NAWSA    Subject File   Anti-Suffrage Literature

N Y. State Assn Opp to
W Suffrage

Do You Realize

That in every county Woman Suffrage
and Socialism go hand in hand?

REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA has adopted Woman Suffrage,
and according to dispatches from Ambassador Francis
in Petrograd, the Bolsheviki are now murdering the women
troops whom they have made their "political equals."

FINLAND adopted Woman Suffrage and Socialism which has develope
into the wildest anarchy soon followed.

NEW ZEALAND has Woman Suffrage.  Its government is wholly in
the hands of Socialists, and at the beginning of the war it was the worst debt-
ridden country in the world.

AUSTRALIA has just defeated conscription for the second time since the
war began, owing to socialism, pacifism, and the woman's vote.

In ITALY the Suffrage movement has no independent existence -- it is
frankly there what it is in reality everywhere -- merely a part of the Socialist
movement.

In the United States Socialism is gaining strength rapidly since it has drawn to
it the support of the German-Americans, who look to it to favor a  pro-German
peace.

    It was the pro-German-Socialist vote in New York
City which brought victory to the Suffragists.  An
analysis of the vote shows that the Suffrage gain,
the Socialist gain and the number of pro-German
voters is similar in every borough in New York.

The Suffragists in their great "drive" on Washington to try to force Congress
to pass the Federal Suffrage Amendment will have the assistance of every
Socialist and pro-German in the country, who see in the votes of their women
an enormous asset.

[Over]

Already Socialist leaders in New York City are 
undertaking to naturalize 125,000 foreign Socialist 
women whose votes they can control. 

The program of these pro-German Socialists was openly stated at the Socialist 
Mass Meeting held in New York on November 25th to celebrate the Suffrage 
victory. Assemblyman Shiplacoff, one of the ten Socialists elected on 
November 6 to the New York Legislature, said: 

"Our program is Sabotage. We intend to do 
all the damage possible," 

and he rejoiced in having ten men in the legislature to back him "in throwing 
monkey wrenches into the machinery." The writings of Lenine and Trotzky 
were on sale at this mee ing. 

The Socialist vote has increased 700 per cent. 
in Chicago where women can vote! 

The San Francisco Chronicle, which has seen the working of Woman Suffrage 
at close range, said on November 8th: "It is impossible not to recognize 
that votes for women are most earnestly sought by those least likely to make 
good use of it. All the radical elements favor it because they are in deadly 
earnest and are sure their women will vote every time. The trouble is with 
the large number of women, who say they did not and do not wish to vote, 
and what is more, they won't. And they are mainly of the class who would, 
if they voted, vote in the interests of the best possible government." 

Given this situation, that the majority of the home-making 
women of the country refuse to discharge the political 
duties forced upon them against their wishes; - that the 
radical women all vote, as they surely will; - that the 
radical votes is a Socialist, Pacifist, pro-German vote, which 
will be used in every way to hamper our government in its 
conduct of the war - to "throw monkey wrenches into the 
machinery," as Assemblyman Shiplacoff aptly expressed 
it:- given these circumstances, and it becomes clear that 
the Kaiser has in the United States two allies more powerful 
than Bulgaria or Turkey, namely, 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE 
and 
SOCIALISM. 

Issued by the PUBLIC INTERESTS' LEAGUE OF ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS, 687 Boylston St., Boston. 



DO WOMEN WANT THE VOTE?
Suffrage is not a natural right.  It is a question to be determined by the community solely by
a consideration of its effect upon the public welfare.  The majority of women do not want to 
assume the burden of government.  A very small minority of women demand the ballot.  It is 
unjust to force new duties upon a large body of women who are indifferent or opposed to woman
suffrage.
Voting is only a small part of government.  If the duty of voting is laid upon women, the
duty will also be laid upon them of taking an active part in the preliminaries necessary to voting, 
and in the consequences which result from voting.  They must take part in political discussions and 
share in political campaigns, and see that the laws which they help to enact are enforced upon those 
that refuse to obey the laws.

Would it Promote the General Welfare?
Woman suffrage would double the number of voters and double the expense of elections to the 
tax payer, without any corresponding gain.  The need of America is not an increased quantity, but 
an improved quality of the vote, and there is no adequate reason to believe that Woman Suffrage, by
doubling the vote, will improve its quality.

Would it not impose Great Hardship on Many Women?
Equality in character does not imply similarity in function; the duties and life of men and 
women are different in the State, as in the home.  Women have many physical limitations which do 
not exist for men, and already, as a rule their strength is over-taxed.  The energies of women are engrossed 
by their present duties and interests, from which men cannot relieve them, and it is better 
for the community that they devote their energies to the better performance of their present work, 
than to diver them to new fields of activity.  The ballot is not essential for the performance of
woman's present duties.

Are not the Interests of Women Safe in the Hands of Men?
Quite as safe as in those of other women!
The woman suffragists always imply that men legislate only for their own interests.  But in
America men cannot be accused of indifference to the wishes and happiness of women.  They would 
make any reasonable amendments in the laws affecting the welfare of women, if urged with half the 
force now brought to bear in favor of suffrage.  Moreover, in general the interests of men and 
women are very much the same.  Both desire good schools, good roads, good drainage, and good
government.  The prosperity of the town and of the State benefits both alike.  Only in the common
division of labor, certain duties are apportioned to each, according to their special conditions of 
strength and organization.  These differences are not of human origin, and therefore cannot be 
changed by any so-called "reform."
Political equality will deprive woman of special privileges hitherto accorded to her by law.

Will Woman Suffrage Help the Cause of Temperance?
No woman suffrage State is a prohibition State; no woman suffrage State is a high license 
State.  Eight States where women do not vote are prohibition States.

Is the Ballot Essential to Woman's Public Usefulness?
Woman Suffrage would force woman into the political arena.  This would impair her usefulness
which she exercises to-day as a disinterested, non-partisan worker for the public good.  She 
would duplicate man's work and lose her special value if she went into party politics.

What would happen to Legislation and Government?
Behind law there must always be force to make it effective.  Women, by the limitations of 
their sex, are unfitted for the stern work of enforcing law.  It would be ill for any State where 
legislation was shaped by women over the heads of a majority of men.  Under such conditions you 
would soon have, not government, but chaos.
Issued by the NATIONAL STATE ASSOCIATION OPPOSED TO WOMAN SUFFRAGE  29 West 39th Street, New York.

FARMER'S VOTE MIGHT BE LOST 
     Every farmer wants his vote to count on election day. 
Have the farmers who have been urged to vote in favor of 
woman suffrage on Nov. 2 stopped to consider what effect 
this may have upon their vote at future elections? 
     It is always much easier to get out the vote in city 
districts than in rural ones. The women who live close to 
the polls in the cities will vote in larger numbers than the 
women in the country districts, who perhaps might have 
to give up a day's work in the dairy or leave the feeding 
and care of their chickens to the care of others while they 
drive to the polling place. 
     Political power can also be more readily wielded in 
closely populated communities, and many women of these 
districts will be taken to the polls to vote on election day 
just as men are taken out to vote by the workers of the 
party which wants their votes. Therefore, should woman 
suffrage prevail in New York State, rural voters will stand 
even less chance of obtaining their proportionate representation 
in State and National affairs than they have now. 
     If for no other reason than to retain the present balance 
between the city and country vote farmers should 
Vote NO on Woman Suffrage 
Nov. 2. 1915

First Legislative 
ADDRESS 
IN OPPOSITION TO WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
DELIVERED BEFORE THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE 
OF THE NEW YORK SENATE. 
APRIL 10th, 1895, 

BY 
MRS. FRANCIS M. SCOTT. 

ISSUED BY 
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. 
29 WEST 39TH STREET. 
NEW YORK CITY. 

     We women who are opposed to the Extension of the Suffrage, 
have felt constrained to appear before this Committee because we 
believe the Legislative bodies to be under a misapprehension as to 
the attitude of the majority of our sex toward this, one of the 
most important social questions of the day. 
     Every extension of the Suffrage has been a subject of grave 
debate, but the general feeling of a fundamental similarity between
men, has led to Universal Male Suffrage. 
     Now comes the question of the extension of the Suffrage to 
women, and we can no more call it a like question to those earlier 
ones, than we can call women like men. Equal they may be - different 
they certainly are. I shall very briefly touch upon the 
points which appeal most strongly to the body of women whom 
this committee represents. 
     The question of the right of Suffrage is disposed of by the 
fact that the State alone holds the power to extend the Suffrage, 
and she is only justified in extending it when her own best interests 
can be served thereby. 
     That the best interests of the State would be served by the 
extension of the Suffrage to women, we do not believe. Think for 
a moment of giving the voting power to a majority (we women 
are in the majority you know), unable to coerce a troublesome 
minority by physical power. A government unable to compel is 
no government at all - it is a mere travesty, a farce. We cannot 
be blind to the fact that civilization in the nature of things progresses 
by the force of the law, not by its moral suasion. 
     But civilization goes forward by two roads: one I have 
mentioned, the other is Philanthropy, and I use the word broadly. 
By it I cover educational, municipal and charitable work of all 
kinds, and it has a most important bearing on this question. The 
fact that women have no political prizes to gain, no offices in 
view, no constituencies to please, has made them of special value 
in all this wide field of work. Their ends are more quickly 
achieved since their singleness of purpose cannot be questioned. 
Let them be plunged into the arena of political strife and there 
will be no one left to carry on the work they now sustain so 
bravely. 
     There is a ridiculous side to this whole question, which is 
tacitly avoided in these public hearings, as are other more serious 
views of the subject, but brief as the time is I propose to touch 
upon both. 
     A very slight mention of the ridiculous side will suffice. We 
women are not supposed to be humorous, I know, but even the 
most serious of us are obliged to smile when we ask ourselves who 
will do our work when we are doing the men's! 
     The obvious reply to that, is that all women will not want to 
go into political life if they have the ballot, any more than all men 
do, but all men may and can; it is a matter of choice. Legislation 
is for the majority, and the majority of women are mothers, whose 
health and strength must be given to the State, during their best 

years, only through the medium of those lives in whose preservation 
and upbringing lies the future of our country. It is these 
women - the great majority - whom we beg you to protect; the 
chivalry of men belongs to them. So sure are thousands of them 
that you will never place the burden of government upon their 
shoulders that it is difficult to persuade them that there is any 
danger of your mistaking the clamor of the suffragists for truth, 
or that their still small voice should be heard above the din. 
     It is true that last spring, in less than three weeks, without 
solicitation, 7,000 names, nearly half of which were those of self-supporting 
women, were collected and sent to the Constitutional 
Convention to protest against the amendment you are now considering, 
but I cannot give you an idea of how difficult it was for 
many women to gather sufficient courage even to put their names 
to a public paper. They confessed to a struggle before they could 
make up their minds to come forward. That may have been a 
foolish feeling - it is not for me to criticise - it is at least, one 
which most women understand. These women do not publicity, 
they do not want to be mixed up in politics, they just want to 
be women and do a woman's work, and they are the great majority 
of our sex, and they should be respected. 
     This question is often confounded with that of the higher 
education. Believe me they have nothing whatever to do with one 
another. The ballot in itself is not an educational force, as you 
men very well know, nor is it a wand with which to turn all vileness 
into purity. It is simply a part of the machinery of the State, 
a very cumbersome part, costing an enormous amount, but the 
only way we know of giving to a few representative men the 
power to legislate for all. The laws of the State have given 
women so much that any attempt to alter her position, would, in 
the cause of justice, have to begin by taking away, not adding to 
her rights. 
     The gradual changes in the laws of this State during the last 
quarter of a century have taken away every cry of the Suffragists 
of that earlier time, and what women have asked, men have done, 
time and time again. 
     Now in closing, I wish to be very serious. To many young 
persons, to many emotional persons, change is mistaken for progress. 
Thus in the train of the women so long identified with 
the demand for suffrage, who do not realize that the times have 
outgrown their cause, have followed many who, full of the unrestful 
spirit of the end of the century are hurrying along, eager 
only for something different, something more, forgetting the 
inexorable law which science has laid down; the law we know 
as the Specialization of Function. In every line of life we see 
this law ruling development. Where there is specialization there 
comes to be greater and greater perfection; nowhere is progress 
accompanied by a diffusion of force, but always by a concentration 
of effort in special directions. So, since the first development of 
sex, has specialization of the male and female types gone on; 

men have grown more manly, women more womanly. Are we 
alone of all nature to forcibly destroy the work of untold ages, and 
thrusting men and women together, demand that the work that 
each is beginning to be perfect in shall be indifferently done by 
both! And then, there are the assertions of greater virtue made 
for our sex without foundation. Again, in being equal we differ. 
Born as we are of man and woman, inheriting the mental and 
moral characteristics of both parents, we differ from our brothers 
only in so far as our physical limitations affect our organizations. 
Theirs are the robuster virtues, called to growth and strength by 
rough contact with the world. Theirs the word which serves for 
the bond; the responsibility which is the foundation of business 
life; the integrity on which justice rests; the broad mindedness, 
which gives each man his chance. And to balance all that, women 
have the spirit of self-sacrifice, the charity which forgives, the 
personal purity, all of which are essential to the existence of the 
home, and cause their sons to rise up and call them blessed. 
     I approach this question of morality with natural hesitation. 
It, and our physical disabilities are the points I spoke of earlier as 
being ignored when this question is seriously discussed, and yet 
unless considered this question cannot be properly dealt with. 
     Who does not realize the present disinclination for motherhood 
which possesses so many of our younger generation, and who 
can see it without alarm? It can be traced to this unrestful 
desire for life outside the home. When motherhood is spoken of 
with contempt, when a home-life is considered too dull to be 
endured; when the ambition of the intellectual life becomes so 
warped as to be dissatisfied with any outlet but that of public 
life - what is to become of the future? 
     Do what we may, say what we can, we cannot break down the 
barrier of sex which indicates the parting of the ways. 
     Build up the wall of the law about us, seeking and accepting 
our counsel meanwhile; protect the homes , which we women 
alone can make for you; open to use every door for our education 
and advancement, but do not put upon the shoulders of women 
the muskets they are too weak to carry, nor the burden of the 
government which was constituted to protect them; do not force 
them to undertake an undue share of the world's work. 
     I leave this matter in your hands with confidence - I am a 
woman speaking for my silent sisters, appealing to you to leave us 
the liberty we might demand, begging you not to give your 
sanction to a retrogressive action, by breaking down the barrier 
experience has built between our sexes, but, as you go on becoming 
nobler, finer, men, carrying on the active part of the world's 
work, to let us too progress, becoming every decade abler and 
more intellectual women, better and better fitted to help and 
counsel, but never your rivals, never partakers in the eager strife 
of public life. 

IN OPPOSITION TO 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE 

Two Papers Read at Albany, 
February 24, 1909 
BEFORE THE 
Joint Senate and Assembly Judiciary Committee 
BY 
MRS. WM. FORSE SCOTT, 
OF YONKERS, N. Y., 
AND 
MISS MARY DEAN ADAMS, 
OF NEW YORK CITY 

ISSUED BY 
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, 
29 WEST 39TH STREET, 
NEW YORK CITY. 



Written and read by
Mrs. William Forse Scott, of Yonkers

We wish to present again for your consideration a few of the fundamental reasons upon which the opposition to the suffrage for woman is based.
But first we wish to make it unquestionable that the opposition is not due to class, or sex feeling, or partisanship of any sort; nor to a weak desire to avoid responsibility. It is due, rather, to a patriotism which would seek to make the ballot  a high mark of civic worth and honor.
We would not ask for ourselves an increase of power or an enlargement of civic rights, merely because others possess that power and those rights. 
We want to be assured that an extension of the franchise which would include all women, irresponsive of fitness, would tend to improve the condition of our country, to elevate and make more effective its government.
We are not skulkers. We do not hide behind bushes, as has been said. We are simply not in any fight. We see no reason for discussion where there is no tribunal. We present to you our reasons for objecting to a burden which we have assured we are not all qualified to bear. We have nothing to say to those who would put this responsibility upon us; no propaganda to urge. Our business is properly only with you. To ask that their appeal to you shall be carefully weighed; that the lack of evidence in support of their theories shall be duly considered.
They urge upon us public discussion. The necessity for public discussion rests upon them, not upon us.
We ask that they should show by the record of the suffrage States, sufficient evidence of success to justify their prophesies of improved conditions for laboring women; for evidence of the purification of politics; for evidence of the passage of new and better laws due to the votes of women; for evidence of better social and domestic conditions in the four woman suffrage States.
We are ready to cite incontrovertible evidence of improved conditions for women and children in the non-suffrage States; of rapid advancement in education for the masses; of improved social and sanitary conditions; of property rights for women greater even than those held by men; of unlimited freedom in the choice of occupation under the limitation of economic restraint solely.
And we do not hesitate to affirm that the promise to give to women equal wages for equal work is based upon a fallacy, since the wages of men or women either are beyond the permanent control of the law, and lie only within the control of economic forces.
This may be illustrated by the decline of wages in England immediately after the enlargement of the borough franchise, which the laborers had been taught would raise their wages.
While in this country the extraordinary increase of the wages of domestic servants, without a vote, may be compared with those of the farm laborer, whose wages, with a vote, are but slightly increased, and are about on a level with a very inferior class of women in domestic service.
The Kindergarten and the Juvenile Court are not due to the votes of women-- since they originated in the States where there is no woman suffrage-- nor are the hospitals and protective institutions for women and children which keep thousands of women busy for their maintenance in this unenfranchised State.
We have no reason to doubt that the legislative wisdom from which the Juvenile Court springs, for instance, depends not upon women, but on the average of intelligence. That with or without women's votes such wise institutions will increase.
The ballot is demanded as a right. Those urging suffrage for woman insist that the "Women are entitled to representation" -- that, being citizens, they are entitled like other citizens, to be represented in government and that there is no true or complete representation without voting.
This is a claim that all citizens ought to have the power to vote for their representatives. But what if a large portion of them don't want it? Should the others force it upon them? Are the woman suffragist speakers demanding the vote for themselves only, or for all women?
It is for all women. But have they any right or authority to speak for all women? If they have, how and when did they get it?
Of course it is not possible for the suffragists to show any authority to speak for all women, or for a majority of women, or for any more than a minority-- and that, too, after a most active and fierce propaganda of more than fifty years in this State. Is not the position of the suffragists than a direct contradiction of their own proposition, a direct violation of their own principle?
Is it representation in any fair or reasonable sense, when a small minority demand civic duties for all women, when only they themselves really want them? When, in fact, the great majority of women are unwilling to accept such duties, or actually oppose the demand?
There is no "right" to vote. The men do not vote by right, but only because the ballot has been agreed upon as a method of carrying on government.
Government is an expedient, not a heaven-born institution,

1909 NY State Assn
In opp to W. S. 
"In Opposition to 
Woman Suffrage"

but a compromise by which the race endeavors to ameliorate 
the hardships imposed by evolution. 
There is no "Divine right of kings" even in a democracy where 
each individual prates of kingship. 
Government is imposed upon the mass by the weight of opinion 
derived from the experiences of the mass. There lies 
no right to the vote in either man or woman. 
They demand that there shall be no taxation without representation. 
Do they also insist that there shall be no representation 
without taxation? 
We could better understand their position if they would claim 
that the vote should be earned as a right, by those who could 
produce evidence of their fitness for such high responsibility. 
A right so constituted would be an incentive to each member 
of a commonwealth to attain the requisite standard of character, 
intellect, and property which would entitle him to vote. 
They would be more lovers of their country, if less lovers of 
their sex, were they to ask for representation as the equitable 
award of merit regardless of sex or color. The limitation placed 
upon the franchise in the South to-day  must eventually affect 
the white as well as the black vote. Why should they not say:- 
"We will not enlarge upon the blunder already made by men, in 
cheapening the vote of men, by placing it heedlessly in the hands 
of hundreds of thousands of illiterate foreigners, and untrained 
natives, as one would place a loaded gun in the hands of a 
child by way of protection." Why should they not say:- "We 
ask for our country a vote protected as far as may be possible 
against ignorance and vice - even if we must be excluded by the 
protective measures." There would be a test to prove whether 
patriotism or class interest was at work!
The welfare of the country demands the existence of a class 
of home-makers, whose vocation is interfered with by active 
public life; and only by life in the office, street, market and 
shop does the voter get the training which fits him, in some degree, 
for the exercise of his duty. We admit the inevitable exceptions 
to this rule, but believe that the rule should not be altered 
to fit the exceptions. 
In the development of the race woman has become functionally 
better fitted for occupations and modes of thought which 
are non-political than for those which are political. The heavy 
labor of the world should not be laid upon her, as it is in some 
exceptional cases among fisherwomen and peasants. Nor should 
she be trained to abstract, impersonal modes of thought. The 
family is held together by the love and sympathy and partisanship 
of the wife and mother. The traits are characteristic of 
the sex, as are the traits of rapid intuition, of imagination, of 
emotion. The characteristics which most ensure woman's fitness 
for her vocation, most positively bar her from any promise 
of fitness to deal with broad and high questions of Statesmanship. 
     We are charged with a cowardly unwillingness to "come out 
4


into the open." On the contrary we claim that here and in the 
public press, there has been no failure to present our reasons 
for opposing the extension of the franchise. 
But we maintain that mere matching of wits in public debate, 
with no definite object, is futile and injurious. We lay our 
arguments before the body whose action is alone decisive. 
We are said to favor "indirect methods" and a meretricious 
"silent influence." On the contrary, we maintain that our appeals 
to you as law-makers are utterly free from indirectness---
and through you speak loudly to the State at large.
Methods of indirectness may more fairly be charged upon
those who make use of the public schools, even so low as the
grammar grade, to further their propaganda. 
We claim that the schools should not be made a battle-field
for any political issues. We are willing to assume, however,
that this has been done without a full realization of the impropriety
of such a course.
We are charged with being "undemocratic." We claim for
ourselves the purest democratic principles, since we would vest
the rights of the people in the votes of those who can give proof
of fitness.
We believe that energy unrestrained is destructive, and claim
to be purely democratic in our contention that democracy is
is at its best under the pressure and limitation of some test of
fitness.
We maintain that by functional specialization women are fitted
to produce and rear children and maintain the home. That
the artificial reaction against this womanly vocation is due to
temporary economic and social conditions, which, if establishes
by concerted effort on the part of women will tend to the disintegration
of the home, and the hurt of the nation and the
race. For we maintain that the health of the nation is rooted
in the family, not in the individual, and that the entrance of woman
into the political field would tend to increase the alienation
of woman from the duties and responsibilities of the home which
rest upon her by virtue of her endowment, both mental and
physical.
We maintain that the corrective and coercive power of public
opinion exceeds that of the Law, and that in the creating of high
standards and the maintaining of high ideals, the influence of
woman is positive and measurable. We ask for education, the
best and broadest that can be given to women, not necessarily
co-education, in order that the non-political and politically non-partisan
woman may be instrumental in maintaining high national 
ideals.
We maintain that interference by law with the wages of
women would be class legislation, and unjust and injurious,
were it practically possible. But, we maintain that it is not
possible to govern wages by law, since economic conditions must
and always will control them.
We maintain that the assumption that the women and children
5

ren of the country suffer wrongs which the woman's vote would correct is not justified. On the contrary we point to the legislation of the past fifty years with pride in the accomplished results of the combined efforts of men and women; the votes and humane efforts of men supporting and furthering the efforts of women.
We maintain that the arguments of the suffragists are based upon unrelated prophesies and promises.
We maintain that the foreign immigrant vote has already passed the limit of assimilation. That to add to it the hundreds of thousands of votes of illiterate and unintelligent women would show a criminal disregard for American institutions.
In considering this question gentlemen - a question with manifold ramifications that are far from obvious - we ask you not to be misled by vain prophesies of the future into a disregard of the lessons of the past.

Written and Read by
Miss Mary Dean Adams
Investigator for the New York State Commission of Immigration

For several years the foreign-born woman has been my chief interest in life. Through my work with the Travelers' Aid Society, the Inter-Municipal Research Committee, and this year as investigator  for the New York State Commission of Immigration I have known this woman in every phase of existence. In her native land; crowded in the steerage of transatlantic lines; on the docks, or trooping through the Immigration Station at Ellis Island, a bundle on her head or child in her arms; and in her dark and crowded home in the tenements of New York or Brooklyn - I know her well.
In a discussion of the vital question of the expediency of granting the suffrage to the women of this State, it seems to me the part the immigrant woman would play under such a system is significant. First because she is so very numerous; not, as some people think, in Greater New York along, but there is scarcely a city or town in the State which has not an ever-increasing alien population. There are at least twenty places outside of New York City which have an adult immigrant population of over a thousand. And in some cities, as Rochester, Buffalo, Utica, Niagara Falls and Syracuse, there are large colonies of Italians, Poles and Russian Jews. Out of 158 cities and towns in New York State, only seven this year reported few or no immigrants.
Another fact which must be taken into consideration in a discussion of this question is, that in the immigrant woman we see most clearly those strong, primitive characteristics which
6

persist in the women of all classes of society, even though it be under another mask.
Now our sister  from foreign shores has some admirable traits. Under present conditions it is a very good thing  for society that she is here. I have always found her affectionate and sympathetic; in the home, an unselfish and devoted wife and mother; an able and industrious worker in the factory or domestic service. But of affairs of public interest, she knows nothing and cares nothing. They lie entirely beyond her horizon. Her ideas of most things are very strange. Think of the woman who told me that she always felt so easy about her children when they were in the street; she knew they could never be run over by a trolley car or meet with any accident, because she had their lives insured! A large proportion of these new arrivals can neither read nor write their own language. Many who have been here as long as a year cannot tell the number or name of the street in which they live.
The immigrant woman is a fickle, impulsive creature, irresponsible, very superstitious, ruled absolutely by emotion and intensely personal in her point of view. In many things much resembling a sheep. She would be capable of understanding just about as much of matters political as a man born deaf and blind would of the opera.
We can see very well the mental attitude of the immigrant woman by the two questions I am usually asked when I go for the first time to visit a new arrival in her home. The first is "Are  you married?" and the other, "How much salary do you get?" The ignorant woman who is absolutely incapable of understanding anything of government and who has never held any property would be very quick to see and take advantage of the commercial value of a vote.
A few weeks ago I asked a man who is a naturalized alien and active labor organizer what effect he thought suffrage would have on his countrywomen. He laughed, "Ha! Ha!" said he; "Why she would sell her vote for a pound of macaroni!"
Mr. Lawrence Lewis, formerly Secretary of the Rocky Mountain Harvard Club, says, in the Outlook for January 27th, 1906, that in Colorado a large proportion of Slav and Italian women register and vote, the percentages both for registration and voting being higher than those of the wives and sisters of the skilled American mechanics and small tradesmen.
He says also:-
"Foreign-born women, the Slavs, Italians, Greeks and Russians, like the foreign-born men, vote for the most part in the manner the superintendent of the railroad, mining or manufacturing corporation, or his foremen or their agents or the subsidized priest or padrone, tell them they must vote. These commands are sometimes reinforced by money or by threats of bodily violence or spiritual damnation, or more often by threats of the kinsmen of the women losing their jobs. Women of this class, as well as men, are told to ask election officers for assist-
7

ance - indeed most of them need it - in preparing their ballots on the ground that they do not understand the process of voting or that they are unable to read or write English. In this way the intended secrecy of the Australian ballot is violated."
It is an interesting coincidence that the women of the races who have been most eager to vote, are those whom I have always found it impossible to persuade of the benefits to be derived from going to evening school. They say that they are too old, or can't go out in the evening, or that education will not help them to marry.
It seems unfortunate that all advocates of suffrage have not had the opportunity of being present as have I, at tenement house quarrels on the lower East Side; and seen angry females ready to scratch each other's eye out over some trifle; for one who has seen these things it requires not a very vivid imagination to picture the awful state of discord and confusion which would be the inevitable result of votes for women in these communities at least.
In another walk of life, we find the parallel of the tenement house brawl in woman's club disputes. Only a fortnight ago, gentlemen, it took a federation of women's clubs in a certain large city, twelve hours to elect their officers for the coming year. As a friend of mine, who is herself an ardent suffragette, said to me the other day, - "but I must admit that women would never be willing to abide by the will of the majority; you see, every woman wants to be boss!"
After a few years of suffrage we would doubtless find a state of things something like this:
The thoughtful suffragist would find that that for which she strove was in no sense that for which she sought, and would turn sadly away to find some other way of improving society than by means of the ballot.
The strident suffragette, having satisfied her appetite for that particular kind of forbidden fruit, would take up some other form of social revolution. But a vast mob of excitable women, the unthinking, the uncaring, women who to-day have never even heard of a vote, rushing madly to the polls, they might be compared to a political Frankenstein whom its creators were powerless to either check or control.
We firmly believe, gentlemen, that when you carefully consider these facts in regard to the immigrant woman herewith presented that you will not consent to place the ballot in her hand by removing the word "male" from Article II, Sec. 1. of the Constitution of the Empire State.
MARY DEAN ADAMS.

Other papers were read by,
Mrs. Robert McVickar of Mount Vernon,
Mrs. Wm. P. Northrup of Buffalo,
Miss Margaret Doane Gardiner of Albany.

So. Cal. Ass'n. Opposed to Woman Suffrage
322 Exchange Bldg., 321 W. 3rd St.
Home F2698    LOS ANGELES

STATEMENT
IN REGARD TO
THE SUFFRAGE
BY THE
HON. ABRAM S. HEWITT

ISSUED BY
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage,
29 WEST 39th STREET,
NEW YORK CITY.

STATEMENT IN REGARD TO THE SUFFRAGE.

1.—From time immemorial the responsibility for civil government 
has been confided to and been exercised by man. The 
reason is founded in nature. The ultimate reliance Of government 
is upon force. Man is by nature combative, woman is 
non-combative. The responsibility for the maintenance of civil 
government rests, therefore, upon man because some one must 
be prepared to fight for it whenever the necessity arises. 
2.—The function of maternity is the peculiar attribute of 
woman. Her natural sphere is in the family, and love and not 
force is the source of her power. 
3.—In consequence of these functional differences between 
woman and man, she enjoys certain privileges and immunities 
which are denied to men. Among these may be enumerated the 
following: First, the duty Of holding public office. Second, the 
obligation of jury service and the discharge of judicial and 
police functions. Third, military service. None of these duties 
could be performed by women without violating the proprieties 
and safeguards of female purity and delicacy. 
4.—The suffrage is a duty which can be exercised by women 
as well as by men, and it will doubtless be cheerfully conceded 
to woman wherever it can be shown that it will be for her 
benefit or will promote the welfare Of society; but the burden 
of proof rests upon those who advocate this extension Of the 
suffrage. The suffrage is not a question Of right or Of justice, 
but Of policy and expediency. Heretofore it has been conceded 
only to those who can perform the duties which are inherent in 
the nature of civil government: shall it be extended to those who 
cannot perform these duties? 
5.—lt is alleged that women are subject to certain legal 
disabilities, and deprived Of certain privileges, the injustice Of 
which, the possession of the suffrage would rectify. The Legislature 
of the State of New York has already redressed all grievances 
brought to public attention, and if any remain to be re- 
dressed, the suffrage is not necessary to secure beneficial action. 
Man, in this age, is not willing to bear the odium of injustice 
to woman. 



6.—lt is claimed that the vice of intemperance and the traffic 
in strong drink, admitted to be the crowning disgrace of our 
day and generation, would be cured if women could vote. If 
this expectation were well founded it would go far to overcome 
the obvious objections to the exercise Of female suffrage, but 
nothing is more certain than that the suffrage, whether exercised 
by man or woman, or both, is powerless to restrain the 
animal appetites. There is abundant experience of prohibition 
enacted by man alone, and of its failure to produce the reformation 
so much desired by all good men and women. This reformation 
must be the result of elevating the moral tone of individuals, 
and herein lies the greatest power Of woman, which will be im- 
paired, if not destroyed, by contact with men in political movements, 
assemblies and elections. Experience would seem to 
show, therefore, that there would be a loss, and not a gain, in 
the encouraging progress now discernable in favor of temperance 
throughout the world if women were deprived Of that in- 
fluence which is now so potent in the family and upon those who 
are dear to them. 
7.—lt is asserted that the denial of suffrage to women is a 
violation of the principles of "no taxation without representation." 
This assertion rests upon on entire misconception of the 
origin and nature of that political canon. It originated in 
opposition to the attempt of Great Britain to tax her North 
American colonies without their consent. It had no connection 
whatever with the basis of representation, or the limitations 
upon suffrage and these questions were never the subject of 
discussion. Universal male suffrage did not exist anywhere at 
that time, but if it had been of any consequence, the abolition 
of the property qualification in the State of New York and elsewhere 
has entirely dissevered the connection of taxation with 
representation. If such a relation should be re-established, justice 
would require that representation should be proportioned to 
taxation, a proposition which will hardly be recognized in our 
political system. 
8.—lt is assumed that the possession of the right of suffrage 
would be an elevating and refining influence for women. Has 
it been so with men? Certainly at no period of the history of 
the country have there been so many complaints as to the indifference 
of the educated classes and of the venality of ignorant 



citizens as at this time. Judging by the effect, therefore, of universal 
suffrage upon man, and considering the more emotional 
nature of woman, it is a fair inference that the conferring of 
the suffrage upon them would be a degrading rather than an elevating 
and refining influence. 
9.—So far as the family is concerned, a new element of 
discord and of injustice will be introduced. Among the enlightened,
 doubtless, political issues would be fairly discussed and 
differences of opinion would be tolerated, but in the great majority 
of cases women will either blindly follow dictation or submit 
to coercion, by which the influence Of the baser elements of 
society will be enlarged and that of the conservative elements be 
impaired. 
10.—Taking a dispassionate survey, therefore, of the whole 
situation, it would appear that women have no grievances that 
cannot be redressed through existing agencies; and that the 
possession of the suffrage would not tend to enhance either the 
interests of woman or of society; but that, on the contrary, it 
would tend to degrade, by imposing a privilege which she could 
not exercise without confessing her inability to perform the corresponding 
duties which adhere to the responsibility of civil 
government; that the courtesies and amenities of life which are 
now felt to be due from man to woman would soon cease to 
exist, resulting in the practical unsexing of men and women by 
destroying the sanctity and privacy of the family circle and home 
life, upon which depend the virtue and the welfare of humanity. 
11.—Finally, the proposed innovation involves too much risk 
to the present and permanent welfare of woman, and offers too 
little prospect of advantage, to warrant the voluntary assumption 
of new and untried political responsibilities, the outcome of which 
may, and probably will be, deplorable. It is fortunate that woman 
is now independent Of the suffrage. Let her not become subject 
to its servitudes. 
1894 

Is Woman's Suffrage an Enlightened and 
Justifiable Policy for the State? 
BY
HENRY A. STIMSON 
NEW YORK CITY 
…Compliments of the…
Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further
Extension of Suffrage to Women
For pamphlets and information address the Secretary
687 Boylston St, Room 615, Boston.
BROOKLYN AUXILIARY 
NEW YORK STATE ASSOCIATION 
OPPOSED TO WOMAN SUFFRAGE 
REPRINTED BY PERMISSION 
OF BIBLIOTHECA SACRA CO.

IS WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE AN ENLIGHTENED AND JUSTIFIABLE 
POLICY FOR THE STATE! 

     DESPITE the vehemence which in many quarters has been 
introduced into the discussion, Woman's Suffrage is still a 
matter for serious and enlightened consideration. Discussion 
both of the reasons for and against it, and of its probable 
results, is not to be precluded on the ground of its being 
a right, self-evident and ultimate; nor to be settled by any 
a priori argument. 
     It is time to examine political aphorisms which pass current 
for ultimate truth, but which are at best only half truths. 
"Equal Rights," "Equal Opportunities," and "Man-made 
Laws" are illustrations. Back of these lies the assumption 
that society and government rest on a social contract - Rousseau's 
theory, which underlies so much of the democratic 
thought which came into vogue with the French Revolution. 
That conception was false, and has long since been repudiated 
by all serious thinkers; but it is responsible for the 
attitude of many ardent reformers to-day.
     The ballot is simply a method of conducting public business, 
-far from perfect, even theoretically, because it 
implies a general intelligence which does not exist; and 
extremely ineffective in our own country, because of the ease 
with which it is controlled by political machinery. We have 
the form of expressing individual opinion; whereas, in 
reality, we can only vote for the candidates presented to us 
for that purpose. 
     It is well to bear in mind that law in America is no more 
man-made than is a document woman-made that chances to 
be written by a female secretary. Our legislators are men. 
But, despite their independence and self-assertiveness, they 
do, in the long run, only what the community desires; and 
the community, in fact, expresses its desires far less by the 
ballot than it does by public opinion. In the making of that 
public opinion, men and women participate, and no one will 
seriously question that the opinion of the women is a widely 
exercised and most important factor. It is often said that a 
community has no worse laws than it desires, and no better 
ones than it is prepared to see enforced. The certain fact is 
that no law can long exist in an American community against 
the will of the people, regardless of age or sex. So much of 
the making or administering of the law as is accomplished by 
3 


the ballot is relatively small. Even if it were greater, the 
opinion that expresses itself through the ballot of the men at 
any election is eventually the opinion of the public, made up 
of all its elements, men and women alike. 
     "Equality" is a misleading word in almost all social and 
public affairs. The vital fact in all organic life is not equality, 
but diversity. Out of that diversity of original endowment 
and of external conditions comes whatever progress is 
made in any department of organic life. Nowhere does 
"equal opportunity" exist, and the demand for equal opportunity 
in any relation is fatuous. It diverts attention from 
what should be the demand, which is adequate opportunity. 
Equal opportunity implies equal endowment, and equal endowment 
is against nature; it would arrest all progress. It 
never did exist, and it never will. Adequate opportunity 
meets every requirement. 
     The same is true of "equal rights." The right to strive 
to attain all that is possible in the way of individual development, 
whether it is "equal," still less identical, with that of 
others, is of small consequence. What we need is individual 
opportunity, and such assistance as the community can properly 
provide. The right of the individual is always conditioned 
by the welfare of the whole. Whether it shall be 
marked by the possession and exercise of certain political 
functions is a matter to be determined by other considerations
than abstract or inherent right. It is wholly a question 
of what experience shows to be for the greatest good, not of 
the individual only, but the community. Whether certain 
individuals in the community, or certain classes, shall, or 
shall not, possess the ballot is a question of civic administration; 
and the chief factor in determining it is the actual, 
or probable, results. 
     As yet, the experiment so far as it has been tried is far 
from being conclusive. I am aware that everything in sight 
is claimed for it by its more ardent supporters. All the improved 
legislation especially bearing upon the condition of 
women and children within the last fifty years is claimed by 
the suffrage agitators. This is an old habit on the part of 
enthusiastic advocates of any theory of reform, and little attention 
need to be given to it, especially in view of the fact 
that States, like New York, which have made the most 
progress in legislation of this character, inaugurated much 
of that legislation before the Woman's Suffrage Movement 
4

was heard of, and have enacted it without its aid. In the 
list of the States which in recent years have enacted various 
laws in the interest of social betterment the names of the 
few States having woman's suffrage are singularly missing, 
or are of only exceptional occurrence. 
     After many years of agitation, woman's suffrage has been 
tried in a few small Western States under conditions so exceptional, 
and for so short a time, that testimony concerning 
the results is widely diverse and uncertain. Wyoming, for 
example, where it has been longest in use, inaugurated it at 
a time when the population of the entire territory was only 
five thousand souls, and where it was done largely as a joke, 
because so few women had come to that remote part of 
the country. The total population of the four States in 
which it now may be regarded as experimental, is equal 
only to that of the State of Maryland; while their population 
is scattered over an area thirty times as large, or larger 
than all New England, all the Middle States, and all the 
Atlantic States as far as Florida. The few foreign countries 
in which it is being tried present conditions so different 
from our own that from them also, as yet, little is to be 
learned. While strong and emphatic statements as to its 
benefits come from some quarters, there are equally emphatic 
ones in opposition. In any case the effects, one way or 
another, must inevitably to be so complex that far more time 
is necessary to determine them than yet has been given. 
     The question, therefore, is open to study and to comparison 
of intelligent opinion. It is a situation in which 
obstreperousness, the vulgarity of self-assertion, the 
ineffectiveness of argument based on self-interest, and the 
ill-manners of ridicule or personalities, are singularly out of 
place. Shop-worn phrases are to be challenged, if not 
excluded. "Classed with lunatics, criminals, and idiots," 
has no more sense in it than the protest of the Southern 
woman against "votes for woman," because "it classed her 
with men and niggers." The welfare of the whole community 
is involved, and the very earnestness of the advocates 
of the cause demands a seriousness of consideration and a 
quiet thoughtfulness, which hitherto it has not commanded. 
Unfortunately one cannot present arguments to an eruption. 
     The argument against woman's suffrage may be summed 
up in two phrases: it will not do what is claimed for it; and 
it will occasion unanticipated evil. 
5 


WHAT WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE WILL NOT DO. 

     1. It will not remove economic ills. Many are urging it 
because of its assumed value in bettering the condition of 
women workers, particularly girls who are on a strike or are 
abused by the police, and teachers and other women who do 
not receive the same pay as men holding similar positions. 
No one has, as yet, proposed a program by which, when the 
ballot is given to women, they can proceed effectively to secure 
this result. The pay of any worker in any industry is 
primarily determined by what the industry can afford, and 
by the available supply of labor. The chief fact in the employment 
of women, is that, with most women, work outside 
the home is only an ad interim employment. It is taken up 
by young women in anticipation of the day when they will 
marry and abandon it for the life that opens for them in 
their own home; it is held by other women because the exigencies 
of their life leave them without a home, or with a 
home where there is not adequate support. In the latter 
case they are handicapped in so many directions that their 
work is necessarily done under serious restrictions. They 
cannot give their whole strength or thought to their work 
because of divided cares involved in their home relations. 
Or they are not under the necessity of earning a wage adequate 
to their support, because, as in the case of many young 
women, they have a home provided for them and they need 
only to earn enough for their extra or personal wants. In 
all such cases women do work, and must work, for less pay 
than workers of a more serious class require. Their presence 
in the market breaks the price of wages, and is, as 
shown by Mr. Charles Booth in his exhaustive studies of 
industrial life in London, the chief reason for the distressing
condition of women in that great city. The price paid 
for any given work is sure to be fixed by the price at which 
the cheapest workers can be obtained, and nothing that the 
state can do will alter that law of industry, under which 
goods must be produced as cheaply as possible or the industry 
must eventually fail. No one has, as yet, ventured to 
point out exactly how giving women the ballot will affect 
wages. What will affect wages is industrial conditions which 
give a community exceptional advantage in the open market, 
cheap raw material, cheap mechanical power, attractive 
conditions of light and air and cleanliness, abundance of 
6

labor of an intelligent class. These and similar things are 
essential to successful production; and wherever these 
maintain, wages will be found to be in harmony with them, 
that is, they will be higher than under other conditions; 
and they can be maintained because the economic situation 
of the mills makes it possible to pay them. All that the 
state can do it to secure as far as possible proper conditions 
of labor, and to prevent that injury to the community 
which occurs from child labor and the employment of 
women in what are to them destructive vocations to which 
either their necessities or the attractions of large wages 
might draw them, as, for example, mining. 
     2. It will not secure better personal treatment for 
women. Despite the emphasis with which some women 
speakers repudiate the thought of privilege, the fact is that 
society rests on the possession of privilege as one of its corner-stones. 
The characteristic of civilized society is that 
every member, rich or poor, by virtue of his being a part of the 
social structure, however humble, shares the privileges 
which pertain to the community as a whole. Those privileges 
are in part the gift of God, in climate, and material 
surroundings, and in still larger part the inheritance of the 
past, in which much blood has been shed and great sacrifice 
has been made to secure liberties which otherwise would 
not exist and which many other communities do not possess. 
These are privileges to which we may be born, or 
which we may share by adoption. We speak of them as 
the gifts of God, or of nature, or of inheritance. In any 
they are privileges, and in no true sense rights. They 
become rights only so far as they are maintained by a sacrifice 
on the part of the sharers of them akin to that by 
which they were won. In civilized society the range of 
such privileges is vastly increased. It extends to personal 
protection, to all that is involved in good manners, and especially 
in the courtesy that is shown to women and the 
tenderness of the public toward children. As a matter of 
fact, courtesy as between men, is the mark of such society. 
That courtesy is found only in highly civilized communities, 
and takes on its best forms only when those communities 
are largely governed by the standards of a very high 
morality and a very spiritual religion. They are quickly 
lost, wherever a community drops its standard of morality, 
7
 


or becomes indifferent to the sanction of its religion; so 
that the treatment of woman in the streets and in the social 
intercourse of a community is one of the surest and most 
quickly accepted standards of both its morals and its culture. 
This courtesy does not depend upon any particular form of 
administration of the state. It may be found in a monarchy 
in as highly developed a form as in a republic. It is 
due primarily to the respect which men have for women, 
and to the character of the women. Where they maintain 
high ideals of dignity and purity and womanly reserve and 
intelligence, where especially they represent that standard 
which the word "mother" connotes, there courtesy in its 
finest form is found. It is difficult to see how the possession 
of the ballot can possibly affect this for good. Public 
life, in all forms, is remote from what has been in the 
past the ideal life of women, and has been so entirely out 
of the range of their life that it is difficult to see how it can 
introduce into its elements that will reinforce those traits 
which constitute at once woman's greatest charm and her 
most effective influence. It is a simple fact of history that 
a community which does not accord in its esteem a place to 
women above men, assigns them to a place below them. It 
is impossible to maintain them on the same level. No 
state and no civilization has ever succeeded in doing this. 
     3. It will not help the community politically. It is 
urged that introducing women by the ballot into public 
life will purify politics. At present the effort to purify 
politics is resisted chiefly by two factors; on the one hand, 
a mass of ignorant voters; and on the other hand corrupt, 
but highly skilled, political managers. Giving women the 
ballot would at once add greatly to the number of ignorant 
voters, and the mass with which every reform movement 
has to deal would become by so much the more obstructive, 
making the situation by so much more difficult than it is now; 
while, on the other hand, the machine politician is so adept 
at his trade, because it has so long been practised by him 
and his kind, because he is so much less scrupulous than 
women, and because he can give himself wholly to it as a 
business, that good women and intelligent women would 
find themselves no match for him in the battle of public life, 
and would be compelled, in spite of themselves, either to 
adopt his ways and become like him, increasing corruption, 
or to surrender to his efforts, and consciously or unconsciously
8

 become his tool. The educational process for women, 
to fit them for the ballot, would necessarily be preceded by 
a long period of political disorganization and corruption 
which would only repeat the Carpet-bag period of the 
South, and reproduce evils not unlike those which were 
precipitated upon the country by giving the suffrage to the 
Freedmen, even though at the time that seemed an absolute 
necessity following upon the Civil War. 
     4. Furthermore, it will not help women individually. It 
is claimed that the suffrage is necessary chiefly for the good 
that it will do to woman. This is so purely an untried experiment 
that there is room for very grave doubts about it. 
Undoubtedly, it is well for man or woman to be intelligent 
in matters of public life, but that that intelligence will be 
secured to any great degree by the possession of the ballot 
does not appear; or, at least, it would seem that every opportunity 
of gaining information, and of intelligent interest 
in public affairs, is open to woman to-day if she cares to 
avail herself of them, and the growing intelligence of the 
community will make this knowledge both attractive and 
available for her, whether she has the ballot or not. 
     It is not necessary to deliver women from the "tyranny 
of men," or the oppression of daily toil. Civilization is 
rapidly doing that. In barbarism woman does all the arduous 
labor. As society advances man has assumed that, and 
the woman has been left free for the care of the home, until 
to-day even milking and the making of butter on the 
farm are no longer woman's work. the vast majority of 
women in civilized lands can to-day live a womanly life. 
Personal culture and personal comfort and gracious service 
are within their reach as never before. 
     But it is also to be said that the possession of the ballot 
will be very sure to create unanticipated evils. 

WHAT WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE WILL DO. 
     1. It will bring new temptations to weak women, and 
crowd them upon them with great force, in ways which 
women little anticipate. It will draw women out of their 
homes and expose them in the very necessities of public 
life to forms of temptations for which they are little prepared.
Men have this experience, and one of the saddest 
facts in our public life is the breaking down of otherwise 
9



reputable men as a consequence of their going into politics,
or accepting office.  It will be a sad day when the community
has to face the added amount of evil which will appear if
women enter the same field.
  2.   It will greatly increase the ignorant and usable proletariat.
It is not a question whether women are more or
less intelligent than men, or whether their character is
stronger or weaker.  The possession of the ballot would at 
once add a mass of voters to the voting list who are little
informed as to the questions that are before them, are little
accustomed to deal with external pressure, and are correspondingly
open to undue influence.  This to-day is the 
great burden upon the civic life of every democratic community,
and Democracy is to-day on trial in no other direction
more seriously than in this, its inability promptly
and adequately to educate its less intelligent voters, and to
hold them to any adequate sense of their electoral responsibilities.
Increasing the number of such votes would be a 
disaster.
   3.  It will introduce new elements of evil into corrupt
politics, because women are women and not men.  Their
entrance into corrupt political life so far as they would enter
it, and many would, because women are not all saints,
would be the introduction of an unspeakable element of
public demoralization, to offset which it would be necessary
to show that the benefit of having good women enter politics
would far counterbalance this evil, which, unfortunately, 
is not demonstrable.
   4.  It will cost women the loss of much of the personal
influence which they now possess.  So far as women have
influenced legislation and public officers, and their influence
has been constant and effective in many directions, it has 
been due to the character and the intelligence of the women
who advocated good causes.  Does anyone think that the
late Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, of blessed memory, would
have had any more influence in the State of New York than she
did have if she had had the ballot?  Men in all departments 
of public life were only too glad to yield to her judgment
and to follow her intelligent desire.  To-day in many departments
of administration of the state, the presence and
the counsel of wise and good women is in the highest degree
important.  The danger is that if women should appear
advocating public measures, being at the same time

10


themselves identified with political factions, or perhaps
known as successful political managers, their personal influence
would surely be diminished, and not increased.  So
long as a woman now is recognized as interested in any
matter of public welfare, the very fact that she is unselfish
in her advocacy, and has no private interests to gain, gives
her a power that would disappear, were her political condition
to be altered.
   5.  It will add a new excitement to lives already greatly 
overexcited, especially in the cities.  One of the chief
problems in our American life to-day is to protect even the 
men from the pressure of overstrain.  We are seeing many
of the strongest fall and die in the prime of middle life because
the burden of life is too heavy for them.  All wise
physicians are warning both men and women of the
danger of so much excitement.  The sterility of American
homes, which in some parts of the country has become
alarming, is now shown to be closely connected with this
condition.  The suffrage will add one more to these destructive
influences bearing upon that element in human
life which is most sensitive, and needs more protection;
and the mothers, actual and potential, to-day are needing
a readjustment of the conditions of their life, if the family
is to be preserved and the home is to be guarded against
the influences which to-day in so many melancholy cases
are destroying it.
   6.  It will divert the attention of the women from the
agencies for good which are now within their reach.  One
cannot but feel that if a small part of the time and excited
interest which is given by the women to this effort of securing
the suffrage were given to dealing directly with the
evils of which they are talking, not one of them but what
would have been remedied.  Their own attention and the
attention of other well-disposed people is diverted from
the actual condition of the working-girl, and of the teacher
and her compensation, of the shop-girl, of the school children,
and of women and children in factories, in order
that it may be fixed on this question of suffrage, which is
at best a remote and problematic method of doing them
any good.  The service which women could render, are
rendering in many instances, in all these directions, is to-day
unlimited.  It is both effective and prompt in its results.
The suffrage agitation, so far as these immediate

11

interests are concerned, is doing far more harm than
good.
   7.  And, finally, it introduces a terrible risk into the life
of the state because, once given, it is unalterable.  The
experiment must be tried, if at all, in its entirety.  The
women recognize the little value of the attempts that have
been made of giving them a limited suffrage.  In Massachusetts,
where thirty years ago women were permitted to
vote in educational matters, it is a complete failure.  In
one hundred and eighty cities and towns of Massachusetts 
last year not a single woman voted.  In France, where
recently women have been permitted to vote for the
judges of the commercial courts, though more women are
engaged in business in France than in any other country,
and French women are proverbially expert as business
women, hardly a woman has voted.  And in the cases
where small groups did appear to vote they were found to
be clerks in banks whose officers sent them out for the
purpose.  Therefore, it must be tried, if to-day we would
satisfy its advocates, without limitation.  It must be given
to women very much as the ballot was given to the liberated
slaves of the South.  We certainly do not want to
find ourselves under the necessity of trying to take it back,
because of the evils which it may be found to produce, by
methods like those by which the Southern States have felt
compelled to protect themselves,---methods obviously more
disastrous to the morals of the state than the evils which
they were set to remedy.
   It must, therefore, be recognized that while woman's
suffrage may be called an experiment, if it be once granted,
it ceases that instant to be experimental; but becomes, for
better or worse, an unalterable fact in political life, with
probable consequences far too serious to make the thought
of the experiment even tolerable, not to say prudent.
    Thus for every reason, both positive and negative, the
claims of woman's suffrage are unsound, and ought to be resisted.

New York City.   Henry A. Stimson.

12



(FOURTH EDITION.  EIGHTH THOUSAND)

How Women Can Best Serve the State

An Address
before the
State Federation of Women's Clubs,

Troy, October 30th, 1907,
by
Mrs. Barclay Hazard

Issued By
The New York State Association Opposed to Women Suffrage,
29 WEST 39th STREET,
New York City.

[*...Complements of the...*]
[*Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further*]
[*Extension of Suffrage to Women*]
[*For pamphlets and information address the Secretary*]
[*687 Boylston Street, Room 615, Boston.*]


Mrs. President and Ladies: 

     The Twentieth Century opens with government by party the 
almost universal rule in all civilized countries, Russia alone 
excepted. Even the Kaiser, reigning by right Divine, does not 
venture on pushing any very important measure unless he is sure 
of the preponderance of the Reichstag. Naturally, in a Republic, 
the strength of party government has "grown with our growth 
and strengthened with our strength." Our parties have grown 
from the smallest of beginnings to the most formidable of organizations. 
No longer does the voter on election day cast his vote 
for an elector who, exercising his own best judgment, shall choose 
a President for him, but for an elector who casts his vote for the 
man whom the party he represents has already chosen.  Theoretically, 
nothing could be better than party government, especially 
where parties are pretty equally divided. The "Ins" are to 
be kept in the path of virtue by the "Outs,", who in their turn 
will endeavor to so shape their policies as to insure for themselves 
recognition and return to power from the people. Unfortunately, 
human nature being what it is, this theory has not 
worked out in practice, and many a party politician will welcome 
a national misfortune, provided it bring obloquy to the other side.  
Nor is this a new development. Macaulay, in his lay of Horatius, 
makes the appeal for the old days (old even in those days of 
fable), "When none were for a party and all were for the State."
 It is evident, therefore, that we must accept partisanship, political 
trickery and office seeking as necessary evils inseparable from 
modern conditions, and the question then arises, what can be done 
to palliate the situation. To our minds the solution has been 
found by the entrance of women into  public life. Standing in an 
absolutely independent position, freed from all party affiliations, 
untrammeled by any political obligations, the intelligent, self-sacrificing 
women of to-day are serving the State (though many 
of them hardly realize it) as a third party whose disinterestedness 
none can doubt. 
To do men justice, they have welcomed the new element. 
Governors have gladly appointed women to positions on Boards 
of Education, of Charities and Corrections, and on Sanitary Commissions. 
"It is such a relief," said one Governor lately, "to be 
able to pick out the best worker in that particular line and know

2


that one is neither giving offence or raising false hopes by so 
doing." The advantage of complete political independence enjoyed 
by women so appointed, cannot possibly be over-estimated. 
Only those who have been so placed (and doubtless there are 
many such in this audience) can begin to realize what is means 
to be able to plead or a cause or a reform in administration, 
and to know that such a plea will be considered on its merits 
alone, with no ulterior thought of what may be he motive of the 
pleader, or what "pull" may lie back of the petition. This attitude 
of entire disinterestedness is, above all things, useful when 
appropriations have to be obtained from legislatures. Some years 
ago, an appropriation for absolutely necessary improvements to
one of the asylums for the criminal insane was "held up," session
after session.  The parties were very evenly divided, and each
wanted to trade appropriations with the other.  The deadlock
was at last broken by two women, who appeared before the Committee,
and in a simple but convincing manner, explained the
unnecessary sufferings of the poor creatures who could not make
their wrongs known.  The bill was reported favorably and went
through at once. The chairman of the committee thus explained
the matter:  "When those women told use just how things were
and what was really needed, we knew they were telling us the
truth, for they had nothing to gain, one way or another."   "When
I look at my poor lunatics in their nice clean cells," one of these
two women wrote, some time later, "I am so thankful to be a
woman; to be able to work for the work and not to be suspected
of wanting any political advantage out of it."  Unquestionably,
had the poor lunatics been capable of understanding the situation,
they would have been thankful likewise.  More than one probationary
officer in New York City has expressed gratitude that
she could not be said to belong to Tammany nor the County
Democracy, nor yet the Republicans, and when aid was needed
for her proteges, could approach all organizations indifferently,
relying only on the genuineness of her case.
Organization being the order of the day, the majority of
women do their share of public service through an organization,
rather than by individual effort.  In organization, the same principle
of power through independence holds good. A "Good Government"
club or a "Civic Betterment" club composed of women,
exercises its influence for good because it expresses in its highest
terms, the best public opinion--that is, public opinion divorced
from political or party questions.  It is for this reason that such
clubs command respect and secure respectful hearings. When,

3

for instance, the Woman's Municipal League of New York City 
goes to Mayor McClellan, and says: "Never in our memory have 
the streets been so dirty," the Mayor cannot reply: "Well, you 
are a Tammany organization; why don't you see your friend 
Murphy?" Nor can he allege: "As Republicans, it is evident 
you are determined to find fault with everything a Democratic 
administration may do." On the contrary he is obliged to take 
it as a disinterested protest and act accordingly, and that, I am 
happy to say, was just what he did do! This co-operation of 
organized women in public life is still so new that it is no wonder 
that the pioneers make some mistakes. The only matter of 
surprise is that they do not make more. Fortunately, the conservative 
women connected with such movements realize that 
what is at stake is not so much present measures as the whole 
status of women as public servants. Feeling this, they advocate 
a caution which frequently irritates their more strenuous sisters. 
For example, recently (so very recently that the city shall be 
nameless) a Good Government club, after much agitation, secured 
the appointment of four police matrons, such appointments being 
made after the usual municipal politics manner. Ere long, complaints 
came in; and a few weeks ago a committee from the club 
found itself waiting on the Police Commissioner and relating its 
grievances. One matron, it was alleged, was rarely sober; another 
had been known to purloin trifles from helpless prisoners. 
The third had a violent and ungoverned temper, while the fourth 
was just plain incompetent. The Police Commissioner listened 
quietly, and then said: 'I have no doubt, ladies, that what you 
tell me is exactly so, but you see these women are all appointed 
by 'Big Dick Smith,' and we can't offend him; but," he added, 
brightening up, "if you will press the matter, agitate it in the 
newspapers, I will discharge the women on account of pressure 
from your organization. I will even go farther. I will appoint 
any four women your club suggests." Delighted, the committee 
hurried back to the Board of Directors to report, and found 
themselves confronted with this situation. The club would certainly 
agitate, and do all it could to bring about the discharge 
of undesirable city employes, but recommend others it could not, 
one of its cardinal policies being, "Measures, not men." Some of 
the most active and enthusiastic workers deeply lamented this 
attitude, which they felt deprived the club of an opportunity to 
do an excellent and greatly needed piece of work. That it was a 
wise stand, however, who can doubt, who realizes that only in 
that way can absolute independence be maintained. 
4
 
     My understanding of the subject allotted to me to-day is, 
women in public life as distinguished from women in charitable 
life or mission enterprise. Yet, in these days of inter-dependent 
work and effort, it is very difficult to draw the line where the 
one begins and the other ends. How, for instance, shall we 
classify the "Consumers' League"? It began in the philanthropic 
desire of a few women to safeguard and alleviate the lot of that 
singularly helpless body of workers - young shop girls. At first, 
it hardly went beyond inducing employers to provide seats for the 
girls when they were not actively engaged in their work, seeing 
that they had proper sanitary conveniences and an adequate lunch 
hour. Now the work has grown until it has become a State 
question, involving factory inspection and including much legislation 
affecting the working hours and conditions for women and 
children. Another example of the way in which sociological 
work transforms itself into practical problems is to be found in 
the legislation arising out of the investigations of the Household 
Research Department of the Women's Municipal League in New 
York City. The Director of the Department, Miss Frances A. 
Kellor, under a fellowship from the University of Chicago, began 
some ten years ago, a study of women detained in prisons and
reformatories.  In prosecuting this work, she often stayed for
weeks and months in the prisons as a guest of the wardens, and
was thus enabled to make friends with the inmates and secure
their confidence.  When she came to collate and arrange the notes
thus taken, she was herself surprised to find how many women
dated their downfall from the abominable conditions prevailing
at the employment agencies where they had gone for work.  These
facts Miss Kellor placed before some active workers and the consequence
was that with her co-operation, an association was
formed (the treasurer of which I have the honor to be), with
branches in Boston, Philadelphia and New York, the object being
to improve the conditions under which an unemployed and untrained
woman must seek work, and at the same time to try to
attract these young women from the over-crowded, poorly paid
trades into the well paid under-manned line of domestic service.
I am sure it would interest you all, could I take the time to tell
you how we first secured an employment agency law for the State
of New York, and how then, finding that the discredited agents
simply moved across the ferry, we applied to the energetic women
of New Jersey, and how they, with our aid, secured the passage
of an excellent agency bill through the last legislature.  Meanwhile,
the Philadelphia ladies had drawn Pennsylvania into line.
5

It is much easier to get a law passed than to get it enforced, and
we felt that, as an organization, we had our hands full in investigating
complaints and keeping the Commissioner of Licenses up
to his work; but we have not been allowed to pause in our labors.
Our work with the employment agencies has brought us in touch
with the immigrant girl and woman, and we had forced upon our
attention the terrible dangers which surrounded her. It was owing
to investigations undertaken by us that Congress last year passed
the bill rendering liable to deportation any girl found in a disorderly
house within two years after landing. Another phase of
the immigration question which was forced upon our attention was
the shameful way in which the foreigners were treated (usually
by their own countrymen) in the matter of remitting money to
their home people. In New York City there existed very many
fake banks. The so-called banker, usually an Italian or a
Hebrew, had no capital beyond a few foreign coins, which he
placed in a bowl in his window, yet he undertook to forward
money entrusted to him to any part of the world. Needless to
say, it never reached its destination, and when the hapless victim
returned to complain, he either found the "banker" flown or was
met with ridicule or threats. One poor man, for example, was
told he had better not make a fuss about the matter, as it was
against the law to send money out of the country, and if he complained
to the police he would be himself arrested. The victims
were indeed quite helpless. The District Attorney's office, which
has always most loyally and willingly stood by us, could do nothing,
as the evidence that the money was not received was in
Europe. These precious scamps added to their nefarious grains
by posing as steampship ticket sellers, their qualification consisting
of a poster of some steamship line, though in one case a colored
lithograph of a battleship was forced to do duty. Of course,
they could not sell tickets, but they sold what they called orders
for tickets, which upon being presented on the other side were,
naturally, useless. I would not harrow your feelings even if I
had the time to spare, by narrating some of the stories that have
come to us, for pitiful they were beyond words to describe. The
steamship companies were only too anxious to break up the ticket
business, but found themselves in the position of interested parties
before the legislature, so one again we profited by our inestimable
privilege of freedom from all trammels, and our bills were
passed by the last Legislature. One of these bills, No. 515,845,
is an amendment to the banking bill and provides that all "firms
or corporations" taking deposits to be sent abroad, and selling
6


steamship tickets, must file a bond for $15,000. The other bill,
No. 1553, is an amendment to the penal code to prevent fraud
in the sale of transportation tickets. Both these laws came into
effect on September 1st of this year, and we are now engaged
in looking after their proper enforcement.
I have dwelt at length on the work of the Research Department,
not because I think it and exceptional record - I have no
doubt that equally good work is being done in every city in the
state - but because the work accomplished seems to me a good
illustration of the great advantage possessed by women in their
present political status. I find among my more radical friends
an objection to our method of work, which for some unknown
reason they term indirect. "Yes," they say, "you have done
a great deal and you have got all you want from Congress and
the Legislature, but these indirect ways are so undignified -
how much better to have direct influence." My answer to
that is: If we are anything we are direct; if we stand for anything
in public life, it is for direct methods and straightforward
action - it is the men who need the lobby, not we. It is the
men who, because they belong to this party, must placate some
men on the other side, not we. It is the men who go to their
party leader and through him get at the committee they wish
to influence, not we. We go straight to the Governor, Attorney-General,
or Chairman of Committee, as circumstances require.
We have no favors to give and none to ask. We make
a plain statement of our case, backed up by as carefully arranged
evidence as we know how to prepare. We answer the
questions asked us and take our leave. If there is anything
indirect in this procedure it lies beyond my powers of discernment.
As I pause in my writing at this point, it occurs to me in what
a different spirit I have put what I had to say than would have
been the case twenty-five years ago. Then, I should have
thought it necessary to begin my paper with an elaborate defence
of the propriety of woman appearing in public life at
all. I should have felt it imperative to express a belief that it
would not unfit them for their domestic duties. Now, I have
taken it as a matter of course that we all agree that bridge,
lectures, theatres, or even prayer meetings, are more likely to
distract a woman from her home pursuits than the arduous
path of public service. For public work is hard work. Those
who follow it must be content to receive "more kicks than hapence."
It is a self-effacing work. We women who are in it
7

are too busy with our work to talk about it. We have among
us women who are capable of drawing up a brief for the
Attorney General, or an abstract of evidence for the Governor,
but we have very few speakers and no agitators. Only women
who love the work for its own sake will ever be tempted into
our ranks. Yes! the position of woman has changed much in
the last quarter of a century. She has now every legal right
necessary for her protection, and, crowning mercy, she has
acquired them without being called upon to lay down in her independence! 
I often think of a meeting I once attended in
California, where some of our strenuous sisters were demanding 
what they chose to call "rights." At the close I was asked
to make a few remarks. In reply, I gave a brief digest of the
laws of California concerning women. There was a dead
pause after I had finished speaking, which was suddenly broken
by a shrewd old woman from southern Missouri, who drawled
out with a true "Bush Whacker" intonation: "Wal, gals!
I reckon your quarrel is with the Lord and not with the law!"
        And now in closing I want to say a few words to young
women especially—to those young women who are to-day coming 
forward to take up the task that we older workers must
ere long lay down. Do not be beguiled by any specious arguments 
about the so called equality of women into forgetting your
true position. Do not let yourself be imposed upon by change
masquerading as progress. Above all, I earnestly beseech you
let no hope of personal gain, no restless ambition to play a part
in factional public life, induce you to surrender the all-powerful,
absolutely unique position we pioneers have secured for you.
Let your watchword be "Power through Independence"—that is
our last word to you from the conservative women represented
by our organization.

ADDRESS
DELIVERED BY THE
HON. ELIHU ROOT,
BEFORE
The New York State Constitutional Convention,
ON
August 15th, 1894.
_______
ISSUED BY
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage,
29 WEST 39TH STREET,
NEW YORK CITY.

I am opposed to the granting of suffrage to women, because I
believe that it would be a loss to women, to all women and
to every woman ; and because I believe it would be an injury to
the State, and to every man and every woman in the State.  It would
be useless to argue this if the right of suffrage were a natural
right.  If it were a natural right, then women should have it
though the heavens fall.  But if there be any one thing settled in
the long discussion of this subject, it is that suffrage is not a
natural right, but is simply a means of government ; and the sole
question to be discussed is whether government by the suffrage of
men and women will be better government than by the suffrage of
men alone.  The question is, therefore, a question of expediency,
and the question of expediency upon this subject is not a question
of tyranny, as the gentleman from Cattaraugus has said, but a 
question of liberty, a question of the preservation of free constitutional
government, of law, order, peace and prosperity.  Into
my judgment, sir, there enters no element of the inferiority of
women.  There could not, sir, for I rejoice in the tradition and
in the memory and the possession of a home where woman
reigns with acknowledged superiority in all the nobler, and the
higher attributes that by common, by universal, consent, determine
rank among the highest of the children of God.  No, Sir.
It is not that woman is inferior to man, but it is that woman is
different than man ; that in the distribution of powers, of capacities,
of qualities, our Maker has created man adapted to the
performance of certain functions in the economy of nature and
society, and women adapted to the performance of other functions.
One question to be determined in the discussion of this
subject is whether the nature of woman is such that her taking
upon her the performance of the functions implied in suffrage 
will leave her in the possession and the exercise of her highest
powers or will be an abandonment of those powers and on entering
upon a field in which, because of her differences from
man, she is distinctly inferior.  Mr. President, I have said that
I thought suffrage would be a loss for women.  I think so because
suffrage implies not merely the casting of the ballot, the
gentle and peaceful fall of the snow-flake, but suffrage, if it means
anything, means entering upon the field of political life, and
politics is modified war.  In politics there is struggle, strife,

2


contention, bitterness, heart-burning, excitement, agitation, everything
which is adverse to the true character of woman.  Woman
rules to-day by the sweet and noble influences of her character.
Put woman into the arena of conflict and she abandons these
great weapons which control the world, and she takes into her
hands, feeble and nerveless for strife, weapons with which she
is unfamiliar and which she is unable to wield.  Woman in strife
becomes hard, harsh, unloveable, repulsive ; as far removed from
that gentle creature to whom we all owe our allegiance and to whom
we confess submission, as the heaven is removed from the earth.
Government, Mr. President, is protection.  The whole science of
government is the science of protecting life and liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, of protecting our person, our property, our
homes, our wives and our children, against foreign aggression,
against civil dissention, against mobs and riots rearing their
fearful heads within this peaceful land during the very sessions
of this Convention.  Against crime and disorder, and all the army 
of evil, civil society wages its war, and government is the method
of protection, protection of us all.  The trouble, Mr. President, is not in the principles which underlie government.  Men and
women alike acknowledge them and would enforce them, honor
and truth, and justice and liberty ; the difficulty is to find out
how to protect them.  The difficulty is to frame the measure,
to direct the battle, to tell where and how the blows are to be 
struck and when the defenses are to be erected.
   Mr. President, in the divine distribution of powers, the duty
and the right of protection rests with the male.  It is so throughout
nature.  It is so with men, and I, for one, will never
consent to part with the divine right of protecting my wife, my
daughter, the women whom I love and the women whom I 
respect, exercising the birthright of man, and place that high
duty in the weak and nerveless hands of those designed by God
to be protected rather than to engage in the stern warfare of
government.  In my judgment, sir, this whole movement arises
from a false conception of the duty and of the right of men and
women both.  We all of us, sir, see the pettiness of our lives.
We all see how poor a thing is the best that we can do.  We all
at times long to share the fortunes of others, to leave our tiresome
round of duty and to engage in their affairs.  What others
may do seems to us nobler, more important, more conspicuous
than the little things of our own lives.  It is a great mistake, sir, 
it is a fatal mistake that these excellent women make when they 

3

conceive that the functions of men are superior to theirs and seek
to usurp them.  The true government is in the family.  The true
throne is in the household.  The highest exercise of power is
that which forms the conscience, influences the will, controls the
impulses of men, and there to-day woman is supreme and woman
rules the world.  Mr. President, the time will never come when
this line of demarcation between the functions of the two sexes
will be broken down.  I believe it to be a false philosophy ; I believe
that it is an attempt to turn backward upon the the line of social
development, and that if the step ever be taken, we go centuries
backward on the march towards a higher, a nobler and purer
civilization, which must be found not in confusion, but in the 
higher differentiation of the sexes.  But, Mr. President, why do we
discuss this subject?  This Convention has already acted upon
it.  A committee, as fairly constituted as was a committee,
has acted upon it, a committee which had among its members
four who were selected by the women who lead this movement,
which had a much smaller number of gentlemen who were known
to be opposed to it, the great body of which was composed of
men whose ideas and feelings upon the subject were utterly unknown,
has acted upon it, and reported to the Convention. The
Convention has, by a unanimous vote, decided that it will not
strike the word "male" from the Constitution.  Now we are
met, sir, by a proposition that instead of performing the duty
which we came here to perform, instead of exercising the warrant
given to us by the people to revise and amend the Constitution,
we shall have recourse in a weak and shuffling evasion, and then
throw back upon the people the determination which they charged 
us to make in this Convention.  We are asked to do it.  Why?
to do it from good nature, to do it because my friend from
New York, Mr. Lauterbach, is a good fellow ; to do it because
it will please this lady and that lady, who have been importuning
members about this hall for months ; to do it, heaven
knows for how many reasons, but all reasons of good nature,
of kindliness, of complaisance, opposed to the simple performance
of the duty which we came here to discharge under the sanction
of our oaths.  Mr. President, I hope that this Convention will
discharge the duty of determining who shall vote ; discharge it
with manliness and decision of character, which, after all
the women of America, God bless them, admire and respect
more than anything else on this earth.

4


(SEVENTH EDITION.  FIFTEENTH THOUSAND)

How Women Can Best Serve the State

AN ADDRESS
BEFORE THE
State Federation of Women's Clubs,

Troy, October 30th, 1907,

BY
MRS. BARCLAY HAZARD.

ISSUED BY
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage,
29 WEST 39th STREET
NEW YORK CITY.

[*...Complements of the...*]
[*Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further*]
[*Extension of Suffrage to Women*]
[*For pamphlets and information address the Secretary*]
[*687 Boylston Street, Room 615, Boston.*]



Mrs. President and Ladies:

The Twentieth Century opens with government by party the almost universal rule in all civilized countries, Russia alone excepted. Even the Kaiser, reigning by right Divine, does not venture on pushing any very important measure unless he is sure of the preponderance of the Reichstag. Naturally, in a Republic, the strength of party government has "grown with our growth and strengthened with our strength." Our parties have grown from the smallest of beginnings to the most formidable of organizations. No longer does the voter on election day cast his vote for an elector who, exercising his own best judgment, shall choose a President for him, but for an elector who casts his vote for the man whom the party he represents has already chosen. Theoretically, nothing could be better than party government, especially where the parties are pretty equally divided. The "Ins" are to be kept in the path of virtue by the "Outs," who in their turn will endeavor to so shape their policies as to insure for themselves recognition and return to power from the people. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, this theory has not worked out in practice, and many a party politician will welcome a national misfortune, provided it bring obloquy to the other side. Nor is this a new development. Macaulay, in his lay of Horatius, makes the appeal for the old days (old even in those days of fable), "When none were for a party and all were for the State." It is evident, therefore, that we must accept partisanship, political trickery and office seeking as necessary evils inseparable from modern conditions, and the question then arises, what can be done to palliate the situation. To our minds the solution has been found by the entrance of women into public life. Standing in an absolutely independent position, freed from all party affiliations, untrammeled by any political obligations, the intelligent, self-sacrificing women of to-day are serving the State (though many of them hardly realize it) as a third party whose disinterestedness none can doubt.
To do men justice, they have welcomed the new element. Governors have gladly appointed women to positions on Boards of Education, of Charities and Corrections, and on Sanitary Commissions. "It is such a relief," said one Governor lately, "to be able to pick out the best worker in that particular line and know

2

that one is neither giving offense or raising false hopes by so doing." The advantage of complete political independence enjoyed by women so appointed, cannot possibly be over-estimated. Only those who have been so placed (and doubtless there are many such in this audience) can begin to realize what it means to be able to plead for a cause or a reform in administration, and to know that such a plea will be considered on its merits alone, with no ulterior thought of what may be the motive of the pleader, or what "pull" may lie back of the petition. This attitude of entire disinterestedness is, above all things, useful when appropriations have to be obtained from legislatures. Some years ago, an appropriation for absolutely necessary improvements to one of the asylums for the criminal insane was "held up," session after session. The parties were very evenly divided, and each wanted to trade appropriations with the other. The deadlock was at last broken by two women, who appeared before the Committee, and in a simple but convincing manner, explained the unnecessary sufferings of the poor creatures who could not make their wrongs known. The bill was reported favorably and went through at once. The chairman of the committee thus explained the matter: "When those women told us just how things were and what was really needed, we knew they were telling us the truth, for they had nothing to gain, one way or another." "When I look at my poor lunatics in their nice clean cells," one of these two women wrote, some time later, "I am so thankful to be a woman; to be able to work for the work and not to be suspected of wanting any political advantage out of it." Unquestionably, had the poor lunatics been capable of understanding the situation, they would have been thankful likewise. More than one probationary officer in New York City has expressed gratitude that she could not be said to belong to Tammany nor the County Democracy, nor yet the Republicans, and when aid was needed for her proteges, could approach all organizations indifferently, relying only on the genuineness of her case.
Organization being the order of the day, the majority of women do their share of public service through an organization, rather than by individual effort. In organization, the same principle of power through independence holds good. A "Good Government" club or a "Civic Betterment" club composed of women, exercises its influence for good because it expresses the highest terms, the best public opinion - that is, public opinion divorced from political or party questions. It is for this reason that such clubs command respect and secure respectful hearings. When,

3

for instance, the Woman's Municipal League of New York City 
goes to Mayor McClellan, and says: "Never in our memory have 
the streets been so dirty," the Mayor cannot reply: "Well, you 
are a Tammany organization; why don't you see your friend 
Murphy?" Nor can he allege: "As Republicans, it is evident 
you are determined to find fault with everything a Democratic 
administration may do." On the contrary he is obliged to take 
it as a disinterested protest and act accordingly, and that, I am 
happy to say, was just what he did do! This co-operation of 
organized women in public life is still so new that it is no wonder 
that the pioneers make some mistakes. The only matter of 
surprise is that they do not make more. Fortunately, the conservative 
women connected with such movements realize that 
what is at stake is not so much present measures as the whole 
status of women as public servants. Feeling this, they advocate 
a caution which frequently irritates their more strenuous sisters. 
For example, recently (so very recently that the city shall be 
nameless) a Good Government club, after much agitation, secured 
the appointment of four police matrons, such appointments being 
made after the usual municipal politics manner. Ere long, complaints 
came in; and a few weeks ago a committee from the club 
found itself waiting on the Police Commissioner and relating its
grievances.  One matron, it was alleged, was rarely sober; another
had been known to purloin trifles from helpless prisoners.
The third had a violent and ungoverned temper, while the fourth
was just plain incompetent.  The Police Commissioner listened
quietly, and then said:  'I have no doubt, ladies, that what you
tell me is exactly so, but you see these women are all appointed 
by 'Big Dick Smith,' and we can't offend him; but," he added,
by brightening up, "if you will press the matter, agitate it in the
newspapers, I will discharge the women on account of pressure
from your organization.  I will even go farther.  I will appoint
any four women your club suggests."  Delighted, the committee
hurried back to the Board of Directors to report, and found
themselves confronted with this situation.  The club would certainly
agitate, and do all it could to bring about the discharge
of undesirable city employes, but recommend others it could not,
one of its cardinal policies being, "Measures, not men."  Some of
the most active and enthusiastic workers deeply lamented this
attitude, which they felt deprived the club of an opportunity to
do an excellent and greatly needed piece of work.  That it was a
wise stand, however, who can doubt, who realizes that only in
that way can absolute independence be maintained.
4


My understanding of the subject allotted to me to-day is,
women in public life as distinguished from women in charitable
life and mission enterprise.  Yet, in these days of inter-dependent
work and effort, it is very difficult to draw the line where the
one begins and the other ends.  How, for instance, shall we 
classify the "Consumers' League"?  It began in the philanthropic
desire of a few women to safeguard and alleviate the lot of that
singularly helpless body of workers--young shop girls.  At first,
it hardly went beyond inducing employers to provide seats for the
girls when they were not actively engaged in their work, seeing
that they had proper sanitary conveniences and an adequate lunch
hour.  Now the work has grown until it has become a State
question, involving factory inspection and including much legislation
affecting the working hours and conditions for women and
children.  Another example of the way in which sociological
work transforms itself into practical problems is to be found in
the legislation arising out of the investigations of the Household
Research Department of the Women's Municipal League in New
York City.  The Director of the Department, Miss Frances A.
Kellor, under a fellowship from the University of Chicago, began
some ten years ago, a study of women detained in prisons and
reformatories.  In prosecuting this work,  She often stayed for
weeks and months in the prisons as a guest of the wardens, and
was thus enabled to make friends with the inmates and secure
their confidence. When she came to collate and arrange the notes
thus taken, she was herself surprised to find how many women
dated their downfall from the abominable conditions prevailing
at the employment agencies where they had gone for work.  These
facts Miss Kellor placed before some active workers and the consequence
was that with her co-operation, an association was
formed (the treasurer of which I have the honor to be), with
branches in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, the object being
to improve the conditions under which an unemployed and untrained
woman must seek work, and at the same time to try to
attract these young women from the over-crowded, poorly paid
trades into the well paid under-manned line of domestic service.
I am sure it would interest you all, could I take the time to tell
you how we first secured an employment agency law for the State
of New York, and how then, finding that the discredited agents
simply moved across the ferry, we applied to the energetic women
of New Jersey, and how they, with our aid, secured the passage
of an excellent agency bill through the last legislature.  Meanwhile,
the Philadelphia ladies had drawn Pennsylvania into line.
5

It is much easier to get a law passed than to get it enforced, and we felt that, as an organization, we had our hands full in investigating complaints and keeping the Commissioner of Licenses up to his work; but we have not been allowed to pause in our labors. Our work with the employment agencies has brought us in touch with the immigrant girl and woman, and we had forced upon our attention the terrible dangers which surround her. It was owing to investigations undertaken by us that Congress last year passed the bill rendering liable to deportation any girl found in a disorderly house within two years after landing. Another phase of the immigrant question which was forced upon our attention was the shameful way in which the foreigners were treated (usually by their own countrymen) in the matter of remitting money to their home people. In New York City there existed very many fake banks. The so-called banker, usually an Italian or a Hebrew, had no capital beyond a few foreign coins, which he placed in a bowl in his window, yet he undertook to forward money entrusted to him to any part of the world. Needless to say, it never reached its destination, and when the hapless victim returned to complain, he either found the "banker" flown or was met with ridicule or threats. One poor man, for example, was told he had better not make a fuss about the matter, as it was against the law to send money out of the country, and if he complained to the police he would be himself arrested. The victims were indeed quite helpless. The District Attorney's office, which has always most loyally and willingly stood by us, could do nothing, as the evidence that the money was not received was in Europe. These precious scamps added to their nefarious gains by posing as steampship ticket sellers, their qualifications consisting of a poster of some steamship line, though in one case a colored lithograph of a battleship was forced to do duty. Of course, they could not sell tickets, but they sold what they called orders for tickets, which upon being presented on the other side were, naturally, useless. I would not harrow your feelings even if I had the time to spare, by narrating some of the stories that have come to us, for pitiful they were beyond words to describe. The steamship companies were only too anxious to break up the ticket business, but found themselves in the position of interested parties before the legislature, so once again we profited by our inestimable privilege of freedom from all trammels, and our bills were passed by the last Legislature. One of these bills, No. 515,845, is an amendment to the banking bill and provides that all "firms or corporations" taking deposits to be sent abroad, and selling
6

steamship tickets, must file a bond for $15,000. The other bill, No. 1553, is an amendment to the penal code to prevent fraud in the sale of transportation tickets. Both these laws came into effect on September 1st of this year, and we are now engaged in looking after their proper enforcement.
I have dwelt at large on the work of the Research Department, not because I think it an exceptional record - I have no doubt that equally good work is being done in every city in the state - but because the work accomplished seems to me a good illustration of the great advantage possessed by women in their present political status. I find among my more radical friends an objection to our method of work, which for some unknown reason they term indirect. "Yes," they say, "you have done a great deal and you have got all you want from Congress and the Legislature, but these indirect ways are so undignified - how much better to have direct influence." My answer to that is: If we are anything we are direct; if we stand for anything in public life, it is for direct methods and straightforward action - it is the men who need the lobby, not we. It is the men who, because they belong to this party, must placate some men on the other side, not we. It is the men who go to their party leader and through him get at the committee they wish to influence, not we. We go straight to the Governor, Attorney-General, or Chairman of Committee, as circumstances require. We have no favors to give and none to ask. We make a plain statement of our case, backed up by as carefully arranged evidence as we know how to prepare. We answer the questions asked us and take our leave. If there is anything indirect in this procedure it lies beyond my powers of discernment.
As I pause in my writing at this point, it occurs to me in what a different spirit I have put what I had to say than would have been the case twenty-five years ago. Then, I should have thought it necessary to begin my paper with an elaborate defence of the propriety of woman appearing in public life at all. I should have felt it imperative to express a belief that it would not unfit them for their domestic duties. Now, I have taken it as a matter of course that we all agree that bridge, lectures, theatres, or even prayer meetings, are more likely to distract a woman from her home pursuits than the arduous path of public service. For public work is hard work. Those who follow it must be content to receive "more kicks than ha-pence." It is a self-effacing work. We women who are in it
7

are too busy with our work to talk about it. We have among 
us women who are capable of drawing up a brief for the 
Attorney General, or an abstract of evidence for the Governor, 
but we have very few speakers and no agitators. Only women 
who love the work for its own sake will ever be tempted into 
our ranks. Yes! the position of woman has changed much in 
the last quarter of a century. She has now every legal right 
necessary for her protection, and, crowning mercy, she has 
acquired them without being called upon to lay down her independence! 
I often think of a meeting I once attended in 
California, where some of our strenuous sisters were demanding 
what they chose to call "rights." At the close I was asked 
to make a few remarks. In reply, I gave a brief digest of the 
laws of California concerning women. There was a dead 
pause after I had finished speaking, which was suddenly broken 
by a shrewd old woman from southern Missouri, who drawled 
out with the true "Bush Whacker" intonation: "Wal, gals! 
I reckon your quarrel is with the Lord and not with the law!" 
     And now in closing I want to say a few words to young 
women especially - to those young women who are to-day coming 
forward to take up the task that we older workers must 
ere long lay down. Do not be beguiled by any specious arguments 
about the so-called equality of women into forgetting you 
true position. Do not let yourself be imposed upon by change 
masquerading as progress. Above all, I earnestly beseech you 
let no hope of personal gain, no restless ambition to play a part 
in factional public life, induce you to surrender the all-powerful, 
absolutely unique position we pioneers have secured for you. 
Let your watchword be "Power through Independence" - that is 
our last word to you from the conservative women represented 
by our organization. 
8

THE 
BLANK-CARTRIDGE BALLOT, 
BY 
ROSSITER JOHNSON 

ISSUED BY 
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, 
29 WEST 39TH STREET. 
NEW YORK CITY. 

TAKE from your pocket a dollar bill, smooth it out, and look at it. It is handsomely engraved, its declarations are in good legal phrase, it is elaborately numbered, and it carries as a portrait either the strong face of Edwin M. Stanton or the handsome face of Martha Washington. Why is it that that note will buy twenty loaves of bread, or a hundred bricks, or a new novel, or a ticket to the theatre, or a forty-mile ride on a railroad? It is because paper is so precious, and ink so rare? Is it because of the fine engraving, or the legal phraseology, or the interesting portrait? All these circumstances are incidental and intrinsically worthless; the one fact that gives it universal purchasing power is the universal knowledge that somewhere behind it there is a piece of gold whose intrinsic value is equal to that of twenty loaves of bread, or a hundred bricks, or a new novel, or a seat in the theatre, or a forty-mile railway ride, and that the holder of it can have that piece of gold whenever he chooses to call for it. Raise in the minds of the holders of those commodities a serious doubt as to the existence or the availability of that piece of gold, and you can no longer get the articles for your twenty-one square inches of printed paper. They will only smile at the portraits and hand them back to you, though Mr. Stanton was for four years the most gigantic purchasing-agent that ever stood on this continent and Martha Washington is the most revered of American women.
If, then, a piece of paper unbacked my metal cannot procure us a bag of salt or a yard of calico, can another piece, equally unbacked by metal, procure the passage and execution of laws, the revision of constitutions, the distribution of property, the regulation of wages, and the security of life?
The most civilized portions of mankind have not yet outgrown the measurement of force for the ultimate settlement of every great question, and the unit of force is the man capable of bearing arms. As the financial world has invented bank-notes, checks, and letters of credit, which pass current for the things they represent, while the savage is still trading only with his actual cowrie-shells, wampum, and hoop-iron, so various devices have been brought into use by which available force can be measured and the result of a conflict foretold, whereupon the destined losers generally submit without a conflict and thus save life and treasure. This is the philosophy of a popular election. The appeal to reason is made in the preliminary canvass. All the arguments, pro and con., are set forth - generally over and over again - by the orators, the journalists, and the talkers of the club-house and the tavern. Then the ballots are cast and counted, and the result is announced, and the announcement is essentially this: "So many thousand units of military force are enlisted on the affirmative side of this question, and so many thousand on the negative." Then those who find themselves in the minority give up, and permit the majority to have their way; not because they are convinced that they have been in the
2

wrong and their opponents in the right, but because they know that if they do not submit peaceably they will be compelled to do so. And no legal enactment or chartered privilege can forever maintain the opposite state of affairs. We have had some notable instances of attempts in that direction but all have failed. This was exemplified by the "Dorr war" in Rhode Island. For more than half a century after the establishment of our republic, the government of that State was still based on a charter granted by Charles II. This gave the right of suffrage only to men who had real estate to the amount of $134 and to their eldest sons, and legislative representation was so arranged that Newport had six members, while Providence, with a population three times as great had only four. In 1842 there was an insurrection of the majority who were thus wronged, and though the forms of law were all in favor of the prescriptive rights of the minority, and the military were called upon to subdue the rebellion, and the National Government recognized existing State authorities, yet the outcome was a new constitution with a proper division of power. This was yielded by the minority, not because they suddenly woke up to the fact that they were doing wrong, - that had been clearly set forth long before, - but simply because they recognized the presence of a force that would compel them to yield. Twenty years later we had another and vastly greater experience, in which the metallic power behind the paper ballot had to be actually brought into play. Nobody denied that the presidential election of 1860 was fairly conducted and the result correctly declared. But it turned on a very important question, and feeling ran high. Those who found themselves in a minority believed that they were still so numerous and so united, and had so many circumstances in their favor, that they need not submit; and accordingly they refused to do so. Thereupon the majority proceeded to compel them, and though it was an enormous and bloody task, it was carried through to completion, and the minority were convinced - not that they were in the wrong, but simply that they were a minority of the military power as well as of the ballot-casters. If half of Grant's army had fired nothing but blank cartridges, Lee never would have surrendered.
And since the civil war we have had another exhibition of the same principle, in a different way, which still remains with us as a gigantic object-lesson showing the impotence of a blank-cartridge ballot. The colored men of the Southern States have the legal right to vote, yet they are not permitted to vote in any place, or to any extent, that would turn the scale of an election. This is not from lack of intelligence; for many of them are well educated, and are quite as intelligent as some of the whites. It is not because they are untaxed; for, although they began in 1865 with absolutely nothing, they now pay taxes on an assessment of ten million dollars in Virginia, twelve million in Georgia, fifteen million in Texas, and similar sums in other States. It is simply because the white men are fully armed, and understand very thoroughly the art of organization. If the time should ever come when every colored man owns a 
3

Winchester rifle, and when the race has learned how to organize, 
then the colored vote will be cast and will be counted. 
        All this may be very deplorable, but it is the state of affairs 
that exists, and with it we are compelled to deal. Not is it 
confined to our country. When gunpowder came into use and
the man on horseback was unseated, suffrage began to be popularized, 
and it has been widening ever since, but it only follows 
the development of the rifle. The successive enlargements of
the franchise in Great Britain have all been wrung from the 
unwilling or hesitating consent of those who, being themselves
enfranchised, held the place of an aristocracy, and grudgingly 
shared their privileges with an awakening and dangerous
power. In the United States, every good citizen deplores the 
naturalization of foreign born men who have not been long 
enough in the country to understand its institutions. But the
only safety is in making the term of probation inversely proportional 
to the numbers that are coming, lest we acquire too large
an unfranchised population, which by concentrating its strength 
may in some places overturn the civil order. The true remedy
is to restrict immigration, or forbid it altogether for a term
of years. The individual man will insist on buying what he 
wants and can pay for. If you refuse to take his check, he will 
bring on the gold. So,too, men in classes, communities, or 
parties will insist upon what they think they have the right and 
the might for. If we refuse to let them stand up and be counted, 
they will stand up and fight—if they know how, or as soon as 
they learn how. It is galling to a citizen of education and 
refinement to see great and sometimes difficult questions decided 
by the votes of the new-comer and the illiterate; but our only 
safety is in manhood suffrage, because the final arbiter is manhood 
strength. The government set up, and the policy adopted, 
may not be the best possible; but if a majority of the men stand 
behind them, we shall at least have stability, and that is the 
most necessary element in any government. 
        These considerations lead directly to the conclusion that 
woman suffrage would be a serious mistake. A ballot put into 
the box by a woman would be simply a blank cartridge; and 
already we have more than a million blank-cartridge ballots, all 
of which are solemnly warranted by law, but all of which count 
for nothing, and will continue to count for nothing until each is 
backed by a pellet of lead and a pinch of powder, ready to 
enforce its decree. Our greatest peril arises from the even 
division of parties. When we elect a president by a popular 
majority of less than one per cent. of all the votes, there must 
always be a temptation to the defeated party to try the experiment 
of not submitting, and we have seen what this led to in 
one notable instance. Nor is that the only instance. When a 
newly elected legislative body shows an almost even division 
of parties, there is pretty certain to be an attempt on the part 
of the minority to seize the place and power of the majority. 
Then we see a city hall besieged, or the doors of an 
assembly-chamber
battered down with axes. To make any party victorious 
at the polls by means of blank-cartridge ballots would only present
4

an increased temptation to the numerical minority to assert itself 
as the military majority. Under ordinary circumstances the 
law might be allowed to have its way; but sooner or later we 
should arrive at an extraordinary election, and then—revolution. 
Doubtless it would be a righteous spectacle to see a million 
women and half a million men outvoting eight hundred thousand 
men on some great moral question; but when the eight 
hundred thousand men decline to submit, who is going to make 
them? "You are to bid any man stand, in the prince's name. 
How if he will not stand? Why, then, take no note of him, but 
let him go; and presently call the rest of the watch together and 
thank God you are rid of a knave. You are to call at all the 
ale-houses, and bid those that are drunk get them to bed. 
How if they will not? Why, then, let them alone till they are sober; 
if they make you not then the better answer, you may say they 
are not the men you took them for."
         "But," says a woman who seeks to be a voter, "I own 
property, and I pay taxes on it, and I cannot think that taxation 
without representation is just." This plea has been repeated 
so often that it is time to point out its fallacy. There are two 
kinds of taxes—a money tax, and a service tax. The money 
tax is levied on property men's and women's alike, pro rata. 
The service tax is levied on men alone. It calls for jury service, 
police service, military service, and every man takes his chances 
on it. Sometimes one goes through his seventy years without 
suffering from it at all; again he spends weary hours in the 
jury room, or he is sworn in as a special constable to quell a 
riot and fight a mob, or he is called to camp and battlefield, 
where he may lose a limb, or an eye, or his life. Representation 
goes with this kind of taxation, and not with the other. 
Property is protected by the Government, as women are; but 
property, whether man's or woman's has no representation. If 
it had, it must necessarily be in some degree proportional. Mr. 
Astor would have hundreds of times as many votes as I, and I 
perhaps would have twice as many as the man that sweeps out 
my office. Instead of that, Mr. Astor has one vote, the sweeper 
has one vote, and I have one vote. And the reason is plain and 
unanswerable; it is because Mr. Astor can carry one musket, 
the sweeper can carry one musket, I can carry one musket. We 
are all equal on the ballot, because we are all equal on what 
the ballot represents. Mr. Astor enjoys his great property 
because the sweeper and I are ready to shoulder our muskets 
and protect him in it; the sweeper is secure in his little earnings 
because Mr. Astor and I are ready to stand by him with our 
muskets; I find it worth while to be industrious because Mr. 
Astor and the sweeper make it dangerous for anybody to molest 
me. Without this protection, our possessions would be of no 
value; this protection we contribute in equal measure, man for 
man; and this same protection we extend to our sisters, our 
cousins, and our aunts. Frequently an election is for the purpose 
of determining under what laws and in what manner this 
pose of determining under what laws and in what manner this protection 
shall be exercised and those who furnish the protection
rightfully claim the privilege of dictating its form. The 
5

woman-suffragists, so far from suffering taxation without representation, 
are asking to be represented where they are not taxed.
        Properly speaking, no woman is taxed, and no property is
represented. The woman's property is taxed; and for that
money it and she get exactly what the man and his property get
—police protection, fire service, lighting and cleaning of streets, 
maintenance of courts, etc. Every man is taxed, even if he owns 
no property—a tax that is laid upon his time, his strength, and
often upon his life; he bears this tax for the protection of all
the lives in the community, no matter whose; and all the property,
no matter whose; and to this tax the women contribute nothing
and are not asked to contribute.
        The Suffragists appear to think they dispose of this consideration 
when they speak of men who are "exempt" from military 
service and still vote. The immediate answer is, that there 
is no real exemption. All the mean are liable; but when it happens 
that the Government, in an emergency, does not need all 
at once, it takes its pick, and speaks of the others as "exempt."
It may at first call only for the men under twenty-five; but when 
more are wanted it does not hesitate to call for men as old as 
thirty-five, and so on. Many now living remember an emergency 
in which ten States called out every man, of whatever age, who 
could shoulder a musket at all.
        But even this is not the root of the question. For regular 
service in a long campaign, the Government would not take a 
man forty-five years of age, with weak lungs, if it could get as 
many as it wanted who were but twenty-five and had strong 
lungs. But suppose the weak-lunged man of forty-five is "agin 
the Government," and disposed to unite in an attempt to over-
throw it, will he "exempt" himself? Will he refrain from joining 
an insurgent force, on the ground that he is over age and 
not in robust health? Youth or age, lungs or no lungs, that 
man is a power to be reckoned with; and this is why he is 
allowed to vote, in order that when the ballots are counted he 
may see that he and his kind are in the minority, and it would 
be hopeless for them to attempt an overthrow of the Government.
        Some advocates of woman suffrage profess to answer all 
this by pointing to the State of Wyoming, where women have 
voted for several years, or have had the privilege of doing so.
As a matter of fact, the women of that State have not voted 
to any alarming extent. One farmer being asked how he 
managed them on election day, answered: "If I find that the 
women of my family are not going to vote as I want them to, 
I don't hitch up the team that day. And the polls are held 
fifteen miles from our house." It will be logical to point to 
Wyoming only after its women have carried an election, on an 
important issue, against the men.
        It is not to be wondered at that an educated and patriotic 
woman frets a little when she sees an ignorant or vicious man 
going to the polls while she stays at home, nor that she should 
sometimes assert herself by asking if she is not intellectually
6

and morally superior to him. So is a man intellectually superior 
to a sledge-hammer; but when he wishes to rend a granite rock 
he does not pry a it with his fingers; he persuades the sledgehammer 
to do his bidding. Similarly, it would be futile for her 
to go to the ballot-box and with her own fair hand throw in 
a blank-cartridge ballot; but if through argument or entreaty 
she can persuade a musket-bearer to throw a right ballot instead 
of a wrong one, she can accomplish something worthy. And 
the means of enlightening and convincing voters, through print  
and oratory, are all quite as free to women as to men. 
        It should be remembered that every popular election has two 
phases—the phase of discussion, and the phase of determination.
In the canvass (the phase of discussion), men exchange facts 
and arguments and express their opinions. When that is over, 
they go to the polls, where each one expresses his determination 
that the conduct of the government shall be thus and so—provided 
enough men are found to be on his side. A woman who 
is familiar with our politics and knows how to address an 
audience might take a very forcible part in the phase of discussion, 
and she would be listened to as eagerly and respectfully 
as any orator we have. Facts and logic are quite as powerful 
from a woman's mouth as from a man's. And it seems a little 
singular that none of the Suffragist speakers ever use their eloquence 
to turn (as presumably they might) hundreds of votes 
and make an election go right instead of wrong. If they really 
want to benefit the community, there could be no better way. 
Instead, they appear to be only anxious to get their single forceless 
ballots into the box,—reminding one of the man who thought 
he could produce cooler weather by rubbing the thermometer 
with ice. They find it impossible to realize that the ballot is not 
a power, but only a means of reckoning power. 
        This subject of the suffrage is not a question of courtesy and 
chivalry toward women—those are abundantly shown in the 
statutes of nearly every State, which are more favorable to 
women than to men. It is a question of the stability of our 
government, and the success of democratic institutions. Universal 
peace has not yet arrived; the great struggle that has 
wrenched mankind through the ages is still going on, and one 
may see it in various phases in our own country as well as in 
the bristling armies of Europe. Men, whether savage or civilized, 
never have been accustomed, in fighting their battles, to 
put the non-combatants in the forefront, whose station in the 
rear may be quite as honorable and far more useful. Wherever 
we place the ballot, manhood must necessarily be the power 
behind it to give it effect; and manhood suffrage is therefore the 
logical suffrage and the only safe experiment. 
        The planet on which we live was once a molten mass, and 
nobody knows how many million years the process of cooling 
went on before it had a solid crust sufficient to support the 
various forms of life. That it was far slower than the earlier 
cosmogonists believed, is shown by every successive advance of 
science. A generation ago the geologists told us the crust was 
about fifty miles thick; now they calculate it at seven miles, and 
7

Vesuvius and Krakatoa and Kilauea still mutter their awful
warnings. Socially, we are in a similar condition---
For we are ancients of the earth,
And in the morning of the times.
When the good Prince Albert, in 1851, invented world's
fairs and organized the first one, it was hoped that the brotherhood
of man had been demonstrated, and the era of universal 
peace begun; but in three years there was a bloody war that
involved more than half of Europe, in which the only thing
contended for was commercial supremacy. And many who 
read this page have seen in our freest of all free countries a 
million men fighting to the death and spending their last dollar
for what they themselves now admit was a mistake. Boast as
we may of our inventions, our arts, and our learning, or fair
gardens, our romantic places, and our courts of equity, we
have yet but a thin crust of civilization spread over a heated
mass of savagery; and organized force is all that saves us from
anarchy. Of all the women who are asking for an irresponsible 
ballot, there is not one who would dare to walk through our 
metropolis in broad daylight, past its churches, its art-galleries,
and its court-houses, if it were not for the policeman at the
corner and the great armory whose shadow crosses the avenue 
and falls upon the steps of the sanctuary; and of the unthinking
men who wish to give it to them from a vague sense of fairness,
there is not one who could have gone alone into the coal-regions
and proclaimed his opinion that the great strike was unjust.
Such is the brutal truth about the suffrage and its basis;
and a brutal truth, when it exists, must be admitted and reckoned
with like any other truth. In our elections as now held, there is 
no security for the verdict unless the majority is sufficient to
assure those who are in the minority that if they refuse to submit
they will be coerced. With the proposed extension of the 
suffrage, if the votes of the women were so divided as not to
affect the result, then the women might as well not have voted,
and their presence at the polls would be a useless and costly
addition to the electoral machinery. If women voted in the State
of New York, the additional cost of the annual elections, to the
tax-payers, would be equal to that of building and endowing a
college like Vassar every five years. On the other hand, if an
election is carried by a preponderance of votes cast by women,
who is to enforce the verdict? When a few such verdicts have
been overturned, we shall find ourselves in a state of anarchy.
We may admit all that those excellent women say about
the purity of their politics, their determination to educate themselves
on public questions, and the probability that they would
vote in the interests of civilization and good morals. The difficulty
is, that the ignorant are not ignorant enough. When 
the virtuous woman, the well-bred woman, the enlightened
woman, goes to the polls, she will meet there no man so ignorant
as not to know perfectly well that his ballot has a metallic basis
and must be respected, while hers is nothing but paper, and he
may respect it or not, as he pleases.
8

(NINTH EDITION, NINETEENTH THOUSAND)
How Women Can Best Serve the State
===
AN ADDRESS
BEFORE THE
State Federation of Women's Clubs,
TROY, OCTOBER 30TH, 1907,
BY
MRS. BARCLAY HAZARD.
---
ISSUED BY
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage,
29 WEST 39TH STREET
NEW YORK CITY.



Mrs. President and Ladies:

The Twentieth Century opens with government by party the
almost universal rule in all civilized countries, Russia alone
excepted. Even the Kaiser, reigning by right Divine, does not 
venture on pushing any very important measure unless he is sure
of the preponderance of the Reichstag. Naturally, in a Republic,
the strength of party government has "grown with our growth
and strengthened with our strength." Our parties have grown
from the smallest of beginnings to the most formidable of organizations.
No longer does the voter on election day cast his vote
for an elector who, exercising his own best judgment, shall choose
a President for him, but for an elector who casts his vote for the
man whom the party he represents has already chosen. Theoretically,
nothing could be better than party government, especially
where the parties are pretty equally divided. The "Ins" are to
be kept in the path of virtue by the "Outs," who in their turn
will endeavor to so shape their policies as to insure for themselves
recognition and return to power from the people. Unfortunately,
human nature being what it is, this theory has not
worked out in practice, and many a party politician will welcome
a national misfortune, provided it bring obloquy to  the other side.
Nor is this a new development. Macaulay, in his lay of Horatius,
makes the appeal for the old days (old even in those days of
fable), "When none were for a party and all were for the State."
It is evident, therefore, that we must accept partisanship, political
trickery and office seeking as necessary evils inseparable from
modern conditions, and the question then arises, what can be done
to palliate the situation. To our minds the solution has been
found by the entrance of women into public life. Standing in an
absolutely independent condition, freed from all party affiliations,
untrammeled by any political obligations, the intelligent, self-
sacrificing women of to-day are serving the State (though many
of them hardly realize it) as a third party whose disinterestedness
none can doubt.
To do men justice, they have welcomed the new element.
Governors have gladly appointed women to positions on Boards
of Education, of Charities and Corrections, and on Sanitary Commissions.
"It is such a relief," said one Governor lately, "to be
able to pick out the best worker in that particular line and know
2


that one is neither giving offence or raising false hopes by so
doing." The advantage of complete political independence enjoyed
by women so appointed, cannot possibly be over-estimated.
Only those who have been placed (and doubtless there are
many such in this audience) can begin to realize what it means
to be able to plead for a cause or a reform in administration,
and to know that such a plea will be considered on its merits
alone, with no ulterior thought of what may be the motive of the
pleader, or what "pull" may lie back of the petition. This attitude
of entire disinterestedness is, above all things, useful when
appropriations have to be obtained from legislatures. Some years
ago, an appropriation for absolutely necessary improvements to
one of the asylums for the criminal insane was "held up," session
after session. The parties were very evenly divided, and each
wanted to trade appropriations with the other. The deadlock
was at last broken by two women, who appeared before the Committee,
and in a simple but convincing manner, explained the
unnecessary sufferings of the poor creatures who could not make
their wrongs know. The bill was reported favorably and went
through at once. The chairman of the committee thus explained
the matter: "When those women told us just how things were
and what was really needed, we knew they were telling us the
truth, for they had nothing to gain, one way or another." "When
I look at my poor lunatics in their nice clean cells," one of these
two women wrote, some time later, "I am so thankful to be a
woman; to be able to work for the work and not to be suspected
of wanting any political advantage out of it." Unquestionably,
had the poor lunatics been capable of understanding the situation,
they would have been thankful likewise. More than one probationary
officer in New York City has expressed gratitude that
she could not be said to belong to Tammany nor the County
Democracy, nor yet the Republicans, and when aid was needed
for her proteges, could approach all organizations indifferently,
relying only on the genuineness of her case.
Organization being the order of the day, the majority of
women do their share of public service through an organization,
rather than by individual effort. In organization, the same principle
of power through independence holds good. A "Good Government"
club or a "Civic Betterment" club composed of women,
exercises its influence for good because it expresses in its highest
terms, the best public opinion--that is, public opinion divorced
from political or party questions. It is for this reason that such
clubs command respect and secure respectful hearings. When,
3

for instance, the Woman's Municipal League of New York City
goes to Mayor McClellan and says: "Never in our memory have
the streets been so dirty," the Mayor cannot reply: "Well, you
are a Tammany organization; why don't you see your friend
Murphy?" Nor can he allege: "As Republicans, it is evident
you are determined to find fault with everything a Democratic
administration may do." On the contrary he is obliged to take
it as a disinterested protest and act accordingly, and that, I am
happy to say, was just what he did do! This co-operation of
organized women in public life is still so new that it is no wonder
that the pioneers make some mistakes. The only matter of
surprise is that they do not make more. Fortunately, the conservative
women connected to such movements realize that
what is at stake is not so much present measures as the whole
status of women as public servants. Feeling this, they advocate
a caution which frequently irritates the more strenuous sisters.
For example, recently (so very recently that the city shall be
nameless) a Good Government club, after much agitation, secured
the appointment of four police matrons, such appointments being
made after the usual municipal politics manner. Ere long, complaints
came in; and a few weeks ago a committee from the club
found itself waiting on the Police Commissioner and relating its
grievances. One matron, it was alleged, was rarely sober; another
had been known to purloin trifles from helpless prisoners. 
The third had a violent and ungoverned temper, while the fourth
was just plain incompetent. The Police Commissioner listened
quietly, and then said: "I have no doubt, ladies, that what you
tell me is exactly so, but you see these women are all appointed
by 'Big Dick Smith,' and we can't offend him; but," he added,
brightening up, "if you will press the matter, agitate it in the
newspapers, I will discharge the women on account of pressure
from your organization. I will even go farther. I will appoint
any four women your club suggests." Delighted, the committee
hurried back to the Board of Directors to report, and found
themselves confronted with this situation. The club would certainly
agitate, and do all it could to bring about the discharge
of undesirable city employees, but recommend others it could not,
one of its cardinal policies being, "Measures, not men." Some of
the most active and enthusiastic workers deeply lamented this
attitude, which they felt deprived the club of an opportunity to
do an excellent and greatly needed piece of work. That it was a 
wise stand, however, who can doubt, who realizes that only in
that way can absolute independence be maintained.
4

My understanding of the subject allotted to me to-day is,
women in public life as distinguished from women in charitable
life or mission enterprise. Yet, in these days of inter-dependent
work and effort, it is very difficult to draw the line where the
one begins and the other ends. How, for instance, shall we
classify the "Consumers' League"? It began in the philanthropic
desire of a few women to safeguard and alleviate the lot of that
singularly helpless body of workers--young shop girls. At first,
it hardly went beyond inducing employers to provide seats for the
girls when they were not actively engaged in their work, seeing
that they had proper sanitary conveniences and an adequate lunch
hour. Now the work has grown until it has become a State
question, involving factory inspection and including much legislation
affecting the working hours and conditions for women and
children. Another example of the way in which sociological
work transforms itself into practical problems is to be found in
the legislation arising out of the investigations of the Household
Research Department of the Women's Municipal League in New
York City. The Director of the Department, Miss Frances A.
Kellor, under a fellowship from the University of Chicago, began
some ten years ago, a study of women detained in prisons and
reformatories. In prosecuting this work, she often stayed for
weeks and months in the prisons as a guest of the wardens, and
was thus enabled to make friends with the inmates and secure
their confidence. When she came to collate and arrange the notes
thus taken, she was herself surprised to find how many women
dated their downfall from the abominable conditions prevailing
at the employment agencies where they had gone for work. These
facts Miss Kellor placed before some active workers and the consequence
was that with her co-operation, an association was
formed (the treasurer of which I have the honor to be), with
branches in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, the object being
to improve the conditions under which an unemployed and untrained
woman must seek work, and at the same time to try to
attract these young women from the over-crowded, poorly paid
trades into the well paid under-manned line of domestic service.
I am sure it would interest you all, could I take the time to tell
you how we first secured an employment agency law for the State
of New York, and how then, finding that the discredited agents
simply moved across the ferry, we applied to the energetic women
of New Jersey, and how they, with our aid, secured the passage
of an excellent agency bill through the last legislature. Meanwhile,
the Philadelphia ladies had drawn Pennsylvania into line.
5

It is much easier to get a law passed than to get it enforced, and
we felt that, as an organization, we had our hands full in investigating
complaints and keeping the Commissioner of Licenses up
to his work; but we have not been allowed to pause in our labors.
Our work with the employment agencies has brought us in touch
with the immigrant girl and woman, and we had forced upon our
attention the terrible dangers which surround her. It was owing
to investigations undertaken by us that Congress last year passed
the bill rendering liable to deportation any girl found in a disorderly
house within two years of landing. Another phase of
the immigrant question which was forced upon our attention was
the shameful way in which the foreigners were treated (usually
by their own countrymen) in the matter of remitting money to
their home people. In New York City there existed very many
fake banks. The so-called banker, usually an Italian or a
Hebrew, had no capital beyond a few foreign coins, which he
placed in a bowl in his window, yet he undertook to forward
money entrusted to him to any part of the world. Needless to
say, it never reached its destination, and when the hapless victim
returned to complain, he either found the "banker" flown or was
met with ridicule or threats. One poor man, for example, was
told he had better not make a fuss about the matter, as it was
against the law to send money out of the country, and if he complained
to the police he would be himself arrested. The victims
were indeed quite helpless. The District Attorney's office, which
has always most loyally and willingly stood by us, could do nothing,
as the evidence that the money was not received was in
Europe. These precious scamps added to their nefarious gains
by posing as steampship ticket sellers, their qualifications consisting
of a poster of a steamship line, though in one case a colored
lithograph of a battleship was forced to do duty. Of course,
they could not sell tickets, but they sold what they called orders
for tickets, which upon being presented on the other side were,
naturally, useless. I would not harrow your feelings even if I
had the time to spare, by narrating some of the stories that have
come to us, for pitiful they were beyond words to describe. The
steamship companies were only too anxious to break up the ticket
business, but found themselves in the position of interested parties
before the legislature, so once again we profited by our inestimable
privilege of freedom from all trammels, and our bills were
passed by the last Legislature. One of these bills, No. 515,845,
is an amendment to the banking bill and provides that all "firms
or corporations" taking deposits to be sent abroad, and selling
6


steamship tickets, must file a bond for $15,000. The other bill
No. 1553, is an amendment to the penal code to prevent fraud
in the sale of transportation tickets. Both these laws came into
effect on September 1st of this year, and we are now engaged
in looking after their proper enforcement.
I have dwelt at length on the work of the Research Department,
not because I think it an exceptional record-- I have no
doubt that equally good work is being done in every city in the
state--but because the work accomplished seems to me a good
illustration of the great advantage possessed by women in their
present political status. I find among my more radical friends
an objection to our method of work, which for some unknown
reason they term indirect. "Yes," they say, "you have done
a great deal and you have got all you want from Congress and
the Legislature, but these indirect ways are so undignified--
how much better to have direct influence." My answer to
that is: If we are anything we are direct; if we stand for anything
in public life, it is for direct methods and straightforward
action-- it is the men who need the lobby, not we. It is the
men who, because they belong to this party, must placate some
men on the other side, not we. It is the men who go to their
party leader and through him get at the committee they wish
to influence, not we. We go straight to the Governor, Attorney-
General, or Chairman of Committee, as circumstances require.
We have no favors to give and none to ask. We make
a plain statement of our case, backed up by as carefully arranged
evidence as we know how to prepare. We answer the
questions asked us and take our leave. If there is anything
indirect in this procedure it lies beyond my powers of 
discernment.
As I pause in my writing at this point, it occurs to me in what
a different spirit I have put what I had to say than would have
been the case twenty-five years ago. Then, I should have
thought it necessary to begin my paper with an elaborate defence
of the propriety of woman appearing in public life at
all. I should have felt it imperative to express a belief that it
would not unfit them for their domestic duties. Now, I have
taken it as a matter of course that we all agree that bridge,
lectures, theatres, or even prayer meetings, are more likely to
distract a woman from her home pursuits than the arduous
path of public service. For public work is hard work. Those
who follow it must be content to receive "more kicks than hapence."
It is a self-effacing work. We women who are in it
7

are too busy with our work to talk about it. We have among
us women who are capable of drawing up a brief for the
Attorney General, or an abstract of evidence for the Governor,
but we have very few speakers and no agitators. Only women
who love the work for its own sake will ever be tempted into
our ranks. Yes! the position of woman has changed much in
the last quarter of a century. She has now every legal right
necessary for her protection, and, crowning mercy, she has
acquired them without being called upon to lay down her independence!
I often think of a meeting I once attended in 
California, where some of our strenuous sisters were demanding
what they chose to call "rights." At the close I was asked
to make a few remarks. In reply, I gave a brief digest of the 
laws of California concerning women. There was a dead
pause after I had finished speaking, which was suddenly broken
by a shrewd old woman from southern Missouri, who drawled
out with the true "Bush Whacker" intonation: "Wal, gals!
I reckon your quarrel is with the Lord and not with the law!"
And now in closing I want to say a few words to young
women especially---to those young women who are to-day
coming forward to take up the task that we older workers must
ere long lay down. Do not be beguiled by any specious arguments
about the so-called equality of women into forgetting your
true position. Do not let yourself be imposed upon by change
masquerading as progress. Above all, I earnestly beseech you 
let no hope of personal gain, no restless ambition to play a part
in factional public life, induce you to surrender the all-powerful,
absolutely unique position we pioneers have secured for you.
Let your watchword be "Power through Independence"---that is
our last word to you from the conservative women represented
by our organization.
8

[*Ten Reasons Why
Mrs. Goodwin
Duffield & Co
36.W.37*]

WOMAN'S RELATION 
TO 
GOVERNMENT

BY 
MRS. WILLIAM FORSE SCOTT

ISSUED BY
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage,
29 WEST 39TH STREET,
NEW YORK CITY.

(Reprinted from the North American Review, January, 1904)
Copyright, 1903, by the 
North American Review Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved

WOMAN'S RELATION TO GOVERNMENT

What is the purpose and nature of government?
For the purpose of government, is the human race homogeneous?
Is it a unit composed of co-ordinated elements?
Is it divided by sex into two classes of opposing interests or 
is it a chaotic mass of warring elements?
Is there an evolutional tendency toward increasing dissimilarity 
of function?
If so, would a change in the occupations of women by which 
they would share the occupations of men indicate progress 
or reversion?
Is political activity founded in peaceful efforts to adjust conflicting
interests or is it essentially aggressive and warlike?
Since the care of young children should be in the hands of
women, is it better or worse for the race that women should be 
occupied in the political struggle?
Does the employment of women in such occupations as will 
place them in further conflict with men promise better economic 
conditions?
Is there a biological reason for the mental qualities which fit
women for one type of work rather than another?
Where do reforms originate, and by what methods do they 
progress?
Is it not more highly specialized education for women, rather 
than "votes for women," which is to be desired?

When men live together the first condition, the original necessity, 
is concession; and concessions by absolute necessity, become
laws. So freedom is possible only within law, if men are to abide 
in communities. Man can be permitted only such freedom of
3





action as may be enjoyed without encroaching upon the liberty
of others. The higher the type of government, the fewer and simpler the laws should be, though becoming more complex in their interrelations. 
As the only purpose of government is to insure freedom, and 
as freedom is impossible except under certain limitations, the 
perception, formulation and maintenance of such limitations is 
the primary function of government. Government is not a machine
designed to give employment; it is not "an opportunity
for the education of the masses" (a theory recently advanced by 
the suffragists); it is not a mine of wealth to be exploited for 
the benefit of a class or of individuals. It is simply a device
for equal protection of all, which should automatically work to 
that end. It makes little difference what the form of government 
may be, so long as it accomplishes its purpose as well as can 
reasonably be expected in the time and under the then existing
circumstances. Those who revolt against established law should
be taught to recognize the impossibility of perfection, and led 
to consider whether there is a tendency toward better or worse 
conditions. If the laws and the execution of the laws show
progress, the government is practically a good government; if 
the contrary, there is need of intervention, perhaps of revolution.
Democracy is a form of government which, it is assumed, 
gives every man an equal voice in the governments. Our Saxon 
ancestors used their voice, or vote, to acclaim one man their 
leader, and he a man like themselves with only one vote. To-day, 
under our free institutions, one man, whose vote counts only one 
as against another man's nevertheless, leads in the ward or the 
city or the state or the nation, swaying by his will the vote of 
thousands.
The town meeting was a typical democracy, but even there 
the personal equation counted above the power of the vote.
Every man may cast a vote, and only one, but always the vote of 
some one man or group of men will dominate the votes of all the 
others. So the pure democracy does not, any more than other
forms of government, bring perfect protection; and because it 
fails to realize its ideal, it gives way to representative government, 
the republic appears. Now, although through representation 
the individual vote loses its authority, it gains by co-operation
the desired end more safely and more surely.
4

The purpose of a republic is to establish and protect the interests
of all classes. It sees, what is not seen in a democracy, 
that to be efficient, legislation must be for the average and not 
for the individual. So it is only by republican institutions that
democracy is made effective. When a community thus grows
into a nation, it is the quality, not the quantity, of the vote that 
is important. The result to be studied is the operation of republican
institutions in relation to a democracy divided into groups, 
with reference to the equable protection of all groups.
This brings us to a consideration of the groups into which 
mankind separates under the influence of community life. We 
recognize the producing, the professional, the executive groups.
Roughly speaking, two groups would answer. In the one the
work is intellectual; in the other muscular. But we are told 
to-day that there is another and more important classification
based upon sex—that women compose a class by themselves.
Biologically this is, of course, true. Economically it is fallacious.
Politically it is false. For while mankind is in its nature
dual, that duality is lost in the unit Man, as oxygen and hydrogen
are lost in their combination in the perfect drop of water.
Man and woman combine to form mankind, and it is mankind
which is divided for economic purposes into laboring, professional
and commercial groups. The laws enacted for the protection
of these groups apply equally to men and women. Where
woman needs special protection—as for large moral and economic
reasons she does need protection—such legislation can be 
secured by direct petition, if it fails through the ordinary course of the law as it develops under the growth of education and intelligent 
public opinion.
Natural evolution is eternally from the simple to the complex.
New activities beget new forms, and new forms increase
until new types are produced, with infinite possibilities of still
further differentiation and specialization. From protoplasm to
man we face an awe-inspiring series. But no step in the progression 
is so portentous as that from the sexless to the sexual. At 
this point the high faculties of man begin to appear.
Here is the beginning or the emotional stimulus which is to
develop the sensitive relations of the sexes. Out of this, by
5

slow evolution, now come protection on one side and dependence
on the other, with mutual care for the young; and from this have
sprung the great train of burdens and cares which are the crown 
and glory of mankind. Out of the interrelation of men and
women has grown all that we know as civilization. Out of the
man's protection of the family and the women's care of the 
family have grown all government, all arts and all sciences.
Man kind being of necessity broken into groups (absolute
equality cannot exist with life and inequality results in the 
gathering together of similar individuals into groups), there is
a resulting difference of standards and desires, which throws
the various groups into a struggle in which each seeks to bend
the machinery of government to its own purposes, often to the
hurt of other groups. And so the national energies break up 
into political parties, the conflicting interests organizing against 
each other. In other words, it is a form of war, and while it 
may be at times only a quiet fencing or a friendly tilt, with
banners flying and music playing, it is more frequently a hot and
sometimes cruel contest, always with the possibility of the intervention
of physical force. The women who are as yet only
striving on the outer edge of political life show this particularly.
They seek to advance their cause, even in the beginning of the 
contest, by kicking and scratching and biting, by hurling stones 
and acids. They can never lay aside this element of war; their 
very weakness naturally and quickly constrains them to have 
recourse to it.
As the race develops the care of the young grows more and
more important as a function of the female, while protection of 
them and the young remains the duty of the male. The period
of adolescence is inevitably being extended the physical care
of the young is being carried almost to the point of danger, while 
the care of the mind has been added. The responsibility of the 
mother for the physical, moral and mental training of her children
makes demands upon her judgment, intelligence, fortitude
and patience to the utmost of her capacity. She needs all the 
strength, the serenity, the "sweetness and light" that she can
summon, to meet these demands rightly. Since political activity
involves strife, with attendant mental and physical weariness,
6

and since the paramount function of woman is motherhood, the
influence of political life cannot be useful in developing those 
qualities most essential to her unique function. It would certainly
obstruct their development.
Since men should bear the burden of support of the family, 
it seems economically a sound proposition that women would
serve the welfare of the race better by confining themselves as
strictly as possible to feminine occupations, especially as there is 
too often a lack of well-paid work for the men who ought to 
maintain families. When women refuse, as so largely they do
to-day, to go into domestic service, or to remain in the house to 
perform its social and domestic duties, they cause economic disturbances;
they blindly try to occupy the field which naturally
and rightly should be filled by men.
It is far from clear that woman can do entirely well the
work which is properly called masculine, because she is physiologically
and psychologically the result of an evolution along lines
differing essentially from those which have produced men. Her
duties, occupations and interests have given determinate form 
and characteristics to her mould. The seal of science has been set upon the fact of the interrelation of form and function.
Woman must think and act as woman, not as man. Her physical
constitution predetermines this whether she will or no.
When women assume that the vote is a necessity to insure
their proection against the "greed and injustice of men," they
are misled by a theoretical valuation of the vote into an overvaluation
of its practical efficacy. What the individual vote
can accomplish is of little or no advantage to the individual.
The organized vote of a class can do little more for the class.
What the vote really does is to keep the governmental machinery
moving according to the policy predetermined by public
opinion, and not otherwise. Public opinion may temporarily
fail under the artful attack of the machine politicians, who often
run the government for a brief time, in spite of both votes and
public opinion, but only until some vital issue rouses the nation
to a realizing sense of its danger and power.
Reforms do not originate with, they are not furthered by, 
the mass of voters. They begin in the minds of a few observant
7

and public-spirited persons, men and women, who form themselves
into self-appointed committees. By these few organized
reformers questions are presented to the public, and when public 
opinion has been aroused they are submitted, usually by entirely 
non-partisan means, to the governing bodies
It is by educating Public Opinion, then, rather than by voting,
that social and political reforms have been brought about.
Since women influence the characters of men by moulding 
them during the plastic years of infancy and childhood, does it
not seem that it is education rather than suffrage which women
should seek? Do they not blindly ignore the true source of
power? Should not women be striving for the best education
and training for women, in order that their standards may be
kept ideally high and their power of transmission as instructors
developed? Should they not desire that through them the greatest 
power of all government, that last and highest authority,
Public Opinion, may be intelligently moulded?—Public Opinion, 
which in all great issues sweeps the ballot aside with its mighty breath.
Since woman is able to participate fully in all reforms without
the ballot, the demand for the ballot on the ground that she
has no influence in the making of the laws under which she lives
is unreasonable and untrue,—especially so since the existing
laws prove that her protection has been unceasingly the object
of much legislation by men.
Since the vote of women is not essential to the purpose of 
government, and since her vote would not necessarily improve 
the mode of government, we can see no reason why, under republican
institutions which accomplish the democratic purpose of 
affording equal protection to all groups she should increase the 
burden of government by an unnecessary increase of voters.
Since the two sexes are essential to the continuation of the
race, it is illogical to force upon society customs which would
tend to efface that dissimilarity which is the result of evolution.
It would be wrong to encourage woman to engage in political
activities which would interfere with her natural development
and with the performance of strictly womanly duties.
That her influence in the home and in social relations cannot
be ignored is proved by the testimony of all history to the importance 
8


of the woman's part in the forming of the characters 
of men and in the development of their careers.
If woman seriously desires to benefit her country, she has
completely the means to do so. By educating and training herself
to the best of her womanly powers she can fit herself for
service more effective than any she could render through the best 
of political parties.
Finally we are led to this conclusion, that for the purposes
of maintaining an efficient government, not more voters, but better
voters are needed. We find no evidence in the political 
methods observed in the large bodies of organized women, now
so conspicuous, to prove that women would be better voters than
men. The history of the Shafroth case is a painful illustration
of the ease with which women politicians adopt dishonest 
methods. 
The best testimony which the suffrage organizations of New
York are able to offer disprove their own propositions. The New
York League sent Miss Sumner to Colorado, and she was there
two years engaged in "studying" the life of women and women 
voters in order to get convincing evidence of their success.
Women had then had the vote in Colorado for twelve years. In 
this book she says: "On the whole the most noteworthy feature 
of Colorado politics, and especially perhaps of Denver politics, is
that there never seems to have been any real awakening to civic
righteousness." One woman said to her: "I have attended committee
meetings which broke up in riot, but that only increased 
the delights of attendance. We are only human, you know."
Again, "Women are known to work for the election of their 
friends rather than for the best candidates." Again, "Prostitutes 
in general vote, and their vote is cast solidly for the party in
control of the police force. . . . Neither is it surprising to
learn that the prostitutes vote not only once, but often more 
than once."
In answer to Miss Sumner’s  question, addressed to different 
citizens, as to whether women are more or less corrupt than
men, here are two typical answers. This by a woman: "There
is a class of women who do not realize the sacredness of the
responsibility of doing their part to elect good men and women 
to office and will sell their vote for a box of candy or less, while 
the same class of men will sell theirs at a little higher price."
9

This by a man: "Women are more corrupt, more easily brought 
up, because, as a rule, a larger percentage of the better class of 
women will not engage actively in political work, and a large 
percentage of those who take active interest do so for selfish 
reasons." In conclusion Miss Sumner says: "Politics in Colorado
are at least as corrupt in other States, and the woman of
ideals who goes into political life for reform soon finds, not
merely that she is working in the mire, but that she is persona
non grata with the habitual denizens of the mire and with those
persons who profit by its existence. Sometimes she becomes
unutterably disgusted and ceases her political activity; sometimes
her grit arouses antagonism, and she is more or less politely
shoved out by experts at the business; and sometimes she strays
and is taught the tricks of the trade. The last illustrates the
one direct evil of equal suffrage."
It is rather bewildering that these things are said by an intense
advocate of woman suffrage, a paid employee of suffragist
societies! So do the suffragists themselves make a strong case
for their opponents on the point of the woman's relation to
government. And so we who oppose see in the legitimate and
proper work of women a far more direct and far greater influence
upon government than this two years' investigation in Colorado
has shown as the result of the woman vote. And we believe
that we, in private life, have our full and equal share both in
the support of government and in the benefit derived from it, as
a result of the performance of our non-political duties.
Dorothea Dix said that woman suffrage would have hampered
her work, and Mrs. Kinnicut, Mrs. Arthur Dodge, Mrs. Bartow
and large numbers of women in New York to-day will add
their testimony to hers in favor of petition and education as
against the duty of voting. In the one case the women who have 
the strength, leisure and ability, are free to use them and do
use them for the public good. In the other all women are laid
under a burden of necessity to perform complex duties for which
not one in hundreds can honestly be said to be fitted.
Aother consideration that ought not to be overlooked is 
that of the large number of women who are pregnant at the time
of any national or political campaign and election. It is often a
time of prolonged excitement and bitter controversy. Often
10

even merely local issues develop extreme irritation and personal
feuds. The gravity of this aspect of the matter should give us
pause. Who will say that there will be no injurious effect upon
women about to become mothers or that there might not be a
bad effect upon the offspring?
We find no political reason for the woman's vote. On the
contrary, we find in the complementary relation of men and
women a reason why they should not both be engaged in doing
the same work. The work of the world for the benefit of humanity
needs co-ordination of men and women; and women need
the protection of men to make them efficient in their special
function of motherhood. The irritating and combative nature
of politics certainly would not tend to increase the efficiency of
woman in her own proper work, and, as has been shown, she
would not have the power to do more than man in improving 
political conditions. The experience of twelve years in Colorado,
as stated by Miss Sumner in the report of her investigations
before referred to, shows that women have quite failed to
fulfil their promise to use political power to improve social and
moral conditions. In addition to the extracts already given from
Miss Sumner's book we find the following: "On the social evil it
is impossible to see that equal suffrage has had any effect. Women,
in fact, have made little effort in this direction. . . . But equal
suffrage has about as much to do with this condition of affairs as
a twelve-year-old child with the Constitution of the United
States." What comment could make more striking this astonishing
statement? If in a State in which there are no large cities
the full political power of women has not in twelve years produced
any effect upon the social evil---and cannot produce any
effect, as the statement fully admits---then can there be any
moral question upon which the vote of women as women would
be worth a straw?
The further promise of the suffragists, that their vote would
control economic conditions is, of course, rash and foolish, since
the least reflection shows that no vote could do that. Indeed,
the evidence is brought before us daily of the total inability of
men to control these conditions after voting for centuries. The
men are driven to the strike, just as women are; and the results
of their strikes are inevitably wiped out by the law of supply
11

ply and demand, which is and must be always stronger than any
agreement between labor and capital.
However we look at this question, whether politically, biologically,
or humanly, we can see no better reason for the vote
for women than the one which the suffragist calls that of
"Justice"! And when this reason is analyzed, it is found to be
only the assumption that each human being has "a right" to
whatever any other human being possesses. A fallacy, if ever,
there was one. A shallow fallacy! For no man can possibly
have a "right" to anything in a political community except as
the community allows it to him. It is a privilege and not a
"right"; and he gets it, not at all because it is "just," but because
it is expedient; that is, because it is believed by the controlling
majority to be for the good of the community. Let the
suffragists show that the vote of the women will be, beyond reasonable
question, for the good of the State, and they will get it.
They seem to be a very long way short of showing that as yet.
"Rights?" What "rights" has man? In the beginning he
must wrest from nature the very right to live. And when he
has gained that, he must agree with other men upon what terms
he may continue his existence. Is there any magic by which
women are to escape the natural law?
This agreement between men is government-- no more, no
less. And the government is good or bad, according to the average
of intelligence and morality of the individuals who agree.
The goodness of these individuals depends so much upon the
women who bear and educate the succeeding generations of men
that we pray all men who love their kind and would see the world
grow in the virtues of manhood and womanhood, to secure for
woman not only the protection she needs, but all opportunities
for the education and training she ought to have to fit her to rear
men worthy of their manhood-- and women worthy of mother-hood.
Bertha Lane Scott.

T. Case II   Drawer 2    File A
Auth
Woman's Rights
vs
Woman Suffrage

by
Mrs. A. J. George

Issued by
The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage
37 West 39th Street
New York City.

WOMAN'S RIGHTS vs WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 

VOTES are far from being the whole story in this dispute. The 
imposition of political duties upon women is not, as suffragists 
claim, the logical result of the several steps by which the civil and legal 
rights of women have been recognized. It is a fundamental departure 
from the ideals of life and of the distribution of its duties on which 
the fabric of our society rests to-day. As the civic and legal rights 
of women have increased, public thought has become blurred and 
confused as to woman's duties. The suffrage is a responsibility and a 
duty. 
     Upon one thing we are all agreed - the right of woman to that 
individual development which shall make possible her fullest contribution 
to the social order. There is honest difference of opinion as 
to how this contribution shall be made. There is no monopoly on 
either side of spiritual vision or of devoted service. There are those 
who believe that only through the vote can the State be moralized and 
reformed - and there are others who believe that woman's vote would 
be a waste of power because a duplication of effort, and that there 
would be no compensating gain to woman or the state for this economic 
loss. These hold the conviction that true progress can lie only in 
guiding nature in the direction in which she is moving, and not in 
trying to head her off, who believe that the so-called "reform" is 
really a retrogressive movement.  
     The chief opponents of woman suffrage are not the special interests 
nor those men who take a narrow and prejudiced view of woman's 
relation to the state, but those women who have grave doubts whether 
their duty lies in service to the state by the ballot, or by a fulfilment 
of present responsibilities which bear no relation to the ballot. Society 
3 

developing normally tends to differentiate and separate the duties which
men and women have, for "civilization deepens the dye of sex."
         If there is one thing which alarms the advocates of woman suffrage, 
it is the suggestion that an opportunity shall be given to the
women to register an opinion on this "revolutionary measure," as
Mr. Gladstone termed woman suffrage. They hate the thought of it.
The reason is quite clear: they know quite well that the great majority
of women are not with them and they do not want the voters to find
it out. The most ardent suffragists are agreed that the enfranchisement 
of woman is the one subject on which men alone are competent
to decide. It is no part of their plan to give women a chance to
express their will on this question. They forget that the foundation
of a democracy lies in mutual agreement and majority rule. Form the
days of the Mayflower Compact to the adoption of the Arizona constitution, 
the people are "bound to obedience under what is undoubtedly
the will of the majority."
        So convinced are these impassioned advocates of votes for women
that theirs is the one method by which woman should contribute her
services to the state that they are determined to force legislation which
is in strong opposition to the wishes of the great majority of those 
most concerned. Because it is peculiarly true of the American man
that he shuns contention and argument with women, there is danger
that the will of a minority, insistent and clamorous, shall be interpreted
as the expressed desire of the majority, unless this great army of
hitherto silent women takes the anomalous position of publicly protesting 
against the imposition of political duties.
     Wherever women have been given an opportunity to express their
will in regard to the suffrage, a very small proportion have gone on
record in favor of it. The suffragists report that only 8 per cent. of 
the 24,000,000 women of voting age in United States are enrolled
as active suffragists. In the state of Connecticut, which the suffragists
claim as the best organized of any of the eastern states, only 4 per cent.
of the women voting age are acknowledged suffragists. In Massachusetts 
in 1895 a Referendum was held in which both men and
women were allowed to vote on the question "Is it expedient that 
Municipal Suffrage should be granted to Women." The suffragists
made every possible effort to bring out the vote of the women while
                                                       4

the anti-suffragists were encouraged not to vote. Only 4 per cent. of
the women of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts went on record in
favor of municipal suffrage for women.
       You may say that this was 18 years ago and public sentiment has
changed, yet we find the suffragists to-day in the state of Massachusetts 
protesting against another referendum, because as they now
admit "the referendum of 1895 set back their cause many years" as
well it might. In that state where all women of 21 years can vote for
members of the school board without paying a poll tax and by meeting
 a slight educational qualification, only 2 1/2 per cent. of the women
entitled to register and vote for school committee do so.
      The last election in Boston for school committee brought out the 
lowest percentage of registered women voters on election day that has
been recorded since 1879--with two exceptions--although since 1879
the city has greatly increased in population.
         In the state of New Hampshire during May 1912 over 3,000
women of voting age were enrolled opposed to woman suffrage,
although in 40 years' agitation the suffragists reported as their net
membership some 7,000 members, men and women.
        In San Francisco at the election of November 1912, according to 
the report of the Commissioner Elections, 26 per cent. of the women
of that city entitled to register and vote did so, although that day 
offered the first opportunity for San Francisco women to cast their vote
for presidential elections.
      In England when it was suggested in South Wiltshire to hold a
referendum which the local anti-suffragists welcomed, the suffragists
spurned the suggestion because "the referendum gives an equal value
to the opinion of those who have carefully studied the subject and
probably that larger number who have given it no serious consideration." 
In passing, it is interesting to ask if this objection which in the
minds of the suffragists invalidated the referendum in South Wiltshire 
does not sum up one of the chief arguments of the opponents to
woman suffrage, who see in woman suffrage a destruction of the
power of the informed woman to-day, since the vote would give the
uninformed woman equal power with the informed.
       Suffragists promised us in 1910 a petition to Congress bearing
1,000,000 signatures. They managed to secure the signatures of
                                                  5

163,438 women to that long heralded petition and these 163,438 names
represented the harvest of months of passionate and devoted work
throughout the country.
Why is it that the majority of women do not want the franchise?
It is not because they are careless of the public welfare or of the rights
of woman, but because they are reluctant to assume responsibilities
for which they are not fitted and which do not carry with them a
promise of the better fulfillment of old responsibilities which woman
must carry.
What has thus far been done or left undone in other states and
countries where women have the ballot signifies little, for nowhere has
the principle been in operation long enough to be put to the test. The
real test of such a change requires a great international crisis in which
passion and prejudice are at white heat and the life of the nation is
at stake.
Because of recent suffrage gains this sort of talk is unpopular,
but we have lived through other movements - greenbackism, populism,
free silver - and time may prove that suffragism is no more sound than
these other panaceas which failed when put to the test. As. yet there
is only the initial enthusiasm of a popular movement.
There is a reason that we should consider the situation in England.
Does the deliberate destruction of property and the creation of public
disorder promise that women are to show a more excellent way in
government? Those who read history aright know that reforms have
not been brought about in that country by the use of force.
The country could doubtless stand the drainage of woman's civic
life into political activities; in a short time as history moves, the waste
of such a policy would be manifest and woman would again seek her
natural channels of expression. I am not afraid of the masculine
woman, but I have grace fears for the woman who confuses the work
of man and woman and attempts to do both.
How shall woman best contribute her part to the social order?
It is not a question of aim in which suffragists and anti suffragists
differ. Both parties desire woman's opportunity for her highest social
efficiency in order that she may serve the State fully and nobly. The
problem is to be solved, not by consulting the wishes of one group of
women, but by earnest consideration of the possible results to the
6

State of the imposition of the duties of government upon all women.
If the law gives to woman the right to vote, then all women have the
responsibility of voting. This burden, if it is put upon any woman,
must be put upon all women. Never before has it been proposed to 
extend the franchise to a new electorate, the majority of whom are
acknowledged to be either indifferent or opposed to it.
It is not a question of what women want - even a majority of
women; it is a question whether it is expedient for the State to put
the balance of political power into the hands of woman. Doe this
policy promise a better order for the State? We must not take any
single group of women and compare them with a less informed group
of men. We must compare like with like. Have those who advocate
woman suffrage the proof that the average woman will make a better voter than the average man?
A favorite cartoon of the suffragists representing a woman scrubbing,
with a contrasting picture of a drunken husband. The cartoon
is labelled "She can't vote - he can." Fortunately, society is not made
up of scrubbing wives and drunken husbands. Unfortunately both
types exist, but to compare these two for purposes of illustrating the
quality of moral force which all women would bring to the exercise
of political duties, is neither fair not just, either to the voting men
of to-day or to the women whom it is proposed to enfranchise. Compare
like with like. Do you believe that the average woman has surer
means of information in regard to matters of state and national policies
than has the average man? Unless you have this proof you must
hesitate, as patriotic women, before you double the present difficulties
of our democracy. Civilization goes forward by two roads - one of
them is provided by the State and deals with the conditions which
surround the citizen; the other is opened by education - and here is
woman's distinctive sphere - in the upbuilding of character. She
trains and educates not only her own children, but also the whole
body politic. She builds the individual character, by which society
is reformed, for society at best reflects the character of those who
compose it. It is not by the establishment nor by the suppression of
institutions that social change is wrought - you may suppress the
saloon, but unless public conscience is arouse, the liquor traffic is
unchecked; it is by reform within the individual that the Kingdom
7

of God is advanced, and to-day we have lost our clearer vision of this
truth and, forgetting the power of character, invoke the power of 
the law. 
         Man's work is concerned with affairs which are akin to government, 
with commerce, with finance, which defence-a realm which lies
outside the experience of most women. Woman is vitally concerned 
with matters in the home or akin to the home. To imply that we need
her vote in order to help our larger housekeeping, bespeaks a misapprehension 
of what constitutes municipal housekeeping. As in the
home the mother stands for ideals, so in the State woman stands for
the creation of a public opinion which the voter embodies in law. 
         It is no answer to say that the men have failed. If they are doing
so poorly, what shall we say of the women who have trained them?
We have made them men what they are. Our need to-day is not more
voters but better voters, and if the men have failed-and they have
not failed, if we consider the slow process of the race in attaining its 
ideals-but if they have failed, it is because woman has neglected her
part in training them to ideals of righteousness which shall be translated 
at the polls into votes for candidates who stand for that which is
true and clean in public life. A clever woman said in New York the 
other day-"we want more of the home-made child and less of the
street-made;" if the women think they must go into politics in order
to make the street a safer place for their children, we must ask in all
honesty who made the street child? 
        As a reasonable women we need not deal with the absurd contention
that the anti-suffragists class themselves with criminals, and idiots,
and insane. Nor we consider the old argument which stood for 
"woman's rights," so called, on the assumption that the suffrage was a
natural right ; leading suffragists long ago abandoned that claim, and 
have taken up new and alluring arguments which seem to them an
expression of the spirit of the times. Anti-suffragists are the first to
affirm that woman's citizenship is as real as man's ; that her contribution 
to the State is as worthy as man's.
       The logic of theory is on the side of those who ask for this change; 
the logic of fact is with those who protest against it. 
       A New York newspaper of February 14 contained on a single
                                                    8

page an illustration of this logic of theory measured up to the logic
of fact. One press despatch informed a sympathetic public that a
young woman would march in a suffrage pageant bound in shackles
to represent the state of unenfranchised women. Another press
despatch told of the introduction into the New York Assembly of a 
proposed constitutional amendment which "prohibits the Legislature
of that state from enacting laws making any discrimination between
the sexes in relation to personal, civil or property rights. The amendment 
provides that all such laws at the time the amendment takes
effect shall be null and void unless vested rights are thereby affected.
A number of laws now discriminate in favor of women in regard to 
such matters of dower rights, alimony and personal property." There 
are no shackles save of nature's making. Full justice has not been
done to woman, neither has full justice been done to man, but the laws
of the state of New York stand as a protest against those who talk of 
"shackles," and they record the legal rights and exemptions for women
which have been written on the statute books in recognition of the 
fact that woman has a special service to perform for the state and 
needs these rights and these exemptions in order that she may do her
work with efficiency. 
      Women stand to-day for the duties of a broader moral and
social life, apart from the spectacular duty of exercising political power
under stress of personal political ambition-an undivided body to 
create a scientific and trained public opinion. If they are to use men's
clumsy methods, they will be a part of the political machine, and
they will be divided into Democrats, and Republicans, and Socialists
and Prohibitionists, precisely as men are, and as they themselves, are
to-day threatened with division by the politics of suffrage. It is the 
greatest power and the pressing danger of our woman's temperament
that we cannot have difference of opinion and treat them impersonally 
as men do. In too many instances to-day necessary work right at 
our hand, is hampered and hindered because we are estranged by this 
talk and noise of the suffrage movement. Do you believe that a pledge 
which a powerful suffrage organization sought to exact from its members 
that they would "give neither money nor services to any other
cause until the women of New York state have been enfranchised," is
a hopeful sign that enfranchised woman will place the public good
                                                   9

above party politics? While woman parade and demand votes, what is the work at their hands which no vote can solve?
Some of us, gravely doubtful as to the results of suffrage, are anxiously asking ourselves whether we are standing in the way of our toiling sisters. There are 7,000,000 of "females gainfully employed," according to the census of 1910. Are the troubles of these women to be solved by more politics or are they social and economic? Of these 7,000,000 of women, 40 per cent. are domestic servants in our homes. If we women who have so signally failed to solve the problems of two-fifths of all the wage earning women in our country, with whom we come in daily and hourly contact, who make or mar our domestic order, can we hope that by the votes of women better conditions will be obtained either for or by the women who toil in our homes and the women who toil in our factories? The terrible thing about the wage earning woman is that she is so young, that she is so overworked and that she is so underpaid. Probably the percentages of the census of 1900 will hold good with the larger figures of the census of 1910, when one-third of the wage earning women were under voting age and one-half were under twenty-five years; the average duration of the working woman was from the age of 18 to 22 years, when she left industry to go into "the business of being a woman," as Ida Tarbell has aptly termed it.
Three factors determine wages; the market supply and demand, the degree of skill which is offered, and the organization of the workers into bodies where they can make collective bargaining. Under the census of 1900, only one woman in six of voting age was gainfully employed. If the five who are not wage-earners are so careless and indifferent of the lot of the women who toils, can we hope that votes are going to help out these problems of the woman in industry? a problem beside which questions of tariff and finance sink into insignificance and to which every right-minded woman must bring the best her heart and mind can offer.
When you attend a conference on Juvenile Crime, or Infant Mortality, or Divorce, what is the keynote sounded every time? Not "Votes for Women," but the need of the preservation of the home. While suffragists are talking about the passing of the home and the dawn of an era when baby gardens shall precede kindergartens, and the state shall take care of the child, experts affirm that what the child 
10

needs even more than sanitary conditions is mothering, and that the morals and the health of the child are safer in a poor home than in a good institution. In recognition of this fact we have the movement for the Widow's Pension bills in various states. That great Chinese woman, Dr. Yamei Kin recently said, "I think there will be a great reaction toward home and family life instead of the present agitation against the sacrifice and so-called narrowness of woman's sphere." 
In all the States there are now Child Labor Committees. Those committees have done more to better the conditions of child labor than all other influences combined, and the woman members have influenced legislation as much as the men, and the fact that the latter had a vote has not increased their effectiveness. The Child labor laws of states in the union where women do not vote are in advance of those where women do vote, and there is abundant proof from suffrage authority to uphold this statement. 
Dr. McKelway is authority for stating in the fall of 1912 that the Child Labor Law of Massachusetts was the best in the country considering the compulsory education law, the age certificate system, the factory inspection laws and the many other factors which go into the building of conditions which shall safeguard the children. 
It is also true of the body of remedial and protective legislation for the working women, that the best safeguards for the woman who toils are found in those states where the laws have been made under an electorate of men. 
This is not because, as some suffragists urge, there is no need of this legislation in the woman suffrage states. There is need of it, even though the workers be few, and the comparison of laws in Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming, where women have had the vote, with those of the adjoining states of Nebraska, Oregon, Oklahoma, and the Dakotas, shows an advantage on the side of the latter group of States where male suffrage has prevailed. The high water mark of legislation for the working woman was reached in Massachusetts, with her Maternity law, which forbids the employment of women for a certain period before and after child birth (New York in 1912 passed a similar law) and with her Minimum Wage Commission, which is concerned with the living wage of women, and her absolute prohibition of woman's work after 10 P.M. in manufacturing
11

and mercantile establishments. New York in 1912 enacted a 54-hour
law for women which has just passed the test of the Supreme Court.
As far back as 1877 women were elected by popular vote in the
State of Massachusetts as Overseers of the Poor. The value of the
work of women on appointed commissions dealing with the dependent
and defective has increasing recognition in many states. To these
positions women bring service untainted by political ambitions.
Suffragists claim that suffrage is necessary to abolish the hideous
white slave traffic. The Federal Slave Act has been on the statute
books since June, 1910. Since this Act was passed, the government
has obtained 337 convictions, only thirty-five of which have been
acquitted, and in the present session of Congress an effort will be
made to have certain amendments adopted to make a wider application
of the law. These matters are being corrected along educational lines,
rather than by political propaganda. Other laws must and will follow
as the knowledge of the extent of the evil awakens the public conscience
and the moral sense of the people is aroused.
A woman before the Massachusetts Legislature pleaded for the
ballot in order that the theatrical billboard displays might not offend
the eyes of youth. She lacked nothing in zeal, but her knowledge of
fact was lacking, as it is a fact that eighty-five per cent. of the patrons
of the theatre are women. Obviously, the most direct and simple
way to raise the standard of the stage is to make the box office receipts
voice our protest against the violation of decency, of modesty and the
corruption of youth. We have laws enough to sink the Ship of State.
What we need is an enforcement of existing laws, and such new ones
as shall express a public opinion which stands ready to make those
laws operative. Why are we known as the most lawless people on the
face of the earth? Because when a law is passed, we feel the fight
is won, when in reality the campaign is just begun.
The only consistent suffragist to-day is the woman who has the
courage to follow her theories to there ultimate conclusion; who stands
for the so-called economic independence of woman, even to the co-responsibility
of the wife for the maintenance of her children, if she has
any. This is the socialistic view. It must be the view of every suffragist
who has the intellectual honesty and perception of the feminist.
Although an officer of National Suffrage Association has recently
12

pronounced that "Most informed and progressive people are agreed
that the married woman should be economically independent," and
assuming this, has urged that the father and mother should have five-hour
shifts at work and in the care of the children in the home, public
opinion has not kept pace with this interesting device to put marriage
on a business basis.
If you honestly believe in doubling the present electorate, by
adding to the problem of our democracy an untried electorate, the
majority of which is acknowledged to be indifferent or opposed to the
exercise of the franchise, if you believe that the ballot is woman's
best means of social efficiency, then you are a suffragist.
Manhood suffrage is on trial and the of us who are optimistic
believe it must succeed, but we know that out machinery of government
is under the greatest strain in congested areas of population
which present the greatest obstacles to getting measures clear before
the voters. In the towns and in these same congested areas when are
doing a noble work through their individual efforts and in their
municipal leagues and kindred organizations. They gain respectful
hearings because they are distinctly apart from party strife and they
do not divert the efforts for the solution of social problems to the
machinery of political organization.
If you recognize that nowhere on the face of the earth has woman
suffrage been tried under conditions which would obtain here in this
state, you will hesitate before you support the suffrage claim and you
will question whether woman's service to the state should be identical
with man's. What the method of that derive may be I have tried to
indicate. It has not the glamor of a new program; it has not even a
war cry, which Voltaire said people dearly loved; but it involved a
careful consideration of present duties and old obligations, to which
the ballot, the political activities, the share in the administration of
government, the scramble for office, officer no solution.
That great English woman who made the largest contribution of
the 19th century toward solving the problem of the housing of the
poor, Octavia Hill, has said "Political power would militate against
usefulness in the large field of public work in which so many are now
doing noble and helpful service. This service is far more valuable
than any voting power could possibly be. . . . . . Let the woman be set
13

on finding her duties, not on her rights-there is enough of struggle
for place and power, enough of watching what is popular and will win
votes, enough of effort to secure majorities ; if woman would temper
this wild struggle, let her seek to do her own work steadily and
earnestly."
     The anti-suffragists recognizes woman's distinctive value to the
State, and believes that it is by an intensifying of her old methods of 
work and of her present obligations and duties, that she is to make her 
best contribution to the body politic, not by an extension of her energy, 
already overtaxed, into fields of politics and government, for which
she is unfitted.  There is no limitation to woman's opportunity to-day,
save the limitations imposed by her physical and nervous constitution,
and there we have a stone wall-not of prejudice, as some would make 
us think, but of Nature's own building. Suffrage is a backward step
toward conditions where the work of man and woman were the same, 
because neither sex had evolved enough to see the wisdom of being
specialists in their own line.
     The question is one of the improvement of society versus the
multiplication of votes. To-day we have the vote of the informed man
reinforced by the influence of the un-informed woman to set over against
the vote of the informed man-two against one. Universal woman
suffrage would destroy this situation, it would distribute the power
among women qualified for holding it and those not qualified for holding it. We would have the votes of the informed man and the informed
woman against the votes of the uninformed man and uninformed 
woman-two against two. The average woman is worthily employed
outside of political lines. The exceptional woman to-day has every 
opportunity of rendering her distinctive service to the state by giving
public service uncolored by political motives. To-day women have no
office to seek, no political emotion to gratify, no desire but to serve. 
Shall the ballot be adopted as a means for that service? If woman is
to exercise political functions, every act of every woman in public life
will be taken with an eye to her personal and political future and not
solely, as now, with reference to the good of the state. 
     The voters register the general will- the general will is created
by each human being discharging first of all the duty to which he is
called by the state, There are those, and they are a majority of our
14 


women, who believe that woman's duties to the state are not along 
political lines. These recall Maeterlinck's fable of the lighthouse
keeper, who gave oil, which should have filled his lamps, to feed the
poor, and when the storm came he saw great ships go to pieces on the 
rocks, because he had failed in the duty which was his portion.
Alice N. George. 
15

WOMAN'S PROGRESS
Versus
WOMAN SUFFRAGE
BY
HELEN KENDRICK JOHNSON
...Compliments of the...
Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further
Extension of Suffrage to Women
For pamphlets and information address the Secretary
687 Boylston Street, Room 615, Boston.
ISSUED BY
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage,
29 WEST 39th STREET
NEW YORK CITY.

WOMAN'S PROGRESS VERSUS WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
   THE suffrage movement is more than fifty years old, and has therefore run parallel with the progress of women which has marked this era. Suffragists declare that much of this progress is due to the woman-suffrage movement, which the opponents of such suffrage deny, because they believe that the principles and the results of the suffrage agitation are at variance with any true advancement either of woman or of the State.
     Evidence that woman suffrage is not deemed progressive is seen in the following facts: 
     In making up their reviews of the year's progress, the public prints make no mention of the successes of woman suffrage. 
     The States where woman has made most progress are those in which woman-suffrage bills have been most steadily and decisively defeated. 
     There has been slight improvement, if any, in the laws of the States where women vote, due to the fact of that vote; and, in some ways, the progress of those States is behind that of other States.
     If the suffrage movement were to disband to-day and no woman ever vote, not a single great interest would suffer. None of woman's wide philanthropies would be harmed; women's colleges would be unaffected; the profession would continue to give diplomas to qualified women; tradesmen would still employ women; good laws would not be repealed, and bad laws would be no more likely to be framed; literature would not suffer; homes would be no less secure; woman's civic work would not cease; nor would there be any more disposition than there is to-day to remove to a State where woman still had "freedom." (It is interesting to note that there never has been such a migration of women to the suffrage States as to overburden the population.)
     The suffrage movement is to-day allied with co-education as against woman's higher education in colleges of her own; with "isms" as against tried principles; with prohibition as against temperance; with Mormonism as against separation of church and state; with socialism as against representative government; with radical labor movements as against the best organized and unorganized efforts of wage-earning men and women; with "economic independence" and the co-operative household as against family life and the home. 
      Higher education for woman has been the special mark of her progress in this era; but the men and women who founded 

her colleges received neither inspiration nor aid from suffrage workers who strove chiefly to "break down the sex barrier in education" and directed their efforts to the advocacy of co-education rather than to the establishment of the higher education. 
     Enlightened discussions of great questions of public policy should be called out by the suffrage idea; but there are none on record. For example, divorce for several causes was the first legislation demanded by the suffragists, and to-day their standing committee on "divorce reform" demands joint legislative action by women, concerning divorce, but makes no suggestion as to the value or trend of such action. 
[*Good*]
     Nor do they give intelligent reasons for such bills as the one so long urged by them, asking that the wife should have separate earnings and a valuation placed upon her labor in the household. It is most fortunate that no amount of such pressure has made American legislators look upon marriage as a business co-partnership or consider that progress required them to place wives in the attitude of hired servants of their husbands. 
[*They didn’t do it.*]
     Education as well as religious decency received a blow from these professed friends of woman's progress when the authoritative members of the Association issued the "Woman's Bible."
    The hollowness of suffrage claims to be progressive may be further judged by the fact that no writings concerning the condition or needs of the public schools have been published by those who are using school suffrage as a stepping-stone to political advance. Suffrage agitation has secured school suffrage for women in twenty-five States, but it has not succeeded in inducing any great number of women to go to the polls and vote on school matters. On the contrary, the unwise pressure brought to bear on legislatures and public officials by suffrage workers has hindered the natural progress of women in connection with non-political public-school work. The small, fluctuating and sometimes manipulated school-suffrage vote is proving of little advantage and an expense, and therefore in two States, Connecticut and Ohio, its abolition has been proposed. School-suffrage bills have been defeated in five States in the past three years, and a bill making women eligible as school trustees was defeated in Kentucky in 1897, and one requiring that at least one-third of the members of boards of education appointed by mayors should be women, was defeated in New York in 1899. 
    Suffrage leaders claim that the change in laws, making them more favorable to women, is largely owing to their demands, but this can be distinctly disproved. In their published History the leaders say that one of the causes that led to their movement was "the discussion in several of the State legislatures of property questions in regard to married women, " showing that this agitation preceded the work of the suffrage organization. The suffrage movement began in 1848, but in 1844 Rhode Island had passed such laws, and Connecticut, Massachusetts, Texas, and

New York passed such laws in 1848-49. In 1881 the suffrage
leaders in New York inquired, "who was responsible for the married
woman's property-rights bill, and whether any debates had
preceded it?" To which Hon. George Geddes replied, that Judge
Fine was responsible, and that there was no debates, and but one
petition, which he (Mr. Geddes) presented from personal friends.
Mr. Geddes added: "We all felt that the laws regulating married
women's as well as married men's rights demanded careful
revision and adaptation to our times and our civilization." In
1850-52, Alabama and Maine passed similar laws. In 1853, New
Hampshire, Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa made radical changes.
In 1849, Ohio, Maine, Indiana and Missouri had passed laws
giving to married women the right to their own earnings.
The New York State Suffrage Association reports that during
twenty-two years it had urged but three bills relating to 
anything but suffrage, and that those three did not originate with
the Association. Twenty-one suffrage bills were defeated. Of
the suffrage bills, three referred to school matters, of which two
were lost.
The professions were not opened to women through suffrage
agitation. When that movement began, a dozen women
were already studying medicine in this country, and the medical
missionary was the pioneer. Here again, it was co-education,
not education, that suffrage leaders urged. As to the ministry,
two of the early suffrage leaders were preachers.
In 1851 Mrs. Stanton wrote to a suffrage convention: "The
trades and professions are all open to us." Mrs. Dall said: "I
do not believe any one in this room has an idea of the avenues
already open to woman." "Make her equal before the law, and
wages will adjust themselves." The "her" to whom suffrage
speakers refer is always the married woman; for the single
woman had long possessed legal equality, but her wages had not
adjusted themselves to equality with man's. Laws were soon
made which were largely in the married woman's favor as against
her husband, but the market value of her business services was
not raised or lowered on that account.
The raising of a false standard of value is not progress, and
the suffrage contingent is now face to face with a new problem
in the field of labor, that of a man's rights to a home and the
wherewithal to support a family. [*and a womans too?*]
The life of modern scientific investigation is embraced in the
period of which we speak, and its powerful voice is uttered
against putting woman in man's place. The specialization of
functions proclaims the "sphere" of woman, while it exalts the
importance of that sphere. Sex antagonism is the corner stone
of the suffrage movement, while sex harmony is the foundation
of woman's progress as seen in the light of science and Christian
civilization.

A HELP OR A HINDRANCE?

There is no wise woman who does not want her sex to
have the best opportunities that life can give, the freest
and highest education, the widest choice of occupations,
the largest social activity, the truest culture, the most
commanding and permanent influence that are possible in
the world to-day. Young or old, rich or poor, educated 
or ignorant, we are all women, and we want what is best
for all womanhood.
Do you want the ballot? If so, why? and if not, why
not? It is a real question and an important one, a question
on which every thinking woman to-day ought to have an 
opinion, and know what her reasons for that opinion are.
It is well for you to ask yourself, seriously, do I want the
ballot? and would it be a hindrance or a help to me as a 
working woman?
Supposed we begin with a few facts about that great body
to which any girl may be proud to belong, that army of
intelligent, conscientious, capable workers who are so
necessary in every field of occupation to-day. Do you
know that out of the 369 groups of industries in the United
States only nine have no women employed in them? There
are about 2,000,000 working-women in the United States, (of
these, by-the-way, more than half are in the New England
and Middle States) and their number increases steadily
every year. Besides these two million, more than a
million and a half women are employed in domestic service,
and half a million more are teachers, thus making about
four million in all.
This great army of two million workers, is not detached
from the ordinary life of womankind. Ninety-five per
cent. of the two million live at home, and the average

2

length of their outside occupations is less than five years.
The average woman works only from about eighteen to
twenty-two years of age, after which she returns to domestic
life, usually to preside over a home of her own. During
these years of outside work, half of the workers give their
earnings to the home life, and nearly two-thirds not only
work at their regular occupations, but assist in the housework
at home. Working girls seldom change from one
occupation to another, and are peculiarly steady and conscientious
in their work. Their wages, however, are less 
than those of men, except in piece-work, where they often
earn more than men can. In some fields of occupation,
they have already driven men out, and are rapidly displacing
them in others.
"But," you say, "what have these facts--most of which
I know already--got to do with the ballot?" Suppose we
take them separately and see.
What does the equal suffragist promise that the ballot
will give the working girl? A larger field of labor? well,
360 occupations already conquered, out of a possible 369,
does not seem to need much improvement, does it? More
permanent work? but does the woman who only works
five years on an average require more permanent employment?
These two promises, surely, we need not consider
seriously.
The great question of wages, however, is a different
thing. The suffragists make a point of assuring us that
the ballot will raise wages, shorten hours, and equalize
conditions; and if this were true, the ballot would certainly
be a good thing for the working-woman. But, is it
true? is it backed up by facts? or is it just a mere catchword?
The only way is to study up the facts, and see for
ourselves.
It is hardly worth while, here, to set forth the laws of
supply and demand, the position of woman as a new
economic factor, etc. Political economy is a dry subject;
so, beyond the mere statement of the acknowledged fact
that the supply of women ready for work is greater than the

3

demand for their labor, and that woman, as a mere factor
in the field of occupation will take some time yet to find
her right place and her fair wage, we will not consider
these points. One thing, however, may be affirmed that
voting can no more influence supply and demand than it
can change the phases of the moon. When there are two
men to every job, wages are low, whether men vote against
the lowering of wages or not; and when there is only one
man to two jobs, he can ask his own price and get it. And
another thing is also certain, that where untried labor
comes into the field against skilled labor, skilled labor will
always command the high wage, and unskilled labor sink
to the lower one.
Just think about it. If you go into a factory or a store
as a beginner, say, at sixteen years of age, you do not look
at that work at all in the same way that a boy of sixteen
would do. You only work because, at present, you have
no necessary home duties, and you want the money for
your support or for the support of others at home. No
girl works outside her home for the pleasure of it, or
deliberately expects and hopes to work thus all her life
long. She expects, and she is right to expect, for the vast
majority of all working-girls realize this expectation, to
work only for a limited term of years, until she has a
home of her own, or until the present necessity for her
wage-earning is over. It would be a most unnatural and
wrong state of things, and a peril to any community, for
such an immense number of girls, in the flower of their
youth, to renounce the thought of marriage and devote
themselves absolutely to their work. For this obvious
reason, no working-girl does or can, or ought to, enter any
field of occupation on the same level as a working-man,
because marriage does not stop a man's work but rather
stimulates him to become more skilful in it, and therefore,
though he also expects to marry, he is a permanent worker 
from the beginning.
The average age of the working-woman is only twenty-two.
Few remain after twenty-five, and fewer still after

4
thirty. In other words the woman-worker must either choose a trade which can be learned quickly and such trades are always poorly paid, or she must drop out just as she becomes skilful, thus losing her only chance of a high wage. Don't you see that all the voting in the world cannot make a high wage for woman's work, if it is temporary and unskilled? On the other hand, when a girl remains in higher grades of work, after becoming skilled, as in piece-work, for instance, she earns a wage equal to and sometimes larger than a man's. I know, and I daresay you do, many a girl who makes larger wages than her father does in the same mill, and who is surer of her position, as long as she wants to keep it, than he is. And in trades where men are principally employed, but where there is overcrowding and the grade of work required is not especially skilled, wages and conditions are no better, and often are far worse, than in the case of women. 
     The best illustration of the whole thing can be found in the case of the million and a half of women engaged in domestic service. Here is a vast class of women, generally foreigners, often uneducated, entirely without organization or influence, whose wages are yet raised, year after year, without a struggle. Why? The answer is evident, there are never enough good domestic servants to supply the demand, and therefore even the unskilled emigrant gets a high wage at once. The plain fact is that the ballot has no more connection with wages than the Statue of Liberty has with the tides in New York Harbor. 
     But suppose, just for the sake of argument, that voting was a sort of miraculous process, and could work the impossible wonders the suffragists promise. Suppose that the ballot, in the hands of working-women, meant higher pay for skilled work, shorter hours, longer vacations, and yet more wages. Suppose all these fairy tales were true, how would the working-girl gain control of the ballot? Could she grasp the talisman, or would it remain tantalizingly outside her reach?
     In the first place, the majority of working-girls could 


5
not vote. They are too young. More than half are under twenty-one, the legal voting age at present. Even if eighteen were fixed as a voting age for women there would yet be many who could not vote. And the remainder would not be a large enough body, for the proportion of working women to women in general, as shown by the last United States census, is only one in ten- to make even the smallest impression upon politics unless they were closely organized, well officered, and all of one mind as to what should be done. It would take a tremendous amount of determined work and steady perseverance to organize such a party, and each member would have to give her leisure to it. The closest organization, the most arduous work, the largest expenditure of time and thought would be necessary to form a guide a Working-Woman's Party. It must have its primaries, its delegates, its conventions, its candidates, its district leaders and workers, and, naturally, its expenses. It would mean a great deal of hard work for both leaders and members, and it would be so small, in comparison with other political organizations, that it would never be an appreciable factor in a general election. The ordinary women's vote, nine time as large, would overshadow it completely, and it could not command the needed influence to accomplish the hoped for results, even if the ballot could bring them. 
     Even if it could bring them! Some of them if we will stop and think about it, have come already, without the ballot. A girl employee has the right to b paid where a man's claim must wait. A married woman's earnings are her own property, her husband's must be shared with her. 
The hours of labor for women have already been restricted by law, while men's are not. Girls in stores must be provided with seats and given a certain length of time to eat their noonday meal. The wages of a wife cannot be attached for her husband's debts. If any employer fails to pay the wages due to a woman, up to $50, not only is none of his property exempt from execution, but he is liable to be imprisoned without bail. No woman can be arrested in

6
a civil action, or held by an execution, unless it is clearly shown that she has committed a wilful injury to person or property, or is in contempt of court. It would be hard to mention any injustice to women that the law has not tried to prevent, as far as such injustice lies within the power of law. But the trouble is that law cannot help most of life's problems. The majority of voters have wives, sisters and daughters, and are anxious as to their welfare. As far as the ballot can help woman, it is helping her now, though cast only by man in her behalf. It is because the ballot cannot help her in certain directions, and against certain economic laws, that she continues to struggle with low wages and overcrowded trades. 
     The voter would help his wife, his sisters, his daughters, if he could but, alas! he cannot even help himself by this vote to steadier work or a better living. Recognizing this powerlessness of the ballot, he has organized instead, the Labor Union, and the Labor Unions, with all their mistakes, are far better and more available channels of influence than the voting booths. In several cases they have succeeded in raising the wages of women to a level with those of men; and if a woman is to give time and energy, she had better spend it in the promotion of such organizations among women than in a fruitless struggle for political power. The working-girls' clubs are also a splendid force for good, and time is never wasted in joining and working in them. But the ballot, which has never yet raised wages for men, and never will for women, is a delusive light which is not worth while to follow. Equal suffrage has not raised the pay of women workers in Colorado, during its three years of trial there, nor in Wyoming, where it has been in force for a quarter of a century; a fact which its advocates agree to ignore, but which is convincing to any intelligent mind. 
     In fact, instead of being a help, the ballot, in several ways, might become a decided hindrance. Many laws have already been made, as we have seen, to protect women. Would men continue to make laws which discriminate in


7
favor of women, if women had the vote? It would be only natural for them to say, "You asked for the vote so that you could arrange better things for yourselves; now that you have the vote, use it, and do not trouble us to legislate for you. Your vote gives you an equal chance and we are no longer responsible." In that case, the working-girl's chance would be a poor one indeed.
     And, above all, we must remember that a vote is a very poor and mechanical substitute for true womanly influence. The girl who only has the power in the world, represented by one vote out of 26, 000, 000 is a cipher indeed; while the intelligent and womanly girl who influences all those who know her is a queen in her own right. Do you suppose a vote would have added anything to Martha Washington, or rendered Mrs. Cleveland a whit more popular? The women of America, without a vote among them, abolished slavery. The great temperance movement of to-day, which grows stronger and spreads wider every hour, is the work of women with no aid from the ballot. If we were all the right kind of women, thoughtful, wise, loving, helpful, striving to understand and do the best things, the world would move onward as fast as we could lead. The ballot is only a hindrance to such progress, for it tempts the weak and useless woman to think that it would give her power in an easy an irresponsible way. 
     No! true womanhood does not need the ballot to influence the world. And the working-woman is not an abstract woman, one cut off from normal, womanly life, no longer restricted by its natural limitations, or out of sympathy with its sphere of love and home. She is just a woman, who, for awhile, happens to be working outside the home, but who, later, will be a home-maker and a home-lover. Votes, politics, office-holding, primaries, and ward meetings, the pulling of wires, the making of speeches, the manipulation of candidates, what useful wife and mother has room in her life for these? what active, hardworking, home-loving girl can make a place for them in her busy existence? Education? yes, let a woman strive

8
for the best and most of it that she can get; it will make
her home brighter and her life more of an influence upon
her husband and her children. Social opportunity? yes,
the more of it the better. Choice of occupations? yes,
while she is working, let her work be as congenial and as
wide as possible. All these are good; but political activity
is a barren gain, it cheapens womanhood in a vain struggle
for the wrong kind of influence. As in England centuries 
ago the "King-maker" was far greater than the kings 
whom he made and unmade, so woman, with the training 
of voters in her hands, is greater than the voter, if she but
knew it. She supplements man best by keeping in her own
higher, more disinterested sphere of love, sympathy, purity
and righteousness in daily life and thought, and leaving
him to translate that influence into action upon the world
outside, into whose work she never throws herself except
from necessity, and from which she returns gladly, as 
soon as she can, into the higher life of the home again.
"Every wise woman," said the greatest of ancient sages, 
"buildeth her house, but the foolish plucketh it down
with her hands." It is the foolish woman, to-day, and 
not the wise one, who asks for the ballot, that she may pull
down with her own hands, the protection and the sanctity
of her womanhood and her home.
PRISCILLA LEONARD.

SHOULD WE ASK FOR THE
SUFFRAGE

BY

MRS. SCHUYLER VAN RENSSELAER

ISSUED BY
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, 
29 WEST 39TH STREET,
NEW YORK CITY. 

NOTE.
These chapters were written very hastily for publication
in the New York "World" and have been as
hastily revised in answer to a wish for their immediate
issue in pamphlet form. They do not profess to treat
the woman-suffrage question from every point of view,
or fully to discuss it from any point of view. But I
trust that, fragmentary as they are, they may lead
some of the women to my state to consider more
seriously than hitherto the right relations of men
and women to the country and the government we love.
M.G. VAN RENSSELAER.


Should We Ask for the Suffrage?
"Whenever the women of the United States really want the
suffrage, they will get it." This has long been said by all reasoning
men in the United States. It has proved itself true in two
of our commonwealths, and if the test comes it will prove itself
true in New York and Massachusetts.
It is perfectly certain that whenever we women ask to be
allowed to vote - unanimously or in any determinant majority - 
we shall get what we ask. Therefore it behooves us to know
thoroughly well just what our demand would involve, whether
we veritably wish to make it, and whether we should be justified
in making it at this present time. And therefore, as a New
York woman, but one who has lived in other countries and other
parts of our own country, and has compared the condition of
women there and here; as a working woman who for many years
has been thrown much with other working women and with men
of various classes and kinds; as a woman who now holds property
in her own right, and has no relative who immediately
"represents" her at the polls; as one who has carefully considered
the woman suffrage question for a long time, listening respectfully
to the arguments of its advocates, and as one who recently
voted in Colorado - on all these counts I ask women, and especially
working women, to look with me a little into the matter.
Let us take up in succession the chief points it presents, and
briefly examine them one by one.
The first point of all is this: Need every conscientious
woman make up her mind decidedly whether or not she "believes
in woman suffrage" as an abstract question? No. But
we have often been implored to say that we do believe in it so
firmly that we wish for its establishment here and now.
If we do not feel certain that it would be advantageous,
then we must feel certain that its establishment would be a risk.
Woman suffrage has never been tested in any way, which
indicates how it would work in our eastern states. Colorado
and New Zealand are being held up for our imitation. But their
experience has been too brief to prove anything. The experience
of Wyoming has not been so encouraging as the advocates of
suffrage here desire us to believe. And even if it had been, it
would still prophesy little with regard to New York and Massachusetts.
Not one of those three communities includes a city
even remotely approaching the size of ours. Not one has a
population at all resembling ours. Not one has problems to deal
3

with such as are most prominent, most insistent, with us. Surely
we must feel that it would be a fresh experiment, in the fullest
and gravest meaning of the term, to establish unlimited feminine
suffrage here and now.
        Some people are passionately asserting that they know it
would work well here and now--even that they know just how
it would work well. But they have no right to assert this unless
they claim the gift of inerrant prophecy. They have no proved
reasons, no tangible indorsements, to give for what they call
their knowledge. They say more with regard to women who
have never possessed political power, than they would dare to
say with regard to men who have possessed it for more than
a century, and been severely tried, variously tested and minutely
studied during that time. They say that good women, intelligent
women, would vote and vote more wisely than the men of their
kind, and they say that ignorant women and bad women would
not vote (or would vote in comparatively harmless numbers), or
that they, too, would vote more conscientiously and wisely than
the men of their kind. Some people boldly declare this, and all
who ask for woman suffrage imply that they believe it, for unless
the average of intelligence and conscientiousness is to be raised
at the polls, certainly no sane person can wish to see the suffrage
in any way extended.
        For myself I do not think that these predictions are plausible, 
and bit by bit I shall try to tell why. But what I want to insist 
upon now is that no one can know anything with regard to
the matter--that any person who says he or she does know, or can
make more than a plausible guess, has never learned to appreciate
the difference between knowing and guessing. What he or she
calls knowledge is merely a personal opinion based upon data
which are almost altogether of theoretical sort. And when a
thing is a matter of guesswork, risk is of course involved.
        In this case it would be hard to overestimate the magnitude
of the risk. It would mean an innovation of unparalleled significance 
with regard to the future of our women and of our
men, with regard to our political course, our social conditions,
and the status of the home and family. And it would mean an
innovation affecting not merely our own state, but the country
at large. What Wyoming does the rest of the states may disregard. 
But what New York and Massachusetts do the rest of
the states must at least consider and most probably would imitate. 
We must think of the tens of thousands of illiterate and
vicious women in New York city, and just as carefully of the
scores of thousands of ignorant negresses at the south. All told,
the women of the United States very nearly equal the men in
number. Think of the enormous burden of responsibility for
the welfare of our whole fatherland which we women are asked
to assume.
        Are we prepared just here and now to assume it? Are we
prepared to throw into political life all the women, good and bad,
intelligent and unintelligent, of the whole United States, including 
the swarms which belong to Europe, but have been adopted
here? Are we thoroughly, rationally convinced that such an
4


innovation, sudden, but irrevocable, would inevitably work for
good? And if not--if we feel that it would to any degree be
a risk--ought we not to raise our voices against it?
        Silence will be cited as consent. Every new recruit for the
"movement" will be counted and all the rest of us will be pronounced 
merely weak, cowardly, indifferent, or as yet unawakened. 
The world will be told that at the bottom of our hearts
we all think the suffrage desirable, else we should have said that
we did not. We must declare that we are not convinced that
unlimited woman suffrage is desirable here and now. And it is
our duty in any clear and forcible manner that presents itself
to say, "I am not sure that our country should run this enormous 
new risk at this particularly disturbed and critical time."

        It is not necessary that every woman should make up her
mind to-day with regard to the abstract desirability of woman
suffrage. But there is a danger that, if they do not think the
matter out now, many women will remain in a state of vague
interest and uncertainty, distressed perhaps by the thought that
they should have asked for their "rights," and perchance made
discontented by the idea that, had we all done so, woman's lot
would have been improved and our country as a whole would
have been benefited.
        "I have taken the suffrage side," one of my friends recently
told me, "not because I am convinced that woman suffrage is
desirable, but because I think that it is bound to come some
day, and therefore it is best not to fight against it." But no
events dependent upon human action are bound to come, like
earthquakes or comets, or the changes of the seasons. We may
say that some such events are bound to come, if existing conditions 
do not change. But who can predict positively that any
human conditions will not change? And we may say that some
things are all but certain to come--like greater freedom in
Russia, for example. But even then, if we disapprove of them,
it is better to fight against them. If we do not stave them off,
we shall profit the world by helping the growth of courage, constancy,
public spirit, and the reasoning power.
        Far from believing that woman suffrage is bound to come
because of the present increase of interest in it, many of us
hope that just this increase will give it its death-blow. Opposition 
to it has hitherto been passive, and to a great degree merely
instinctive. No one has strongly felt the need to give her reasons
against it. Therefore no one still uncertain upon the subject
has had the chance to hear both sides and intelligently make
up her mind, and few have even been prompted to think about
it at all. But if the negative side is now faithfully presented,
the current excitement, we feel, is likely in the end to do more
to hurt than to help the "cause."
        Therefore it is well to ask ourselves a second question:
Upon what grounds do its advocates base their demand for
woman suffrage?
5

Many of them do not explain how they think that its possession 
by the whole of our sex would affect the welfare of the
community. They simply declare that we have "a right" to it,
and state or imply that the securing and active exercise of any
right must result for good. 
Even the latter proposition is, however, far from logical. 
It is not a proposition which conscientious people act upon in
private life. When a woman or a man perpetually insists upon
personal rights, without considering the expediency of their 
assertion, she or he is recognized as a discordant element in 
family life, as a member of society whose influence is pernicious.
All family life, all social life, is a system of compromises between
the rights of different individuals. And civic life, political life,
is a system of compromises between the rights of different individuals 
and those of different sexes, classes, and communities of
people.
The most indisputable personal rights may be infringed for
the benefit of a community as a whole. A man may be forced
to sell his house if the people need a railroad or a park. That
great bulwark of personal liberty, the habeas corpus act, may be 
thrown down in troublous times. And even the right to safeguard 
one's life is done away with in times of war. Men are
then righteously called upon to face certain death itself. If the
 power to vote could be proved the indisputable right of every
woman, nevertheless no woman should demand it without a firm
belief, based upon definite reasons, that its exercise by her sex
as a whole would benefit her country as a whole. 
But the power to take direct active part in political life
is not a right in the true sense of the word. It is not on a par
with the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." 
Our present laws do not recognize it as such with regard to men.
The corporate intelligence of the country does not interpret it
thus. The instant a child, male or female, is born, the law undertakes 
to protect it in its life, its liberty, and its pursuit of 
happiness. It is protected even against its own parents, should
need rise, and the murder of a day old infant is counted a crime
as much as the murder of a Lincoln or a Garfield. Of course
what the law thus professes and attempts to do it does not 
perfectly accomplish. It never can perfectly accomplish it as
long as individual human beings are imperfect in so many ways.
But its theory is clear, and its practice steadily improves. Men
and women, adults and children, all are to be equally well protected 
by the government in so far as the recognized rights of 
humanity are concerned. 
The question whether progress might be swifter, details
of legislation and practice might be more rapidly improved, if
women could vote, may be left aside for the moment. What I 
want to show now is that our constitutions, our systems of law,
our political beliefs, do not include the power to vote among the
indisputable rights even of masculine humanity. If they did,
boys would be born with the right of suffrage. They would not
have to wait until they were 21 to get it. They would vote by 
deputy until they had reached years of discretion, just as now,
6

if they are born to an inheritance, they own their property from
birth and control it by deputy until they come of age.
Expediency, not right, is the basis of the suffrage. It is
inexpedient, our legislators think, that all men should vote before 
they are 21. Surely, the well trained, educated, intelligent
boys of New York city, even though they be not more than 10 
years old, would make better voters than vicious tramps or stupid
foreigners, all but wholly ignorant of the English language. But 
it is felt that more harm than good would result if the suffrage 
were universally granted to boys or youths, and therefore the 
most intelligent contentedly stand aside until they come of age. 
And thus should we contentedly stand aside all our lives,
unless the most careful examination of a most complicated problem, 
to which past history affords not the slightest guide, seems
to assure us that it would be for the greatest good of the greatest 
number of Americans that all women should vote. Expediency
must here again be consulted - upon different grounds, of course. 
Immaturity is the ground in one case, feminality in the other. 
But in the one case, as in the other, no fundamental human
"right" is involved except the right of the greatest number of 
American to the greatest possible measure of life, liberty, and
happiness.

The possession of the suffrage and the possession of freedom
are too often confounded in popular thought. An individual is 
free when he is checked in his pursuit of personal happiness as 
little as is consistent with the existence of a like freedom for
all his countrymen. Universal masculine suffrage has been
established in this country because our legislators have thought
that by its means this state of things might most surely be
brought about. The innovation was a practical expedient, a 
business experiment, so to say - not a recognition of inborn
personal rights. Nor was it everywhere adopted. In Massachusetts 
utter illiteracy is still excluded from the polls. Yet the 
illiterate man is surely as free in Massachusetts as here - nay,
freer, since he is free from the interference of the political 
"boss." The time may come when masculine suffrage will be
limited in New York. If so, the change will be made in the 
interests of the truest freedom of the greatest number - in the 
interests of real liberty, as against the interests of license in some 
directions, of oppression in others. To-day the suffrage is denied 
to women - on different grounds, I repeat, but with the 
same great and righteous end in view. We who conscientiously 
and thoughtfully oppose its granting, believe that the majority 
of Americans, women and men, are more truly free to-day than
they would be were it granted; that they are less painfully
checked in the enjoyment of life and liberty, and in the pursuit
of happiness. It is not in the name of the subjection of our
sex, it is in the name of the true freedom of our sex, that we
demand that men shall continue to do the work of governing 
our country, themselves and ourselves.
7

Why we take this ground I shall try to show in another place.  Now I may add that our general attitude with regard to the ballot being an expendient, not a "right," would be more often understood were it remembered that governments themselves are nothing but expedients.  Were human beings perfect no governments would be needed.  And until they become perfect thy do not live that governments may exist.  Governments exist that they may love as comfortably and happily as possible.  Life is the sacred thing, not government, which is merely the safeguard of life.  There is nothing sacred about governments except in so far that they are needful engines for the protection fo individual life, family life, social life.  When these are protected, the race has a chance to advance, the world has a chance to improve.  But the mere fact of protection does not assure improvement.  The real work of furthering it is done outside of politics.
It is the duty of every man and woman in our country to help the world grow better.  But it is not the duty, still less the right, of every one to help it by actually assisting to protect individual, family, and social life.  Even if it cold be proved that American women in the mass are more intelligent than American men in the mass, still we ought not to ask for the ballot unless we are sure that if any measure of our energy is given to political life, the loss in the other directions will not be greater than the gain in this direction.  It was recently said by a prominent woman that "the state has a right to regulate suffrage, but it has no right to refuse it to any American citizen."  but what can confer it upon any American citizen except the state?  Public opinion-the voice of the people-lies behind the stat in some countries, but in ours public opinion is the state.  Not merely the men who vote, but every man, woman, and child in the United States plays a part in molding public opinion; and the part that women collectively play, without possessing votes, is shown by the fervid declaration of the woman suffragists themselves, "Whenever we all ask for votes, we shall get them."
But until at least a determinant majority of us do ask for them, and until a majority of men are willing to give them to us, until public opinion favors the innovation, it is grossly illogical, misleading, disingenuous, to talk of of our "right" to them-to talk of anything except the expediency of our getting them.  Those have a right to vote whose votes public opinion thinks likely to advance the public welfare.  Other people have no rights in the matter at all.
What stands behind and above public opinion except the moral law? And does the moral low prescribe direct participation in active political work for all members of both sexes, or of either sex? It prescribes no more than that the greatest good of the greatest number shall be secure, no more than that public opinion shall carefully, conscientiously concern itself with questions of political expediency.  Look at the condition of most of the South American republics if you think the moral law-which must be the same for all men everywhere-prescribes universal masculine suffrage, or look even at the negro vote of our southern states, or at the voting record of New York city.  I do not say that universal masculine suffrage has proved itself a hopeless failure anywhere in our country, but I do say that in many places it gives a bold lie to the statement that the moral law prescribes anything whatsoever with regard to the voting power.
The constitution leaves the power to extend or limit the suffrage to the several states, saying only, in its fifteenth amendment, that no state shall make a difference between colored people and white people.  Yet it is careful to secure and protect the genuine inborn rights of human beings as such.  Each state acts in the matter of suffrage just as it sees fit, and has legal and moral power to do so.  If a genuine human "right" is in question, why is there no outcry over the voteless illiterate men of Massachusetts?  Why none about voteless youths of 19 or 20?  Why none about the adult male citizens of territories?
As a more sparsely populated, less experienced region than its neighbors, a territory is not thought entitles to full self-control.  Consequently the franchise of its citizens is limited.  To vote for their local officers, but not for their own governor, and to send no full tale of senators and representatives to Washington-is this equal suffrage for the men of a territory?
Again, a state deprives a man of his right to a vote if he has recently changed his residence, and each state enforces such a term of residence as it prefers.  For the moment a newcomer is everywhere disfranchised, and if any moral principle underlies the matter this is as true a grievance, although not as great a one, as that a woman should be deprived of the franchise all through her life.  In short, there cannot possibly be any such thing as state regulation of the suffrage without full power on the part of the state to give it or take it away, just as it may think expedient.

The first warcry of the still unborn republic, "No taxation without representation," is falsely quoted now as a warcry for woman suffrage.  There is not true connection, historical or ethical, between representation as our forefathers then meant it and universal suffrage.  Theircry had no reference to individual powers or privileges.  It was a collective cry from an oppressed people, practically enslaved because their interests-not themselves individually-were not represented in the British parliament.  If the interests of the women of America, collectively considered, are not represented at the polls, then they too may consider themselves oppressed and enslaved and refuse to pat their taxes.
The true basis of the justice of taxation is not the permission to take active part in the government.  "The protection of the government," says Judge Cooley in his "Law of Taxation," "being the consideration for which taxes are demanded, all parties who receive, or are entitled to that protection, may be called upon to render the equivalent."  If our government does not recognize the equal claims of men and women to receive its protection, or if, when it fails to give equal protection in certain respects, we can show that only woman suffrage is likely to

induce it to, then, and then only, we may rightly raise the old cry, "No taxation without representation," and give it a new meaning. 
This would be more generally understood if certain people had not got into the habit of calling women a separate "class" of citizens. They are not a special, distinct class of citizens, with corporate interests unembraced in the corporate interest of the community as a whole. Physiologically they differ from men, and this fact has brought about certain differences in legislative action with regard to the two sexes, notably as affects participation in the work of running our government. But as social factors, as children of the state, they are inextricably mingled with men–as inextricably as they are in family and business life. And the great majority of legislative acts must hurt or help men and women in equal measure. When negroes are legislated for, or farmers, or bankers, or fishermen, are not the women of the class as nearly, as directly affected as the men? Women do not go to sea for codfish or whales or seals. But the wives and daughters of the men who do are as keenly interested as themselves in the laws which protect their lives and labors. And, conversely, American men are as deeply concerned as American women in legislation which affects the property rights of women, the moral safety of young girls, the welfare of the children of the poor. 
 Are we prepared to say that this is not so? Or do we desire to say that it ought not to be so–that women must specially care for their own interests, which implies, of course, that men may specially care for their own? Do we wish to evolve into separate classes? saying. "The best interests of American women are not identical with those of American men?" Is this what we do in our families, in society, in the church or in business?
To my mind nothing more dangerous could be said to American women to-day than that they need, as women, specially to care for the interests of women. These cannot be separated, except in minor points, from the interests of men. Our men have never desired to separate them. And the blood of the happiness of our country will be upon our own heads if we set them the example and they are tempted to follow it. The ruin of our country will lie at our doors if we do aught to cultivate this, the most horrible and pernicious kind of selfishness–antagonism between the sexes–for from the growth of woman's love and respect for man and of man's love and respect for woman, resulting in the consciousness that their best interests are indeed and in truth identical, all the progress, all the happiness of the world have grown. 
I do not pretend to say in how far these feelings might be fostered or injured by the establishment of woman suffrage. But I do say that the tenor of the propaganda in favor of woman suffrage has often done much and is now doing very much to injure them, at least among our own sex. 
An advocate of woman's suffrage writes to me that, nevertheless, "it is a mockery to call those free who have no voice in framing the laws they are forced to obey." Of course this statement 
10

is true. But the manner in which the writer construes it is typical, I am sorry to say, of the manner in which a great many true statements are being construed just now. When we pronounce axioms, we should be careful to respect the genuine sense of the words which compose them. 
Is it needful that in this connection "voice" should be understood as meaning "a vote?" Every person has a voice in the making of our laws who plays a part in influencing any individual voter, or in helping to form that deep and strong voice called public opinion which influences all voters, and the collective result of which is the collective vote of a community. 
By their fruits ye shall know them–ye shall know those who visibly act and also those whose mold the course of their action. 
Have women really "no voice" in the making of laws like those of New York and Massachusetts? Are they justified in feeling that they must "protect their own interests" by means of the ballot box? May they not believe that, if further legislation specially favoring them is needed, it will come in the established way –through the votes cast by men whose conscientiousness it lies so largely in their own power to develop, whose thoughts and actions are so largely determined by their own influence, consciously or unconsciously exerted? And should they not see that their task, which no man can take away from them and in which no man can replace them, is to mold public opinion, to form and train, inspire and reward the executive sex? 
It has been said that only ignoble minds can be content with indirect action in the political field–with power at second instead of first hand, with influence instead of a share in control. But why is this true of politics more than of other things? And if it were true of everything, could any good work ever be done? No one works for himself or herself alone, and no one's mind and life are trained or guided by himself or herself alone. Behind all people who do worthy things stand others to whose help their power of action is due. In some noble tasks it is men who thus stand behind a woman; in others it is women who stand behind a man. And in both cases the role of the Aaron and the Hur is as important as the role of the Moses. 
Turn now from the "right" of woman suffrage, which is no right at all, to the question of its expediency. This is the true problem, and of course the best way to approach it is at the very foundation. 
Is there indeed a good reason why women, simply because they are women, should not take active part in political life?
Women are physically much weaker than men. It matters nothing that here and there a woman might say, "Lo, I am physically as vigorous as a man." Averages must rule when millions of men and women are concerned. No sane person believes that the average woman equals the average man in vigor, any more than that the exceptionally strong woman equals a Corbett or a Sandow. 
11

     Nature has made us weaker than men, not merely by giving 
us smaller skeletons and tenderer muscles, but by fitting us for 
the role of motherhood. Of course in being fitted for this role a 
special kind of strength has been conferred upon us, and no kind 
could be more valuable to ourselves or to the world. But we 
have to pay for it in weakness in other directions - not only in 
lesser muscular power, but in lesser ability to withstand strains 
and exertions of many kinds. 
     Man's greater physical strength is not merely a reason why 
he has hitherto done all the work of government. It is also a 
sign and proof that this is part of his natural work. By nature 
he is the protector of his family, whether it be attacked by wolves, 
by human individuals, by the fear of poverty or by the dread of 
public calamities. And by nature a woman is a being to be protected. 
Her physical weakness is a sign of this. So is the great 
fact which necessitates it - the fact of her motherhood. So are 
the domestic and social cares which the probability of motherhood, 
and the absence of the working males from their homes, 
make the business of our sex as a whole. And so is the fact 
that while man needs to safeguard his life and property only, she 
needs to safeguard her chastity as well. 
     Woman is the homemaker, the home keeper; man is the home 
supporter, the home protector, and government is only one form 
of home protection. Often to-day a woman must assume part 
of a man's work of protection. But this is a misfortune, not an 
"opportunity." We must take the best of it by educating our 
girls better, and by teaching our men to realize, even more 
thoroughly than they do now, that it is their business to protect 
all women in so far as they can. But it is foolish, as against 
nature, which means common sense, to think that it would be 
well if women should share equally in the hard outside work 
of money making and of organizing and protecting society as it 
would be to think that the world would be improved if men 
could bear and rear half the children. Any doctrine which tends 
toward a general reversal of the great roles of the two sexes, or 
toward their confusion, or toward the growth of the idea that 
they may be confused without danger to society, must be distinctly pernicious. 
     Woman needs more liberty, truly - at least in intellectual directions. 
She needs to know more, to think more, to have a 
deeper sense of responsibility. But she needs this to do her own 
work more thoroughly, to teach her what had better be left to 
man to do, and to teach man how he may do it well. Her work is 
world's educator. He is the world's executive. Her work is 
really more important than his, for it is the making and molding 
of human character and of social characteristics  - which means 
the making and molding of public opinions - while man's work is 
to support and protect her as she does this, and to give public 
opinion shape in that practical form which we call government. 
     I have actually heard women say, and with much decision and 
fervor: "Certainly we should not hold office. The men ought 
certainly do the work of governing. But it is our duty to see 
that good men are put into office. It is our duty to vote, because 
12

this is the best way to show what we think ought to be 
done by the men who govern." 
     Surely this would be very unequal suffrage - half the controling 
power to be ours, all the work and responsibility to fall 
upon the men. It would be interference - not influence. It 
would be irresponsible dictation - not education, direction, help 
and counsel. 
     And of course it would be impracticable. How could we vote 
for good men unless good men were always nominated? And 
how are men nominated except through difficult, exacting work, 
which is heaviest just before an election, but must be persisted 
in more or less all the time? Going to primaries, pulling wires, 
and influencing voters in favor of the nomination of good men 
is not very hard work in little country places. But it is work that 
needs time even there, and needs knowledge of a particular 
kind - special knowledge with regard to the qualifications of 
special men. And in big cities the work is so difficult, disagreeable, 
and harassing that, just because of it, very many men lose 
their interest in politics altogether. Yet in this work at least we 
should positively be obliged to share if we wished to vote those 
whom we might consider the best men into office. 
     No one can simply vote for "the best man" without regard 
to anything but his personal trustworthiness and ability. Behind 
every man who stands for an office lies a principle of one kind 
or another - legal, financial or economic ideas. Choice must be made 
between principles, and choice must be made between men, 
and then the claims of the one and the other must be 
balanced against each other. No problem is more frequent 
or more difficult than that which confronts the voter obliged to 
choose between a "good man" representing principles or expedients 
of which he disapproves, and a less good one representing 
principles or expedients he thinks right. Thus no intelligent vote 
can be cast without a knowledge and consideration of abstract 
political, financial or economic ideas. The best man, when political 
office is in question, is the one who will have the most power 
to legislate for us toward the best result, and this necessitates 
considerations with regard to his ideas and beliefs, his wisdom 
and tact, his influence with other politicians and with the people, 
as well with regard to his knowledge and conscientiousness. 
     And this all means that women would have to take an earnest 
part in political thought, an active part in political life, if they 
wished simply "to see that the best men are put into office." 
Otherwise they could only vote with blind eyes for men whom 
they had had no share in selecting, or else duplicate the votes of 
men whom they esteemed intelligent. I think no woman need 
ask for the suffrage who desires to be an ignorant voter or a 
mere echo. 

     Men have made our laws wholly of their own motion, as 
some declare, or largely influenced by women's expressed or implied 
wishes, as I and many others believe. What solid ground 
have we for saying that, given political responsibilities, our 
13

women would bear them more conscientiously than men?  A very large proportion of our political questions to-day are financial or economic questions.  Is it probable that women would be more generally stirred than men to think seriously and vigorously about these?  Did my friend really show cause why the suffrage should be given to women when she said that only direct personal political activity could awaken their real interest in political things?  Do good women thus disassociate themselves from the duties and responsibilities of their husbands and sons in other directions?  Do they not feel a personal concern in the progress of their sons' college education, even though they may have had none themselves? Or in their athletic education?  Or in their professional success, the business rectitude and diligence of their husbands?  Or in the councils and affairs of their churches?  Is it true that we feel we cannot take an active interest in public affairs unless we take an active personal part in them?  And, if so, is this indeed a proof that we are vain and proud and selfish-that we must audibly "have our say" in the same manner as men, or else will sulk in our corners and declare that we wash our hands of the nation's interests, of our men's interests, of our own interests?  I have already said that I cannot believe it is so.  I cannot believe so badly of the women of America.  They are not generally interested in public affairs to-day because their true education has only just begun.  But they will gradually grow interested without the bribe or the lure of votes, and then we shall see what woman's influence may mean for good.
If it is indeed true that the work of the world must be divided, and that nature, experience and a sane philosophy unite in showing that the labor of government is part of man's proper share, it is hardly needful to consider any such minor arguments as that if women could vote "there would be no more wars."  But I may say that most of them are on a par with this one as regards any basis of demonstrated or probable truth.
Does the history of the female sovereigns of Europe or of India show that women hate war more than men, or does it show that when their emotions are excited they are apt to be more recklessly bellicose than men?  How was it with the women of France in the days of the great revolution?  And do recent instances differ from those of earlier date?  Was not the terrible Franco-German war of 1870 called by the French empress "my war?"  Was it not recognized as such by the French people?  Do not the investigations of historians and memoir writers show it to have been such?  And which were recognized as the most bitter opponents of the Union in our southern states during the war of the rebellion and long after its close-the women or the men?
But the worst of all the fallacies now being used as persuasive arguments is the declaration that if American working women could vote their wages would be equalized with men's.  Those who promise this do not give their reasons, and they could not base them upon past facts with regard to rises in the value
14

of men's labor.  Even to-day women are paid much more nearly the same as men for really equal work than the makers of this promise would have us believe.  But often what is called equal work shows some inequality, if not in the perfection of its performance, then in the probability that the worker will continue permanently at her task.  Although certain agitators have declared that the "law of supply and demand" is a foolish fetich, it nevertheless affects the pay of every laboring individual in the world.  Amid social and commercial conditions like ours, the slightest inequality in working power, the slightest difference in the relations of a supply to a demand, tell in financial results; and no laws can possibly obviate this fact.  Not legislations, but organization, has raised the wages of men during the past two generations.  And the most successful result of labor organization-the famous strike of the dock laborers in London a few years ago-was accomplished by men, a very small proportion of whom had votes.  Thus there are many things to think about, many serious questions to decide, before we can conscientiously say that we believe woman suffrage should be established.  And, be it noted, the burden of proof lies with those who advocate the innovation.  We are not obliged to prove that woman suffrage is undesirable.  They are obliged to prove that it is so clearly desirable that, for its sake, the country should run the enormous risk involved in a political and social revolution of the most radical and far-reaching sort.  This is law and justice all the world over: The status quo, like the human individual, must be considered in the right until we have good evidence that it is in the wrong.  Otherwise there would never be any security for individuals, never any peace or safety for the state.
Therefore all I desire to do is to bid you pause-pause, and think, and consider the arguments of the advocates of the "movement," without passion, without prepossession, and especially without that foolish vanity of would-be imitation of men which means a great lack of true feminine pride.  But above all do not be tempted to say, "We women must look out for ourselves and our own interests."  It is a slander upon the men of America to say this-upon those men who have so cordially helped us to become the freest and most highly considered women in the world.  And it is a defiance of the laws of nature and of common sense to declare that the best interests of the sexes are separable.  To declare this is to give men an excuse, a temptation - nay, a veritable right - to say, "Then we also must look out for ourselves and our own special interests"  Do you think that the country would fare better if our men said this or that its women would fare better?  Do you not think rather that the best way to serve our country and to serve ourselves is to do our own work as well as we can - which means a great deal better than in the past?  And do you really believe that part of this work should consist in a half share in the actual immediate power to make those laws which deal chiefly with matters than men's daily occupations fit them to understand better than we do, and in the execution of which, strive as we might, we could take but a very small share?
15

(Revised 1910) 

THE 
Problem of Woman Suffrage 

BY 
ADELINE KNAPP 

ISSUED BY 
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage 
29 WEST 39th STREET 
NEW YORK CITY 


The problem is not the woman question; it is not the man question; it is a human question and an essentially vital question to-day.
But while diagnosis is half the battle in dealing with disease, it is only half the battle.  The successful practitioner is he who, adding knowledge to knowledge, applies the remedy really indicated by the symptoms upon which diagnosis is based.
We have had shown us clearly the causes of the growing, and I think the commendable restlessness exhibited to-day among certain classes of women.  It stated, with fine justice, the history of the accumulating burden that to-day rests upon the shoulders of men as the self-instituted providers, each for the dependents of his household.  That that burden is growing so heavy that ere long men will have to acknowledge themselves unequal to bearing it, I think the logical ones among us must admit.  It seems, however, that there is a failure wholly to make clear where or in what way the ballot in the hands of women will operate in any degree to lighten this burden.
We are told that the restlessness of women to-day is essentially a growing quality among married women who "in their supported condition in the home," with servants to perform the household tasks, with factories and workshops to spin and weave what once the women wove and spun in the home, find no adequate outlet for their energies.  This is correct, but a measure of the alarm we might feel over this condition is allayed when we reflect that the women so situated to-day are so small a proportion of the great mass of womankind in this country as scarcely to form a class in the larger sense of the word.  Four-fifths of the housewives of America, statistics tell us, still do their own housework.  This being the case, it may safely be predicted that four-fifths or nearly four-fifths of our women are still too busy  to form any element of danger to the institutions of our country by reason of finding no occupation for hands and brains.
It must, however, be conceded that even one-fifth of the women of a land are too great a number to be allowed to go to waste by reason of their enforced idleness.  Serious as it is, the situation is still not without a saving grain of humor and suggests the reflection that amid the much organizing of the period may be found a field of the usefulness for a society to relieve the hardships of the neglected rich.
But there is a deep significance in the phrase, "The supported condition of the married woman."  There is a decided tendency among women nowadays to deny that their husbands support them.  It must be conceded that fully ninety-nine one-hundredths of wives render multifold return to their husbands for all the maintenance they receive.   I do not mean in service to and for their children or even for the home.  The woman who expends herself for home and children does no more, and she should certainly do no less, than do the birds of the air, the creatures of field and forest.  These are services performed not for her husband,
2

but because of her human nature.  She is entitled to maintenance while performing them, not because of her usefulness to her husband, but because of her incalculable usefulness to the Nation.  But the good companion, the wise helpmeet, is a maintenance to her husband as surely as he is to her.   There can be no account here of value received; so that married women are as fully within their right when they decline, even in their "supported condition," to feel dependent upon their husbands.
The legal status of the married woman is, nevertheless, that of a dependent.  Her economic status is that of a non-producer.  Until we have so far departed from social sanity as to believe that the average wife and mother should become a wage-earner, or until we so alter social conditions as to insure maintenance to every human being by virtue of his humanity, this status of women, legal and economic, cannot be altered.  This being the case, the possibility of extending the suffrage to women must come into serious question.  Our voting body is to-day so large, so unwieldy, as to form a serious menace to the institutions of our country.  Thoughtful men and women, regarding the situation, cannot but view with apprehension any addition to this well-nigh self-defeating body.  Certainly the good possible to accrue to the Nation must be very clearly shown before this step is taken so unprecedented in the history of nations, of precipitating upon the country at large bodies of voters whose legal status is that of dependents.
This brings us to the question of whether the ballot is, per se, a human right.  If it is, then it must be granted that there is no reason in logic why it should not be in the hands of women as well as of men.  There is however, no Nation that has not reserved to itself the right to declare who shall exercise its suffrages.  The United States government has opened widest this door, but it is a growing question among statesmen, at home as well as abroad, whether it has done wisely in this respect. It must be remembered and can be remembered, too, with pure and patriotic loyalty, that this government is still in an experimental stage.  We may believe it the republican idea, the American idea if you prefer so to style it, we may love our country, none the less that we are sorely troubled for her future; we may hope earnestly to see her ride triumphantly into safe harbor, but our faith, our love, our earnest hope cannot establish the success of this experiment if the logic of time shall prove to be against it.  There is no argument from the Declaration of Independence to establish the natural right of women to the ballot.  This government is not based upon the Declaration of Independence, but upon the Constitution, drawn and adopted by the men who establish the government, and this Constitution defines who shall be entitled to vote.
It is claimed for the ballot that it would give to women a sense of responsibility which they do not now possess.  It is claimed by thoughtful friends, as well as by enemies of the Nation, that a serious defect in American character is the failure
3

to accept and to discharge grave responsibilities in matters of government, as our blood-kin, the English, for instance, accept and discharge such. The sense of responsibility toward the government is not a characteristic of voting American manhood. Why should we be asked to assume that voting will make it a characteristic of American womanhood? The private morality, the character building that must precede all public law-making and sense of responsibility has all along been in the hands of women. How have they accounted for it?

It is declared that one great hindrance to the usefulness of women is that they are not the constituents of any representation in our government. Do you for a moment suppose that, even with full suffrage, women as women would never form a constituent body? Womanhood is not an issue. On what would or could any representative of voters stand as the mouth-piece of a feminine constituency? Women, like men, would divide upon the question of the hour and the general effect of their voting would merely be an increased number of votes to be counted all round. This at first. in time it is not irrational to predict something like this might take place. As education, culture, and the habit of study increase among women, who, being self-supported, have leisure for self-improvement, they might little by little take a lead in affairs governmental as now they take the lead in affairs social. As invention and the perfection of luxury increase upon us, the increased demand upon men to earn money to maintain their home might lead them to leave the conduct of government more and more in the hands of women, until, did no equalizing of social conditions occur by revolution in method, we might see a supported governing body, women, maintained in leisure to govern a money-earning body, men, the latter content to leave the ambition, the aesthetics and the culture of life to the women. I do not claim that this is an inevitable result of woman suffrage. I only claim that it is a possible one, and one exactly in line with the present trend of events. It is permissible to point out this responsibility when certain of their own agitators to-day speak, unchallenged, of women as “the dominant sex.”

It is difficult for those who are concerned to help the world’s work along, to hold back from what seems to promise to be useful. We see the wrong to be righted and plunge eagerly into whatever reform seems to us likely to work the quickest good, only to find, as William Morris has somewhere said, that that for which we strove was not after all that for which we sought; so that those who come after us are obliged to strive further to undo that which in our wistful haste we seized upon for the good. It is certain that good men and women desire the good of this land which it is ours to live for or to die for. It may be questioned, however, whether there is not as true patriotism in the quiet conservation of the inner things of the home and of society which are permanently in women’s hands, as the insistence upon rights so-called which are not yet successfully demonstrated to be human rights in the sense which is claimed for them.
4

What Women Have Actually Done Where They Vote
A PERSONAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE LAWS, RECORDS, AND RESULTS OF THE FOUR EQUAL SUFFRAGE STATES: COLORADO, IDAHO, UTAH AND WYOMING
By RICHARD BARRY
ISSUED BY
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage
29 WEST 39TH STREET
NEW YORK CITY

     In 1910 Mr. Richard Barry, widely known as a 
writer on sociological conditions, made a careful study 
of the effects of woman suffrage, social and political, 
in the (then) four woman suffrage States. His report 
was published in the Ladies' Home Journal of 
Nov. 1, 1910. 
     It is here reprinted from the Journal by permission.
     In 1906-08 a similar study was made chiefly in 
Colorado, by Dr. Helen L. Sumner, a "Suffragist," for 
the "Collegiate Equal Suffrage League of New York," 
and published in book form under the title of "Equal 
Suffrage" by that organization in 1909. 
     The striking observations made by Mr. Barry are 
remarkably illustrated and supported by Dr. Sumner's 
book, as will appear by the extracts here given following 
Mr. Barry's article. [Many other parts of the 
book could be quoted with like effect.]

WHAT WOMEN HAVE ACTUALLY DONE WHERE THEY VOTE
By RICHARD BARRY.
IN four States women have full suffrage. I went there to find
out the definite accomplishments of women's votes.
My first step was to learn what women's votes have done
for women and children. On the statement of Eastern advocates
for "votes for women," that in States where women have the
ballot we could expect conditions that affect women and children
to be much better than they are in those States where only men
vote, I based my initial investigations.
Before I went West I ascertained that Oklahoma, the newest
State, is commonly conceded to have the best child-labor laws
in this country; and my first surprise came when I found that
these laws were compiled from the best provisions of the laws of
New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio, Wisconsin and Nebraska,
and that Oklahoma did not go to any of the States where
women vote to find a model when providing for its child-labor
laws.
I found that Wyoming and Utah, where women vote, prohibit
the employment of children in mines only, while the States of
Nebraska, Oregon, New York, Wisconsin and Illinois, as well as
several others, where men only vote, prohibit the working of
children under fourteen years of age in twelve specified employments
during school hours.
The Question of Child Labor Had Never Been Discussed!
When I asked officials of the suffrage States how they could
account for this condition where women vote they replied that
the question had never been discussed. They added that such a
law was not necessary anyway, as there is no chance of child
labor in the mountain States, where they have no factories. Yet
Montana, where men only can vote, and which is as sparsely
settled and as free from factories as Wyoming, Utah or Idaho,
all three States where women vote, has a constitutional amendment
prohibiting the working of all children under sixteen years
of age.
While I was in Denver one of the newspapers undertook the
exposé of a revolting child-labor condition near the city. AS it
was the paper of the part out of power and as an election was
in progress the opposition papers and every man in office pooh-poohed
the exposé. Nothing came of it. Nor did the voting.
5

woman of Denver even investigate whether it were true or not
that children were being overworked and abused in the outskirts
of her own city. I sought the reason for this and found, for
example, that the most prominent political women's organization
of Denver was absorbed in a factional fight. In February, when
knowledge of the condition of the abuse of child labor first became
public, this woman's public organization held a meeting
at which the members fought with their fists. Women who wore
false hair lost it, and one woman lost a handful of real hair.
Their debate was not over the outrages committed on children in
their State; it concerned the choice of one of their number for
indorsement to an unimportant office. In May, when I was there
and the employment of children in factories was more widely discussed,
this same woman's political organization was absorbed 
in a more desperate fight: one faction was striving to have the
treasurer arrested for refusing to distribute the funds of the organization
as this minor faction desired.
I found, too, that no proof of age, other than the mere statement 
of the child or parent, is required in any of the four suffrage
States, whereas nineteen States require documentary proof of
age. None of the States where women vote is in this last list.

Women Are Bound by Political Expediency as Well as Men.
I could not understand this singularly lax condition, so I
sought Judge Ben Lindsey, of the Juvenile Court, who is outspoken
in his theoretical belief in woman suffrage. He admitted
that the conditions in Colorado were far from what they ought
to be, and was frank to say that the women of his State are fully
as much bound by the political expediency of the moment as are
the men.
Then he told me his experience in the last Legislature. He
had seven bills affecting the Juvenile Court which he asked to be
passed. They were all drawn with an eye to the protection of 
children and were modeled on proved legislation elsewhere. When
it came to submitting them to the Legislature he asked the one
woman member of the lower house to introduce the. The
woman member introduced the bills. The woman's clubs publicly
indorsed them and women went to the State House to lobby
for them. "Three," said Judge Lindsey, "concerned technical
trivialities in the reading of the law and were of no particular
moment except that they would expedite legal procedure. One
of them was revolutionary and vital. Three concerned important
changes in the law."
The first three were passed. The last four never got out of 
committee. The unimportant bills got through; the important 
ones are still pigeonholed. Yet California, Illinois, and Massachusetts,
where women do note vote, has found no difficulty in passing
similar laws.
Judge Lindsey could not explain why his laws failed of passage;
6

the woman member of the Legislature would not. But I
found an old State Senator who told me the truth.
"The Legislature had nothing against children," he said, "and
if some sensible man had presented those bills and explained their
need in simple, forceful language, they would have been passed."
I also found that the eight-hour law for working-women
failed in the last Colorado Legislature. A similar law went easily
through the Legislature of Illinois, but was annulled by the
Supreme Court, after which a ten-hour law was passed. Now
why should such a law for women fail in Colorado, where the
women vote, and pass in Illinois, where they do not vote? I
asked this of a prominent official of the State of Colorado, and he
answered" "There is nothing that a woman wants to accomplish
that she cannot accomplish without the ballot."
In twenty States where men only vote laws have been passed 
limiting the hours that a woman may be employed. In not one
of the four States where women vote are there any laws restricting
the hours of labor for woman employees.
In thirty-eight States the earnings of married women are
secured to them and cannot be required by law (as can the earnings
of married men) for the support of their families. Eight
States have no such law, and Idaho, where women have voted
fourteen years, is one of them/
There are other good laws pertaining to the work of women.
For instance, Massachusetts prohibits an employer from deducting
from the wages of women when time is lost because machinery
has broken down; Delaware has a law exempting the wages of
women from execution, while Indiana, Massachusetts and Nebraska
have laws prohibiting night work by women. None of
these laws is found in any of the four States where women vote!
But, some one will say, these are supercritical examinations
of the law. Do the conditions of the States where women vote
make these laws so necessary? Suppose we see.
[ | ?am]
[ | ?am]

An Alarming Increase in Juvenile Crime.
In 1905 and 1906 there were sixty-seven children committed 
to the Golden Industrial Home, the Colorado State reformatory.
The following two years one hundred and ninety-seven were
committed there: an increase of three to one.
The chief of police of Denver told me that juvenile crime
is on an alarming increase in that city. Judge Lindsey says this
is due to the increase pressure of economic conditions, but he
does not deny the fact.
The criers for women's votes have pointed to the establishment
7

of Judge Lindsey's Juvenile Court as one of the greatest 
achievements of woman's ballot, and have repeatedly said that
Colorado was the first State to establish such a court. I found
this to be untrue, as the juvenile courts in Boston and Chicago
both antedated the one in Denver. Nor is the Denver Juvenile
Court an exclusive possession of Colorado. Fifteen States where
men only vote have established such courts.
I went into the question of child illiteracy in the four States
where women vote, and found that the United States census 
of 1900 showed that Wyoming had one illiterate child to every hundred
and eighteen people in the State. Oregon, a Western,
sparsely settled State where women do not vote, had only one
illiterate child in every two hundred and forty of the population.
Colorado, where women vote, had one illiterate child to every
sixty persons in the State, or four times as many as Oregon,
where women do not vote. Nebraska, again, where women do
not vote and with twice the population of Colorado, had only
half as many illiterate children.
In none of the four States where women vote was I able to
find any Home Finding societies for the placing of destitute
children, such as you find in Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey,
and a number of other Eastern States. This is the most humane
and economical method of caring for the orphan, and yet you do
not find it where women vote.
The conclusion of my investigation of the laws for children
was, as any one can see from the actual records I have given, that
instead of being better protected, or even as well protected in the
States where women vote, they were actually less protected in the
States where women had for years the opportunity to pass laws
for them, and the conditions parallel the laxity of the laws.

The Social Evil Has Not Been Abated.
To ascertain this condition in Denver I quote the woman who
ought to be well informed as any one in this country: Mrs.
Kate Waller Barrett, National President of the Florence Crittenton
Home for Wayward Girls.
"In all the seventy-eight Florence Crittenton homes in the
United States I never saw such a collection of young, innocent
girls of the better class as there are in the Denver home," said
Mrs. Barrett. "There are fifty-eight girls there, most of them
still in their 'teens. The number of illegitimate births among 
young girls is increasing at an alarming rate. So-called 'free
love' is also alarmingly on the increase."
The chief of police of Denver joins with the chief of police of
Salt Lake City (the only two towns of any size in the woman
suffrage country) as my authority for the statement that prostitution
is largely on the increase both in Colorado and in Utah.
8

Idaho and Wyoming, being rural communities, can show a better
record, but still no better than similar communities elsewhere.
Denver and Salt Lake City are among the few remaining 
large cities in this country where an open, segregated district is
given over to the public practice of the social vice. In one of the
principal streets of Denver painted women exhibit themselves in
the doors and windows; while two blocks away is a schoolhouse,
and children daily pass through this district on their way to
school. Salt Lake City has the only "stockade" in America, a 
walled space in the center of the city, where the social vice is
practiced under police protection.
I asked a prominent woman why these conditions were such
in cities where women voted, and she condoned them as being
"incident to a Western town." Yet Los Angeles, California, a 
Western town where women do not vote, banished its objectionable
district, a relic of early days, five years ago.
Nor have the women stamped out polygamy, not even when
they have the ballot as in Utah. This on the statement of the
most prominent paper in Salt Lake City, "The Salt Lake Tribune,"
which on August 1 of this year published a list of one hundred
and fifty men who had contracted plural marriages recently.
As for drinking among women, I was told, and saw for myself,
that few cities in the country, not New York nor Chicago
nor San Francisco, are any worse in this respect than the capital
of Colorado. Even some of the drug stores in Denver, according 
to good authority, serve whisky and brandy to unescorted
girls.
Last year the police board of Denver passed a regulation
prohibiting all unescorted women from entering cafes and restaurants
rants where liquor was sold after eight P. M. Instantly a storm
of protest was raised, not by the refined, respectable women, not
by the women of the streets, but by political women. These
political women complained that their "rights" were being interfered
with, that they might be compelled to be on the streets
after eight P. M., and that it would be an outrage to prohibit them
the use of restaurants after that hour.
"Ladies," said the chief of police, addressing a committee of
these women who visited him, "I can prove to you from the records
here in my office that the women of Denver drink more 
whiskey than the men. Shall I open my books and show you?"
They did not ask for proof. They withdrew their protest, and
that regulation is in effect to-day. But this regulation stands not
by the reason of, but in spite of, the political women of Denver.

Divorce Has Increased Largely in the Four States.
My next step of investigation was to see to what extent
divorce had been checked in the four States where women have
9


voted for so many years, and in examining the divorce records of these four States I found that the laws are as lax as anywhere in the Union. Except that each state requires a year's residence they are as lax as in Nevada and South Dakota. Several attorneys in Denver told me that, except for the year's residence as against a six months' residence in the other two States named, it is just as easy to get a divorce in Colorado. All the ordinary pleas are substantial grounds, except incompatibility of temper, and that bar against easy divorce is more than made up by the clause in the law which permits a divorce on the grounds of "mental cruelty." In one case a man did not speak to his wife at breakfast and was adjudged to have committed "mental cruelty."
     The newspapers of Denver constantly carry advertisements of "divorce attorneys," and one of the Friday afternoon diversions to go to the County Court and observe the "divorce mill." Ordinarily the average time required to "grind out" a divorce is four minutes and a half.
     The following table, taken from United States Government statistics, shows the increase of divorce in the four States since equal suffrage became a law, down to 1906, since when the figures have not been computed. In Wyoming woman suffrage came in 1869, in Colorado in 1894, in Utah in 1895, and in Idaho in 1896. 

Year             Idaho   Utah  Wyoming.  Colorado
1894               89     189            66       364
1895              134.    202.           71.       414
1896              139     225            70       450
1897               129.    228          63         398
1898              162.     209         84         437
1899              136      234         99        426
1900              204     273         122       450
1901               243     264        144       509
1902              223      295        94        460
1903              296      350       160        538
1904              281      410         137        476
1905              296     355        145       508
1906             320       387       143       557
I could not find from any of the records that women have made any successful effort in any of the four States to correct the divorce laws. Nor has the fact that women vote done anything to correct the evil itself. Instead, as these figures prove, divorce has been on the constant increase in all the States where women vote. 
     Important Laws Sneered At as "Fad Legislation."
     But, some one will say, do you think it fair to charge up these conditions to the voting of women? Please remember I am making 
10

no charges- I was not commissioned to make charges - I was asked to examine conditions and give results. 
     I give further results. For example: 
     Illinois has just passed a law regulating the practice of obstetrics with the aim of preventing the recent alarming growth in blindness among babies. In not one of the four States where women have a vote is there such a law. 
     Massachusetts and New Jersey have taken a deliberate stand against the instalment furniture evil. In Colorado and Utah the political women apparently do not know that there is such a thing. Yet the wives with small incomes in Salt Lake City and Denver are as much oppressed by it as they are in the East where, without voting directly, women have influenced the Legislatures to abate the evil.
     Idaho, where women have voted for fourteen years, is the only State in the Union lacking a law to compel railroads to provide suitable segregated toilet-rooms for women and children. 
     Eight of the Eastern States have recently passed laws abolishing in the common-law marriage. This is perhaps the most important step possible toward the conservation of the home. Colorado, Idaho, and Wyoming, where women vote, have not passed such a law. 
     I asked a woman legislator why none of these laws had either been originated or copied in the woman suffrage states. "Oh," she replied, "we don't believe in fad legislation!"

Women Were Promised Higher Wages. 
     One of the strongest promises made by the advocates for "votes for women" is that if suffrage were given by the men they would have the weapon in their hands that would compel men to pay women higher wages.  
     My next investigation was to see how this promise had been fulfilled in the four States where women had voted 14, 15, 16, and 41 years. 
     You can hire plenty of girl stenographers just out of school, in Denver and Salt Lake City, for $5 and $6 a week. You cannot hire even the greenest boy for less than $7.50 a week. This ratio of male to female wages extends pretty generally throughout the scale of skilled labor. 
     The cashgirls and salesgirls of these two cities are paid exactly the same as similar girls are paid in the department stores of Chicago. And it costs more to live in Denver or Salt Lake City than it does in Chicago. 
     In the four states where women vote there are comparatively few girls in domestic service, and domestics are much in demand, but great as that demand is the Swedish and Norwegian hired
11

girls get from $18 to $25 each a month where the Japanese "boy"
gets from $25 to $40 a month.
Newspaper women are paid less than newspaper men, just as
they are in the East. One curious fact must be noted in this
connection: among the newspaper women of Denver I found that 
two out of every three did not believe in woman suffrage.

One Woman Says Suffrage Is a Hindrance.
In none of the four States did I find a woman in executive
management of a corporation. There are no women real-estate
operators or promoters. I did not even find a woman cashier of
a bank, though I inquired for one.
In school-teaching it is the same as in the East. The grades
are taught by women, the high schools and universities largely
by men, while the principals are, nine times out of ten, men.
And the men are paid more than the women!
In Denver there are eight women attorneys, or one to every
twenty thousand of the inhabitants, which is just half as many,
according to the population, as there are in Detroit, for example,
where women do not vote. I asked one of these women, an excellent
attorney who has fought her way valiantly to the top and
who is a credit to the bar and to womanhood, how suffrage had
helped her. (She is a voter, too!)
"Helped me!" she said. "It is not a help, but a hindrance.
Woman's political enfranchisement does not aid industrial equality.
The attitude of men has been (and I quote the words that 
one of them used to me once)" 'There! You've got your rights!
Take them!' It could not possibly have been any harder to succeed
in New York or in Philadelphia than it has been in Denver.
Men give women 'rights' here, not privileges. The business
woman here does not meet courtesy, chivalry, or justice. I do
not expect the courtesy and chivalry in business, but if I could
get within long-distance-telephone reach of justice I would be
satisfied; plain, simple justice as between man and man. Not
flattery, not charity, only justice!"

How the "Wets" Carried Denver.
Another positive claim made by the advocates for "votes for
women" is that if women were given the ballot they would uplift
and purity politics.
I was in Denver at the time of the last election, and had, 
therefore, a first-hand opportunity to study the question of
women's honesty in politics. I saw scores of women accept
money for the election held in Denver on May 17, 1910. An
incalculable amount of money was spent on that day. In my
own very restricted sphere I saw about $17,000 paid out to women
in five, ten and twenty dollar lots.
12

Two issues were before the people. First, the temperance
question: should the town be wet or dry? Second, the water-franchise
question: should the city own its own water plant or
let a corporation have it?
On the temperance question every one of age could vote and
the ballots were about half male and half female. On the franchise
only taxpayers could vote and the ballots were about two-thirds
male and one-third female. The great bulk of the money
was spent by the saloonkeepers to keep the town wet, and by the
corporation to get the franchise.
The corporation, though it spent hundreds of thousands of
dollars, could not purchase the male electorate. Municipal ownership
won by comfortable majority.
But on the temperance question the vote was: For the drys,
17,237; for the wets, 33,191; the wet's majority, 15,954. With
the votes half female and half male the saloonkeepers won almost
two to one.
For two weeks before that election the women and children
of the working classes paraded the streets making strenuous
appeals for a "dry" town. Three nights before the election the
Auditorium held 5,000 people, largely women, fighting desperately 
for temperance.
That same day I sat in the office of the campaign manager
of the "wets" and saw a stream of "political" women pass in and
out. Each woman took with her a ten-dollar note and instructions
how to work her precinct. There were 211 precincts and
four women workers to each precinct. The night before election
each of them got another ten dollars; the committee-women
twenty-five and the chairwoman seventy-five dollars apiece.
One woman came for her ten dollars and was rudely shown
the door.
"Why?" I asked the manager.
"She double-crossed me last election," said he. "I paid her,
then she sold out to the other side and worked for them. Two
days ago I gave her ten dollars. Now she is back for more. I
throw her out. To-day or to-morrow she will go to the other side
and get paid. The night before election I'll hunt her up and
slip her another ten, or maybe fifteen. Then I stand a chance
that she will work for me, but I will not be sure."
"Are many of the women like this?"
"Nine-tenths of them."
"Why do you continue employing them?"
"Because the other side does. I don't dare neglect them. I
would rather spend the money and take a chance on half or more
of them working for me than to freeze up and have the whole
pack on me. Besides, they are often useful. Where there is an
13


ignominious job I can't get a man to do I can always get a woman."
  "What kind of an ignominious job?"
  "Well-last election there was a district I knew was against me. The polling place was in a schoolhouse. I gave a woman ten dollars and told her to go there when the polls opened and challenge everybody, to delay the election in every possible way. I wanted to keep the vote down. That woman certainly earned her money. She held up everybody. She made them go back and get their certificates from the County Clerk. She almost tried to make them produce their birth certificates. The first three hours of the morning only fourteen votes got through. About eleven o'clock she held up the alderman from that ward. The policeman on the beat hunted me up and told me to take that woman out or he would arrest her.
  "'You'll not arrest her,' said I; 'if you do I'll have the polls closed and notice posted "Closed, Women Intimidated by the Police." Then the election will swing my way. You'll not dare make a martyr of that woman.'
  "'You know that woman is crazy,' said the policeman.
  "'Certainly,' said I.
  "'Then why have you got her there?' said he.
  "'Because she's crazy,' said I.
  "Then we went off and left her to her work."

HOW WOMEN SELL THEIR INFLUENCE.

  Election day I asked a number of the "wet" workers why they were against temperance. One of them, a middle-aged woman, with two daughters and a son, said: "I don't believe in saloons, but the business people want them, and the City Hall wants them, and there's money for me in working for them-so why oppose them?" She was not exceptional; there were thousands like her. Such women won the election, two to one, for the saloons.
  One woman told me she had started to work for the "wets," but was later out for the "drys." She was very pretty, very smartly gowned. I asked her why she had changed.
  "Why," said she, "the 'wets' gave me seven dollars and a half two days ago, and I was for them all right, but this morning I found they had given my sister ten dollars, and now I am for the 'drys.'
  At that moment the "wet" manager came up, quietly handed her five dollars, chatted with her pleasantly for a few moments, and passed on. "How about it now?" I asked the girl. "Still for the 'drys'?"
  "No, sir," she said. "I'm out for the 'wets' now-and just wait till I tell Jane."
14

  "You'll lose Jane," I said to the manager.
  "Don't worry about that," he replied, wise in his woman-suffrage wisdom. "I slipped Jane two-fifty at the same time. I can't imagine how I ever got mixed there. It will take a lot of explaining to haul the price in that family down to ten dollars next election."

All Political Women Have Lost Something.

  A little later, in one of the most exclusive polling places, I talked with one of the highest officials in Denver. The votes were being cast in a garage. Women were driving up in their automobiles, and were being escorted to the ballot-box by their husbands, brothers, fathers, and friends. All looked perfectly orderly and respectable. But, out in the street, two girl workers, smartly dressed, were seated in a carriage with their feet poised on the opposite seat, nibbling the candy just handed them by the manager on his rounds, and chatting familiarly with every male hanger-on that came along.
  "Don't fail to look below the surface," said the official. "When any one tells you that women mixing in politics help any tell him he has no real knowledge of the subject. In this election about a thousand women are being paid  as workers and 422 more women are sitting as officials at the polling places. Every single one of those women has lost something, that indefinable something that ought to set her apart. I would no more think of letting my wife or daughters come here to work than I would think of taking poison into the kitchen.
  "It is inevitable," continued this political manager, and I may well close with his words, as the man stands high in Denver's political circles, and voices the opinion that I found was held by many-"It is inevitable." he said, "that women should lose not only their fineness, but also their characters when they mix in politics. They cannot see the game as we do, not because they are mentally inferior, for I do not believe they are, but because they lack experience in affairs. So men do not treat them seriously. Woman suffrage in this State is a joke, when it is not a shame. High-minded men ignore the woman voter; to low-minded men she is-well, the less said about that the better."

15

CITATIONS AND COMMENTS

Turning now to Dr. Sumner's book, we find that, although
it is written in a carefully-maintained spirit of judicial frankness,
courageously admitting some unfavorable facts, yet that
it is at all points meant and constructed to support the cause
of woman-suffrage. But, just because of this frankness and
honesty, it often really and strongly supports the opposition. If
the personal comments and criticisms of the author or only a
part of them, be omitted, the book might almost be adopted as a 
"campaign document" by the "Anti-suffragists."
Dr. Sumner says that her work is "a serious attempt to
disentangle from other political factors, the influence of equal
suffrage upon political and social life"; that her purpose is "to
assist those who wish to determine, in the light of evidence
rather than of assertion, whether equal suffrage is a sound and
helpful measure under our present political system"; and that
she has "spent nearly two years in it, with special reference to
the actual results and achievements of equal suffrage in Colorado."

[*Colo*]
[*Child Labor*]

On the subject of child-labor in Colorado, Mr. Barry's report
upon which is far from credible to the women voters and
lawmakers, Dr. Sumner says, first (p. 181) that "the first concern
of women in the matter of legislation, * * * is naturally to
promote the interests of their own sex and of children," and
then (p. 185) that "Colorado is not as advanced as many of
the Eastern states in the matter of legal protection for women
and children in industry"; and that (p. 186) "Practically the
only law (of Colorado) which regulates the labor of girls over
fourteen years of age" was passed in 1885, that is nine years before
the franchise was granted to women; and that "Before
women voted a number of laws had been passed regulating the
employment of children."
Then she says (p. 191) "Turning to the subject of offences
against women and children, it is found that. before Colorado
women were enfranchised, a considerable number of protective
laws were on the statute-books." And she sums up the subject
(pp. 194, 196) "The chief laws enacted in Colorado in the interest
of women and children since the passage of the equal
suffrage amendment are: The law providing that a homestead
cannot be mortgaged or sold without the wife's signature; the
law making fathers and mothers joint guardians of the children,
with equal powers; the revised compulsory education law of
1899; the law providing for truant schools; the Juvenile Court
laws; the age-of-consent law and its revision of 1907; the law
establishing the Home for Dependent Children" (pp. 194, 196).
This is all, but all these laws were and are common to other
states, and are excelled in some non-suffrage states. Moreover,
legislation in the interest of women and children has not
16

increased under woman suffrage, as is shown by a comparison
of the laws passed during the preceding ten years with those
passed during the twelve years in which woman suffrage had
been in operation (pp. 182 to 187, 194).
It should be noted that Dr. Sumner is mistaken in crediting
to equal-suffrage the "age-of-consent" law. That law was the
work of men before woman-suffrage was granted. The act of
1907 was merely an amendment raising the age from 16 to 18.
Mr. Barry reports that women are bound by political expediency
as well as men. That political expediency does control
under woman suffrage is admitted by Dr. Sumner (p. 21).
She frankly says that "the most noteworthy feature of Colorado
politics, and especially, perhaps, of Denver politics, is that there
seems never to have been any real awakening to civic righteousness."
She further makes the extraordinary admission (p. 40)
that "A woman rarely either nominates or seconds the nomination
of a man, except in some cases where the man has shown
himself unusually favorable to women in politics." She quotes
(p. 45) the opinion of a "well-informed woman" who said: "The
source of strength of women politicians must be among men
primarily, for the men have the power to give." Again she says
(p. 48): "The conclusion is therefore unavoidable that, while
women have often caused men of clean personal lives * * * to
be nominated in preference to men of notorious immorality, equal
suffrage has had no effect whatever upon the other qualities required
of candidates for public office," That is, like the men,
they support the candidate who best serves their political purpose!
Finally, she admits, in her conclusion (p. 258), that the
effect of woman suffrage "upon party politics has been slight.
But the reason is to be found primarily in the character of the 
present political machinery. To fully perform, under the existing
system, the duties of an enfranchised citizen requires
not only an inflexible moral code, but the public spirit, the self-immolation,
and the unselfish devotion of a martyr." This
would seem to support fully the opinion of Judge Lindsey,
quoted by Mr. Barry, to the effect that "women are fully as
much bound by the expediency of the moment as men," an opinion
well illustrated by the statement in Dr. Sumner's book (p.
208), that women "would vote Prohibition if that party had
enough male voters to do much good, but they do not like to
waste votes on a losing proposition."
Even Mr. Barry's observations on the increase of juvenile
crime find support in Dr. Sumner's studies. Although her
statistical tables are curiously vague and so limited in material
and construction as to be of little value, still we see that she
finds that they confront her with results which make her position
insecure. For an instance, the opinions summarized by her
17

(p. 245) as to the effect of woman suffrage on the home and
children might not unreasonably be used to prove the fact of
the increase of juvenile crime in Colorado. They show that
even of those who believed in equal suffrage, over 7 per cent.
of the men and over 3 per cent. of the women believed that "its
effect on the home and the children had been bad."
As to the "social evil," notwithstanding the fact that the
claim has everywhere been made that woman suffrage would
eliminate that horror, Dr. Sumner allows but two paragraphs
to the subject (pp. 193 and 205). Yet, in those paragraphs, she
admits: (1) that "it is impossible to see that equal suffrage has
had any effect upon the social evil"; (2) that "in Denver (after
12 years of woman suffrage) the social evil was more brazenly
open and *** more extensive than in almost any other city in
the United States"; and (3) that "women have in fact made
little effort in this direction"; and then she shirks the promise
and the responsibility of the voting women in relation to this
extremely important subject, by lightly remarking that women's
votes "have about as much to do with this condition of affairs
as a twelve-year-old child with the Constitution of the United
States"!
On another subject of the greatest practical importance to
women, Dr. Sumner also discreetly limits herself to a very
narrow space. Mr. Barry reports the disgraceful looseness of
the divorce business in the (then) four suffrage states, but Dr.
Sumner says only this (p. 191), that "Though easily obtained
in Colorado as compared with the average Eastern community,
divorce is no more difficult than in neighboring states." As it
is certainly not more difficult in Colorado than in Kansas and
Nebraska and as New Mexico was not a state when she wrote,
she must refer to Wyoming and Utah (and probably to Idaho,
which, though not adjoining Colorado, is near enough to be called
neighboring) and these three were the only other suffrage states.
That is, if divorce was admittedly too "easy" in Colorado, yet it
was still easier in the other suffrage states! But, at the time of
Dr. Sumner's report, Colorado had had woman suffrage over 12 
years, Idaho and Utah 10 years and Wyoming (as territory and
state) nearly 40 years!
When Dr. Sumner reaches women's wages, she supplies a
plenty of material, and it unfailingly corroborates.
In fact she makes it both clear and certain that women's
votes have not had, and cannot possibly have, any effect whatever
in raising the pay of women.
She says (p. 155): "Taking public employment as a whole,
women receive considerably less remuneration than men." As
to private employment, she quotes from a Colorado woman (pl
179), apparently as an economic truth, "It is the same old story
of demand and supply in the commercial world," and (p. 170)
18

from a Denver employer "suffrage has nothing to do with the
wages of either men or women. The wages of men and women
in all fields of industry are governed by economic conditions."
The only instances she gives of improvement in wages of
women in trades (pp. 173, 174) show that the improvement was
due only to trade unions, which were organized and conducted
by men, the gain in wages being for both men and women. She
quotes (p. 150) a labor-leader, endorsed by 20 or 30 men whose
opinion she asked: "Organized labor is the only force that has
benefited the condition or wages of workers."
She says (p. 162) that, excepting coal-mining, "women in
Colorado are restricted in their choice of occupation only by
their physical strength and mental ability," that though the
women have started many trade unions in Colorado the most
of them have failed (pp. 172-177), "largely because of the difficulty
of keeping the women organized" (p. 173); that those
that live are "usually where all trades are well organized (that
is, by the men) and the women's work is supplementary to the
men's" (p. 172).
Then she shows that in Colorado the pay of women in private
employments has been steadily lower than that of men, having
never risen to one-half as much (pp. 162, 166 to 169, and the
tables pp. 165 and 167).
Dr. Sumner further shows that while the average of weekly
wages of women in Colorado is only 97 cents higher than the
average for the whole United States, the average for men in
Colorado is $3.62 higher than the average for men in the whole
United States (p. 167). The same table shows that in Colorado
and in each of the three other suffrage states the average of
women's wages is less than half that of men, while in ten of the
thirteen other states named (where only men vote) the average
for women is more than half that of men.
By another table (p. 165) it appears that in Colorado and
Idaho the wages of men in manufacturing industries are about
double those of women, though in all but five of the thirteen
non-suffrage states named the wages of men are less than 
double, while in a third suffrage state, Utah, the men get nearly
three times as much as women.
On the liquor question, Dr. Sumner has to admit not only that
woman suffrage has not done anything with it, but that the
women in Colorado are, practicaly, not trying to do anything.
She admits (p. 204) that the "liquor question is perhaps most
prominent among those in which women have taken a deep interest,"
but explains the fact of their neglect of it by saying (p. 205)
that "the activity of women has been toward constructive rather
than preventative measures!" and then, immediately, that "the problem
here is not, however, the need of laws, but the need of their
enforcement," while, as to enforcement, she says "all that women
can do is vote and work for candidates pledged to such enforcement."
And the result is the conditions Mr. Barry describes!
19

   There was, however, a local-option law passed in1907, but this
she admits "seems to have been primarily a result of the wave
of temperance enthusiasm which swept over the whole United
States," and was "chiefly due to the men's organization, the Anti-
Saloon League" (p.206). And then she admits "the discouraging
feature that equal suffrage has not materially increased the
strength of the Prohibition party" (p.207), the first election
after the suffrage was granted showing practically no more votes
for that party than the men alone had cast for it before. This
she unconsciously explains a little later (p.208) by quoting statements
of Denver women, one, that "they (the women) do not 
like to waste votes on a losing proposition," that "the women are
almost universally for total abstinence, yet the Prohibition party
never gets their votes," that women were "heard to say that they
would not vote against the liquor interests because they liked a 
glass of beer themselves," and that "in several localities women
have frankly expressed a preference for the saloon over the drugstore
sale of liquor,"
   Speaking generally (p.258), Dr. Sumner says of woman 
suffrage: "Its effect upon party politics has been slight. * * *
Politics in Colorado are at least as corrupt as in other States."
"There is some complaint from both sexes that equal suffrage 
has obliged men politicians to make their wives and daughters
enter politics in order to aid them against rivals whose women
relatives would otherwise turn the balance." "In 1906 a woman
sat through the sessions of one of the long and tedious conventions
in Denver with a nine weeks' old baby girl in her arms.
Neither she nor her husband believed in equal suffrage, but her
husband held a political position."
   Dr. Sumner supports Mr. Barry again in relation to the participation
of women in corrupt practices in politics (p.239). On
the same page she quotes opinions to the effect that "Woman's
sense of honor has been blunted," that "Women have been made
bolder and more self-assertive," and "A county chairman, over
his own signature, testified: In the last campaign women who
sold their influence agreed to work for both parties for cash- 
highest price paid, $25; lowest, $5. I myself bought one woman
for $10 where the Democrats had paid for $15, and we have her
endorsements on the checks."
   It should not be supposed that Dr. Sumner's striking success 
in finding support for her adversaries is limited to the references
given above. Our object was only to quote a part of the evidence
her book supplies in support of the vital charges made against the 
working of woman suffrage in Mr. Barry's report. It is quite
as effective against "votes for women" in other aspects of the
question; but this i not the occasion, nor have we space, for other
extracts. The book reminds one of the old hymn :
   "* * * I give myself away;
   'Tis all that I can  do!"
   20

TAXATION AND SUFFRAGE
=
   Those who advocate woman suffrage are fond of quoting the
colonial dictum that taxation without representation is tyranny, 
and declare that this, one of "the fundamental principles upon
which the country was founded," is shamefully violated under
present circumstances as far as women are concerned. Women,
they say, are taxed. But women have no votes. Having no
votes, they are not represented in the tax-laying body. Hence,
they conclude, here is taxation without representation.
   Any one who has examined the "argument" critically, and 
realized what a total lack of connection there i between the
dictum and the interpretation put upon it, is inclined to smile
at the display of logic and to dismiss the whole matter as nonsense.
But, as undoubtedly many people who have not looked
into the question sincerely believe that women have here a real
grievance, a few words of explanation may not be superfluous. 
   The colonists declared that taxation without representation was
tyrannical- which is one thing. The suffragists pretend they said 
that taxation without votes was tyrannical- which is quite an-
   1


other thing. There is nothing unjust in requiring all citizens who 
can afford it to contribute to the support of the government, 
whether they vote or not. They get in exchange for their taxes 
the government's protection to life, liberty and property and all 
the other benefits of a well-ordered society. The colonists never 
said or thought that taxation and votes went together and nothing 
of the kind has ever been attempted. Thousands upon thousands 
of men, as well as women, in this country are taxed without being 
able to vote. That is the condition of the residents of the District 
of Columbia. The property of minors is taxed, yet they have 
no votes. A man may own taxable property in a dozen different 
states and yet can vote in only one. Finally the tariff is a tax 
upon every man, woman and child, citizen and alien alike, in the 
country. 
     The truth is, that the phrase "taxation without representation" 
did not refer to individuals at all, but to the dealings of one 
commonwealth with another. It did not mean that neither this 
man nor that woman should be taxed unless he or she were personally 
represented in the government. The slightest reflection 
will show the absurdity of such a construction. At most, only 
those would be personally represented who voted for successful 
candidates. A man who has not only not voted for those who are 
elected, and so have power to tax him, but has endeavored to keep 
them out, cannot be said to be "represented" by them. Yet would 
any one contend that all adherents of defeated candidates should 
2 

be absolved from paying taxes because they were not "represented?" 
     A very few will be sufficient to explain what the colonists 
meant by "taxation without representation," and why they 
thought it so unjust. The whole thing arose out of the imposition 
of the notorious Stamp Tax in 1765. The colonists were 
on this side of the Atlantic, Parliament in England. There were 
no representatives of the colonies in Parliament, familiar with 
conditions over here, and competent to explain what taxes would 
bear most lightly upon the inhabitants. Under such circumstances 
Parliament coolly decreed this burdensome tax, to be 
collected wholly from the colonists and not from the inhabitants 
of Great Britain as well. Moreover, the money so raised was 
not to be expended in the colonies but withdrawn to England. 
     In order to create an analogous situation in this country now, 
and support the present contention of the suffragists, the following 
grotesque circumstances would have to be imagined. The 
women would have to be moved in a body to the Pacific coast, 
the men, retaining the sole power of legislation, remaining east of 
the Alleghenies. If, the, the men proceeded to declare a tax 
upon, let us say, every article of clothing worn by the women, 
without consulting the latter, without paying a similar tax on their 
own clothing, and appropriating the proceeds of the tax on the 
women to themselves, the women would be justified in crying 
that the colonial dictum was being violated. 
3

But when men and women are jointly members of the same
community; when taxes are laid not upon the women for the
benefit of the men, or vice versa; when, finally, they are imposed
by representatives drawn from the community and not by outsiders,
the dictum is absolutely and utterly irrelevant.
FREDERICK DWIGHT.

ISSUED BY
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage,
29 WEST 39TH STREET,
NEW YORK CITY.
4

LISTEN!
Only a few of the women in New York State
want to vote. You can see them marching in
the suffrage parades and hear them making
speeches in the streets.
The rest of the women—thousands and
thousands of them—do not want to vote. They
are not our making speeches—or selling papers
on the streets—or carrying yellow banners.
All these women believe that it is a woman's
work to take care of her home, to do the work
of the church, to send the children to a good
school—and let the men do the voting.
Vote NO on Woman Suffrage

1909 No 5
SUFFRAGIST DEFEATS SINCE 1900

In the ten years since 1899, the advocates of votes for women have suffered defeat 133 times, or one defeat in every 28 days.

In 1900, the reverses occurred in Iowa, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Vermont: 7 defeats.

In 1901, Alabama, California, Connecticut, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota and Wisconsin declared against them: 11 defeats.

In 1902, the suffrage bills in Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont were defeated: 11 defeats.

In 1903, Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wisconsin turned down suffrage measures: 18 defeats.

In 1904, Iowa, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont followed suit: 7 defeats.

In 1905, defeats occurred in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wisconsin: 17 defeats.

In 1906, Iowa, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont confirmed their former action: 12 defeats.

In 1907, a perfect landslide occurred in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wisconsin: 23 defeats.

In 1908, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont were firm in their denial of votes for women: 13 defeats.

In 1909, California, Kansas, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Wisconsin completed with 14 defeats the full tally of 133 defeats in ten years.

In this term of 10 years:

School suffrage was defeated 13 times.
Municipal suffrage was defeated 21 times.
Presidential suffrage was defeated 18 times.
Suffrage for tax-paying women was defeated 17 times.
Constitutional amendments to confer suffrage on women were defeated 43 times.

In Oregon the question was answered at the polls by a plurality in the negative of 2,137 in 1900; in 1906 this had grown to 10,173; In 1908, the plurality was 21,812. In New Hampshire in 1903, it was defeated at the polls by a vote of 21,788 to 14,162.

The suffragists have made no advance in the same period in any state, to offset these figures, except:
Bond suffrage in Kansas (1903);
In 1901 New York gave tax-paying women in towns and villages the right to vote on questions of local taxation;
In 1908, Michigan adopted a constitutional amendment providing for tax-paying suffrage for women tax-payers.

ISSUED BY
THE NEW YORK STATE ASSOCIATION OPPOSED TO WOMAN SUFFRAGE,
29 West 39th Street, New York City.
15 Cents per 100.


[*NY*]
1911 No. 10

WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE EQUAL GUARDIANSHIP LAW.
A suffragist writing on equal guardianship, says:

"It took the mothers of Massachusetts fifty-five years to get an equal guardianship law, but after the women obtained the ballot in Colorado, the very next legislature enacted one."

The Colorado law was not the result of woman suffrage in that state, as the suffragist writer would have us infer, but was placed on the statute books through the efforts of a Buffalo woman, then a resident of Colorado, with the co-operation of good men in the Senate and House of the Legislature. Before she undertook the work for equal guardianship in Colorado, she returned to Buffalo and consulted with Mrs. George W. Townsend of that city, who had succeeded in securing an equal guardianship law in New York the year before, and who was able to advise her what lines to pursue.

It is not too much to say, therefore, that Mrs. Townsend was largely instrumental in the passage of the law for Colorado, as she had been in New York the previous year.

Mrs. Townsend was the active head of the Woman's Educational and Industrial Union of Buffalo for years, was one of the most public-spirited women of the state, and has been identified with every movement in woman's behalf during the last thirty years. In answer to a letter of inquiry, she says of her efforts for equal guardianship:

"Knowing that the woman suffragists had been working for long years to secure equal guardianship, our Union was especially careful that the Suffrage Association should not know of the Union's effort until after the law was passed.

"I remember that a prominent suffragist called to see me as soon as she heard of it, and said, 'How did you accomplish this

great good and not let us know?' And I answered, 'Because we 
did not let you know.' I think I was justified in saying that, 
because many men in both houses were so opposed to woman suffrage 
that they would not have voted for our bills. The guardianship 
bill was passed without a negative vote in either 
house, * * * 
     "The work was done in a systematic manner. Circulars giving 
full information in regard to laws in other states, and as to 
what we desired to accomplish, and reasons therefor, were sent to 
every legislator. There was no lobbying, and, in fact, it was not 
necessary for me to go to Albany at all. * * * 
     "My experience for eighteen years as President of the 
Women's Educational and Industrial Union, in close relations 
with all classes of women, has led me to believe that the ballot 
given to woman at the present time would be more of a hindrance 
than a help, and I should never wish to see it without educational 
and other qualifications."
     The suffrage writer quoted is characteristically silent about 
Wyoming, where women have voted for more than forty years 
without passing an equal guardianship law. As a matter of fact, 
there are fourteen states which now have such a law, and Colorado 
is the only suffrage state in the fourteen. 
     It appears, therefore, that, though enacted after woman suffrage 
was established, in point of time, the equal guardianship 
law of Colorado should not be credited to "equal suffrage"; in one 
case at least, the efforts of the suffragists delayed its enactment 
for some years. And above all, the remarkable success of Mrs. 
Townsend and the Woman's Educational and Industrial Union, 
as indicated in the vote on this bill, goes to prove that women can 
accomplish more along all lines of human betterment without the 
ballot, than with it. It all depends on the woman! 
ISSUED BY 
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage 
35 WEST 39TH STREET 
NEW YORK CITY 

[*P 05 A 11*]

SUFFRAGISTS DESERT PHILANTHROPY 
UNTIL THEY CAN VOTE. 
     Not content with pursuing the evasive ballot with the weapons 
of argument and moral suasion, many suffragists have lately forsaken 
the path trodden by their pioneers, and marked out for 
them by the wisdom and conservative judgment of the champions 
of an earlier generation. They are withdrawing their active and 
financial co-operation from civic and philanthropic societies, in 
what appears to be a concerted plan to boycott this class of work, 
and to refuse to give money to religious, charitable or humane 
causes, until such time as they shall be allowed to vote. This is a 
direct attempt to hamper these undertakings irrespective of the 
disastrous results, if they should succeed in crippling them. 
     The kind of public spirit which sets the gaining of its own 
ends before the weal or woe of thousands of women and children, 
who are dependent for better conditions of living upon the humanitarian 
institutions of this city, is of ill augury for that future 
time to which these women look forward. Selfish pursuit of an 
object is not likely to engender unselfishness when the object is 
attained. 
     In the examples quoted, the names which are withheld are 
those of prominent women suffragists.

"THE PLEDGE OF 'WILL AND WON'T'
OF THE  
Woman's Political Union.
I hereby promise that:
1. - I will give what I can and do my share of the work to 
gain Votes for Women. 
2. - I will not give either money or services to any other cause
until the women of New York State have been enfranchised. 
Signature
Address
Date"
--
Form sent out by several women in response to appeals from
charities and educational societies:
"The undersigned pledges herself not to subscribe for any
charity or any public object of any kind until such time as a law
shall be passed giving the vote to women."
--
Letter from
"The demands upon me in the suffrage movement have become
so great, and the work appears so vital and pressing, that I am
discontinuing my subscriptions to everything outside this political 
reform, with one exception, the trade union movement among
women. On this account I must not continue my small subscription
to the important work of the Public Education Association.
After the vote for women is won, I shall be glad to help the 
Association in its valuable work."


Mrs. wrote:
"Of course charity and educational work and the enlightenment
of public opinion will always have to be carried on, but I
cannot give to any other cause than suffrage until the Women
of New York State have the vote."
--
A resignation from the Woman's Municipal League reads:
"It is my desire to withdraw from the Woman's Municipal
League in order to devote my time more exclusively to suffrage
work.  Our Municipal interests lead us so inevitably to direct
political action that I do not feel we can do effective work until
we acquire the ballot.  I have found the Woman's Municipal
League too conservative a body to hold my interest."
--
The National Woman Suffrage Association has printed and
is distributing the following slip, which it urges all suffragists
to use in reply to all appeals sent to them for money:
"Until women are enfranchised, efforts to ameliorate social
conditions can be at best but crippled.  Therefore, I have decided
to give such time and money as I can spare to those causes
only that will bring about the political freedom of women."
The Association tells its members that this slip, "if used in
large numbers will have a marked moral effect," and" will serve
for propaganda."
--
The English "Votes for Women" prints the following:
"A well-known suffragette, who received appeals recently
from various charitable societies, has written to them all, stating

that she would willingly contribute, but that, in common with
hundreds of women, she withholds any and all support to charities 
until such time as women's demand for political enfranchisement 
is recognized. This, she points out, will enable women to
deal with the root of the evil at which so many charitable societies 
are only tinkering." 

From the Anti-Suffrage Review, London:
"The case has just reached our ears of a lady, formerly active
in aiding the work of the National Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children, who abstains from helping it now on the
ground that she has joined the local Women's Suffrage Society
- 'and they don't like us to work for anything but The Cause.
In fact, we almost promise not to!'"

From The Scotsman:
"It was decided to send the following resolution to the Prime
Minister: "That the Edinburgh Branch of the Women's Freedom 
League protests against any further legislation involving the 
interests of women until such time as women are enfranchised.'"

ISSUED BY
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage 
29 WEST 39TH STREET
NEW YORK CITY


[*Anti*]
No. 4
AN ECONOMICAL WOMAN,

Who Thinks Men Need No Help From Others
in Politics.

There is one thing I can never understand about the woman
suffragists, and that is why they want men and women to do the 
same work. It seems so wasteful. I never can bear to see two
people doing what one can do just as well. I may not be able to
rise above the plain, practical common sense side of the question,
but I know I have a love of economy, and I do not like to see
time and strength wasted any more than I do money; in fact, 
time and strength are so much harder to get than even money,
that I would rather throw away money. Of course, if the men
can't possibly get along in politics without the women, that is a 
different thing. If they are unable any longer to take care of 
what has so long been considered their department, let them say
so, and then, out of pity, and the spirit of helpfulness for which
women are noted, perhaps we will turn to and help them. But
it will have to be a beseeching and heartrending wail from our
enfeebled men that will make the greater part of our women
willing to use their time and strength that way. Our women
do not seem to have any superabundance of strength 
and nerves anyway, and what will they become if 
the woman suffrage reign should come in? I love to see
people work, and I love to work myself, but I would rather 
women should set men a good example, by doing their work 
well, than by pitching in to help the men and neglecting their 
own special duties. Women's work is the noblest in 
the world; her power and influence is the strongest.
The homes, the babies, the charities, the schools need woman,
and let our legislators consider carefully whether woman can
attend to all these duties and a hundred others, as well as do
their part in the political world. Let us hope and pray that
these legislators of ours will not vote away so much of the time
and strength of the women of this state in as thoughtless a way
as they sometimes do its money.
AN ECONOMICAL WOMAN.
1909.
ISSUED BY
THE NEW YORK STATE ASSOCIATION OPPOSED TO
WOMAN SUFFRAGE,
29 WEST 39TH STREET, NEW YORK CITY.

15 Cents per 100.

Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.