Today in Herstory: New York Rabbi Calls Women’s Disenfranchisement A “Great Moral Wrong”

[niyad]

Today in Herstory: New York Rabbi Calls Women’s Disenfranchisement A “Great Moral Wrong”




November 4, 1917: The New York State suffrage campaign is coming to an enthusiastic and optimistic finish with just two more days remaining until the vote. In a statement issued today, Carrie Chapman Catt said
In the name of the 2,000,000 women who comprise the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and who are straining their eyes toward the great promise of victory in New York State on Tuesday, I ask you for woman suffrage.

Referring to a giant petition containing 1,035,000 names, she went on to say:
Remember that more than 1,000,000 of your mothers, wives, sisters, and sweethearts want you to vote for it, and have said so over their signatures. Remember that our country is fighting for democracy, ‘for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government.’ Vote for woman suffrage, because it is part of the great struggle toward democracy. Vote for it as an earnest of our country’s sincerity, when it says that it fights for democracy.

A seasoned veteran of suffrage campaigns in New York and three other States in 1915, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is still as dedicated as he is eloquent. Speaking in Carnegie Hall to the Free Synagogue today, he addressed and demolished every anti-suffrage argument one by one, and said that now is the time “to right a great moral wrong.” He also expressed no sympathy for male anti-suffragists:

If we continue to disenfranchise the women, it will be because of the meanness and want of elementary generosity of the men. The men who vote against suffrage are cowards. They are guilty of cowardice, because they know that whether the women get the vote or not, these women will continue to do their duty by their families and by their country. So far as the men are concerned, they lose nothing by depriving the women of the vote. But democracy loses, and will continue to lose, as long as men continue to perpetuate this injustice…

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http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/11/04/today-in-herstory-new-york-rabbi-calls-womens-disenfranchisement-a-great-moral-wrong/