I ran across a wonderful book from my Great-Grandmother's collection by the suffragette poet Alice Duer Miller called "Women Are People." It contains a whole collection of some of the most modern-sounding snark in poem form I've ever seen. One poem in particular seemed quite apropos for these days. It talks of those who have now joined the cause when it's easier to do so and is a most wonderful example of what we've come to know as blog snark from early the last century.
Enjoy the poem (and a couple of others) below the fold:
From Women are People! by Alice Duer Miller, published 1917.
To The New Converts
Ladies, whose conversions date
Rather late,
Who but now have understood
That the cuase of womanhood
Is not alien, and unknown,
But your own.
Ladies, who can recollect,
I suspect,
That you once stood by and mocked,
And were elegant and chocked,
And were haughty and remote
From the vote.
Just because in bygone years
Your own sneers,
Your own clinging with such passion
To the side you thought the fashion
Made the work so hard to do
For the few.
Now, when everything is pleasant,
As at present,
Now that ridicule is not
Universally our lot,
Now that every public man
Tries to please us all he can,
Ladies, don't you think you owe
More, because you were so slow?
Just because you used to shirk,
Get to work!
These poems were first published in The New York Tribune and this book is a sequel to her earlier book titled after her regular column Are Women People?.
Some of my favorites are from the section entitled "Treacherous Texts." These are such wonderful examples of the snark and sarcasm we've come to know and love in our bloggy world. They sound very modern to me, and must have been quite the sensation at the time. Many of the poems in this section begin with a quote which the poem then responds to. (also a familiar format)
The Selfish Creatures
("In this age of discontent, hundreds of thousands of girls, who have no necessity to support themselves, leave home in order to win pin money" - Anti-suffrage leaflet. Apply to G.D.M., Albany.)
I stopped to ask a scrub-woman:
"Why labour like a man?
You cannot feed your children? Well,
There must be some one can."
She said: "I merely work because
I need a feather fan."
I went to a steam laundry,
And asked with smile polite:
"Ladies, why will you work so late?"
They said: "We think it right
To buy our opera cloaks ourselves,
And so we work at night."
Observe how nagging women are:
Their work is just a feint
To make Man feel inadequate,
And selfish - which he ain't.
True womanhood would rather starve,
And starve without complaint!
Alice could also get quite personal. She seems to have a particular fondness for tweaking Chairman Webb of the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the suffrage amendment. Webb, from North Carolina, was a staunch opponent of universal suffrage, and major block on progress of the bill.
From Are Women People?
Our Idea of Nothing at All
("I am opposed to woman suffrage, but I am not opposed to woman."—Anti-suffrage speech of Mr. Webb of North Carolina.)
O women, have you heard the news
Of charity and grace?
Look, look, how joy and gratitude
Are beaming in my face!
For Mr. Webb is not opposed
To woman in her place!
O Mr. Webb, how kind you are
To let us live at all,
To let us light the kitchen range
And tidy up the hall;
To tolerate the female sex
In spite of Adam's fall.
O girls, suppose that Mr. Webb
Should alter his decree!
Suppose he were opposed to us—
Opposed to you and me.
What would be left for us to do—
Except to cease to be?
From Women are People!
Botheration
("Why do you come here and bother us?" - Chairman Webb, at the suffrage hearing in Washington.)
Girls, girls, the worst has happened;
Our cause is at its ebb.
How could you go and do it!
You've bothered Mr. Webb!
You came and asked for freedom,
(As law does not forbid)
Not thinking it might bother him,
And yet, it seems, it did.
Oh, can it be, my sisters,
My sisters can it be,
You did not think of Mr. Webb
When asking to be free?
You did not put his comfort
Before your cause? How strange!
But now you know the way he feels
I hope we'll have a change.
Send word to far Australia
And let New Zealand know,
And Oregon and Sweden,
Finland and Idaho;
Make all the nations grasp it,
From Sitka to El Teb,
We never mention suffrage now;
It bothers Mr. Webb!
Check out her earlier book out which is online, and enjoy some historical snark for the new year.
Plane Crazy