“Suffrage Play Pleases,” Oregonian, October 27, 1912, 12.
-Transcription
SUFFRAGE PLAY PLEASES
Bungalow Theater Crowded to Witness “How the Vote was Won.”
Seating capacity at the Bungalow Theater was at a premium Friday night on the occasion of the presentation of the suffrage play, “How the Vote was Won,” by a company of amateur actors and actresses under the direction of Mrs. Emma W. Gillespie. The first half of the programme was devoted to music and recitals, grave and gay, chiefly gay.
Miss Emma Wold, president of the College Equal Suffrage League, the society in the charge of the evening, presided. Mrs. Sara Bard Field Ehrgott related the story of the death of a little child, whose mother was known to Jane Addams, the case being the one which, of all that had come under her notice, was the most pathetic, in mind of the great woman worker and the one which most illustrated the need for equal suffrage. Mrs. Helen Miller Senn gave her recitation, the comedy of the “Anti-Suffrage Woman,” with telling effect and with real dramatic talent, and she later recited some verses of her own composition in regard to Oregon women, the need of the ballot, and what they would do to make home the real home when they had it.
Then came the play, a story of how to win the vote and the mere male at the same time. Briefly the idea was that a husband and a wife, both hating the idea of suffrage, have their home invaded by every possible relation of the former, all of whom demand support from him, or failing this, declare they will take refuge in the workhouse, as they have gone on strike.
They relate how they were told they were unsexing themselves when they wanted to earn their own living rather than be dependent upon their nearest male relation, who, by law, was bound to support them if possible. And then, when they refused to work any longer, mere man was the first to see the justice of the demand to have a say in the business to which they belonged. In the end, of course, husband is first to demand that woman shall have the ballot.