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A mother has been judged in New York as not next of kin to her own son. A case in hand was a young man killed in an accident. The father brought a suit and would have been adjudged damages, but he died and the mother could not collect damages, as by law she is not “next of kin” to her own son!

This is one of the California laws that suffragists say is a relic of slavery days and should be erased from the statute books: “Every minor of the age of fourteen years or upwards may be bound by indenture as an apprentice to any mechanical trade or art or the occupation of farming to the age of eighteen, if a female, or to the age of twenty-one years, if a male.”

This law, in connection with a law which gives to fathers the sole right to all the money earned by minor children, makes a certain type of slavery among minors possible. The suffragists maintain that there is no other means equal to voting for learning the weakness of California laws and therefore helping in the elimination of worthless laws and dangerous laws.

Source: The Western Woman Voter, September 1911

(The Camp Bragg News, September 11. 1919) Home stations have now been definitely selected, to which the Regular army divisions that served abroad are being returned for discharge of emergency enlisted men who desire it, recruitment and reorganization on peace basis. These home stations are:

• First Division, Camp Taylor, near Louisville, Kentucky.
• Second Division, Camp Travis, near San Antonio, Texas.
• Third Division, Camp Pike, Little Rock, Arkansas.
• Fourth Division, Camp Dodge, Des Moines, Iowa.
• Fifth Division, Camp Gordon, Atlanta, Georgia.
• Sixth Division, Camp Grant, Rockford, Illinois.
• Seventh Division Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas.

By the last of October, the process of actual demobilization will be practically completed insofar as combatant troops are concerned. There will be many details of care and disposition of surplus property, completing permanent records, looking after the population of the hospitals, that will continue to require the time and attention of many officers and men. But the units of the mobile army which have been overseas will be busied with plans for the future.

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In the 1910s, Frank Leslie’s Weekly had an increase in news by and about women. Kate Upson Clark* and the paper’s “In the World of Womankind” page is a good example. After sharing news tidbits from around the world, she would respond to letters from readers:

FOR A EUROPEAN TRIP

Dear Mrs. Clark: I am going abroad for a six-weeks’ trip. I take a steamer trunk, two suitcases and a hand-bag. Please advise me about what dresses to take. I have a good tailor-made suit, and a charmeuse (short) dinner-dress. Our party will travel, stopping only a few days in any one place. Is this enough? I shall have three or four blouses to wear with the skirt of my tailor-made gown.—L. B., Trenton, N. J.

That supply should serve for so short a trip. Take stout, comfortable shoes, and new underclothes.

DEAR BALLOT BOX: Do you know that this interminable drudgery imposed on American mothers of petitioning—petitioning for the ballot—this humiliation of forever praying to their own sons to be allowed to enjoy their birthright with the men born of them, furnishes me with stronger evidence of the Darwinian theory than anything I am able to find elsewhere. Were it not for this relic which has no parallel in the history left us of the dark ages—of the long ago buried past, there would be little proof of such an age having once enshrouded the earth.

The brutish vulgarity which we see cropping out in men who ignorantly disgrace themselves by ignoring their own mothers, is conclusive evidence to me that the race must have come up through the long line of animal ancestry to the “man in the dugout,” and from thence to the men in our present Congress, some of whom still seem inclined to root, and grunt, and squeal, if others assert rights equal to their own: lest the visual line of their own pen be the world’s extent, and, if others should be allowed to enjoy like blessings, they would be crowded, off the stage of action. While there are other men on the same floor, who, I am proud to say, are infinitely in advance of all this, which is a promise and prophecy of the oncoming of those others, for which I thank God and take courage; and love to accept this theory because it gives us a better outlook—this law of eternal progress must in cycles of years lift the most sordid to a higher plane of nobler action.

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From time immemorial, the part of woman in war has been the hardest. It has been her lot to send her loved ones away as sacrifices on the altar of her country and to remain at home, torn by all the emotions that rend the spirit of mothers, wives and sweethearts. She has been forced in the ages past to await with fearful forebodings the news from the scenes of conflict; she has suffered the pangs of sudden bereavement, and has borne the consequent burdens in the future years.

The success of any nation’s arms has been due largely to the fortitude of its women. What we of the present day know as morale and which is maintained by large organizations in and out of the army, was just as important a factor in the years that have gone as it is today. But then there were no well organized bodies to see to it that our soldiers were kept in good spirits and guided in the right paths. The burden of the task lay with the women of our country.

It was their bravery at the parting, their cheerfulness in adversity, their fortitude in bereavement, their happiness in victory which inspired men to do or die, and which has demonstrated that “they also serve who stand and wait.” The ancient Spartan mother said to her son when he left her to do battle for Sparta, “Return with your shield or on it.” Human nature has not changed a great deal in the last two thousand years, and although the mother of today does not say so in so many words to her son, when he goes forth to battle, “acquit yourself honorably or do not return home,” she teaches him from childhood the value of bravery and the wretchedness of the coward. (more…)