The Bosses Speak!

From The Tacoma Times, July 3, 1913.
 By Berton Braley.
 

 Keep women away from the polls
 For the sake of their lily-white souls,
 Forever forbid them to roam
 For the sake of the washtubs at home,
 Let ‘em tend to the clothes and the grub,
 Let ‘em dust, let ‘em bake, let ‘em scrub,
 Let ‘em raise up the girls and the boys,
 Let ‘em share all your troubles and joys,
 But we beg, with a sob in our throat,
 Don’t give ‘em, don’t give ‘em the vote,
 For they might interfere if you please,
 With the three great political “B’s,”
 Whose graft we’d be sorry to lose—
 Breweries, Brothels and Booze!
 
 Keep women away from the polls,
 They vex and they trouble our souls,
 The home is their foreordained place
 Which they deck with their beauty and grace;
 If you go and you give ‘em the vote
 They’ll start to get after our goat
 In a wholly undignified way,
 Which ain’t like a lady, we say.
 So we beg, with a sob in the throat,
 Don’t give ‘em, don’t give ‘em the vote.
 They’d never give comfort or ease
 To the three great political “B’s”
 Whose graft we’d be sorry to lose,
 Breweries, Brothels and Booze!