Day: July 3, 2025

BILLY SUNDAY IS FOR SUFFRAGE FIRST, LAST AND ALL THE TIME

Woman suffragists ought to like Billy Sunday.

“Do you favor woman suffrage?” he was asked the other day.

“Why not?” he hurled at the reporter just as though the latter were an “anti.”

“I don’t know,” murmured the representative of the press, in a tone measured to encourage Mr. Sunday to a further discussion of the subject. And Mr. Sunday was quite willing to talk about it. And talk he can on any subject.

He launched into one of the most picturesquely worded and one of the most emphatic indorsements of woman suffrage that its most ardent supporters could ever wish to have, “Why shouldn’t women have the franchise? They are as worthy of it as the men,” was the substance of what he said.

There are 6,000,000 women and girls working for a livelihood in this country, he statistically declared to the reporter.

He urged that the working woman fills an important place in the industrial and business life of the country.

“Take them out of the offices, mills, factories and stores, and you’ll miss them quickly enough.” These 6,000,000 women so engaged were advanced as one of Mr. Sunday’s reasons for granting the franchise to women.

All an interviewer of Mr. Sunday can hope to do is to get impressions. In answering one question he said enough interesting things on the equal suffrage question to fill a small volume. He invented enough aphorisms and sprung enough epigrams to make an issue of Elbert Hubbard’s Philistine look like a mere sample package.

If you go to interview Mr. Sunday take the best stenographer in the state with you. No, take two or three. Mr. Sunday uses words with exceeding celerity. He confessed that he could use as many as 350 a minute. The interviewer gained the impression that he was trying to break the speed limit yesterday.

“There’s only one stenographer I have known who could get my speeches in full,” he said, “and he missed one word in ten.”

The South Bend Tribune. Thu, May 15, 1913 ·Page 9