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^ 493 ••••••••• 244 • Speech by SBA to the Judean Club of Rochester Editorial note: SBA was the guest of the Judean Club at its rooms on Baden Street. Formed in 1895 to provide young Jewish men with a forum for religious and cultural education, the club evolved from the social services offered by the Gannetts at the Unitarian church. “It is an organization of young men,” the press remarked on this occasion, “but the Ladies’ Auxiliary . . . was largely represented in the audience which the eminent suffragist addressed.” (Rosenberg, Jewish Community in Rochester, 71–74.) [17 November 1903] “The Local Council of Women is trying now to secure the right of women in the cities to vote upon school matters. 1 They should not only vote for school commissioners, but for members of the Common Council, and the mayor as well. We cannot take up a paper that does not tell of a shooting, murder, or some disaster resulting from a fight in a saloon. We want to shut up the saloons so that they will at least do their fighting out in the fresh air, if there is any to be done. “The majority of women are better qualified to vote than the majority of men. How many homes do you know where the husband cannot read English, at least, where the wife in addition to the cooking, dishwashing, washing and ironing and the care of the children, finds time to read the newspaper, and when her husband comes home at night is able to tell him while he is eating his supper what she read during the day? “When I was in California during the last campaign I knew a woman who was a graduate of a normal school, but her husband was a foreigner. He was a master iron worker, but he could not read English. That woman got him his breakfast in the morning and filled his dinner pail with good food, got her children ready for school, washed her dishes and found time to read the paper.When her husband came home at night she always either read to him or told him what was in the newspaper.” Miss Anthony had given the young people the privilege of asking any questions they wished her to answer, and just at this point some one 17 november 1903 494 & suggested that it would be well to disfranchise all men who cannot read. To this the speaker replied: “No,it is a great deal better to have them vote.In New York the ignorant men,those in the slums,all vote,and we are a thousand times better off with their having the ballot than if they did not have it.I would much rather have a man vote, no matter if he was so ignorant that he could not read a letter. We are a great deal safer. Those men would be the first ones to rise up in a mob if we should disfranchise them. At each election they are led to think that this or that candidate will better the condition of the country and that their wages will be raised. It gives them a voice. As women, we cannot ask that any one be disfranchised.” Y Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 18 November 1903. 1. Still unable to vote in school elections, women of Rochester worked hard through the Local Council of Women to keep Helen Montgomery on the school board and get a second woman elected. (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 9 September 1903,Film,43:699; Pease,“Gannetts of Rochester,”16–18; Blake McKelvey , “Rochester’s Public Schools: A Testing Ground for Community Policies,” Rochester History 31 [April 1969]: 9–10.) ••••••••• 245 • SBA to Elizabeth Browne Chatfield1 Rochester, N.Y., Dec. 12, 1903. Dear Lib:—¶1 Your good letter came duly. “Kit” Stanton had been miserable for a long time. 2 Your word of him was so sweet, carrying me back to his young and beautiful days, that I sent the letter to Mrs. Blatch, asking her to send it to Maggie and for Maggie to send it to Kit’s wife, who is a beautiful woman of thirty perchance, now. She was very young when he married her. I presume she will go home to her father’s and live. 3 Kit belonged to societies enough to break any man down. They do say that he was the son of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They could not well say he was the son of Mr. and...

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