragettes at recent parades with the deliberate design of making their sex the basis of an appeal to men to grant them the suffrage. After declaring that the “suffrage disturbance is in plain words a sox disturbance,” Mrs Dodge proceeded: “One morning in New York f bead a young woman discoursing witli great eloquence on how she and her sisters could improve the manners and morals of men if they were given the ballot. That evening the same girl was at a fashionable dance. She was gowned in an extremely decollete fashion, and the way she danced and bore herself was suggestive, to say the least. I do not believe that this girl ever realised that, while her vote would be powerless in an election, the cut of her gown, the manner of her dancing, am! the words of her conversation could have a tremendous influence for good among her friends, both men and women, and thus throughout the whole community. Recent paraders offered the spectacle

of women demanding the ballot in order to put down the social evil and vice kinds appearing in support of their demand in costumes that aroused natural resentment among any set of ladies and gentlemen.” Mrs Dodge argued that the liberty young girls had succeeded in securing from the watchful eye of chaperons lias been turned by their conduct into something perilously akin to license. She concluded: “It is a pathological fact that women as a sex' must respect and revere the divine mission of their sex, which is motherhood. The moment they outrage, distort, and deny the purpose for which they are born they become shirkers and drones. Misdirected Government is a badl thing, but miscredited sex is a national tragedy which, if it ho not cheeked, will degenerate the race.”

For, Agaii st. Ma, ority. 1908 . .. 271 92 For 179' 1909 . .. 135 122 For 13 1910 . .. 299 189 For no 1911 . 255 88 For 167 1912 .. . 208 222 Agst. 14