THURSDAY WAS THE 90th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote.
Ratification came 27 years to the day before my birth.
Actually, women won the vote in Washington state in 1910, and in my native state of Idaho and in Wyoming even earlier, in 1896.
Starting in 1860, women’s suffrage was part of the then-fledgling Republican Party’s platform, along with abolition of slavery.
It was a Republican senator from California, Aaron Sargent, who in 1878 introduced the “Susan B. Anthony” amendment, which was ratified in 1920.
Understandably, Anthony and all the early suffragettes were avid Republicans.
Now I receive e-mails from an outfit called Emily’s List, which presumes that since I’m female, I must be what they want to call a “progressive” Democrat.
Not hardly.
Recognizing that rights and responsibilities are two sides of a single coin, the suffragettes and the abolitionists demanded for every individual the right to take responsibility for one’s own life and decisions.
I see nothing “progressive” about demands that government take charge, as in the Old World feudal system.
Much has changed since women began voting — some for the better, some for the worse.
Much has stayed the same — not always for the better, not always for the worse.
A century ago, there were only 8,000 cars and 144 miles of paved roads, according to statistics circulating via e-mail.
The e-mail didn’t mention worries about pollution from the teams that pulled carriages and freight wagons.
Only 14 percent of homes had a bathtub, and most women washed their hair once a month — often water had to be hauled in a bucket from the creek.
A century ago, 94 percent of American adults never graduated from high school, the e-mail reported, and two in 10 couldn’t read or write.
That means 80 percent of them were literate.
Functional literacy may still be close to the 1910 level, even among those granted high school diplomas, or today’s literacy rate may be as high as 99 percent, depending on how one defines literacy.
(Frustrated by grammatical errors in online reports, I abandoned further research on this.)
Comparing wages and prices provides an interesting exercise of one’s math skills.
At the average 1910 wage of 22 cents an hour, it took nearly 40 minutes to earn enough to buy a dozen eggs, four pounds of sugar or a pound of coffee.
At Washington state’s current $8.55 an hour minimum wage, the time needed to earn sugar and coffee hasn’t changed much, but you can pay for a dozen eggs in less than 10 minutes.
The 1910 average life expectancy for men was 47 years, which brought to mind a recent PDN letter to the editor from a cancer survivor in his 70s who’s worried about overpopulation.
Today’s birth rate is less than the replacement rate, but he’s on a crusade to discourage young folks from having babies, presumably to keep more space on planet Earth for old codgers fighting to extend their stays indefinitely.
Also turning up in my inbox were 1930s-1940s photos portraying the hardscrabble life also seen in family photos from my early childhood and before.
My father was a machinist and a mechanic, born in 1905, who surely would have admired, but didn’t miss, technology he never knew.
Mother lived from 1918 to 2005, found computers thoroughly annoying and never saw much good in changing social mores.
Mother’s Day and Father’s Day were artificial holidays designated during her lifetime, and poor replacements for the practice of treating one’s parents and all elders with respect every day.
Growing up, I was taught that elders were to be served first and children went to the back of the buffet line. Now, it’s toddlers first, grannies last.
I don’t mind.
But as my life turns into history, I want 4-year-old Ephrem, 21-month-old Jennifer and 18-month-old Zebadiah and their peers to grow up to have the right to take responsibility for their own lives and decisions.
Call me a latter-day suffragette.
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Martha Ireland was a Clallam County commissioner from 1996 through 1999 and is the secretary of the Republican Women of Clallam County, among other community endeavors.
Martha and her husband, Dale, live on a Carlsborg-area farm. Her column appears every Friday.
E-mail: irelands@olypen.com.
