Ten Years After

Emily Newell Blair, 53, began campaigning as a feminist in her native Missouri in 1914. She followed through the whole suffrage fight that resulted in the 19th Amendment. She saw what women could do politically, hoped for even greater things. An excellent politician with a shrewd knack of organizing and leading women, she was elected to the Democratic National Committee in 1921, rose in three years to be its first vice-chairman.

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of equal suffrage, the League of Women Voters asked Mrs. Blair and many another woman what they thought of the results of the 19th Amendment. Last week Mrs. Blair's answer was disclosed:

"Frankly I am quite discouraged about women in politics. . . . The suffragists have made the same mistake as the temperance group. Both thought that with their victory they had only to defend their positions. . . . The suffragists stopped their educational work of convincing people that women had a right to equality and devoted themselves to other interests."

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, oldtime professional feminist who has avoided political parties and kept her eye on the larger theory of equality, declared in the New York Times on the same subject:

"To sum up the merits of man suffrage for a visitor from Mars after 15 decades would even now be difficult, for no one can know what noble proposal may be offered at any moment and manfully carried out nor what recrudescence of the Stone Age may suddenly appear under the united protection of the male vote. . . . You have seen a kitten waggling its tail with body atremble as it spies an imaginary mouse. It is proclaiming what it is going to do, when it grows up. So women voters with wrinkled brows are looking on--indignation mounting here, aspiration growing there and determination everywhere. Some day these voters may well be grown-up enough to pounce."

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