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Show DID'THBTTOMEN DEFEAT TffiSMSELVES? . "Women will help the suffrage cause if they quit smoking- cigarettes," cigar-ettes," declares Miss Susanna Cocroft, of Chicago, advocate of better bet-ter health for women- Miss Cocroft was in New York at the time of the recent big suffrage parade. "One had but to walk from the women's suffrage parade on Fifth avenue to the dining room of any of New York's first-class hotels to be confronted with the answer given to the women at the polls in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. "I sat at table in a corner of the dining room of a prominent hotel, alone, quietly studying the faces and figures of beautiful women and the strong features of men. I selected types of splendid manhood and .womanhood, .wom-anhood, but alas for my ideals when dessert was served! Not alone women wom-en whose faces expressed the downward down-ward tendency, but many whom I had selected as beautiful types both in faces and features were drinking and smoking blowing cigarette smoke through their nostrils. Be- fore the meal was finished, dozens of women were smoking and I am told this custom prevails in nearly every high-class hotel in the East, "I wondered if the men who smoked with them would not go directly to the polls, in November, and vote against suffrage; I wondered if they, deep down in their inner consciousness, conscious-ness, were not dismayed at their shattered ideajs of womanhood? "Of course, this is not generally true, because it is only a small percentage per-centage of women suffragists or not who smoke cigarettes, Dut, can women afford to smoke? If we leave out the moral effect entirely the physical result is sufficient. Woman's Wom-an's nerves, digestion and heart action ac-tion are too delicate for tobacco m any form. "Woman is the custodian of man's ideals, but a cigarette-smoking woman wom-an is a poor advocate of suffrage. A man may regard her as capable of voting and he wants her help in the moral issues of city, state and nation, but he is afraid she will step down from bis ideal to be 'common.' " |