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Maryland State Archives Maryland Suffrage News Collection MSA SC 3286 msa_sc3286_scm7805-0061 Enlarge and print image (1M) |
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Maryland State Archives Maryland Suffrage News Collection MSA SC 3286 msa_sc3286_scm7805-0061 Enlarge and print image (1M) |
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326
MARYLAND SUFFRAGE NEWS
[January 9, 1915.
LAST SEGREGATION DISTRICT
IN WISCONSIN CLOSED.
Re-elected District Attorney Insists Thai Law Shall Be Enforced.
THE recent closing of the red-light district of Superior marks the end
of recognized segregated vice in the State of Wisconsin. How the
city of Superior actually gained some of its regular municipal income from
vice was disclosed a year ago by the State Vice Commission, as reported in
The Suncy for January Jl, 1914, page 512. A uniform fee of $50 a month
from each of 20 places made a revenue of $i2,uoo a year, nominally from
fines which practically were license fees.
The abolition of the vice district is due to District Attorney Archibald
McKay, re-elected in November for a term of two years. He insists that
as long as he is in office the district will be closed, and he has the backing
of public sentiment, which seems to have undergone a great change since
the visit of the Vice Commission.
In 1907, when Victor Linley was Mayor of Superior, the red-light dis-
trict was closed by the Mayor's order. This act by Mr. Linley was the
climax to a scries of moral improvement measures striking first the gam-
bling resorts, then closing saloons on Sundays and holidays, next forbidding
women and children to enter saloons at any time, and finally abolishing the
segregated district. When the keepers of resorts boasted confidently that
they would open again in a few weeks the Mayor threatened injunction
proceedings. The district remained closed to the end of his administration.
An interesting sequence to the successful experiment of holding a threat
of injunction proceedings over the keepers of houses of ill-fame is the Lin-
ley injunction and abatement law, which Mr. Linley, now a State Senator,
put through the Legislature of Wisconsin in 1913.
Mayor Linley was defeated for re-election in 1908. His successor per-
mitted the red-light district gradually to be re-established until it became
even more flagrant than before. Joseph E. Comiskey, supposedly sup-
ported by the saloons and by the ringleaders of the red-light district, was
elected sheriff, so that everything seemed safe for at least two years more
under the open-town policy. When, therefore, District Attorney McKay,
who had been considered harmless, transmitted an order to the sheriff clos-
ing all the known houses of prostitution there was consternation in the
district.
MINIMUM WAGE FOR ALL WORKERS.
President of New York'* Consumers' League Advocates Wage
Commiiiion to Study Each Particular Industry.
MRS. FREDERICK NATHAN, president of the Consumers' League
of the city of New York, believes that a permanent commission,
similar to the one in Massachusetts, with representative wage hoards, is the
only method by which an adequate minimum wage for all workers can be
established, and that, through this, the endless circle of inefficiency, low
wages and poverty, low wages and inefficiency can be done away. Mrs.
Nathan said in part, in a letter made public recently:
"What is this ever-increasing cause of poverty against which we strug-
gle? Within the past few weeks the Factory Investigating Commission has
held hearings which have told us of the low wages received by 105,020
working people in unorganized trades; that 50,000 men and women in four
trades alone in New York State are earning less than $8 per week; that,
out of 15,000 female employes in New York city, 8000 received less than
$6.50 a week during the busy season last year; that 53 per cent, of the
women in the large department stores in New York city earn less than $8
per week ; that in the candy trade 50 per cent, of the single women receive
less than $5.85 per week; that in the paper-box factories women working
at the highest possible speed can make their weekly wage only $6.
"Those who have been active in the work of relief societies know that
low wages is one of the economic causes of poverty. From recent studies
made by the Consumers' League we know that the health and efficiency of
some of the working women and girls is being undermined for lack of
proper food, recreation and proper living quarters.
"Are we not, therefore, creating by our own industrial conditions the
thing which we arc all being called upon later to alleviate? Is it not pos-
sible to secure some standard of payment for the weakest of the working
people? Some standard commensurate with the existing high prices, and
the price which the industry can afford to pay for the service rendered.
"The Consumers' League believes that a permanent commission should
be organized similar to the one in Massachusetts, with wage boards com-
posed of representatives of employers, employes and the public. We con-
sider that these wage boards should take up one industry at a time, study-
ing it intensively, taking into consideration the standard of living of the
worker and what the industry can afford. A wage rate should be decided
for each particular industry."
A VOTE FOR THE
BRISTOW-MONDELL AMEND-
MENT.
North Dakota Congressman Will Vote for Resolution When It
Comes Before Him?A Clear Interpretation of
the Reasons for His Support.
CONGRESSMAN HELGESEN of North Dakota announced a few
days ago that he intended to vote for the Mondcll woman suffrage
resolution, although his State rejected the proposition at the last election.
Mr. llelgesen does not regard the action of his State in the light of an
instruction on a question that concerns the welfare of the nation. He
gives the following as his reasons:
1. Senators and Congressmen, under their oath of office, must not
only support the Constitution of the United States, but legislate for all the
people of the country, and not be governed solely by the selfish interests of
a majority of the voters voting in their own States or districts.
2. In order to intelligently legislate for all the people, consideration
must be given to the rights and welfare of those who cannot vote as well
as to those who can.
3. The right of petition is one of the most sacred constitutional rights
vouchsafed to our people. This right of petition applies to women as well
as to men, and does not depend upon their right to vote.
4. Congress cannot amend the Constitution, but by a two-thirds vote
of its members can make it possible for the people to determine for them-
selves whether or not they will change the fundamental law of the land as
petitioned for.
5. When many millions of people, representing every State in the
Union, petition Congress to permit the people of the country to exercise
their constitutional right of determining for themselves whether or not
our organic law shall be amended, I contend that Congress has no right to
ignore such a demand nor to take to itself the power of determining
whether such change shall be made or not.
6. If woman suffrage could be granted by an act of Congress, I be-
lieve Senators and Congressmen ought to consider themselves bound by
the action of the States they represent when the people of such States have
recently expressed themselves on the subject at the polls; but when all
that Congress can do is to submit to the States themselves the question of
whether or not they want to make a change in the organic law of the
nation, I believe as legislators we should take a broad enough view of the
matter to take into consideration the rights of all the people of this great
nation, regardless of local sentiment.
I quite agree with Mr. Saunders of Virginia when he said in a speech
he made the other day on the Hobson prohibition resolution:
"The gentlemen who have discussed this proposition seem to me to
have lost all sight of what is actually before us for consideration. We are
not amending the Constitution of the United States. This body will never
vote upon an amendment to the Constitution of the United States. We
merely afford the opportunity to the States to exercise their constitutional
powers of amendment under the terms of our Constitution. The States
will determine whether or not in their wisdom they will add to our funda-
mental law."
About twenty years ago the first proposed amendment to the Consti-
tution in respect to the manufacture and sale of ardent spirits was sub-
mitted in a report from a committee of the Senate of the United States.
Upon that committee there were some great constitutional lawyers, such as
Senator Pugh of Alabama and Senator George of Mississippi, both repre-
senting States in which a large majority of the people were at that time
opposed to national prohibition, and yet these men had the courage and
fairness to make a favorable report on said resolution, in which, among
other things, they said:
"Whenever any considerable and respectable portion of the American
people (and no considerable number can fail to be respectable) desire
changes in the fundamental law and ask respectable consideration of their
proposition by the nation at large, we hold it to be the duty of the Con-
gress to give them a status in the court provided by the Constitution for its
ov 1 amendment. They have a right that their contention be placed in
proper form before the local legislatures and the people before they have
demonstrated that they are able to secure its ratification by three-fourths
of the States. That ratification, if it comes at all, will come as a result of
agitation and discussion of the very proposition which they ask to have
HELP THE CAUSE?Motion Ih. Marylud Sulfa,. N.w. Wh?a P.tronliln, Our A |