Measuring Up Equal Suffrage" pamphlet.
Creel, George and Judge Ben B. Lindsey. Pamphlet: Measuring Up Equal Suffrage. New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, [ND, ca. 1911].
Pamphlet: 3-1/2" x 6"; 32 pp.; printed gray wrappers (stapled); occasional pencil markings to text; ownership signature in pencil of "A.B. Rice" at top margin of front wrapper; very good. “
The leaflet reprints extracts from an article that originally appeared in the magazine, Delineator, February, 1911 describing the effects of equal suffrage on the laws and politics of Colorado. The state accorded women the right to vote in 1893. Suffragists pointed to it as a model example of how women suffrage could effect better laws. Judge Lindsey and George Creel note that "Colorado has the sanest, the most humane, the most progressive, most scientific laws relating to the child to be found on any statute books in the world." Among the other advances: raising the age of consent to 18; creating juvenile courts; requiring school for all children until age 16; prohibition against child labor under age 14; making mothers joint guardians with fathers. The last, of course, was a major issue for woman suffrage supporters. Creel and Lindsey emphasize that "Massachusetts, where the women 'keep their place in the home,' and depend entirely upon 'silent influence,' worked fifty-five years getting one little law making the mother equal guardian of minor children with the father. Colorado women received suffrage in 1893, and in 1894 they put this law on the statute books.”
George Creel (1876-1953), journalist and political leader, became editor of the Denver Post in 1909 and from 1911-1913 headed the Rocky Mountain News. A progressive with a predilection for controversy, he became an ardent supporter of President Woodrow Wilson and from 1917-1919 he served as the head of Wilson's Committee on Public Information.
Benjamin Barr Lindsey (1869-1943), judge and social reformer, became known as the "Father of
Juvenile Court" through the policies he advocated and effected as a sitting judge. One of his early cases as a judge in Colorado was to render judgment on a young boy accused of stealing coal from the railroad tracks. The mother's heartfelt cry when he sentenced the boy to prison as required by law gave him pause. When Judge Lindsey investigated, he found the family was impoverished and the father dying. Convinced that economic misery rather than moral delinquency was the cause of much youthful misdemeanor, he drafted and secured passage of a law establishing a juvenile court in 1899 of which he was appointed judge. The court became known nationally and internationally as a model for the judicial system treatment of youthful offenders. He wrote and spoke on behalf of judicial reform in this area, its most prominent and well-known advocate, and was a stalwart proponent of woman suffrage.
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