Manners’ Need to Evolve

A 1912 magazine advertisement for Post Toasties breakfast cereal. In 1914, much to the dismay of men on his corporate board, Marjorie Merriweather Post, the daughter and only child of C. W. Post, became the owner of the Postum Cereal Company after the death of her father in 1914. She inherited a US $20 million fortune at age 27. At age 35, the heiress and philanthropist literally crawled through a jungle of Floridian overgrowth in Palm Beach until she found an ideal spot to build a home. With both access to the Atlantic Ocean to the east and to Lake Worth on the west, Post bought the large parcel of land and named it “Sea to Lake.” In Spanish it’s, “Mar-a-Lago.” In 1929, Post hired the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus to perform for a charity fund-raiser at Mar a Lago, and invited underprivileged children to attend. Post also offered the grounds of her grand estate to World War II veterans in need of occupational therapy in 1944. “In 1957, she opened Mar-a-Lago to the International Red Cross Ball, and the gala event has been held there many times since…”, according to Town & Country Magazine.

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Other Times-Other Manners

But the Times Having Changed, Why Wouldn’t It Be Wise to Change Some of the Manners Also?

Boswell, famous for his Life of Johnson. once wrote to his much-admired friend asking for advice in regard to a certain family matter. He and his father, it seems, were having a difference of opinion over an entailed estate which had just come into the family. Boswell wished the matter adjusted so as to cut off all possibility of female heirship, while his father desired to provide her such a contingency. In a letter written in 1776 to Johnson, Boswell sets forth a series of arguments supporting his theory of woman's incapacity to handle property, though he generously concedes that the feminine members of a family “should be treated with great affection and tenderness and always participate of the prosperity of the family.” 

It must have been a severe blow to the sycophantish Boswell to have his idol take the other side, defending the right of women to inherit. Johnson concludes his argument thus: “It cannot but occur that women have natural and equitable claims as well as men, and these claims are not to be capriciously or lightly superseded or infringed. When fiefs inspired military service, it is easily discerned why females could not inherit them: but the reason is at an end. As manners make laws, so manners likewise repeal them.” In this statement, hammer-like in its conciseness and truth, Dr. Johnson stated an axiom that is ignored by all opponents of votes for women. 

As manners make laws, so manners repeal them. Under the feudal system there was a distinct danger in women holding land, since the first armed robber baron who fancied the fertile fields could wrest them from her. Today, when in the State of Michigan alone over a hundred thousand women are paying taxes amounting to $3,856,749.71 on property assessed at $177,586,638. (this, let it be remembered, too, is a conservative estimate, since the taxes of many very wealthy women are paid for them by trustees or guardians without the slightest danger of being dispossessed and with legal power to sell or will away such property in any manner they see fit. 

A man who advanced an objection to women inheriting and holding real estate, giving as his reason their inability to protect same by armed force, would be hooted down. For times and manners have hanged and the law protects women as well as men In certain ways, and there is sufficient respect for the law extant to restrain the most rapacious robber from taking possession by force. So far has the tide of civilization borne us. But it will bear us farther still. So long as the stale, foolish arguments set forth by the opponents of I equal suffrage such as— Women cannot do military service, hence they must not vote. Women have sufficient work to do in the home and have no time for the consideration of public affairs. Women are weak and must be protected and kept from all contact with the rough world, etc., etc… — 

All heard, the community is not yet civilized even up to our present standards of civilization, for its people have not awakened to the fact that this is the twentieth and not the fourteenth or fifteenth century. They have forgotten or overlooked the conditions which have resulted in the ancient and honorable occupations of women, such as spinning, weaving grinding the corn, the brewing of simples, even the preparation of much of the food, being taken away from women and given over to men, leaving the women of the race time to think and act; as for the high-sounding apparent willingness to protect the weak and helpless, that is and always has been mere sophistry. 

Granting, for the time being, that women need protection, when a man brings forward this argument, ninety-nine times out of one hundred he means that his wife, his daughter, his sister, must be protected from the buffetings of this wicked world; as for the girl who has no brother, husband or father to protect her —well (shrugging his shoulders), she must fend for herself. But now mark this well: when the said unprotected women proceed to do so by demanding the only weapon available, under our present degree of civilization, this chivalrous gentleman instantly is incensed and begins to raise a mighty clamor of “unwomanly.” 

There was a time when this cry of unwomanly sufficed to frighten most women back into the fold, but today the word has lost its power to conjure. Times change manners, but not the great currents of life. Women have always exerted influence in war and In peace, legally or illegally! Now when her hands are free she asks only that she be given opportunity to exert that
influence openly and through legitimate channels. And it is not too much to hope that under the changed social conditions those qualities which always especially characterized the female sex and have sometimes been counted against it. may become of the highest social benefit to the nation. 

For with each decade manners are changing and it will not be long now til the people of this nation will be so accustomed to the idea of women bearing their share of responsibility for the country’s welfare that it will seem as absurd to advance arguments against the fact as it does now to question her right to inherit and sell real estate. And when that time comes the masculine fault-finder, when fain to use his favorite epithet “unwomanly,” will be forced to apply it to such women as do not make the use of their privileges!– By Eleanor R Gage in the Chico Record, 1912

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