The WINNING of the FIRST BILL OF RIGHTS for AMERICAN WOMEN By Mabel Raef Putnam = 20 Published By FRANK PUTNAM 434 Public Service Building Milwaukee, Wisconsin Publisher 120-27-1923 PUBLISHER'S PREFACE This edition is of 1,000 copies. It is a gift to the cause of human liberty. Its aim is to aid in the liberation of American women from a status subordinate to American men under manmade constitutions, laws and customs. All American women are charged by the Nineteenth Amendment with the obligations of citizenship, equally with men. Except in Wisconsin alone, and partially, as yet, even in Wisconsin, all American women are still denied equality with men in the rights and privileges of citizenship. They are still, legally, "half slave, half free." The Twentieth Amendment, to be offered in Congress this winter, when adopted—and it will finally be adopted—will place all American women upon a plane of complete equality with men in the enjoyment of all of the rights and privileges of citizenship, as now they are equal in bearing the obligations of citizenship. Welfare legislation, whether honestly intended to protect women workers "for the general welfare," or trickily meant to handicap them in competition with men for the means of life, or wholly to exclude them from such competition, must and will be broadened to protect men and women equally. Justice demands it. Logic cannot deny it. The vital needs of yearly increasing multitudes of women workers who are voters will compel it, over whatever opposition by mediaevally minded male law-makers, by the vested interest of salaried welfare bureaucracies, or by the organized and highly vocal minority of prosperous and contented women indifferent to the needs and rights of the majority of their sex. TABLE OF CONTENTS Sending the News to the People............. Chapter VIII: The First Bill of Rights for Women... Chapter IX: Trying to Bar Women from Juries Chapter X: Limiting Women's Choice of Residence.. Chapter XI: The More Haste the Less Speed........... Chapter XII: A Lesson in Practical Politics........... Chapter XIII: A Protest Against Broken Promises.. Preparing for the Final Vote in the Assembly... Rallying for the Battle in the Senate... Page Appendix: Personal Statements; Decision of Wisconsin Supreme Illustrations Portrait of Mabel Raef Putnam. Airplane View of the Wisconsin State Capitol. Governor Blaine Greeting Women Workers for the Bill. Governor John J. Blaine and Mrs. Blaine, from a photograph Group of Women Workers for Wisconsin's Equal Rights Law, Wisconsin's banner at the Seneca Falls equal rights convention |