Warning of an Anti-Suffragist
January 25, 2021
Josephine Jewell Dodge
“WE who oppose woman suffrage are convinced that women suffragists support their cause because they view the whole situation from an unnatural angle. One morning in New York I heard a young woman discoursing with great eloquence on how she and her sisters could improve the manners and morals of men if they were given the ballot. That evening, this same girl was at a fashionable dance. She was gowned in an extremely décolleté fashion and the way she danced and bore herself was suggestive, to say the least. I do not believe this girl ever realized that, while her vote be powerless in an election, the cut of her gown, the manner of her dancing, and the words of her conversation could be made a tremendous influence for good among her friends, men and women, and thus throughout the whole community.
“She was misled, as many other women are, that good manners and morals can be legislated into men and women. Morals and manners are the fruits of women’s minds, not of the voting booth. And just so long as women clamor for political “rights,” and yet dress in garments that are the definition of bad taste, all the votes in the world will not change the trend in sentiment in society and throughout the whole country.”
— Josephine Jewell Dodge, anti-suffragist and advocate for working mothers, writing in The Courant (Harrisburg, Pa.) in May, 1913
