Catt, Carrie Chapman SPEECH, ARTICLE, BOOK FILE Speech, "The Enfranchisement of Women" THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN Carrie Chapman Catt President, International Woman Suffrage Alliance. Nine American States, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington, California, Oregon, Arizona and Kansas, have extended to their women the same political rights as are held by men. Several other States have taken the first legislative step necessary to bring the question of woman suffrage before their voters in the years 1914 or 1915. The great Commonwealth of Australia and the progressive British Colony of New Zealand have granted full suffrage rights to their women. In the five so called Scandinavian Countries the movement has made great progress. In Finland universal suffrage for men and women exists; in Norway women possessing a very small property qualification have all suffrage rights; in Sweden, Denmark and Iceland, women possess all suffrage rights except the vote for Parliament. In Iceland the parliamentary vote will be extended as soon as the necessary constitutional procedure can be completed. A bill to grant the parliamentary vote has just passed the Lower House in Sweden, after being recommended by the King and was only lost in the heriditary House of Lords. In Denmark a measure to extend the parliamentary vote to women is now pending with promise of early success. The women of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales are privileged to vote in all elections except for members of Parliament, and the details, of the struggle to secure this right accompanied as it has been by militant tactics used by one branch -2- of the British Suffragists, have become more or less familiar to newspaper readers all around the world. In some of the provinces of Germany and Austria and in Bosnia and Herzogovina, women owners of large property have a vote. The women of Bohemia have just secured the election of a woman member of their Diet, in order to press their claim for woman suffrage the more effectively. Political freedom for women, however, is not confined to Europe and America. In cities of India, in Rangoon, the Capital of Burma and in all the States of South Africa women possess municipal suffrage. In view of this world wide record of achievement which has already placed the vote in the hands of several millions of women, and in view the present status of the woman suffrage question in the United States, it becomes the manifest duty of all College women to grant conscientious consideration to the claims of the movement. It is always difficult to say when any movement really began. In Colonial days Margaret Brent demanded a seat in the Assembly of Maryland upon the ground that she possessed vast lands, the qualification which had guaranteed seats to the men -3- members, but she was refused. The illustrious Abigail Adams, Mercy Warren and others, appealed to the makers of the American constitution for political rights, but apparently no attention was paid them, yet the idea of votes for women was not entirely without support among the men, for the women of New Jersey exercised the suffrage until 1807, both men and women being subject to a property qualification. The claim for broader opportunities for women was not confined to your America. During the past hundred years many women representing many nations made known their convictions that rights should be equal between men and women. Mary Wollsbomcraft published her "Vindication of the Rights of Women" in 1792, and the effect of her bold and unasnwerable demand was so tremendous and far reaching as to be inestimable. In the early years of the last century a group of British women united in a demand for the vote and in the Constitutional Convention after the French Revolution Condorcet, amde an immortal plea that women as well as men might be made voting citizens in the new Republic. Signs like these appeared here and there all over the world and -4- and demonstrated that society was making ready for a definite struggle to establish a new position in the world for women. It will never be possible to name the date when the woman suffrage movement began, nor to discover its founders, but it is certain that the present organized mouvment dates from the Woman's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, N. Y. in 1848. In the year 1840 a World's Anti Slavery Convention had been called to meet in London. All Anti-Slavery Societies were urged to send Delegates and as several American Societies had women members it happened that eight of them, chiefly Quakers had been chosen to go to England. The presentation of their credentials precipitated a discussion upon the woman question which is a fair guage of the sentiments of that period. When the vote was taken upon their admission, there was an overwhelming majority to exclude them. As a result of this incident Lucretia Mott, a delegate, and Elizabeth Cody Stanton, the wife of a Delegate, agreed to call a woman's rights - 5 - convention, in order to set forth to the world the wrongs of womankind. This determination, however, was not carried out until 1848 when both ladies chanced to be living in Seneca Falls. The liberal ideas loosed by the Revolution, the freedom from conventionalities which is always found in a new Country and the continuous, although unorganized agitation in behalf of "woman's rights" since the days of Abigail Adams had produced a much more hospitable public opinion than could have been found in any other Country at that time. Yet the call for a woman's rights convention was received with almost universal scorn and a perfect storm of ridicule broke upon the heads of the men and women, who, at the convention signed a "Declaration of the Rights of Women", [and] setting forth their demand for education, property rights, and equality of opportunity in every walk of life including the vote. To measure the progress compassed since that day it is necessary to know the exact status of women in that year. The general rule the world over in 1848, was that the property of the wife passed into the possession of her husband - 6 - upon marriage. Although the usual marriage ceremony put the words into the mouth of the bride-groom "with all my worldly goods I theeeendow", by a curious anomoly the wife became possessed of none of her husband's "worldly goods" and lost all of her own. By law the husband was expected to support the wife and in return for this advantage, she "owed service" to him, and any wages she might earn outside the home belonged to him. In most churches, always excepting the Society of Friends, or Quakers, where the equality of the Sexes was an established custom, women were forbidden to speak or vote at church meetings or to pray in prayer meetings, or revivals. A woman who ventured to write prose or poetry was so scornfully snobbed a blue stocking that no doubt was left in the mind of the hearer that the manni title was something thoroughly reprehensible. It was commonly held that education was quite unnecessary for women and the records of "town meetings" in New England show many resolutions against taxing the people for the education of girls. Boston opened a high school for girls in , but it was closed in response to the general - 7 - disapproval which met its appearance and no other was opened until . Oberlin College had opened its doors to women and colored men at the same time. "Learned women were an unpopular as can well be imagined" and it required a brave soul in 1848 to buffet public opinion and go to college like a man. Although law and custom regulated women to an exceedingly low and humiliating position, there were extenuating conditions. Among enlightened classes men were more liberal than the law and there had always been one saving grace in the hard lot of women. Their economic status was strong. It is true they received no pay for their work, but the whole fabric of society so obviously rested upon the labor of women, than an unquestioned dignity was lent to their position. From time immemorial home making had been an occupation which carried with it much economic responsibility. From raw material women manufactured every article consumed in the house by way of food, clothing, carpets, curtains, bed covers, blankets, matresses, and among villagers and farmers they fashioned with their own hands and all of the ornaments and moch of the - 8 - furniture required in the house. The "queen of the home" was no tinselled lady of leisure; she was manager, cook, dairy maid, tailor, dressmaker, milliner, soap and candle maker, doctor, midwife for her neighbors, nurse and every house was a miniture factory for the preservation of fruits, vegetable and meats. So all important were woman's functions in the home, that, although the law declared that her husband must support her, and the belief prevailed that he did so, yet she clearly contributed as much service to the common welfare of the family as did he. Although the schools would not receive her, nor the courts hear her testimony, nor the platform permit her to speak, nor the law allow her to control her property or wages, and although every woman in the land "owed obedience" to her husband, were he rich or poor, drunk or sober, women as a whole were conscious of the value of their own services to the world. The law, however, "aided and abetted", the tendency to tyranny in men of small mould and it left women without redress. That women of spirit often found - 9 - their position intolerable is abundantly evidenced but before definite results could be obtained the prejudice against education and organization for woman had to be overcome. Women possessed of strong characters and robust minds, capable and fearless, were their own best argument for liberation and in every village in the land the of woman's emancipation from the old bondage was at work. The theory of woman's sphere in the Home, the Church, and the State, as expressed by Blackstone was that man and wife were one and that one the husband. The woman's legal existence was merged inthis. The new movement challenged the justice of this condition and declared that man and wife are two - two human beings with brains to be educated, opinions to be respected, individual rights to be protected. It is difficult for young women born into these more liberal times to realize that hundreds of women have offered every possibility of their lives to secure the establishment of this doctrine. That women were ever shuned because they chose to take - 10 - aa college course; or were persecuted because they wished to serve their sister women as physicians; or were egged because in this land of boasted free speech, they attempted to speak in public, seems almost unbelievable. Yet the years which lie between 1848 and the present day have witnessed many a sad and tragic experience in the lives of earnest heroic souls who sought to better the position of their sex. Every movement for human liberty has met the opposition of those who would be benefited and women have been no exception to the rule. From the first certain types of women have been active, opponents of "women's rights" discrediting the leaders and assuring the world at large of their dissatisfaction with anything but the existing order of things. The types which compose the present day"Society Opposed to Further Extension of Suffrage to Women", have invariably accepted every right obtained but have set themselves against the extension of further rights. The first legislative petition in the United States to grant married women property rights was presented in the State of New York and was signed by eleven women only. Women generally refused to sign it, giving as the reason, that they were unwilling to allow the public to think them dissatisfied with their husbands. No woman now would be willing to take that law away. When the opening of high schools and colleges was still a controversial question women were especially vindictive in their condemnation of the entire movement. There are few women today who would be willing to provide their daughters no more education than was deemed proper for their granmothers or who would care to restrict them to the old time sphere of action. When women of Ohio attempted to organize a band of temperane workers, a group of prominent women attended the meeting to urge them to give up their reprehensible course and to remember that God had ordained that such work should be done by men. Now, those who oppose further rights do so with just the kind of organized society their former prototypes condemned. This type of women in Pennsylvania opposes all forms of suffrage. The women of Massachusetts accept school suffrage because they have it, but oppose the exension of further suffrage. Mrs. Humphrey Ward the most notable anti-suffragist, holds that all forms of suffrage for women lie well within the feminine sphere, except the parliamentary vote, and she leads the opposition to this further extension of suffrage in Great Britain. Against such curious odds as these human society has climbed upward from the beginning and doubtless all future causes of human welfare will do battle with similar conservatism until the end. Sixty-five years of steadily increasing effort has revolutionized the social, educational and legal sphere of women. Remains of ancient law may still be found on our statute books here and there, but popular sentiment pronounces the American woman of today a free agent. She marries and divorces on equal terms with man. Her property and wages are hers as his property and wages are his. She may receive an equal education. The trades and professions are open to her. She is free to enter pulpit and platform; and although the shadow of the olden time, which held that woman's work was unqorthy man's pay, still rests here and there upon her pathway, her destiny lies in her own hands. Man and woman are two; the law says it, the schools say -13- it, the society says it. If they are two, why should one vote and the other not? In the early days of our Republican, there was but one argument for man suffrage. Taxation without representation is tyranny. Men paid the taxes on women's property in those days. Now they pay their own. If it is tyranny to tax men and give them no vote, why is it not tyranny to subject women to the same process? Later, it was held that the man behind the property and a new argument for giving the vote to men appeared. "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Then, married women ( and most women were married) "owed obedience" to their husbands, the husbands to the government. The merging of the woman's legal existence in that of her husband made her relation indirect. Now, women "owe obedience" direct to the government, and not to husbands at all. If it is unjust to compel men to obey laws, while giving them no effective means of consenting to or dissenting from those laws, can it be just to frame whole books of laws effecting almost every set of a woman's life, and autocratically compel her to obey -14- them? These are the only reasons ever brought forward in our own or any other country for giving a vote to men. They apply equally to women. The changes in the legal status of woman, have made her a unit of society. Her existence is no longer merged in that of her father as in ancient times, nor in that of her son as in some Asiatic countries, nor in that of her husband as in recent times in our country. She is an individual, owning and controlling her own property, collecting her own wages, holding and expressing her own opinions. In a half century her legal status has been lifted from one bordering on serfdom to that of a free moral agent. Meanwhile, however, she has lost tremendously in her economic value to the family and the State. The products of her labor which for centuries woman had created in the home, and which formed such vital contribution to the perpetuation of society, have steadily found their way out of the home and into the factory. In consequence, men have been left to "support" the family in reality. The continual rise in the cost of living, and women at home with vacant hands, - 15 - have combined to produce a very natural result. The women have followed their work to the factory. This work has differentiated and the department store, the shop, the office, the telegraph and telephone service are served by thousands upon thousands of young women, who in their grandmother's day would have tended the distaff and the loom within the walls of a peaceful home. Under the new order, these women meet questions of house, sanitation, wages, all decided by the law. If it has been wise to equip working men with a ballot in order that they may defend their interests in society, does it not follow that it becomes an invidious discrimination to deny this same privilege to some millions of working women? Women who financially have been more fortunately placed, have been left with idle hands also. The best types of such women, and their name is legion have engaged their activities in good works. The land is covered with the institutions which such women have built and are maintaining. Along a thousand avenues their hands are outstretched to uplift the fallen - 16 - to guide the erring, to help the weak, to strengthen our entire social machinery. In the long run each one of these avenues is sure to lead to law and its enforcement, and these workers are forced to use the indirect, the less effective means to secure the legislation they desire a living wage for working women, the abolition of the dread white slave traffic, the curbing and control of prostitution, are issues which now present an appeal to all women possessed of social urging them to secure a vote and to use it as a solemn duty. We live in a period teeming with mighty problems which concern the destiny of nations and even races. The time of among women on this question of the vote is drawn once more between the progressives and conservatives. It lies between those who accept the privilege of new liberty, but decline the duties and responsibilities which clearly belong with it; and those who hold by declare that he modern woman legally independan educated, emancipated, has no right to be longer exempted - 17 - from the obligations of contributing her opinion to the common welfare. The victories won leave no question to the future. The movement has been a struggle against the current of public opinion, from now on it will move with the current. Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.