Preventive work is better than reform measures, but both are necessary in dealing with this problem.  Women have still much work to do in securing reformatories for women.  New York is the first State to establish such reformatories for adult women.  Private philanthropy has offered refuges and semipenal institutions.  The State stands aloof.

Even in New York public officials are strangely skeptical of the possibilities of reform.  Last year the courts of New York City sent three thousand delinquent women to the workhouse on Blackwell’s Island,—­a place notorious for the low state of its morale.  They sent only seventeen women to Bedford Reformatory, where a healthy routine of outdoor work, and a most effective system administered by a scientific penologist does wonders with its inmates.  Nothing but the will and the organized effort of women will ever solve the most terrible of all problems, or remove from society the reproach of ruined womanhood which blackens it now.

NOTES: 

Note 1:  G.P.  Putnam’s Sons, 1904.

CHAPTER X

VOTES FOR WOMEN

Although Woman Suffrage has been for a number of years a part of the program of the International Council of Women, the American Branch, represented by the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, at first displayed little interest in the subject.  Although many of the club women were strong suffragists, there were many others, notably women from the Southern States, who were violently opposed to suffrage.  Early in the club movement it was agreed that suffrage, being a subject on which there was an apparently hopeless difference of opinion, was not a proper subject for club consideration.

The position of the women in regard to suffrage was precisely that of the early labor unions toward politics.  The unions, fearing that the labor leaders would use the men for their own political advancement, resolved that no question of politics should ever enter into their deliberations.

In the same way the club women feared that even a discussion of Woman Suffrage in their state and national federation meetings would result in their movement becoming purely political.  They wanted to keep it a non-partisan benevolent and social affair.

[Illustration:  SUFFRAGETTES IN LONDON ADVERTISING A MEETING]

Somehow, in what mysterious manner no one can precisely tell, the reserve of the club women towards the suffrage question began some years ago to break down.  At the St. Louis Biennial of 1904 part of a morning session was given up to the suffrage organizations.  Several remarkable speeches in favor of the suffrage were made, and there is no doubt that a very deep impression was made, even upon those women openly opposed to the movement.  Six years later, at the biennial meeting held in Cincinnati, Ohio, in June, 1910, an entire evening was given up to an exhaustive discussion of both sides of the question.