Replies to Articles Published - Criminal Classes Often Control Politics - Comparison of the Number of Men and Women in jail


by C. E. Tibbles
Chapter XXVII from Book of Letters: How to Make Best of Life vs. Woman Suffrage
1912


I quote from one of the suffragette's articles as follows: "Does not the vote of the disreputable, low class of women counterbalance the better element? No. The women of the half world generally do not vote, they are constantly changing their residences and their names; they do not wish to give any data concerning themselves, their ages, names and numbers of streets; they prefer to remain unidentified."

Such specious arguments are used to convert the innocent and unwary to absurd theories, all of which are contradicted by history as shown in one of the many instances, where Harlots who are representatives of the half world not only took an active interest in politics but controlled and led Kings and Nations to their downfall.

I quote below excerpts from Carlyle in which he writes about Louis XV and his Harlot Dubarry who had full control of him.

"But for the rest on green field and steepled city; the May sun shines out, the May evening fades; and men ply their useful or useless business as if no Louis lay in danger. Dame Dubarry, indeed, might pray if she had talent for it."

"O Henault! Prayers? From a France smitten (by black-art) with plague after plague, and lying now, in shame and pain, with a Harlot's foot on its neck, what prayer can come?"

"In such a France, as in a Powder-tower, where fire unquenched and now unquenchable is smoking and smouldering all around, has Louis XV lain down to die. With Pompadourism and Dubarryism, his Fleur-de-lis has been shamefully struck down in all lands and on all seas;"

"For the present he still kisses the Dubarry hand."

"Unhappy man, there as thou turnest, in dull agony, on thy bed of weariness, what a thought is thine! Purgatory and Hell-fire, now all too possible, in the prospect: in the retrospect, - alas, hat didst thou do that were not better undone; what mortal didst thou generously help; what sorrow hadst thou mercy on? Do the five hundred thousand' ghosts, who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields from Rossbach to Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge for an epigram, - crowd round thee in this hour?"

King Louis XV was a weakling who submitted to the dictation and wishes of Dubarry, who ruled France through her influence. Through wars and oppression brought about by her dictation, France was reduced to the lowest level of poverty and disgrace. That was the primary cause of the French Revolution.

Her history requires no further comment except to say that all the women of the Dubarry class will cast their votes on every election day and that "this government cannot stand for any great length of time if governed by half female and half male votes."

Every shrewd politician knows that the criminal classes of them vote and are not afraid of their identity becoming known; that the criminal classes of women in Woman Suffrage States also vote and many of them vote more than once on every election day. That is the great trouble in all our large cities, the criminal classes often get the control the same as a criminal woman got control of King Louis XV.

When women are given suffrage, the criminal women act exactly the same as they did with King Louis and during the French Revolution. In Woman Suffrage States, they sell their votes the same as the criminal men.

Many of the criminal men who have escaped conviction and are running, loose, going from one city to another just as the criminal women do, have places of residence in every city which they visit regularly. Most of these women have husbands and the men have wives, or what they call "common law wives" in each city. Should we give women the franchise, every one of those wives would vote, and while the man might not be able to vote in more than one city, his wives would, on the same day, be voting in half a dozen different places.

The "halfworld" class of criminals, both men and women, live under assumed names and have different ones for every city they visit. They have records made to which they can refer to refresh their memories for all the different names they are to use, the different states in which they were born, and their ages. It would be unwarranted in any respectable person to claim that should suffrage be granted the female sex the disreputable women would 'lot vote. They would be more sure to vote than any other class. There will be at least two votes cast by the criminal class of Women for every one cast by the mothers.

The married women of this country thoroughly understand these conditions and that is one of the great reasons that in Massachusetts when a referendum vote was submitted to the women to ascertain whether they wished to have the suffrage or not, only about four per cent of them voted for it; and I believe that in no state where women have the suffrage with the right to vote upon school and taxation matters, that there has ever been more that ten per cent of those women cast their votes at any election.

Upon careful investigation it has been found that very few of the mothers of children who had homes and attended to them ever voted in those states and it is apparent that a large percentage of those women who voted were of the Dubarry class and followers of her regime, those of the "halfworld."

These facts positively prove that the great majority of the women do not ask for suffrage and that the suffragette agitators are not the representative women of this country.

When they kept up the agitation and insisted on men giving women the suffrage in those states where not ten per cent of them ever cast their votes, they were misrepresenting the women instead of representing them; therefore they cannot complain when I say they are not the representative women of the mothers of this country. If they were representative women, they would favor taking a referendum vote from the women and abide by their decision. However, they refuse to obey the wills of the majority of women by allowing them to have anything to say as to whether they want the suffrage or not.

Men are made bad by yielding to temptations which they meet. The weakest of them become criminals. These are so weak they do not seem able to overcome temptation and succumb to it. Women are even weaker than men. If they are thrown into temptation in politics and public life, the same as men, the weak portion of them will become criminals. The strong portion will yield to temptation just as much, and a little more, than the strong part of the male sex. These are facts which will not be disputed by unprejudiced men or women.

The giving of suffrage to women permits them to travel over the country, stop at hotels and commingle with men as freely as men now commingle with each other. Such a practice insures the same right to travel and associate with men to the unknown disreputable women as it does to the respectable. There are quite as many good women led astray by the advice of bad women as of bad men.

I have been informed that some of the disreputable women of large cities are graduates of colleges, some of them of high schools, and but few who have not graduated from grammar schools, and I strenuously object to forcing our innocent young women into such association, by giving them the suffrage, which will permit their commingling together in hotels and in politics.

The Suffrage Association published a list of men and women who are in jail in different states, to show that there is only a small percentage of women as compared with the number of men. This they claim shows that women are better than men, which, I say, should be so, and under our old system of household government could not be otherwise.

If the reader will go back to the records of sixty years ago, he will find there were practically no women in jail, this because they were riot thrown into temptations which would lead them to commit crime, but since women have engaged in public life, the number of criminals among them has increased rapidly and the increase will continue in proportion to the number of women who attempt to take men's places.

Juries will not convict women of crimes for which they would hang men on the same evidence, and they will send men to jail for offenses for which women would not even be arrested. Again, not one woman is thrown into public life and into temptations such as man has to overcome to every fifty men, this because the great majority of mothers remain in their own sphere. That in itself would prevent women from committing crimes, but when all the women are placed in the same position and have to contend with tire same obstacles in life as men, there will be as many, and perhaps more criminal women than men.

There are many criminal men but there are many more good men, and it will be exactly the same with women when they fill the same places the men have to fill. I do not believe that the good men of this country will vote to give women the suffrage and thereby place them in the same positions men now occupy. If they are given that right, it will be by the criminal classes instead of good, reliable men.

The criminal classes will all vote for Woman Suffrage, and when their votes are added to the respectable, unthinking, careless electors' votes, the two might perhaps carry over the votes of our good men. On the other hand, should every disreputable and irresponsible man be disfranchised when it came to voting upon Woman Suffrage, the election would show an overwhelming majority against its adoption.

I notice that Woman Suffrage agitators claim Colorado and other Woman Suffrage States "have not been made ANY WORSE by giving women their franchise." So far as I can learn, none of them have been made ANY BETTER. If dissatisfaction, quarrels and contentions between husbands and their wives were not kept as family secrets, the whole question of Woman Suffrage would have a different color. I suspect that the six thousand divorces granted in Colorado the last five years indicate that many couples were unable to keep their family troubles as secrets.

There is a continual unrest caused by women having the suffrage in Colorado and other states, and I should not be surprised to hear of resubmission for its repeal in any of them in the near future.

It will be found by reading the letters published in the first volume of this work that some of the Colorado women admitted selling their votes one year to one party, and the next year to the other. This does not indicate that the granting of Woman Suffrage has been a benefit to Colorado or has reformed and made politics more honorable than in other states.

The argument, that Colorado has not gone to the bad, is no argument at all. No one with common sense would expect any such thing to occur within such a short time after the adoption of Woman Suffrage; it requires more than one generation to radically change the customs of women or men.

Those customs which lead to good or bad have their origin in the teaching of the child. While the agitation for Woman Suffrage was earnestly commenced in the part of the country where I resided, about forty-five years ago, the effect upon morality as shown by the increase in divorce, the decrease in marriage and the abandonment of babies, was not enough to be noticed for many years, because the mothers' teachings of those who were then living held sway and influenced the men of this country, as well as the women, in the direction of morality, honesty and purity in the home.

But when those parents who were taught by mothers of sixty or more years ago, had passed away, their grandchildren were not brought tip as strictly as their grandparents brought up their children. And when another generation came in, the girls were not taught to keep within woman's sphere and to attend to household duties, but were taught and prepared for public life. Since this last generation came in, the great increase in divorce, the surprising decrease in births, and the decrease in marriages in proportion to the number of marriagable people have all come about. The decrease in marriage and increase in divorce will determine the length of time yet remaining before marriages will be a scarcity. It is a mathematical problem which can easily be solved.

This is the condition which prevails today, and it should be most seriously considered when we think of giving suffrage to the female sex. I quote from a Woman Suffrage article.

"Vote for Women BECAUSE WOMEN OF LEISURE who attempt to serve the public welfare should be able to support their advice by their votes. They should vote equally with men."

A man or woman of leisure is like unto a carbuncle on one's nose, which pulsates, throbs and disturbs the heart and soul of man and makes a surgical operation necessary, which leaves an unsightly scar on society.

In early days, when a man of leisure was seen loafing around, the banker and the merchant had extra guards stationed around their places of business, and the farmers put their vicious dogs in the barns to guard the stock, locked up the chicken coops and carefully counted the sheep each morning to see if any had been stolen.

In neighborhoods where young ladies of leisure spent their nine as agents calling at different homes in the social and political interests of the neighborhood, any young man found in their company would be ridiculed by the young ladies whose time was occupied, and if he continued to associate with them, every young lady in the neighborhood would refuse to have anything to do with him.

The married men kept their distance from such young ladies. Their wives insisted they should not associate with the neighborhood gossipers. So it is today, the wise young man when he meets a young lady of leisure, a suffrage agitator, he looks aghast and says, "Oh, no thanks; I don't want to get married." People of that day believed that there was something in this world for every one to do without interfering in other people's business.

If Woman Suffrage should be granted, our mothers of families will not be looking to the women of leisure to handle their political interests. It seems to me that the mothers would be a little more neighborly with their husbands to have them attend to their political duties rather than engage idle women to do that work.

The author thinks that if all the women of leisure would, instead of seeking positions in political life, occupy their time in the specialty of housekeeping until they could master that art, they would find it a much more pleasant occupation and they would be able, through such efforts, to "Make the Best of Life," but if they secure positions in the field of politics they will make failures, and for that reason I say DON'T VOTE FOR WOMEN.

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