NAWSA     Subject file         Anti-Suffrage Literature

Minnesota

T. Case II  Drawer 2  File A.

A Case for the Opposition
by
Frances Corning Boardman

St. Paul Association Opposed 
to Woman Suffrage

A Case for the Opposition. 

     In the face of a possibility that the next two or three decades 
will see the women of the whole United States voting on an equal 
political basis with men, the amount of time and space devoted to 
the discussion of an extended franchise is not surprising, nor is it 
wasted. 
     Whatever one's individual opinion, the issue has to be faced. 
     And quite naturally, or course, it is the voices of the propagandists 
that are heard most persistently in the land, for the great, 
silent majority on the other side of the question is composed mainly 
of those who are too indifferent, too dazed, too disgusted, or too 
genuinely heartsick to protest. But, - they re the majority, still; 
remember that. 
     If you have investigated the subject at all, you have found that 
it is very difficult for an aggressive suffragist to allow brains, sincerity 
or enterprise to stand to the credit of disbelievers. But then 
bigotry is the greatest motive power of almost any propaganda, so 
that is condition to be accepted as inevitable. 
     All the same, though, there is the case for the opposition, and 
I sometimes think that its very obviousness and simplicity prevent 
its being more frequently formulated. Somehow it always seems 
quite adequately comprehended in the statement, "Male and female 
created He them." He did, and it is a fact that we cannot get 
back of, nor push out of sight. 
     It goes without saying that we have all frequently been impressed 
by the plausible logic and the utter sincerity of certain suffrage 
promoters, - even those of us who heartily disagree with their 
premises and purpose. But personally, the more I hear and read 
and see of the whole idea, the less faith I have in its efficacy in any 
direction at all, and I persist in thinking that my means of observation 
have been wider than those of the average woman, and my conclusions 
correspondingly legitimate. 
     Moreover, I belong to the class most frequently quoted as being 
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in desperate need of direct political representation - the class composed of unmarried, self-supporting women.
Like many another American girl, I was obliged, while still in my 'teens, to equip myself with a profession.  A kindergarten training was judged the best thing available, and I took the course, the close of which found me ensconced as combination teacher, mother and playmate to the youngsters in a state hospital for crippled and deformed children.
I was still very young when this experience initiated me into the soul sickening mysteries of inherited disease, and in these days, when it has become so common for beautifully-gowned ladies to mount palm-decked platforms and discourse on equal suffrage as a sure road to moral hygiene, I often smile, as I contrast their probable opportunities of knowing the real truth, with those that I have had.
How many of these social evangelists have worked and played daily with little boys and girls whose doom is written upon them in one frightful scar after another?
How many of them have loved and petted and taught babies whose pitiful days were numbered by their grandfathers before them?
I know what it means, and if I believed that an extended franchise could remedy these things, then I should work for it, too.  But I cannot believe it.
A life-long desire to be a trained nurse came to the fore as soon as I was old enough to be accepted for probation in a representative training-school, and for a while I saw active service in the free wards of one of New York's leading hospitals.
That added a few more chapters to what I already knew of the realities of life.
There followed a year of teaching in a public school kindergarten situated in a semi-slum district, and then I drifted into newspaper work.
As with most women who adopt that profession nowdays, I have had very much to do with feminine activities of all kinds; I have attended countless suffrage meetings, and Feminist lectures of every sort, and I have interviewed countless devotees of the "cause;" I have read endless piles of literature, and heard endless clever discussions, and my inner consciousness presents but one answer to it all - it won't work.
And I can never say it to myself without a smile, for as a piece of humor truly Homeric in its proportions, I believe the whole Feminist movement stands without parallel.
I suppose it is my serene, unshakable belief in the superiority of my own sex, and in the inherent dignity of its several functions, that makes me resent so deeply this whole, and pathetically unimaginative scheme for advertising its merits.
It is as though one set seriously about the business of printing tracts to call public attention to the value of sun and rain, or of maintaining a lecture bureau devoted to spreading the news that the animal kingdom offers an interesting field for study.
Yes, if one could not smile, one would weep with mortification at the indignity that is being heaped upon the sex by its alleged champions.  It is a noisy age, though, and a certain number of women are taking full advantage of the temper of the times, to let off steam.
The greatest difficulty in following the logic of the suffragists lies in trying to reconcile their two basic slogans:  "We don't want special consideration because we are women - we want to stand on an equal footing with men," and, "We ought to have political equality because we are women, and our special standpoint is essential to the right adjustment of social relationships."
And there you are.  The fact that they are women must be taken into account - and it mustn't be taken into account.  Why, oh why, don't they accept their age-long privilege of being contrary and contradictory instead of trying to make a whim take on the semblance of logic?  The disguise is much too thin.
How is it, I wonder, when male citizens surrender street-car seats to them?  Is it an offense, or merely a matter of simple justice?  Personally, I am always delighted when that particular courtesy is shown me, and it never seems to me that I am being complimented in the act nearly so much as is the woman who was responsible for the man's up-brining.
"My vote," said a fried of mine who lives in a suffrage state, "is always lost, as well as those of hundreds of other women, because we dare not register, knowing that it renders us liable for jury duty.  I have two little children and no servants, and you can see how such service would be out of the question."
I have mentioned this phase of matters to numerous suffragists, who merely raise their eyebrows at my ignorance, and remark that it is very easy to get excused - plenty of men do it.

    Yes, they do, of course, but not in any such numbers, because 
the claims on a man's time upon that of a wife and mother, 
are of a totally different nature. It simply means that the most 
normal and representative type of woman that we have is to be 
admitted to the duties of citizenship on a very much restricted scale. 
    This one department, for instance, important as it is, is closed 
to her, practically, and for purely sex reasons. Nature, and not 
society, has imposed the barrier.
    Every anti-suffragist has discovered that the last shaft of contempt 
is supposed to have been levelled at her when she is called 
Early or Mid-Victorian by her scornful sisters, but devastating as 
it may sound, this nettle of speech becomes quite harmless when 
seized and examined closely. 
    I am thinking just now of my grandmother, who died not very 
long ago. She was a little girl when Victoria came to the throne. 
Married while very young, her honeymoon trip was made mostly 
by wagon through two Middle Western states, to the tiny pioneer 
settlement which was to be her home. 
    She managed to bring up eleven children to healthy maturity, 
and to make herself indispensable to the community as a domestic 
pattern, a wonderful nurse in times of illness, a counsellor, friend, 
or teacher, as the need might be. 
    Wherever there was any occasion for the display sympathy, 
or of competency in almost any line, she was the woman sent for. 
And she also managed, quite simply and naturally, not only to keep 
her graces of mind and body, but to maintain so keen and intelligent 
an interest in world affairs that, when the progress of events 
sent her husband to Washington, she was able to slip gracefully 
into her place in official society, to become known as one of its distinct 
assets. 
    To the end of her life she retained those qualities which made 
her a notable little figure in more than one city, and I have yet to 
see the advance Feminist who has anything better to offer by way 
of contribution to the uplift. 
    There were countless other wonderful women in that same generation; 
what of the "Mid-Victorian" women who served so faithfully 
throughout the Civil War? What of England's own Florence 
Nightingale and the "Good Little Queen" herself?
   No, here again I part company with my excited sisters--I cannot 
agree with their smug assumption of superiority over preceding 
generations.

6

    "Do you expect women to be drudges--mere pieces of household 
machinery?" is one of their favorite questions, always uttered 
in deeply affronted tones. 
    Well, there, it seems to me, is a proposition that is settled unconditionally 
by circumstance. If you are the mother of a family, 
and cannot afford to keep servants, then I suppose you will have to 
be tied down pretty firmly; there doesn't seem to be any way out 
of it as long as people need to be fed and clothed, and premises 
have to be taken care of.
    If you have one servant, then more of your time will be your 
own, and if you can employ several, then there is a distinct obligation 
imposed on you to cultivate not only the domestic graces, but 
as many more as possible, to the positive benefit of your family.
    There is no possible connection between the extension of the 
franchise and the amount of time which any given woman is obliged 
to open in her kitchen or nursery and yet most suffragists talk as 
though the right to vote carried with it a certain immunity from 
domestic ties of an irksome nature. 
    Apropos of this, they are fond of explaining that domestic 
industries have been taken from the home by man-made corporations;
that it is no longer necessary for the mother to spin, dye, and 
weave the cloth for her children's clothing, or make the candles 
that light the house. 
    That very fact ought to fill her with an overwhelming sense of 
responsibility, and make her realize that time and energy saved 
from grilling physical labor is to be spent still better in promoting 
the mental and spiritual welfare of the household. 
    The case of the unmarried woman, especially if she be self-
supporting, is the one customarily harped upon as most completely 
illustrative of the need for equal suffrage. 
    Being of such myself, I feel that I have fairly good grounds for
asserting that the American woman, even if she is a spinster and a 
wage-earner, need never find herself in a desperate state, except 
through extreme personal or family conditions, such as no amount 
of voting could rectify.
    I know I can never be made to look upon myself as a nonentity 
simply because the men of the community in which I live have been
taught to shoulder all of the more disagreeable burdens of actual 
government. 
    It would seem quite as reasonable to feel humiliated and disgraced 
because, in time of war, I could not carry arms. One would

7

suppose that the civilized mind had progressed beyond such petty reckonings.
     All of which leads up to the chief object of Feminist wrath and censure - that appalling thing known as "indirect influence."
     At least, one would think it appalling from the amount of energy consumed in denouncing it by every severe epithet in the catalogue. It is, assert the suffragists, the most pernicious element in the world, and when exerted by members of the female sex, it assumes the proportions of a moral pestilence.  But here again, is one of those verbal mirages which disappear upon close approach.
     In the first place the suffragist recognizes practically only one sort of effective feminine influence-the kind directly connected with the barter and sale of personal charms. Between that, and a hand-to-hand fight at the polling-booth, she can see no shades, grades, nor qualities, The inevitable coloring of a man's thoughts and character by daily association with the women of his family and those outside of it-all this is negligible and unworthy because is it "indirect;" in other words, because their opinions are not pitted with, or against his, as the case may be, in a ballot-box. A curious, distorted view of things, that:
     Another kind of analysis shows the utter vagueness of the term under any circumstances.
     Suppose it is the will of a certain community that an objectionable place be closed. Voters register this desire through the more or less roundabout method of electing a man who is pledged to accomplish the fact. When he gets into office' he probably sets in motion the machinery which will eventually close the place, but, when all is said and done, the whole thing is managed entirely by indirect influence, except on the part of the man who expels the offenders with his own hands, or who actually fastens the door with hammer and nails. The vast majority of voters never even know the miscreants by sight. And thus constitutional government is always accomplished indirectly.
     It certainly represents a far more creditable moral condition of affairs when the women among our citizens can say to the men within their reach, "I trust you to vote in such a manner that the interests of women are looked after even more carefully than your own, because they need more help," than when they shout defiantly, "You help me accomplish such and such reforms, or else I'll see that our vote hounds you and your friends out of office," Between the two methods is there  any comparison in worthiness and decency of 
                                                                        8


purpose?  Can there be any question as to the comparative desirability of the motives?
     For if there is one forward step upon which the world today prides itself, it is upon the change in our educational methods.
     "Our grandfathers," we reminisce "self-righteously, "were taught that two and two made four because the teacher said so, and if their infant minds did not at once agree or comprehend, a whipping was the only aid to enlightment. Our children are taught to think for themselves-are guided, not coerced into the light."
     We are proud of our honor systems and our moral suasion principles-all of them manifestations of that "indirect influence" so sadly rated by the suffragist. Why isn't the theory the same, whether applied in politics or school?
    After all, the really vicious, insidious forms of influence are not going to be much affected by legislation, nor are the higher ones, for that matter.
     The mother who feels that her husband and sons cannot be trusted to represent her best interest at the polls, has only herself to thank. It has been her far greater privilege to make the voter; she ought to be able to trust him with the smaller function.
     And the woman whom circumstances have placed in the business world has much wherewith to reproach herself if the men who met her daily cannot reflect something of her own best ideals. When I say that I speak from thoroughly practical experience, not from any visionary ambition to preach about the uplift.
     A very serious aspect of the struggle presents itself right at this point ; so long as women keep themselves from actual political workings, just so long will their united desires be looked upon as high-minded and disinterested. Let them once affiliate themselves with partisan interests-which they must inevitably do, once the vote is theirs-and the confidence of the community has been transmuted into a doubtful regard, forever tainted with a suspicion of the presence of party ties.
     It is a colossal sacrifice to make-and for what?
     No, they are advocating a mechanical form of influence cancelable by the tramp who happens to follow at the voting booth : I speak for a brand which is literally deathless, and which makes its direct appeal to the very decentest element in any man-his respect for women.
     Men have governed weakly, foolishly and harmfully ; all the world knows that. But remember this-taking responsibility from
                                                                    9

them, or lessening it in any way, is not going to strengthen them; rather will it mean that they take a backward step, while we stand still. 
It is idle to quote statistics and special cases; they can always be made to serve either end of any argument. I have heard the state of Colorado held up so persistently as an example on both sides of the fence that I should think it must be showing signs of fatigue, if not of actual wear.
And the same is true of Australia. Whether or not they can be made to prove anything at all. I don't know-nor does it greatly matter; the eternal verities may sometimes wear a veil, but they never suffer real change.
This I do know, however, speaking of Colorado. Whereas it has become entirely habitual to point to Denver as the cradle of the juvenile court, and to speak of Judge Lindsey as an example of what a suffrage state can produce, the suffragists take no notice of the fact that Kansas City, without the assistance of women's votes, has developed and takes care of the world's model juvenile court and juvenile improvement system; that it has outstripped Denver and every other city in the country, in proportion to its size.
And then, too, we must all realize that the female vote and the Feminist movement combined have had no perceptible effect on a very sore industrial situation. That seems logical enough, when we pause to consider the chaos which reigns in that department of industrial life which is under exclusively feminine control-domestic service.
Here is the grand opportunity for a display of feminine genius in organization and arbitration; women have the field to themselves, unmolested, and it would be an excellent one wherein to gain training for more extensive activities.
I was talking one day with a clever little suffragist who had just recovered from a severe operation, and our conversation turned toward a discussion of women as physicians. 
"My own doctor," she said, "is a woman, and I have great confidence in her. I think she knows quite as much as any man about anatomy and diagnosis, and the science of medicine, but somehow, when I found that an operation was going to be necessary, I didn't hesitate two minutes before deciding to have a man perform it. Perhaps it's when we reach a crisis calling for decisive executive action that we instinctively turn to men for assistance." And I believe we do. 
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The reason is so awfully simple, so crudely obvious, that the manner in which it is so often overlooked is absolutely astounding. It is a matter of physiology, after all. As our nervous systems differ, so do our psychological processes, and with them our special capabilities. 
At a certain suffrage convention which I was obliged to report for my paper, the presiding officer was an able woman, credited (and rightly, I believe) with an unusual amount of poise. Twice in the course of the first day she became so pitiably overwrought by different crises which arose that she dissolved into a state of hysteria, and the close of the convention found her, naturally, in a deplorable state of nervous exhaustion. 
Now these  crises were of a sort which men meet perhaps with profanity, and perhaps with an outbrust of violence of a physical sort, but from which they manage to recover promptly, with no one the worse for the scuffle. 
Training, the suffragist will tell you, is all that is needed to obviate conditions like this; give women a few generations in which to become used to the handling of affairs, and they will meet them as sensibly as men do.
Training? Is training going to alter the physical structure of the sex? Until it accomplishes that, we must still go on expecting to find a feminine temperament in a female body. 
The suffrage cause has not been wanting in clever leaders, keen casuists, quick-witted opportunists and scientific supporters, and it has required the combined efforts of all these adherents to gain for it the wide and respectful hearing which it enjoys, and its opportunity, here and there, to become an experiment in social chemistry, for such, and only such, it is. The pity is that experiments of this nature always mean so tragic a loss of energy. 
And what of us-the women who feel that a tremendous new burden, a complicated responsibility, is being unfairly shifted to our already tired shoulders? Some of us still believe that it is for men to do the rough hewing of the social structure, while to us is left the management of subtle detail and supplementary finesse. They need our work as much as we need theirs. and the idea that a ranting sisterhood can transform this healthy state of interdependence into a pitting of one sex against the other in heart-sickening political warfare, is a very sorry one.
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Those of us who have had a chance to see, and who are not afraid to look truth in the face, know the utter and absolute impossibility of maintaining the same footing for men and women who are thrown together even in purely business relationships. We are the women who know the futility of pretense at Platonic friendship, and we know that just so long as men are men, just so long will their eyes look upon us through the medium of our sex-even as ours look upon them. 
There is nothing intrinsically evil in this, and to cope with it requires only a little quick, philosophical personal adjustment, although at that, the path is a complicated one to tread. 
And knowing this as we do, why, in the name of Heaven, should we be forced into a still more extensive relationship, under the pleasing hypocritical delusion that "men and women ought to be able to work together impersonally?" They oughtn't, as a matter of fact. When they do, it will mean that the motive power of this world has run down, and that its balance wheels are hopelessly out of gear. 
These women, whose frantic energy and excited vanity is driving them forward so blindly, do they ever stop to realize that somebody is going to pay the cost of it all? Perhaps not they. No, but succeeding generations, who will some day understand that their troubles and problems have descended upon them because these wild sisters chose to throw the times out of joint, and to set up false relationships; because they wanted to believe that what God had put asunder, they could join together in their own vainglorious, artificial little way.
Possibly they will see the consummation of their efforts, but when a reaction comes, and they find themselves floundering among the ruins they have made, perhaps they will try to imitate the men they envy, and not make an outcry. 
They will make it, though; in the end they wi[?] up their voices in wild appeal to husbands, fathers, brothers [?] come and help them out, and they will make the demand as the [?], for by then, perhaps, they will have learned the real, true, honest, clear meaning that lies behind the little word "sex."
FRANCES CORNING BOARDMAN.
12

WOMEN'S ANTI-SUFFRAGE
ASSOCIATION OF SO. DAK.
MRS. E. JACOBSEN-SEC'Y.
PIERRE, S. D.

Nebraska

[*Antisuff - States (Nebr)*]

WOMAN SUFFRAGE
AND THE
FEMINIST
MOVEMENT

[*Neb*]

ISSUED BY
NEBRASKA ASSOCIATION OPPOSED TO
WOMAN SUFFRAGE
OMAHA, NEBRASKA

Woman Suffrage and the Feminist Movement.

That feminism is a live and vital issue of the suffrage campaign
is a fact, not because the opponents of "Votes for Women"
say so, but because the official campaign literature of the suffragists
urges and demands feminism; their speakers preach feminism;
their "Case for Woman Suffrage" praises feminism, and the
official catalogue of the National American Woman's Suffrage
Association commends and advertises feminism.
Suffragists who fear the effect of feminist beliefs upon the
voting public are protesting that "freedom of love and doctrines
of sex antagonism are not essential doctrines of suffrage," yet
many suffrage leaders are active feminist propagandists.
The issue of feminism as defined by some of the leading suffragists,
is an issue that every high-minded man or woman who has
the best interests of the country at heart cannot afford to ignore,
and for whose consideration I review a few of the quotations from
public declarations of leading suffragists.
Jane Olcott gives us this new gospel: "A man or a woman
should be free to give love wherever it is nature. Love is volatile,
and when it goes, I believe it is immoral for man and wife
even to appear to live together, except for the sake of their
children. In that case each should be free to bestow love elsewhere
by mutual agreement."
Mrs. Florence Wise, secretary of the Women's Trade Union
League of New York, says: "I believe only in voluntary motherhood.
There are many persons, men as well as women, who are
better off without children. Many unmarried women, on the
other hand, want children, and there ought to be an opportunity
for the expression of their innate mother love."
Ida Husted Harper said, over her signature: "Woman has
not attempted one advance step which has not been blocked by
these two words--Wifehood and Motherhood."
"Breaking into the Human Race" is the title of a subject
recently discussed at Cooper Union, New York, by six of the
leading suffragist-feminists. Marie Jennie Howe, chairman of
the meeting, complained: "We are sick of being specialized to
sex. We do not put any fence around men, and we insist that
they shall not put any around us either."
Miss Fola LaFollette advocated that a wife should keep her
own name: "If a woman is to change her name as her acknowledgement
of her love for a man, why should not the same sacrifice
not attempted one advance step which has not been blocked by
these two words--Wifehood and Motherhood."


be made by him? You ask, 'What about the children?' Let them combine the names of the father and mother, or let the matter be settled by the parents. If Miss is the form of address before marriage, let it be so after marriage. A woman will not then have to explain her children."
Edna Kenton, in the November Century Magazine, declares: "Nothing invented of man has ever had a more stultifying effect upon the character and morals of women and of men than the Christian ideal which St. Paul laid down for women."
Feminists regard it as a degradation for a woman to accept the support of father, brother or husband. They claim that she must be relieved from household cares and the rearing of children in order that she may have unlimited freedom. Max Eastman, the well-known feminist and suffragist speaker, says: "Women should be made free from all the limitations of law, of dogma, and of custom" This, of course, includes moral law.
Mrs. Inez Milholland Boissevain, the well-known feminist, who led the street parade of the suffragists in Washington last year, says: "Wedding rings are a relic of barbarism. They are relics of the day when women were men's chattels."
The English Review for September 27, 1913, gives place to an article entitled:
"The Truth About Women," by Mrs. Walter M. Gallichan, who says:
"Under present economic conditions and the prejudice of social opinion, the penalties which women have to pay for any sexual relationship outside of marriage is too heavy. I believe if there were some open recognition of these partnerships outside of marriage, not necessarily permanent, with proper provision for the woman and her children, should there be any, a provision not dependent on the generosity of the man and made after the love which sanctioned the union had waned, but in the form of a contract before the relationship was entered upon, there would be many women ready to undertake such unions gladly; there would even be some women as well as some men, who would prefer them to the present marriage system that binds them permanently to one partner for life. It is also possible that such contracts might be made by those who were unsuitably mated and yet did not wish entirely to sever the bond between them, with some other partner they could love. Such contracts would open up possibilities of happy partnerships to many."
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who has been giving a course of lectures on feminism, says: "The woman should have as much to do in the home as the man-no more." When asked, "Who, then, will take care of the sick baby?" she replied: "The nurse 

of course. If the child is not seriously ill, the nurse is as good as the mother. If the child is seriously ill, the nurse is better."
The bold and clear-sighted writer of the Century, already quoted, admits with perfect candor: "The loss to childhood from such a change in the home as would be involved in the mother's going out as a breadwinner is obvious." And adds: "If women are at a loss before their new world, men are to stand aghast before the crumbling walls of their old one. The keystone is falling. One of man's greatest spurs to action is taken from him, with no other incentive equally compelling to take its place." The feminist sees that her doctrine is revolutionary, but she believes the times demand a revolution. 
After submitting the above evidence, which is only a fraction of that available is it not sufficient to prove that there is a strong bond of sympathy and fellowship between feminism and suffragism? What is more destructive of home than feminism? What is more productive of licentiousness than feminism? The time is ripe for Christian women who have the good of humanity, the perpetuity of society, the greatness of womanhood and the purity of motherhood at heart, to act. Let it be known that the great majority of women are not in sympathy with the suffrage movement, freighted as it is with possibilities of evil, and threatening an upheaval of law, order and society. Well may we stop and listen. Until some of our lusty sister states have tried the experiment more fully, let us consider carefully what the consequences will be. Would we have better government under feminist ideals or under the old regime, where woman's work was to form the character of the future citizens of the republic? Are we to abandon honor, civilization and morality because a small minority of women are demanding it, or are we to conserve the womanhood of our country and thereby preserve the nation? M.M.C.
Dora Marsden, A.B., in a pamphlet reprinted by the National Suffrage Association from the FREE WOMAN, the best known Feminist organ in England says:
"The Freewoman must produce within herself strength sufficient to provide for herself and for those of whom nature has made her the natural guardian, her children. She must be in a position to bear children if she wants them, without soliciting maintenance from any man, WHOEVER HE MAY BE."
Another writer in the FREE WOMAN says: 
"For many reasons it may be argued that it is expedient for a couple to marry if they have children, but none of them worth discussion has an ethical basis. The whole edifice of life marriage will at last fall to the ground." -(The FREE WOMAN, Vol. 1, p. 153.)

The National Suffrage Association and the National College Equal Suffrage League both publish and circulate the writings of Charlotte Perkins Gilman under such titles as "Motherhood, Personal and Social;""The Larger Feminism," etc. The writings of Belfort, Bax, Karl Marx, William Morris, Alice Hyndman, Rhine, Cicely Hamilton, Rheta Childe Dorr, and many other well known socialists have been approved and circulated by the National Suffrage Association. Not once has that body, which represents the Suffrage propaganda in this country, gone on record as repudiating the teachings of these writers. 
Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a noted Suffrage leader, bewails the fact that only one woman in sixteen kept a servant; the remaining fifteen-sixteenths were still in the parasitic conditions of doing their own housework-abject SLAVES to men. "Human beings," she declared, "believe their duty is far outside of merely being mothers; even a kitten could be a mother."
According to the Suffragist-Feminist leaders, if the wife and mother works, she is a "domestic drudge." If she does not work she is a parasite. 

The Home.
By Rev. T.J. Mackay, D.D., rector of All Saints' Episcopal Church, Omaha:
"One of the principal reasons I have for opposing the suffrage movement is the danger to the home should such a movement prove successful. There is friction enough in our homes now, as evidenced by the number of divorces; but when conflict of opinion and conflict of authority are introduced, the friction will become infinitely greater. As in a fine piece of machinery, the greatest care is taken to reduce friction, so in the delicate nature of the home anything which tends to create discord should be avoided. Introduce the methods adopted by the suffragists into our homes and Bedlam will result. WE want more love, not more politics, in the homes of this country." -T.J. Mackay.

Do Good Woman Want This Kind of Freedom?
That Inez Milholland is one of the acknowledged leaders alike of the Woman Suffrage Movement, as well as of the "Feminist" Movement, may be gathered from the following, taken from McClure's Magazine for February, 1913:
"A New Department for Woman"-Conducted by Miss Inez Milholland.
Introducing Miss Milholland to its readers, McClure's says, editorially:
"This movement in its largest general aspects it termed 'FEMINISM;' in its immediate political aspects, 'Suffrage.' No woman in America is better qualified for the important task of conducting this department than INEZ MILHOLLAND."
The following is taken in verbatim from Miss Milholland's article in the February number of McClure's: (Note the imputation of ignorance touching women of the old school.)
"A large proportion of the new voters are women of the old types, bred to another standard, NOT EQUIPPED TO COMPREHEND the power that has been placed in their hands. But it will not be long before the steady influx to the voting ranks of those millions of YOUNGER women whose impressions are being formed in the more alert, stirring air of today, adding their clearer vision and greater independence of spirit, will bring the REAL issues more sharply before us."
The "real issue," which Miss Milholland has in mind, is Home and Marriage, for she goes on and says:
"It may be further assumed that his pressure toward a constantly growing FREEDOM and POWER on the part of the sex means that, in the long run, the institutions most certain to be touched and changed are institutions in which sex, as a sex, is most peculiarly and vitally interested. And these institutions, it is hardly necessary to point out, are the HOME and MARRIAGE, itself."
In her article Miss Milholland further refers to women of the old types as "the parasitic" sort, that they are naturally "conservative" and clinging to conditions that maintain them in

idleness.  (This is the same Miss Milholland who early this year
announced that no woman should spend more than fifteen minutes
a day on her housework.)  She announces that she and her fellow
Suffragist-Feminists intend to release women from an "enslavement." 
She gleefully says that suffragists are openly reading
Bernard Shaw's utterances on forbidden topics, reading Havelock
Ellis' work on Sex Psychology, Kaufman on "The Inhabitants
of the Underworld," etc.
    Here is a copy of an Associated Press dispatch quoting a
prominent woman suffragist who declared: "The Bible is not
up-to-date and should be rewritten."  It appeared in the Omaha
Daily Bee of December 9, 1912:
        "Chicago, Dec. 9 - "A woman cannot be a 
conscientious Christian and a suffragist also, because 
of man's monopoly of the Bible and religion,"
said Mrs. Laura G. Fixen, business manager of The
Working Women's Home, last night before the 
woman's party here.
         " 'We cannot accept the Bible as a divine inspiration 
because it features the male sex in everything
almost to the exclusion of the female,' she 
continued.  'Man has usurped almost everything
in religion as well as everything else.
        " 'In the Bible that we know, God is represented 
as a man, Christ is a man, the apostles are
men and the angels in Heaven as men and in it 
women are commanded to obey their husbands.
Suffragists cannot accept the Bible literally as a
divine inspiration.  We must see that it was written 
at a time when women were men's chattels.
        " 'The position given women in the Bible has
kept them from their rights as the equals of men.
THE BIBLE NEEDS REVISION. IT IS NOT UP 
TO DATE.' "
    In a recent article in Harper's Weekly, Winifred Harper
Cooley comments with amusement on the dismay of the middle-aged
Suffragists at the radical utterances of the younger women 
in their ranks.  She says that the older women have not kept up
with the times.
    In an article in the December, 1913, Atlantic, W. L.
George, the well-known writer on Feminism, says that "Suffrage
is but a part of the greater propaganda of Feminism.* * * *
The ultimate aim of Feminism with regard to marriage is the
practical suppression of marriage and the institution of free
alliance.  It may be that thus only can woman develop her own
personality.' " 


    Mr. George says:
        "The gaining of the vote is, in the Feminist's
 view, nothing but an affair of the outposts.  They
intend to use the vote to make women vote for
women, not as citizens. ***  It is no wonder
then that the Feminists should have designs upon
the most fundamental of human institutions-
marriage and motherhood.  ***  In the main,
Feminists are opposed to indissoluble Christian
marriage.  ***  That there is a sex war, and
will be a sex war, I do not deny."
--------

VIEWS OF REV. JOHN WILLIAMS, D.D.

    Rev. John Williams, for forty years rector of St. Barnabas
Episcopal Church, Omaha, writes the following brief, but forceful,
argument, in which he fastens upon the adherents of woman
suffrage responsibility for the utterances of their leaders, which
they have not challenged:
        "It would never be quite fair to hold any cause
wholly responsible for the opinions or character of
every supporter of that cause.  Yet every cause or 
the main body of the supporters of any cause, should
be held morally responsible whenever it allows to 
pass unchallenged and unrepudiated the dangerous
opinions, subversive of Christian morality, which
are openly avowed by the more daring advocates of 
the cause.  Still more does a cause, and the supporters 
of a cause, become morally responsible for
the openly avowed principles of these franker
people, when their published opinions are printed
and circulated as officially approved campaign
papers in support of the cause.
        "The supporters of woman suffrage in Nebraska
must face and meet the moral issue raised, when the
National Suffrage Association and the National 
College Equal Suffrage League both publish and circulate 
the writings of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, of
Inez Milholland, and of many other ultra-radical
writers, which are utterly subversive of Christian
morality, of Christian marriage, and of the Christian
home.
         "The supporters of any cause become at once  
morally responsible for the dangerous principles put
forth in their name, as well as for the people who
are gladly welcomed to its platforms in support of
it.  It is useless to assert that the cause of woman

suffrage is not responsible. or should not be held
responsible, for the immoral principles of the bolder
feminists who openly avow their infidelity to the 
 Christian morality which alone has elevated womanhood 
to purity and chastity.  So long as these ultraradical 
people and their sayings and writings are
left unrepudiated in New York, or in Nebraska,
 not by an individual here and there, but officially
 by the representative body, then the cause of woman
 suffrage must bear the burden of its more daring
 associates.
"It is worse than useless for suffragists here in
 Nebraska to say privately, 'We do not want free
love, nor the destruction of the Christian home and
of Christian marriage.'  They must formally repudiate 
the writings and principles of the more daring
advocates of suffrage in New York and elsewhere--
writings and principles which are endorsed and circulated 
in support of suffrage by the National
 Suffrage associations and leagues.  Silence is acquiescence."
-- JOHN WILLIAMS.


   TERRIFIC  ARRAIGNMENT  OF FEMINISM.

 Col. Henry Watterson, the venerable editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, recently penned a terrific arraignment of Feminism, as follows:
 It is true that the Courier-Journal has refused to take suffragism on its face showing.  Back of the suffragist it has seen the militant; back of the militant, the feminist.  Feminism, at once the genesis and the terminal of the agitation responsible for the prevailing unrest of woman.  Feminism, among the more advanced avows itself the enemy of a man-made world and a man-written Bible, and all existing institutions, including marriage and the home; it proposes the abolition of sex and the recreation of woman in the barbaric image of man, each woman to choose the father of her child, and as many fathers as she cares to have, polygamy and the polygamous instinct to be shifted from masculine to feminine initiation. 
 The suffragists of America are but a little behind the furies of England; the furies of England but a little ahead of time, feminism being the crux of the movement, its destination sex war.
 To be sure, the leaders of the crusade seeking "Votes for Women" deny this, most of them, we doubt not, sincerely.  But revolutions go not backward.  Already it is declared in England that suffrage is merely an "outpost."  Already has the richest and most potential leader of suffragism in the United States announced the coming of militancy of the Pankhurst variety unless the franchise be granted within the next two years.  No question so momentous to organic society exists in any part of the world, and the Courier-Journal, disdaining the cowardice alike of levity and of gallantry, has alone among American newspapers so treated it.
 It plants itself upon the blessed truth that woman was created to civilize and humanize man; that she is a superior being; that without her we would drop into savagery; that without the ballot she has achieved the crown of glory God designed for her when He made her the moral light of the universe, the homebuilder and shrinemaker, securing to man, to her children, and to herself, one spot on earth where love abideth, which may not be invaded by the selfishness, the hatred and the slime of rival ambitions, within whose sweet and safe exclusion and repose the religion of Christ may continue to be cherished and taught, and whence prayers of adoration and gratitude may still ascend to heaven.

New Jersey

Sic  Semper

Mr. JAMES NUGENT will not be Governor of New Jersey. Moreover, it is more than likely that "Mene, Mene" is already being written over the political lairs where "Boss" Nugent has been wont to hold sway.  Mr. Nugent did not even run on the party ticket for the headship of the state of New Jersey.  He was turned down at the primaries on September 23, turned down hard, by a plurality of approximately 15,000 votes.  It was his own party that beat him, and it was the New York World, a Democratic paper, that came out after the primaries with an editorial comment congratulating New Jersey Democrats on their job.  "That he (Mr. Nugent) was decisively beaten by Edwards is altogether to the credit of the Democrats as a party."
     And the thing that beat Mr. Nugent, what was it?  It was fundamentally Mr. Nugent's stand on woman suffrage--his blatant disregard for any rights for the New Jersey women in combination with a little habit he had of double-crossing his own party.  This he did in the matter of returning David Baird to the Short Term of the United States Senate in 1918 on purpose to defeat the Federal Suffrage Amendment.  The ruthless way in which the octogenarian, Mr. Baird, was jammed into the Senate was obnoxious to both parties, and had more than a little to do with the primary elections this Fall.            [*10/4/19  WC.*]
     Mr. Nugent was out on a "wet" platform and one favoring popular election, instead of gubernatorial appointment, of the Public Utility Commission, as well as his plank of wild-eyed hate against woman suffrage.  New Jersey is in a state of seething revolt against the present trolley zone fares, and it might be thought that the fact that Mr. Nugent is charged by his own party leaders with being a tool of the Public Utility Commission was sufficient reason for his downfall.  Mr. Edward I. Edwards, his successful opponent, was in agreement with Mr. Nugent about popular election of Commissioners.  Mr. Edwards was also avowedly "wet," so in these two of New Jersey's three immediate issues, there was not a pin to choose between the two.
     On the other hand, Mr. Edwards was for ratification of the Federal Suffrage Amendment and Mr. Nugent against it, noisily, abusively, against it--so much against it that he was ready to insult every woman of his state to gain his ends.  He has been a loud-voiced ally of the anti-suffragists for the past decade and, to quote the World again, "Nugent's open declaration against woman suffrage was bound to react upon him."  The Democratic women of New Jersey worked against him, his party colleagues whom he had double-crossed in the Baird Senatorial campaign, worked against him, and now the long time myth of the impregnatable control of Boss Nugent of Essex County is no more.
     As a political factor in New Jersey politics, Mr. Nugent will shrink to normal size.  When the New Jersey women vote it is very likely that what there is left of Mr. Nugent will not be discovered without a microscope.   SIC SEMPER.


                                     DIRECT QUESTIONS PUT TO NEW JERSEY ANTIS.

Miss Feickert Asks Them How It Happens That Notorious James R.Nugent, Eward J. Hanley and Horace Nixon Are Running the Campaign.

     New Jersey anti-suffragists attempted last week to deny the charge of James A. Bradley, founder of Asbury Park, that they were the duped allies of the liquor interests. They were met with a direct answer from Mrs. E. F. Feickert, president of the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association:
     "I do not understand why Mrs. Oliphant and Mrs. Emery are so much excited over Mr. Bradley's refusal to let them use the Beach Auditorium for an anti-suffrage meeting, on the ground that the ladies opposed to vote for women were in effect allies of the liquor interests. Mrs. Oliphant says, 'Mr. Bradley has no right to say that we are backed by the liquor interests of the State. Such a statement is untrue, unqualified untrue, and is unwarranted by the facts. "Mrs. John R. Emery also comes to the rescue by saying, 'Our funds are raised by subscriptions and are the result of faithful, honest self-denial on the part of the home-loving women of New Jersey, many of them self-supporting, who make up our organization. Our speakers are paid from such funds only, and our work is carried on from such funds only.'
     "Does Mrs. Oliphant wish us to understand that the liquor interests are not fighting suffrage ? If so, she knows more about the liquor interests than they know themselves, for the leading papers of the State have reported that it was part of theirpolicy to oppose votes for women, a report which has never been denied. Mr. Bradley did not say that the women opposed are knowingly seeking the support of the liquor interests. His statement was perfectly courteous and correct, and a too great hastiness on the part of Mrs. Oliphant not unnaturally raises certain questions in my mind.
     "I should like to know from our opponents if the anti-suffrage campaign is supported solely by the savings of home-loving women of New Jersey (not all of the home-loving women of the States, by the way, for some hundred thousand or so of them are enrolled in the ranks of the suffragists), how is it that, by general admission, the leading part in the campaign is being taken by James R. Nugent?  If the women are running their own campaign, why is that their publicity work is handled by Edward J. Hanley, who tells us that he was engaged by Mr. Nugent in April of this year to fight women suffrage?  Also is it possible that the fund collected from the home-loving women is sufficiently great to pay the salaries of the clerks who are addressing, and for the postage which is placed upon the anti-suffrage literature which is being sent out by Mr. Horace Nixon of Woodbury and Camden to all the voters, not only of Gloucester and Camden counties, but also to those in Cape May and other southern counties?
     "Are we to understand that the money at the disposal of Mr. Nugent and his press agent, and of Mr. Nixon, is taken from a fund raised by honest self-denial on the part of the home-loving women of New Jersey?
    "If not, from what source do Mr. Nugent and Mr. Nixon derive the funds they are using in their philanthropic and altruistic efforts to save women from the burden of the ballot?
     "A full and rank answer from the leaders of the Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage would shed much light upon the present situation."

[*Woman Citizen 9/21/18*]

Prussian Methods in New Jersey
What Happened at the Newark Gross Haupt Quartier

        MANY instances of misrepresentation on the part of the
paid workers now making a canvass in Newark, New
Jersey, for the Anti-suffragists having been reported to the New
Jersey Woman Suffrage Association, the latter organization carefully
investigated the matter and found, according to a report
issued by the State Suffrage Association, that of over fifty women
interviewed by the canvassers not one was told that the canvasser
represented the Antis. The canvassers claimed to be sent out
either by the Suffrage Association or the national or state government.
The New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association also found
that these workers paid 2 1/2 cents for each name obtained, that
the canvassers wrote down the names of the women approached
and that in many instances they put down names of other women
living in the house of the woman interviewed without having
seen such women themselves, and in some cases these women
were under 21 years of age. Not a case was found where the
woman interviewed had personally seen what was written on the
card after her name and these women did not know whether
they were put down for or against suffrage.
        The New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association also found that
these canvassers were not engaged at Anti-suffrage headquarters
in the Kinney Building, but were told to call at 423 Broad Street, 
a building located next to the D. L. & W. Railroad tracks, with
a saloon on the ground floor and furnished rooms above, where
they were interviewed by the man in charge of this work in his
bedroom.
        Affidavits from women householders of Newark and vicinity
covering these facts were secured by the Suffrage Association.
        "Catherine Davies, of full age, being duly sworn according to
law, deposes and says: I reside at 138 Montclair Avenue, Newark,

New Jersey. During the latter part of August I received a call
at my house from a woman who represented that she was from
the state government authorized to obtain my views on the suffrage
question. I gave her the information and she wrote my
name on her papers. I had myself taken a canvass on the suffrage
question in my neighborhood and I told her I had the name of
a number of people whom I knew to be interested. She asked
me if there were any others in my family and I told her of my
daughters and told her that one of my daughters was only
eighteen years of age. She stated that that would make no difference
and took the name, making a separate card for her as she
did in the case of each of the others I gave her.
(Signed) CATHERINE DAVIES.
        "Grace E. Blair, of full age, being duly sworn according to 
law, deposes and says: I reside at 157 Elizabeth Avenue, Newark,
New Jersey. During the last week in August a man called at 
my house and I saw him at the door. He told me that he represented
the State Suffrage Association and was taking a canvass
of the women of the State to see how they stood on the suffrage
question. In his conversation, he referred to the Essex County 
headquarters of the Suffrage Association, 79 Halsey Street.
From his statements and manner I naturally assumed that he 
was an authoritative representative of the Suffrage Association.
I have since been informed by officers of the Association that he 
was not in their employ and I believe that his statement to me 
that he represented the Association was false.
(Signed) GRACE E. BLAIR.
        "Cornelia A. Stanton, of full age, being duly sworn according 
to law, deposes and says: I reside at 225 North Seventh Street,



Roseville, Newark, New Jersey. During the latter part of August
I received a call from a woman who did not give me her name,
but who stated to me that she engaged on the state census
and requested my views on the suffrage
question. I understood from what she
said and her attitude, that she was acting
in an official capacity for the state government
and that my answer to her questions
was a legal obligation. I told her my position
on the suffrage question and she took
my name and wrote it on her papers.
(Signed) CORNELIA A. STANTON.
Subscribed and sworn to before me this
12th day of September, 1918. Rebecca
Clayton, Notary Republic of N. J."
        Speaking for the New Jersey Woman
Suffrage Association, Mrs. E. F. Feickert,
its president, says: "We denounce such
methods and desire to warn the women of
Newark against these canvassers. They
should insist on writing their own names
and their attitude on the suffrage question
on the cards themselves, in indelible ink.
The canvass made by the suffragists is
conducted very differently. Our canvassers
are unpaid volunteers who are
personally known to our city or ward
leaders who in turn are responsible to the
State Board, which meets monthly and
keeps personally in touch with the work.
Women who enroll must sign their own
names, they must not be wives of aliens,
and they must be over twenty-one. No
one is allowed to sign without first reading
the statement printed at the top of the enrollment
sheet. The results obtained in the canvass now being
taken by the Antis will be so palpably false that they will deceive
no one.
        "We cannot express too strongly our regret that any organization
[?] should allow persons in its employ to cause woman

the authority of the national government and in one or two
instances of the state government. I know of my own knowledge
that no such canvass has been authorized by the Woman Suffrage 
Association and that any representation by
such canvassers that they come from the 
Woman Suffrage Association was false. I 
am informed and believe that neither the 
federal nor the state government has authorized 
or undertaken any such canvass 
and that any representation by such canvassers 
that they represented the local or 
national government was false. 
    "I communicated with the President of 
the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association, 
Mrs. E. F. Feickert, and under her 
instructions I pursued my investigation 
with a view to ascertaining through what 
means or by what authority the persons 
purporting to make said canvass were 
employed.
    "I telephoned to Mrs. Thomas
B. Adams, of Summit, New 
Jersey, who I was informed and believe
was for the time being in charge of the 
affairs of the Association Opposed to 
Woman Suffrage and made an application 
for employment as a canvasser. Mrs. 
Adams informed me that she was not employing 
the canvassers, but would put me 
in touch with the man who was doing so if 
I would call at the office of the Association 
Opposed to Woman Suffrage, which office 
is located in the Kinney Building, Newark,
New Jersey.
    "Pursuant to her said suggestion I called at said office in the 
Kinney Building at about eleven o'clock in the morning of Tuesday,
the third instant, in company with Mrs. Alexander Jackson, 
of 57 Amherst Street, East Orange, New Jersey. I there saw 
Mrs. Adams in person and informed her that I had come to 

... but who stated to me that she was engaged on the state census and requested my views on the suffrage question. I understood from what she said and her attitude, that she was acting in an official capacity for the state government and that my answer to her questions was a legal obligation. I told her my position on the suffrage question and she took my name and wrote it on her papers.
     (Signed) CORNELIA A. STANTON. 
     Subscribed and sworn to before me this 12th day of September, 1918. Rebecca Clayton, Notary Public of N.J"
     Speaking for the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association, Mrs. E.F. Feickert, its president, says: "We denounce such methods and desire to warn the women of Newark against these canvassers. They should insist on writing their own names and their attitude on the suffrage question on the cards themselves, in indelible ink. The canvass made by the suffragists is conducted very differently. Our canvassers are unpaid volunteers who are personally known to our city or ward leaders who in turn are responsible to the State Board, which meets monthly and keeps personally in touch with the work. Women who enroll must sign their own names, they must not be wives of aliens, and they must be over twenty-one. No one is allowed to sign without first reading the statement printed at the top of the enrollment sheet. The results obtained in the canvass now being taken by the Antis will be so palpably false that they will deceive no one. 
     "We cannot express too strongly our regret that any organization of women should allow persons in its employ to cause woman workers to seek employment at such place as that described in the affidavit of our Field Secretary, Miss Julia Wernig."
     Julia Wernig, of full age, being duly sworn according to law, deposes and says: "I reside at 231 South Burnett Street, East Orange, New Jersey, and I have been a resident of East Orange for the past eight years. For the past two years or thereabouts I have been and still am Field Secretary of the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association. Recently it came to my attention that certain of the canvassers engaged by the New Jersey Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, who are making a canvass of the women of New Jersey with a view to obtaining their position on the suffrage question, were adopting questionable methods to obtain the information which they seek to obtain. 
     "I thereupon personally undertook to investigate the matter. In my investigation I have visited many women residing in Essex County, who have been approached by said canvassers. In a number of cases they have informed me that the canvasser represented herself as coming from the Woman Suffrage Association. In a number of other cases I was informed that the canvasser represented herself as making the investigation under that no such canvass has been authorized by the Woman Suffrage Association and that any representation by such canvassers that they come from the Woman Suffrage Association was false. I am informed and believe that neither the federal nor the state government has authorized or undertaken any such canvass and that any representation by such canvassers that they represented the local or national government was false. 
     "I communicated with the President of the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association, Mrs. E.F. Feickert, and under her instructions I pursued my investigation with a view to ascertaining through what means or by what authority the persons purporting to make said canvass were employed. 
     "I TELEPHONED to Mrs. Thomas B. Adams, of Summit, New Jersey, who I was informed and believe was for the time being in charge of the affairs of the Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage and made an application for employment as a canvasser. Mrs. Adams informed me that she was not employing the canvassers, but would put me in touch with the man who was doing so if I would call at the office of the Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, which office is located in the Kinney Building, Newark, New Jersey. 
     "Pursuant to her said suggestion I called at said office in the Kinney Building at about eleven o'clock in the morning of Tuesday, the third instant, in company with Mrs. Alexander Jackson, of 57 Amherst Street, East Orange, New Jersey. I there saw Mrs. Adams in person and informed her that I had come to inquire about being employed as a canvasser. I asked her if she was Mrs. Adams; she said she was and asked me if I was the person who had telephoned her Saturday night and I said 'yes'. She then advised me that she was not personally employing the canvassers and said that she would put me in touch with the man who was. She then told me to call at 423 Broad Street, Newark, between four and six P.M. I said, 'Whom shall I ask for?' and she said 'Simply ask for the person in charge and tell them what you have come for.' She mentioned no name. 
     "In company with Mrs. Luther Wilsie, of 231 South Burnett Street, East Orange, I went to No. 423 Broad Street, Newark, on the afternoon of September 3d at about  4:15 o'clock. I found that the premises located at said number of Broad Street consisted of a saloon and two stores downstairs and furnished rooms upstairs. I rang the bell and a man whose name I do not know answered, looked at me inquiringly and I said 'Mrs. Adams sent me.' He said, 'Come right upstairs' and I followed him to the second floor and he showed me into a bedroom. He asked me to be seated. I then asked him what the work of the position was and he said, "It is simply to find out whether the women of New Jersey want the vote." He then told me that he was not actually engaging the canvassers, but that the real man was not at home and would not be back that day, but he said they did not need any more canvassers. He asked me, however, for my name and address. I asked him what the salary was for the canvassers and he said there was no salary, but the canvassers were paid two and a half cents for each name. He asked for my name again and I said 'No' and excused myself and left the premises."

AN OLD PIECE OF HISTORY

It Has Been Rehabilitated Over In New Jersey And The Women Of
The State Are Refusing To Submit Quietly While Masculine
Historians Throw Stones From Glass Houses.

Timely interest in an old piece of history has been reawakened
throughout New Jersey because of a certain State-wide
political issue, combined with a certain local incident
in the Newark schools. To take the last first: an assistant
superintendent of schools has written a textbook in which he
has quoted from a heated adversary of woman suffrage, and
thereby laid himself open to the accusation that he has permitted
a wholesale sneer to creep into a book designed for
the use of women teachers in the instruction of children of
both sexes in the Jersey schools. 

The old piece of history on which the incident pivots has
to do with the accusation that the women of New Jersey, who
once had the constitutional right to vote, lost it by gross
abuse of their franchise privilege -- a picturesque statement
about a scantily investigated fact, say the present-day
Jersey women. They also say that fair play demands that the 
fraudulent election for which women were made to shoulder the
blame shall be accounted just what it was, a fraud primarily
of party leaders, and secondarily of voters of both sexes and
both colors indiscriminately. They say, still further, that
any attempt, particularly any textbook attempt, to pass it
down to posterity as the act of "aliens, females, and negroes"
shows a treatment of plain historical records unworthy of free
white citizens of the twentieth century. So that, although
the women who changed their bonnets and voted twice are dead
and in their graves, and although historians from masculine
strongholds of glass houses would bury these women under
boulders of contumely, the old Garden-of-Eden cry, "The woman
thou gavest me!" is not today allowed its former all-explanatory value. 

Read And See.

 Read Jersey history and see," say the twentieth-century
Jersey women. The Jersey women's right to vote seems to have been
fundamental and constitutional. There is little contradiction
on that score. The old Berkeley and Carteret constitution of
1664 gave women, as well as men, the following rights: "All
subjects of the King to be freemen; no person to be disquieted
or called in question in matters of religion; to every man or
woman arriving in the province, 'so many' acres of land,"
varying according to the status of the person and the time of
arrival. Mr. Whitemead, writing for the Historical Society
of New Jersey in 1858, says that there was a law passed in
1709 limiting the franchise to male freeholders having one
hundred acres of land or possessing fifty pounds ($133) of
money. But when the first State Constitution of 1776 was
drawn up, the old basis of individual freedom bobbed up again,
and New Jersey's magna charta thus early in the day gave the
franchise to "all inhabitants of full age who were worth fifty
pounds' proclamation money." What use the women of the State
made of this privilege before the year 1790 is not recorded.
It was a friend, Joseph Cooper, who first claimed the privilege
of the franchise for women on constitutional authority, and
asked the legislature to repeat the fact that women were
individuals. Women may have voted thereafter, but if they did
it was done without exciting opposition, and no comment on it
was aroused at the time. 

All the previous laws were repealed in 1797, and a new
law was enacted, conferring suffrage on all "free inhabitants
of the State of full age" who had acquired the previously mentioned
property qualifications," and it continued to explain
that "no person shall be entitled to vote in any other township
than the one in which he or she doth actually reside."

-2-

The women of New Jersey seem to have been practically invited 
to use the suffrage by the men of the State, according to the account
found upon historical records to the effect that they gathered together
in bands for a hotly contested Elizabethtown election in this
year of 1797. This election was for members of the Legislature, with
two candidates, John Condit, "Federal Republican," and William Crane,
"Federal Aristocrat," as contestants. The issue fired one of the
first big guns in the bitter Elizabethtown-Newark controversy, which
came to such a pass in 1807, and finally ended in making of Union a
separate county in 1857, and each of these two haughty towns a distinct
county seat.  John Condit belonged to Newark, and William
Crane to Elizabethtown, and it was believed that the two men would
pull about evenly at the polls. 

A Coup D'Etat.

The political leaders, men all, saw in the women's franchise
an opportunity to poll an unusual number of votes, and by a coup
d'etat carry Elizabethtown; so they brought up a band of women,
"just before the close of the polls," to vote for the "Federal
Aristocrat." As might have been expected, this caused a newspaper
outcry. Some of the editorial comments sound familiar, even in 1913,
116 years later. There was no charge of duplicity behind these comments,
and none of ill-behavior on the part of the women -- just the
bare fact, that a group of women had been taken, by a man leader of
Aristocrats, to the polls to make use of their votes. What
party bitterness may have instigated the newspaper's acrid sentences
has been forgotten; but the Newark Sentinel, in speaking of these
seventy-five women pretended to a terror lest they foredoom the
country to the "admission of females to office and to serve in the
diplomatic corps." It finally, and with irony, congratulated the
"Federal leaders of Elizabethtown for the heroic virtue displayed in
advancing in a body to the polls to support their favorite candidates.

Whether this newspaper criticism dampened the ardor of women,
or whether, as in later times, they aroused to an unusual act by
some supreme need of voting for their Elizabethtown candidate, those
passed-away ladies will not inform us. There are no further accounts
of females disturbing the sensitive feelings of males until 1802,
when the women of Hunterdon County burst out in the unholy act of
carrying an election which would otherwise have been lost. Circumstantial
evidence points to some undercurrent of activity during
this interval, and to a belief that there had been here and there a
group using the franchise privilege, for the law had been slowly
evolving, as if in answer to demands from somewhere. At first it
had been construed as applying only to single women and widows; but
afterwards all women over eighteen, "even negroes," were permitted
to vote, and at the Hunterdon County polls, just mentioned, "two or
three such" carried this close election. Mr. Whitehead, the historian,
is responsible for this equivocal "such." He was so overwrought
by the enormity of their desecration of the rights of government
by the people that he omits to make the antecedent of "such"
clear. It is not evident from the context whether this victory was
due to the fact that "such" were women or "negro women." He
continued, with ill-suppressed bitterness, to make the comment: "It is
remarkable that these proceedings did not sooner bring about a repeal
of the laws which were thought to sanction them." Let it be
constantly borne in mind that there was as yet no hint of fraud;
merely the offense of a close election carried by "such."

THE WOMEN'S WATERLOO.

In 1807 came the women's Waterloo. A new court house was to
be built in Essex County. Should it be built in Newark or
Elizabethtown? The fiercest rivalry came to a head in this contest;
for while Elizabethtown doubtless wanted the court house, the real
crux of the situation lay in the fact that the arrogance of Newark
had reached a point where it must be quelled at any cost, and several
places were in line for the honor. Strenuous efforts were put
forth to get the court house somewhere, almost anywhere except
Newark. That there was some deliberateness of purpose in raking in
all votes possible for this contest is indicated by a special legislative

-3-

act calling attention to the persons who might vote, an act
passed in November 1805, authorizing all the "inhabitants qualified
to vote for members of State Legislature to be qualified electors."
This must have prodded up the women. Possibly in view of criticism
and resentment that only wives were placed "on the political level of 
infants and idiots" -- it is unfortunate to be obliged to use this hackneyed
phrase of the present day, but as it was one of the statements
of an old historian concerning the situation, it is worth referring
to -- the judges decided that in the election of February, 1807, all
women, whether married or single, who were of full age and proper
property qualifications, should be entitled to vote for the much-contested
court house. 

In this election, according to the historian of the counties of
Essex and Hudson, "such animosity was engendered that it was not safe
for Newark people to visit Elizabeth" or contrariwise, and this
animosity does not appear to have been in the slightest degree connected
with the question of votes for women or to have arisen from its
menace. When one remembers that before 1790 the vote was counted by 
a show of hands, as at a town meeting, and that even after that, when
printed or written ballots were taken up, it was a personally conducted
sort of business, not managed with much expedition, it is no
wonder that one hears of this contested election lasting for three
days. It began at Day's Hill on February 19, 1807, and in the afternoon
illegal voting commenced, and was carried on with great boldness.
Next day at Elizabethtown there was even greater dishonesty,
and on the third day in Newark, when Aaron Munn was judge of election,
frauds were begun and carried on in every way known to the "ballot-box
stuffers" of the time. "Repeating" was resorted to by those who
would otherwise have scorned such acts. "Men usually honest seemed
lost to all sense of honor."  Women vied with men in illegal voting,
says one authority, and Mr. Elmer, Justice of the Supreme Court of
New Jersey, in his "Constitution of the Government of the Province
and State of New Jersey," adds that "females and colored persons were
allowed to vote without inquiry as to their property, and some persons,
and among them some females, boasted that they voted under different
names several times during the day and night while the polls
were open." "Gov. Pennington is said to have led to the polls a
strapping negress." "Men and boys disguised themselves as women to
assist Newark's vote"; and spies were sent to Elizabethtown from time
to time to see how affairs were going on there and calculate how many
more votes would be needed to keep ahead. "Men were brought down the
river in large gangs to cast their ballots when it was thought that
the election would be lost to Newark."

To rescue the situation, the gallant forefathers resorted to a
law passed by themselves, for themselves, and of themselves. This
law commences: "Whereas doubts have been raised and great diversities
in practice obtained throughout the State in regard to the admission
of aliens, females and persons of color, or negroes, to vote in the
elections, and also in regard to the mode of ascertaining property
qualifications of voters in respect of estates; therefore it was
enacted that no person except free white male citizens of the State
of the age of twenty-one and worth 50 proclamation money" should enjoy the franchise.

In passing this law of repeal of 1807, and in the revision xx
of the Constitution, which took place forty years after, there seems
to have been no active feminine protest, although there have been at
least two protests since recorded which will be written down in
history. The first was Lucy Stone, of Orange, N.J., who in
1853 wrote a letter to her tax collector returning her bill unpaid.
Said she, "My reason for doing it is that women suffer taxation and
yet have no representation, which is not only unjust to one-half of
the adult population; but is contrary to our theory of government.
For years some women have been paying their taxes under protest ....
the only course now left us is to refuse to pay the tax .... We believe
that when the attention of men is called to the wide difference
between their theory of government and their practice .... the sense
of justice which is in all good men will lead them to correct it ....


4

Then we shall cheerfully pay our taxes -- not till then. "The other
protestant was Miss Harriet Pearl Carpenter, of Newark, who within
the last few years demanded a vote upon the constitutional right of
the women of New Jersey. In order to make this a test case and
bring the matter before the lawmakers of the State, Miss Carpenter
presented herself at the polls to vote. The brief written for her
case by her attorney, Miss Mary Philbrook, has been called a perfectly
sound one by lawyers who have examined it. It is based upon
the repeated decisions of the Supreme Court, that any matter "being
fixed by State Constitution is not alterable by State government."
A decision of 1804 in a similar matter was to this effect, and another
in the case of Society vs. Morris recorded a Supreme Court verdict
that "Government cannot even for public purposes take away any
rights of the individual without compensation."

New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association
State Executive Office
State Trust Company Building, Park and North Avenues
Plainfield, N.J.
Telephone 1721
Copy of letter being circulated by the New Jersey Anti-suffragists. 
New Jersey Association Opposed To Woman Suffrage
Mrs. Carroll P. Bassett, President Summit
Office of the President, Summit, N.J. August, 1918
An Urgent Call To Action
A moment of supreme importance has arrived:
Anti-suffragists of New Jersey must rise to meet the present crisis and the opportunity. 
We have all been feeling that our days were too short - our hands too slow - and our purses too slim to accomplish what must be done and given as our part in the great business of the war; but we owe it now to the New Jersey boys who have the biggest part in hand, as well as to the New Jersey women who are standing back of those boys, what in their absence our beloved State shall continue to possess her sacred rights. 
The Federal Amendment seeks to destroy the most important preprogative that the states have title to - the power to determine who shall constitute their electorate. 
Happily our stanch and loyal supporters in the Senate of the United States have made necessary a postponement of final action on that question by the present Congress. The danger is by no means over, but time is given us for important and concerted action, and that time cannot - must not - be lost. 
Two things are immediately imperative. There must be a canvass of the State, and there must be systematic publicity given to our determined effort to save New Jersey from the fate that has overtaken New York. 
Our first and most pressing duty is to start the proposed canvass in order that we may present convincing evidence to legislators in Washington as well as in Trenton, that our contention that we are the majority is undeniable. Without such evidence that contention is futile. 
We have fortunately secured the services of Mr. Bossong, who has conducted such a canvass in other states with colossal results - and he is ready to begin in New Jersey. 
The expenses of this canvass will be large, but can be met if each branch or group of Anti-Suffragists will do its part. 
We ask each organization to acquaint its members with the importance of this effort and the necessity for all to help in making it a success. 
We enclose printed slips which we ask each anti-suffragist to send with a personal note to as many persons as she may think of as possible contributors. 
Don't forget that every dollar to defeat Woman Suffrage is a dollar towards winning the war, because Woman Suffrage in America will "give aid and comfort to the enemy."
We look to you, Anti-Suffragists of New Jersey, to show your patriotism and thus help to save your country. 
By order of the Board of Directors of New Jersey Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.
Margaret K. Bassett, 
President

HAVE THE SUFFRAGISTS 
A MONOPOLY 
OF PATRIOTISM?

Bill to Abolish Teaching of German 
in Public Schools of Nebraska 
Defeated Through 
Corrupt Bargain With 
Suffrage Senators. 

Officers of German-American Alliance 
Reciprocate by Allowing Presidential 
Suffrage Bill to Pass the Senate and 
Become a Law. 

THE NEBRASKA CONSPIRACY.
[From a communication to New York Times 
of March 16, 1918, by Mrs. James W. 
Wadsworth, President National Association 
Opposed to Woman Suffrage.]

In 1917 when war with Germany was 
imminent the patriotic people of Nebraska 
introduced in the Legislature a bill demanding 
that no more German be taught 
in public schools. This bill passed the 
lower house by a big majority. In the Senate 
it was opposed by officers of the German-American 
Alliance. Another bill was 
before the Senate at the same time to give 
Presidential suffrage to women. The suffrage
bill was hopelessly buried in committee, 
while the anti-German bill was in 
danger of passing. 

Consequently a political deal was effected 
and six suffrage Senators who, on April 
9, voted to sustain the anti-German bill 
changed their votes over night and on April 
10 - within a week after America's declaration 
of war - believed it an "inopportune 
time" to stop teaching German in Nebraska. 

"It was only through this tieup with the 
friends of the German propaganda," says 
the Lincoln (Neb.) Daily Star, "that the 
suffragists got their measure out of committee 
and secured its passage, they, in 
turn, lending support to the alliance in 
heading off the anti-Kaiser bill already 
passed in the lower house. 

"The finale occurred," adds the Star, 
"on the evening of April 17 at the Lincoln 
Hotel, where a dinner was given by Senators 
Mattes and Strehlow, German Senators; 
Val Peter, editor of a Kaiser publication 
in Omaha; C.A. Sommer of the German-American 
Alliance School Committee, 
and Fred Volop of Scribner, celebrating the 
defeat of the Trumble bill, at which Senator 
Sandall (father of the Suffrage bill) 
was the chief guest of honor, with Adams, 
Samuelson, and other distinguished friends 
of suffrage as fellow-honorees."

The conduct of the German Senators in 
surrendering to suffrage demands to save...


CELEBRATE DEFEAT OF TRUMBLE BILL

BANQUET AT LINCOLN HOTEL TUESDAY EVENING- 
NINETEEN SENATORS IN 
ATTENDANCE. 

Speakers Express Gratitude for Defeat of 
Measure to Repeal Mockett Law. 

Prominent German-American Alliance 
leaders of Lincoln and Omaha, and some 
of their political friends inside and outside 
the legislature, celebrated the defeat of the 
Trumble bill by the state senate a week 
ago, at an elaborate banquet given at the
Lincoln Hotel Tuesday evening by Senator 
Strehlow, of Douglas County and Val J. 
Peter, editor of the Omaha Tribune, a German 
language daily newspaper. 

About fifty were present. 

The Trumble bill was the measure repealing 
the Mockett law of 1913 under which 
instruction in the German language has 
been made a compulsory part of the course 
of study in public schools above the fourth 
grade in a number of communities. The 
house passed it by a big majority, but in 
the senate it was killed. 

Nineteen of the senators who voted 
against the Trumble bill were special guests 
at the banquet. Senator Howell, who had 
introduced a similar bill in the senate, was 
also present by invitation. Senator Sandall, 
who voted against the Trumble bill 
and thereby managed to get a woman suffrage 
measure on the sifting file, was one 
of the guests. Others were Senators Adams, 
Albert, Bennett, Buhrman, Bushee, Doty, 
Gates, Henry, Lahners, Mattes, Moriarty, 
Robertson, Samuelson, Soost, Spirk, 
Wilson of Dodge and Wilson of Frontier. 

House members absent. 

House members were not represented 
very extensively at the gathering. The only 
ones present from that branch of the legislature 
were Messrs, Keegan, and Segelke. 

In announcing the occasion of the feast 
Senator Strehlow stated that it was given 
to show the appreciation of himself and 
others for the votes cast by senators who 
aided in killing the Trumble bill. Several 
speakers referred to the bill during the 
evening and expressed gratitude to those 
who assisted in its defeat. 

Among those who were said to have 
taken a leading part in the affair were Senators 
Strehlow and Mattes, Fred Volop of 
Scribner, V.J. Peter, Omaha; Prof. Theo. 
Reed Reese, director of German singing 
societies; C.A. Sommer and Gus Beschorner 
of Lincoln. Most of these were accompanied 
by their wives.

STORY OF AN EYE-WITNESS

E.E. Wolfe, Reporter of Senate for the Lincoln 
Star, Names Suffrage Senators Who Struck 
Their Flags to German-American Alliance. 

Lincoln, Nebr., May 11, 1918. 
Dear Sir:

Referring to your inquiry of yesterday 
in regard to circumstances under which the 
Trumble bill to abolish German-language 
     

time. Neither bill had been reported out 
when the sifting committee took charge of 
the general file toward the close of the session. 
The senate was controlled by a group 
of which Senator John Mattes, an official 
of the Nebraska German-American Alliance, 
was the recognized head. He occupied 
the position of president pro tem of 
the senate and was also chairman of the 
sifting committee. 

     A motion was made one day to take the 
Trumble bill out of the hands of the committee 
on education, which was hostile to it, 
and place it at the head of the sifting file. 
The strong sentiment outside the legislature 
favoring the passage of the bill had made 
such an impression that for the time being
 the senate leaders were unable to head off 
this move. The motion prevailed and the 
bill was put at the head of the calendar, to 
be taken up and voted upon the following 
day. 

     At this time the partial suffrage bill was 
still in the hands of the sifting committee, 
where Senator Mattes and his aids had succeeded 
in preventing its being reported to 
the senate. It was generally understood 
that if the suffrage bill came out upon the 
floor it would pass, as some senators were 
unwilling to go on record against it, thought
they would not go to the length of voting
to bring it out over the head of the sifting
committee.  The only chance of passage 
which the bill had was for the sifting committee
to report it voluntarily.

The next morning after the Trumble bill
had been advanced to the head of the file
the suffrage bill was reported out by the
sifting committee, greatly to the surprise 
of many close observers of the legislative
situation.  Almost simultaneously the Trumble
bill was taken up in committee of the
whole, where another surprise followed.
Eight senators who had voted with the
majority on the previous day to advance
the Trumble bill changed front at this time
and supported a motion to indefinitely
postpone it.  This switching of votes resulted
in the bill being killed.  Subsequently
the suffrage bill was passed by the senate
and became a law.

Of the eight senators who changed their
votes in this peculiar manner, seven were
supporters of the suffrage bill.  They were:
Senators Adams, Bushee, Haase, McMullen,
Neal, Samuelson, and Sandall.  Senator
Sandall was the leader of the suffrage
forces and had charge of the bill on that
subject.  The other man who changed was
Senator Doty, an opponent to suffrage.

The tie-up between the suffragettes and
Kaiserites was a matter of publicity in the
state press at the time it took place.  I am
inclosing you a copy of an article which
appeared in the Lincoln Daily Star of April
18, 1917, telling about a banquet given by
the German-American Alliance to Senator
Sandall and other suffragists in recognition
of the aid given by them in defeating the
Trumble bill.  Senators Mattes and Strehlow
were both known to be affiliated with
the German-American Alliance and representing
it in the legislature.  Mr. Peter was 
the president of the state German-American
Alliance.  Mr. Sommer was the chairman of
its "school committee" and was the author
of the Mockett law for compulsory German-

        "It was only through this tie-up with the
friends of the German propaganda," says
the Lincoln (Neb.) Daily Star, "that the
suffragists got their measure out of committee
and secured its passage, they, in
turn, lending support to the alliance in
heading off the anti-Kaiser bill already
passed in the lower house. 
        "The finale occurred," adds the Star,
"on the evening of April 17 at the Lincoln
Hotel, where a dinner was given by Senators
Mattes and Strehlow, German Senators;
Val Peter, editor of a Kaiser publication in
Omaha; C. A. Sommer of the German-American
Alliance School Committee,
and Fred Volop of Scribner, celebrating the
defeat of the Trumble bill, at which Senator
Sandall (father of the Suffrage bill)
was the chief guest of honor, with Adams,
Samuelson, and other distinguished friends
of suffrage as fellow-honorees."
        The conduct of the German Senators in
surrendering to suffrage demands to save
the German language, and the conduct of
the suffrage Senators in changing their
votes on the German bill to save the cause
of votes for women, is equally discreditable
to all concerned. 
        E. E. Wolfe, in the Lincoln Daily Star
of Feb. 20, 1918, says of this incident:
        "I want to say for myself that I voted
for woman suffrage in 1914, advised with
Mrs. Barkley (head of the suffrage organization )
during the legislative session in regard
to the passage of the Norton bill, and
am now friendly to woman suffrage, both
state and national. But I am not friendly 
enough to it to overlook the unpatriotic
conduct of Senators who trimmed or traded
on a bill to get rid of the German language
in our public schools."
        The National and Nebraska Associations
Opposed to Woman Suffrage are now working
to have this measure referred to the
voters. In spite of the methods by which
it was passed, with the help of the German-American
Alliance, suffragists are bending
every effort to deny the voters of Nebraska
a chance to approve or repeal this bill
at the polls. 
                Alice H. Wadsworth, President.
        Washington, March 12, 1918.


evening and expressed gratitude to those
who assisted in its defeat.
        Among those who were said to have
taken a leading part in the affair were Senators
Strehlow and Mattes, Fred Volop of
Scribner, V. J. Peter, Omaha; Prof. Theo.
Reed Reese, director of German singing
societies; C. A. Sommer and Gus Beschorner
of Lincoln. Most of these were accompanied
by their wives.
-------------------------------
STORY OF AN EYE-WITNESS
----
E. E. Wolfe, Reporter of Senate for the Lincoln
Star, Names Suffrage Senators Who Struck
Their Flag to German-American Alliance. 
----
Lincoln, Nebr., May 11, 1918.
Dear Sir:
        Referring to your inquiry of yesterday
In regard to circumstances under which the
Trumble bill to abolish German-language
teaching in the public schools of Nebraska
failed of passage in the legislature of 1917,
I am sending you herewith certain newspaper
extracts bearing upon the matter
and will add such facts as are personally
known to myself and others who were
familiar with the situation. 
        There is no doubt that the defeat of the
Trumble bill was brought about through a
tie-up in the state senate between well-known
German-American Alliance leaders
and the principal supporters of the bill
granting limited suffrage to women. These
two elements in the legislature were opposed
to each other on the liquor question
and on many other matters and it occasioned
a great deal of comment when they
came together and acted in unison in killing
the Trumble bill. 
        There were a number of honest supporters
of suffrage in the senate who refused
to barter their Americanism even to get 
the ballot for women, but several of the
leaders apparently had no such scruples.
The outcome of the deal was the killing of
the Trumble bill and the passage of the
suffrage measure. 
        The house of representatives passed both
bills early in the session. They were sent
to the senate and held up there for a long 


Senators Adams, Bushee, Haase, McMullen,
Neal, Samuelson, and Sandall. Senator
Sandall was the leader of the suffrage
forces and had charge of the bill on that
subject. The other man who changed was
Senator Doty, an opponent to suffrage. 
        The tie-up between suffragettes and
Kaiserites was a matter of publicity in the
state press at the time it took place.
I am inclosing you a copy of an article which
appeared in the Lincoln Daily Star of April
18, 1917, telling about a banquet given by
the German-American Alliance to Senator
Sandall and other suffragists in recognition
of the aid given by them in defeating the
Trumble bill. Senators Mattes and Strehlow
were both known to be affiliated with
the German-American Alliance and representing
it in the legislature. Mr. Peter was
the president of the state German-American
Alliance. Mr. Sommer was the chairman of
its "school committee” and was the author
of the Mockett law for compulsory German-language
teaching in the schools, which the
Trumble bill sought to repeal. Mr. Volpp
was the treasurer of the state German-American 
Alliance and Messrs. Reese and
Beschorner were prominent members. 
        I also inclose articles from the editorial
page of the Lincoln Star in February 20,
1918, relative to the same matter. 
        I have no desire to injure the cause of
woman suffrage, as I am and have been one
of its supporters in this state, but I have
not hesitated to condemn the un-American
conduct of men in the Nebraska legislature
who, for the sake of gaining personal prestige,
in connection with the passage of a
suffrage bill, allowed the Kaiser's friends
to put his brand upon them. 
        This disgraceful deal was repudiated
at the recent special session of the legislature,
when the Trumble bill as re-introduced
at Governor Neville's request and
passed both houses under pressure of an
aroused public opinion demanding that
Kaiserism be banished from the schools of
Nebraska. 
        Hoping that this will meet your request
for information on the matter, I remain,
Very truly yours,
E. E. Wolfe.





Mrs. W. H. Huckabay
c/o Mrs. Violet

ASBURY PARK BARS ANTIS.

Bradley Closes Hall to Them as Being Dupes
of Rum Power.

Alleging that the women opposed to woman suffrage are unwittingly allowing themselves to be made the dupes of the liquor interests, 
James A. Bradley, founder of this city, sent to-day to the 
New Jersey Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage his refusal to rent
the beach auditorium for meetings which had been planned for this
place. He said the association had employed professional speakers and
asserted that the liquor interests contributed to the fund from which
they are paid. Mr. Bradley wrote:
"The liquor interests, which I hold in abhorrence, as I 
look at it, regard sincere ladies as yourself as allies
in their effort to crush the suffrage movement, because
they know that when women get the vote laws will be enacted 
protecting their homes from the curse of rum.

SUN---August 5th.

NEW JERSEY ASSOCIATION OPPOSED TO WOMAN SUFFRAGE

Miss Clara Vezin
Chairman of Legislative Committee
712 Grove Street, Elizabeth N.J.
Telephone 859
Office of President, Summit, N.J.

Miss Dayton, Honorary President
Trenton
Mrs. Carroll P. Bassett, President
Summit
Vice-Presidents
Mrs. Thomas J. Preston
Mrs. Garret A. Hobart
Mrs. E. Yarde Breese
Mrs. John R Emery
Mrs. Theodore C. Woodbury
Miss Clara Vezin
Miss Henrietta O. Magie
Miss Anne MacIlvaine
Mrs. Hamilton Fish Kean
Mrs. William Libbey
Mrs. Horace F. Nixon
Mrs. Henry M. Darcy
Mrs. Sherman B. Joost
Mrs. Henry L. Seligman
Mrs. Thomas B. Adams
Mrs. Robert C. Maxwell
Miss Elizabeth DeH. Kean
Mrs. A. P. McMurtrie, Recording Secretary
Mrs. Isaac C. Ogden, Corresponding Secretary, 31 Highland Avenue, Orange
Mrs. Charles R. Smith, Treasurer, 421 Ellison Street, Paterson
Mrs. O. D. Oliphant, General Secretary

AN URGENT CALL TO ACTION
July, 1918.

A moment of supreme importance has arrived!
Anti-Suffragists of New Jersey must arise to meet the present crisis and the opportunity.
We have all been feeling that our days were too short - our hands too slow -, and our purses too slim to accomplish what must be done and given as our part in the great business of war; but we owe it now to the New Jersey boys who have the biggest part in hand, as well as to the New Jersey women who are standing back of those boys, that in their absence, our beloved State shall continue to possess her sacred rights.
The Federal Amendment seeks to destroy the most important prerogative that the states have title to - the power to determine who shall constitute their electorate.
Happily our stanch and loyal supporters in the Senate of the United States have made necessary a postponement of final action on that question by the present Congress. The danger is by no means over, but time is given us for important and concerted action, and that time cannot - must not - be lost. 
Two things are immediately imperative. There must be a canvass of the State, and there must be systematic publicity given to our determined effort to save New Jersey from the fate that has overtaken New York.
Our first and most pressing duty is to start the proposed canvass in order that we may present convincing evidence to legislators in Washington as well as at Trenton, that our contention that we are the majority is undeniable. Without such evidence that contention is futile.
We have fortunately secured the services of Mr. Bossong who has conducted such a canvass in other States with colossal results - and he is ready to begin in New Jersey.
The expense of this canvass will be large, but can be met if each branch or group of Anti-Suffragists will do their part.
We ask each organization to acquaint its members with the importance of this effort and the necessity for all to help in making it a success.
We inclose printed slips which we ask each Anti-Suffragist to send with a personal note to as many persons as she may think of as possible contributors.
Don't forget that every dollar given to defeat Woman Suffrage is a dollar towards winning the war, because Woman Suffrage in America will "Give aid and comfort to the enemy."
We look to you, Anti-Suffragists of New Jersey, to show your patriotism and thus to help save your country.

By order of the Board of Directors of New Jersey Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.

Margaret K. Bassett,
President
Per A.C.A.

N J

NY Albany

[*T Case II Drawer 2     File A.
Anti
c 1895*]

WOMEN SUFFRAGE AND WAGES.

    The women who are agitating the giving of suffrage to women 
use as an argument to bring the workingwomen into sympathy 
with them the assertion that when women vote, all women will be 
employed at increased wages.  The fallacy of this argument is 
seen in the fact that so many men who are voters are idle, and 
also in the frequency of strikes; for if wages and suffrage bore 
any relative value there would be no men out of employment, 
and no need for any united demand for an increase of wages or 
protest against their decrease.
    The question to be considered carefully is whether the condition 
of the workingwomen will be bettered by allowing her the 
franchise.  Political economists assure us that the wages of labor, 
in the sharp competition among laborers, will naturally every gravitate 
toward the lowest point that will support life.  It is an 
acknowledged fact that wages can be kept up only by keeping 
the demand a little beyond the supply ; that is, by narrowing 
competition.  Everywhere the wage is regulated by demand and 
supply ; and as women enter the field as competitors with men, 
the result is always that instead of wages being increased for
women, they are lowered for men.  The reason of this is obvious : 
competition is sharper and closer among women than among 
men, and they can support themselves on lower wages.  Many 
girls, upon leaving school, enter into employment as a means 
of obtaining money for extra clothing or trinkets, and not as a 
means of livelihood : this is furnished them by the fathers and 
brothers by whom they are housed and fed.  They do not have 
to pay for rent, fire, light, food, or ordinary clothing ; and so they 
accept prices for labor that no man who has to provide for a 
family could accept.  When a merchant or a manufacturer can 
fill all the vacant places with girls who are not only willing, but 
anxious, to work for a low wage, will he stop to ask if he had not 
better employ a man at an advanced price of labor -- because he 
can vote?
    The question is asked seriously by a suffragist: "Do you

2 

supposed that girls will accept the pittance they now receive in 
factories, when they can vote?" I fail to see how the condition 
of things will be changed by the simple fact that so many times 
in a year women will cast their ballot. The price of labor cannot 
be made a legislative matter; or if it could, it could not be enforced.
I am told that there is not a factory in existence in New 
York State, to-day, that has not a long roll of names of girls who 
are begging to be employed. How are these girls to regulate 
their pay if they can vote? Are not the unemployed men already 
too numerous in our streets to-day? They cannot vote, and they are 
generally willing to be employed at any wages that may be 
offered. 
     We will, for the sake of the argument, allow an impossibility, 
namely, that when women vote, they will, by that simple reason, 
have accorded them increased wages. What then? Will our 
manufacturers be willing to open their mills and factories, closed 
on account of their inability to pay the price of labor to-day, and 
sell their goods at a loss, - will they, in Don Quixote spirit, fling 
open the doors for "the woman with a ballot in her hand"? 
Would it be wise, when so many men are unemployed and seeking 
labor, when communism, anarchy, and sedition are threatening 
our large cities, to add to these complications the unknown 
quantity dubbed "woman suffrage," with all of its power for evil 
as well as for good? 
     All professions, as well as other fields of labor, are open to 
women without the ballot. Why do they not avail themselves of 
these openings? Women physicians in the state hospitals receive 
from $1000 to $1500 a year; and yet the examination 
advertised in January by the New York State Civil Service Commission 
for women candidates failed for lack of applicants. 
     In literature women are as well paid as men for the same 
quality of work. It is stated authoritatively that the largest price 
ever paid in this country for a manuscript was received by a 
woman. The magazines make no discrimination, and the same 
rule obtains in art. On the stage and in music there is absolute 
wage equality of sex. If there is any distinction, it is in favor of 
the woman. 
      A fashionable dressmaker or milliner usually receives more 
extravagant profits than the tailor or hatter. 
     The first woman admitted to the bar in New York State was a 
teacher in the State Normal College at Albany, and she is there 

3 
still, and has been there many years since receiving her diploma. 
She has never been heard of in court, and has evidently never 
tried to avail herself of the privileges of her legal profession. 
     Wages will never be a question of the ballot. Low wages will 
obtain as long as there is illegitimate competition; and as long 
as young women enter the shop or factory as a bridge to span 
the interval between school and marriage, so long there will be 
unfair competition. 
     The workers in large proportion see this. When the protest 
against striking the word "male" from the Constitution was 
being signed in Albany, hundreds of young women employed in 
shops and factories came to the headquarters to sign the protest. 
One of them said that a suffrage petition had been handed her 
with the statement that if she could vote she would receive 
higher wages: to which she replied, "I am now receiving more 
than my father does, and he votes." 
     It is a wise policy that dictates the holding of a known good. 
Let us oppose the effort to grasp an unknown and untried system 
that may prove to be an illusive phantom, or worse. 
[Reprinted, with permission of the Albany Auxiliary Association, by the Massachusetts 
Association opposed to the extension of Suffrage to Women.]

The Anti Suffrgist 
Albany NY

LIBRARY.                                                                                                 
BOSTON EQUAL SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION                                            
         FOR GOOD GOVERNMENT                                                                             

6  MARLBOROUGH  STREET,  BOSTON.
          XII  1  wsd

[*  Mrs. Shaw
P   05    12*]
                                             WOMAN  SUFFRAGE  DEFEATS.

     A syndicate letter is going the rounds of the press giving what is termed the gains made by the women suffragists during the last fifty years.  It has been clearly proven in "Woman and the Republic" that neither Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Stanton or Miss Anthony knew the names of the proposers and defenders of the bill that opened the way in New York for all the liberal legislation that has followed.  During the constitutional convention of 1894, Mr. Church, of Allegany, presented an appeal from his county asking for the suffrage.  He said in part:  "Beginning in 1848, the male citizens of the State of New York, not at the clamor of women, as I understand it but actuated by a sense of justice, began to remove the disabilities under which women labored at the time.  Gradually, from that time on, the barriers had been stricken away until, in 1891, I believe, the last impediments were removed."
     A careful study of the laws of our States shows that the change in the laws did not originate in the suffrage movement ; that change of  law has not been so much sought for by the suffrage leaders, as a voice upon change of laws ; that not so much demand has been made for better laws as for woman suffrage ; that being held up to be the panacea for all women's wrongs.
     Women to-day in nearly every States of the Union stand on a par legally with men, or are raised upon the legal plane above man.  Suffrage to be granted to women should be considered only from the standpoint, first :  Will the right to vote confer upon women any benefit from which she is now deprived?  And second, will the States be benefitted by allowing all of its women to vote?
     That these questions have been decided in the negative by the States below, is proof that the suffrage cry of "gain" is "whistling in the dark."  These statistics are given from the time of the late presidential election to January, 1898.
     In Arizona, a woman suffrage bill was defeated by the Assembly.   
     In California a constitutional amendment conferring the full rights of suffrage upon women was defeated by the people at the election in November, 1896; and both branches of the Legislature of 1897 rejected a resolution to again submit the question to the people.

     In Connecticut the Legislature rejected all women suffrage
measures, including a bill to permit women to vote on the license
question, and one allowing tax-paying women to vote upon questions
involving the levying of taxes. 
     In Delaware the constitutional convention refused to strike the
word "male” from the election clause of the new Constitution. 
Similar action was taken with a motion to make the clause read
"every citizen."
     In Illinois it failed to be the one constitutional amendment
possible to be adopted.
     In Indiana, the Supreme Court handed down a decision denying 
the claim that women have the right of suffrage under the existing
Constitution.  The courts held that the Constitution proceeds on the
assumption that the suffrage is not an inherent or or natural right; and
that this is the assumption of the framers of all the constitutions in
the land.
     In Iowa a suffrage amendment to the Constitution was defeated.
     In Kansas, a bill to give women the right to vote for Presidential
electors was reported adversely by the committee on elections, and
the House refused to give it a place on the calendar for discussion. 
     In Kentucky, a bill permitting women to vote for school officers
and to be eligible to the office of school trustee was rejected.
     In Missouri, a resolution for a constitutional amendment conferring
the suffrage upon women was defeated
     In Massachusetts, a resolution providing for the submission of
a constitutional amendment striking the word "male" from the
Constitution was defeated ; also a bill to permit women to vote on
the license question; and propositions to confer municipal suffrage
and presidential suffrage upon women were defeated.
     In Maine, the judiciary committee of the Legislature gave the
petitioners for a municipal suffrage bill "leave to withdraw."
     In Montana, the Legislature defeated a proposed constitutional
amendment to confer the suffrage upon women.
     In Nebraska, the House defeated a resolution to submit a
woman's suffrage amendment to the Constitution; and the Senate
refused to consider a municipal suffrage bill.
     In Nevada, the Assembly defeated a woman suffrage bill.
     In New York, a resolution for a suffrage constitution amendment
was introduced into the Legislature, but defeated in the
judiciary committee.  A proposed woman's suffrage provision in the
Greater New York charter failed in the Legislature.
     In New Jersey, a proposed amendment to grant school suffrage
to women was defeated.


     In Oklahoma, the House on January 25th, 1897, defeated by a
decisive vote a bill to permit women to vote in the territory, and on
February 18th, reaffirmed the action.
     In Rhode Island, a resolution for a suffrage amendment to the
Constitution was defeated.
     In Vermont, a bill to confer municipal suffrage upon women
taxpapers was defeated.
     Woman Suffrage bills were defeated in Nova Scotia, in the
British House of Commons, later in the House of Lords, and still
later in Australia.  
     To this statement may be added the fact that the Assembly
Judiciary Committee of New York State on February 2d, 1898,
killed in committee the concurrent resolution to amend the Constitution
by providing for woman suffrage.  On March 3d, the suffragists
forced a hearing before the Judiciary Committee, who again voted
10-3, to not report favorably.
     In Massachusetts, three suffrage bills have been defeated.  On
February 14, 1898, a bill to amend the State Constitution by
striking out the word "male" was overwhelmingly defeated. 
The committee on constitutional amendments reported "leave to
withdraw" on that petition.  The election laws committee reported
"leave to withdraw" on the petition for municipal and license
suffrage, but the House decided to debate the license suffrage petition.
The result was that the House of Representatives refused by
a vote of 116 to 60 to substitute a license suffrage bill for the adverse
report made by the committee.
     In Iowa, on February 15, 1898, a bill to submit a suffrage
amendment to the people was defeated in the Assembly.
     The Ohio Legislature defeated, on February 28, 1898, a proposed
submission to the people of a woman suffrage amendment.
          Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell.
Albany, N.Y., March, 1898.

     Apply for leaflets to 13 Elk Street, Albany, N. Y.

(NY) American Constitutional
League

HOME RULE
Brief submitted to
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January, 1918

Against Proposition for Constitutional 
Amendment compelling the States
to adopt Woman Suffrage

"What I am perfectly clear about is
that in the present session of Congress
our whole attention and energy should
be concentrated on the vigorous and 
rapid and successful prosecution of the
great task of winning the war."
THE PRESIDENT—December 4, 1917.

AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL LEAGUE
27 William Street
New York City

2

above all ignorance of the history and politics of the United States, to seek to change this fundamental principle of our government.  For this principle the Democratic Party has always loyally stood.  In the platform of its national convention in 1912, it made the following declaration :

     "Believing that the most efficient results under our system of government, are to be attained by the full exercise by the states of their reserved sovereign powers, we denounce the efforts of our opponents to deprive the states of any of the rights reserved to them."

     In its National Platform of 1916 the Democrats declared :

   "There is gathered here in America the best of the blood, the industry and the genius of the whole world, the elements of a great race, and a magnificent society too be melted into a mighty and splendid nation."

     "We, therefore, condemn as subversive of this Nation's unity and integrity, and as destructive of its welfare, the activities and designs of every group or organization * * * which is calculated and tends to divide our people into antagonistic groups."

     This expressly condemns the suffrage organization which is pressing this Congress to submit to the Legislatures in forty-eight States an amendment to the Constitution respecting which the people of those States are now divided and the discussion of which during the war will destroy "that unity of sentiment and national purpose so essential to the perpetuity of the Nation and its free institutions." On this platform Woodrow Wilson was elected.

     II.  What the Constitution  now  declares:

     "The House of Representatives shall be composed of members, chosen every second year by the people of the several States, and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature." (1)

     The Constitutional Amendment as to the election of Senators is as follows:
______________
(1) Article I, Section 2, Constitution.


3

        "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two senators from each State, elected by the people thereof for six years, and each senator shall have one vote."

        "The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for the most numerous branch of the state legislatures."

        Here then we have a recent vote of Congress, ratified by the States, for the maintenance of the principle of American federal government that suffrage is to be regulated by the several States.
        The provision of Section 1, Article 2, in reference to the election of the President is similar:

        Article II, Section 1, "Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress."

        It is Thomas Jefferson to whom the Democratic Party has always looked as its founder.  To the principles of democratic government formulated by Thomas Jefferson the Party in the National Convention of 1912 reaffirmed its devotion.  This great man in a letter to Madison, February 8, 1786, thus expresses himself :

        "With respect to everything external, we be one nation only, firmly hooked together.  Internal government is what each state should keep to itself." (2)

        But it was not alone Jefferson who advocated this doctrine.  Whatever differences there might be in regard to the powers to be entrusted to the general government, the Federalists as well as the Democrats were agreed in devotion to the principle of local self-government.  In the debates in Connecticut on the adoption of the Federal Constitution Oliver Wolcott said :

        "The Constitution effectually secures the States their several rights.  It must secure them for its own sake, for they are the pillars which uphold the general system." (3)

        We have on this subject the authority of one of the authors of the Constitution; who with Madison and Jay, united in the
______________
(2) 1 Tucker (J. Randolph) Const, U. S. 317.
(3) 2 Elliott Debates 2 Ed. 202.

4
composition of the celebrated letters now published in one volume 
as the Federalist, which advocated effectively the ratification of 
our Constitution; - a man whom we delight to honor, Alexander 
Hamilton. In his speech in the convention of New York, he used 
this memorable language:

"Were the laws of the Union to new-model the internal 
police of any State; where they to alter or abrogate at a blow 
the whole of its civil and criminal institutions; were they to 
penetrate the recesses of domestic life and control in all respects 
the private conduct of individuals, there might be more force in 
the objection; and the same Constitution which was happily calculated 
for one State, might sacrifice the welfare of another." (4)

"The blow aimed at the members must give fatal wound 
to the head; and the destruction of the States must be at once a 
political suicide. Can the national government be guilty of this 
madness" (5) 

These memorable statements of the fathers of the Republic 
were echoes by Chief Justice Marshall, delivering the judgment 
of the Supreme Court in M'Culloch v. State of Maryland: (6)

"No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of 
breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding 
the American people into one common mass."

And now to conclude this reference to the 
teachings of the wisest of American statesmen, we quote from another great 
 Virginian, who was for years Chairman of the Judiciary Committee 
of this House, J. Randolph Tucker. (7)

"As the representatives are, as we have shown, representatives 
of the States according to their respective numbers, and 
are to be elected by the people of the several States, it is obvious 
that the people of the State should designate the voters who 
should voice its will."

By strict adherence to these sacred principles, fundamental 
in the United States Constitution, we have prospered. Where 
we have deviated from them we have suffered.  

(4) Ibid., pp. 267, ‘8.
(5) Ibid., p. 353.
(6) 4 Wheaton 316.
(7) Tucker, Const. U.S. 394.


5
III. The question of women suffrage is of less importance 
than the right of each State to regulate the suffrage 
according to the judgment of its own citizens.

The suffragists advocate the adoption of a Constitutional 
Amendment, which would prevent each State from regulating 
this important subject in a manner suited to its needs.  How unjust 
and undemocratic that would be. Colorado for example has 
a population of only 975,190. The population of Pennsylvania 
is 8,591,029, nearly nine times as many. That of Texas is 
4,472,494. That of Virginia is 2,202,522; that of Massachusetts,
 3,747,564. The entire population of nine suffrage states is less 
than that of Pennsylvania. Wyoming has only 182,264, Nevada 
only 108,736. Let them regulate their own affairs. But why, 
on a vote by States, allow the minority to impose on the women 
of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Massachusetts and Texas, a burden 
which is odious to them. (8)
This House is burdened with momentous duties. It has to 
deal with raising billons of dollars; it is charges with the duty 
of ascertaining how these sums, taken from the hard earned 
dollars of the American people, shall most wisely be expended 
for the good of the whole. It deals with great problems of interstate 
and foreign commerce. These subjects are within its 
present jurisdiction. In the campaign of 1916 the platforms of
 both parties recognized "the right of each State to settle the 
suffrage question for itself." The people sent you here on this 
basis. They knew the limits which the Constitution places 
upon the federal government; they understood the powers of 
the several State Legislatures; and they sent you here to do 
your duty under the Constitution and not to break down its 
fundamental principles. It is argued that you are asked only 
to submit this question to the people. That is a mistake. The 
vote will be by States. Each State has one vote, and only one. 
In this House each member votes for a proportionate part of 
the whole people. You represent the American people more 
fully than any Legislature to which the amendment would be 
submitted. 
We believe in the authority of the Union, but equally do we

(8) These figures are from World Almanac, 1917, p. 747.

6

believe in protecting the rights of each individual State.  It is only by preserving the security and authority of each that the happiness and prosperity of the whole can be attained.  Happiness and prosperity depend upon obedience to law.  Home rule is the law of America.

     IV.  This question ought not to be submitted during the war.

     Political suffrage for women is an experiment.  In the larger states which have a population composed of diverse elements, the suffragists concede that the women of these states have not been educated for a proper exercise of their new privilege.  They are undertaking the work of education.  They are doing this when the attention of our people is to a great degree absorbed in the war, in the equipment of our brave soldiers with arms and clothing and supplying them with food. in providing them with decent quarters and caring for them when wounded or when sick.  It is unpatriotic to put upon our people in the non-suffrage states the burden of again discussing this question during the war, and to take from the needs of the Nation the energy and money which should be devoted to it.

     V.  The Amendment Unjust.

     The peculiar injustice of the Federal Amendment is that it deprives the states of the power to make any change in the regulation of the suffrage.  If the new voters prove unfitted for their new responsibilities in any particular State that State will have no power to change its Constitution.  This sacred right would be taken from it by a vote in which each State votes as a unit and in which a majority of the units are not a majority of the population.  To use again the language of the Democratic Platform, "the world has  a right to be free from every disturbance of its peace that has its origin in aggression or disregard of the rights of peoples and of Nations."  The very object of this war, as repeatedly declared by our Nation, is to secure the right of local self-government.  To use the language of the president, "we are fighting for the rights of Nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and obedience."


                                                           7

    If, for example, the women of New York to  whom the right to vote has just been given by their own State should find the burden of the suffrage oppressive, and should be of opinion that they would gladly be relieved of its responsibilities and should ask for a rescission of the New York State Suffrage Amendment this Federal Amendment would deprive them of any power in the matter.  They have not chosen the Legislature to which this amendment would be submitted.  It was not elected on any such issue.
     If the federal form of government on which the state-right theory is based was ever needed to relieve the difficulty of governing a vast territory with conflicting requirements it is needed now while the "pooling" interests due to war is subjecting local self government to great strain.  We do not contend for extreme State sovereignty as against National sovereignty, but merely for the measure of self-rule in local affairs implicit in the federal form of government and necessary to safety.

                                                                AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL LEAGUE,
                                                                                      CHARLES S. FAIRCHILD,
                                                                                                 President,
                                                                                       EVERETT P. WHEELER,
                                                                                                  Chairman,
                                                                                        SYDNEY PETERSON,
                                                                                                   Secretary.

Brooklyn NY
Auxiliary

Rochester Anti-Suffrage Association 
Vote NO 
on Woman Suffrage 

BECAUSE 80% of the women either 
do not want it, or do not care. 
BECAUSE it means competition of 
women with men, instead of cooperation. 
BECAUSE 80% of the women eligible 
to vote are married and can only 
double or annul their husband's 
votes. 
BECAUSE it can be of no benefit 
commensurate with the additional 
expense involved. 
BECAUSE it is unwise to risk the 
good we already have for the evil 
which may occur. 

EASY TO REMEMBER 
VOTE NO IN NOVEMBER 

COPY  OF  PREAMBLE  AND  PROTEST

     We, American women, citizens of the States of New York, protest against the proposal to impose the obligation of suffrage upon the women of this State, for the following, among other reasons:
     1. Because suffrage is to be regarded not as a privilege to be enjoyed, but as a duty to be performed.
     2. Because hitherto the women of this State have enjoyed exemption from this burdensome duty, and no adequate reason has been assigned for depriving them of that immunity.
     3. Because conferring suffrage upon the women who claim it would impose suffrage upon the many women who neither desire it as a privilege nor regard it as their duty.
     4. Because 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's suffrage by doubling the vote will improve its quality.
     5. Because the household, not the individual is the unit of the State, and the vast majority of women are represented by household suffrage.
     6. Because the women not so represented suffer no practical injustice which giving the suffrage will remedy.
     7. Because equality in character does not imply similarity in function, and the duties and life of men and women are divinely ordered to be different in the States, as in the home.
     8. Because 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 more efficient performance of their present work than to divert them to new fields of activity.
     9. Because political equality will deprive women of special privileges hitherto accorded to her by the law.
     10. Because suffrage logically involves the holding of public office, and office-holding is inconsistent with the duties of most women.

     Copy of Preamble to the Protest prepared by Committee of Brooklyn Women, which was extensively signed, and sent to the Constitutional Convention in May. 1894.
                                                                           Brooklyn Auxiliary,
                                                          New York State Association Opposed to 
                                                                              Woman Suffrage

N York State
Literature

Votes for Women Means 
Jury Duty for Women 
     Suffragists leaders are careful never to mention to their audiences in the 
East or in the South the subject of jury duty for women. When questioned 
about it, one of them replied: "Oh, that can be arranged very pleasantly." 
Let us see how it is arranged in the States where women vote: 
     For many weeks of the spring of 1917 a big I. W. murder trial was 
in progress in Seattle. Six of the jurors were women. Mrs. Sarah J. 
Timmer was juror No. 11. She had received word before she entered the 
box that her children had contracted the measles. Calling the jury in, Judge 
Ronald said to Mrs. Timmer: "Mrs. Timmer, I have been informed that 
you are worried about your children. I am powerless to let you go home, 
but both sides agreed that I may communicate to you any word your family 
physician desires to convey. Don't let your attention be attracted by anything 
but the trial. We'll keep you advised and you will have no cause to 
worry. Remember, no news is good news." (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 
March 8, 1917.) It must be a grand and glorious feeling for a woman to be 
drawn as a juror on a murder case, likely to last two months, when the 
children of her family have just come down with the measles! 
     A month later the Seattle Post-Intelligence said: "The confinement 
imposed on juries in murder trials is beginning to tell on most of the 
members of the Tracy jury, especially the women jurors, the majority of 
whom have families. During the last month numerous stipulations have 
been arranged between attorneys for both sides, allowing children of the 
jurors to see their parents for a few minutes in the presence of witnesses. 
The defense attorneys estimate that it will be nearly two weeks yet before 
they are through submitting evidence." 

Women of Wealth Manage to Escape Jury Duty 
     One of them told an Eastern friend how she did it. She said: "I was 
determined I would not serve on that jury, so I go a doctor to give me 
something which would make me violently sick for a little while; then I 
called another doctor, who, finding me a very sick, gave me a certificate that 
I was not able to serve on the jury." The poor man's wife can not afford to 
pay two doctors' bills to escape the disagreeable duty which suffragists 
have forced upon her, so she is obliged to serve. 
     Women in the suffrage States are serving on juries in murder cases, 
commercialized vice cases and whiskey cases. 
     For the April, 1917, term of court in Seattle 21 women jurors were 
drawn. 
     Do you like the prospect for your wife and daughters? If not, 
Wake up and 
Defeat Woman Suffrage 
1

Count the Cost 
To-day the Government asks you to 
count the cost of every item of 
daily living. We ask you to count 
the cost of giving women the vote. 

YOU CANNOT double the electorate 
without increasing the cost of 
government. 
YOU CANNOT increase the cost 
of government without increasing 
taxation. 
YOU CANNOT increase taxation 
without raising the cost of living. 

Count the Cost! 
Work Against Woman Suffrage! 
2 

To the Farmer

Would you be willing to pay more taxes in
order to see TWO persons trying to do ONE
man's job?
You know you wouldn't send two men --
or a man and a woman -- to get something
that one can fetch while the other can be
doing other work, would you?
You wouldn't pay two people to drive a
team under the impression that it would
make the team go faster or keep to the road
better, would you?
Yet this is just what the few women who
want VOTES are trying to tell you is reasonable
in POLITICS.
 LISTEN -- "Votes for Women" is nothing new. Don't 
let the fair suffrage speaker talk about "when women vote"
to you. Women got the vote in New Jersey in 1776 -- two
days before the Declaration of Independence was signed.
They lost it there in 1844, on account of election frauds in
which the women took part.
WYOMING has had woman suffrage for 48 years -- it 
has the highest percentage of public servants -- people on
salary from the state -- and the lowest proportion of married
men in the United States!
COLORADO  has had woman suffrage for 24 years -- it is
the only state which has caused the people of the WHOLE
COUNTRY to send Federal soldiers into its territory
TWICE IN TEN YEARS to protect property, and the
LIVES OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN!
Ask the suffragist what women ever DID
WITH THE BALLOT except to increase
taxes and make the administration weaker.  

3

TAXATION AND SUFFRAGE
               ----------
 The battle cry of the American Revolution, "Taxation without Representation is Tyranny,"
has been distorted into a suffrage slogan.
 Suffragists pretend that the phrase means "Taxation without votes is Tyranny." There
is no connection between the revolt of the American colonists against the levying of taxes by the 
English parliament, in which they had no representation, and the contribution of tax-paying women
for the support of the government under which they live. The colonists never contended
that taxation and votes went together.

Property is taxed, not the owner.

The law does not ask the age, sex, nationality, or any other details about property ownership,
but applies the tax on the property, regardless of ownership. 

Taxation and the vote have no connection whatsoever in the United 
States. The millionaire and the laboring man have equally one vote each.

Thousands of men as well as women in this country are taxed without being able to vote.
Minors and aliens are taxed on their property, but are excluded from the franchise. The residents
of the District of Columbia are taxed, but may not vote. Men may own taxable property
in a dozen different states yet can only vote in one.

Property is taxed for the support of Government; for the maintenance of public schools;
for clean streets, good roads, fire departments, and lastly, and chiefly, for protection. Taxes are paid
by men and women to secure this protection. 

But who affords this protection to the property of both men and women?

No one suggests that this duty should be shared equally by men and women. 
A woman's property as well as man's must be protected by a man. 

NEW YORK STATE ASSOCIATION OPPOSED TO WOMEN SUFFRAGE 
280 MADISON AVE., NEW YORK CITY
SEPTEMBER, 1917
10

Woman's Progress 
VERSUS 
Woman Suffrage 

Published by the "New York State Association Opposed 
to Woman Suffrage."

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 the State. [*x*]
[* x Nevertheless, the greatess workers for the progress
of women spoken of herein were all and are still the
greatess suffragists*]

     Evidence that woman suffrage is not deemed progressive
is seem 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. [*? a N.Y.er wrote this.*]

     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.  [* ? Without the
women's votes where would these states
stand. Way behind where they do.*]

4      WOMAN'S PROGRESS

    If the suffrage movement were to disband to-day 
and no woman ever vote, not a single great interest 
[*not the interests in the slang sense at least.*]
would suffer. None of woman's wide philanthropies 
would be harmed; women's colleges would be unaffected;
the professions 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;[* *but better laws would be put off.*] 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; [* *1 *Lie*] with socialism as against representative government; [* X X Lie*]
with radical labor movements as against 
the best organized and unorganized efforts of wage-
earning men and women; [*↑ ↑ Lie*] with "economic independence" 
and the co-operative household as against 
family life and the home. [* ° ° Lie*]
    Higher education for woman has been the special 
mark of her progress in this era; but the men and 
women who founded her colleges receive neither
inspiration nor aid from suffrage workers who strove 
[*V V Beg pardon, Suffrage leaders started
the movement for Woman's HIgher Education*] 
chiefly to "break down the sex barrier in education" 
and directed their efforts to the advocacy of 

VS. WOMAN SUFFRAGE     5

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. [*+ + Rip Van Winkle has taken to shirts*] 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.
    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.
    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

[* That number is however increasing
steadily and surely*]

6          WOMAN'S PROGRESS 

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 were no debates, and 


VS WOMAN SUFFRAGE          7

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
adaption 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

8      WOMAN'S PROGRESS

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 right to a home and the wherewithal to support
a family.
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 function 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. [*and the object
of suffragists as well. For as long as women*]
HELEN KENDRICK JOHNSON.
[*x Lie. do not govern themselves they 
will be ungovernable.*]

General information and Pamphlets by the following
writers: Francis Parkman, Abram S. Hewitt, Rossiter
Johnson, Francis M. Scott, Goldwin Smith, Rev. Lyman
Abbott, Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, Miss Adeline Knapp,
Ida M. Tarbell, Priscilla Leonard, Annie Nathan Meyer,
may be obtained of the Secretary, Mrs. George Phillips, 377
West End Avenue, New York.

NEW YORK HOTEL REVIEW
Oct. 20, 1917
Editorial

CHARLES E. GEHRING
     Of course, we love them. We couldn't get along without them. But we can get along without their active participation in politics so far as actually voting is concerned. Even without the vote their influence sways many elections that the vast majority of good wives and husbands are agreed on candidates before daddy goes to the polls. 
THE DEAR LADIES AGAIN
But there is that percentage of women, mostly meddlesome and notoriety-seeking, who have been so fortunate as to escape household duties, who must occupy their time in some mischief, and it must be acknowledged that they have made considerable progress in their favorite "wear-the-pants" game throughout the country. Why they've even taken away Dudley Field Malone's "pants." Poor boob!
     But what I am driving at is to tell our readers that in every state where the vote was given to the fair sex prohibition and other blue law legislation now prevails or has made deep inroads. At least until women are willing to take a reasonable view on questions so vitally affecting the liberty and prosperity of a community without negatively affecting its morals, they should be denied the vote.
     Their exhibition at the White House even within the last few days is disgraceful. A few years may change conditions, but this year our vote will fall against the women suffrage amendment. 
     One grouch in a hotel can cast a gloom over every other guest in it, make life miserable for himself, upset the equanimity of the office force, pester the proprietor and arouse a resentful spirit in every department of the house. To the real dyed-in-the-blood grouch, everything is wrong, including himself. 
HAVE PITY ON THE GROUCH
In his moments of reflection, for he does have such moments, this fact comes home to him with a compelling force, and in the quiet of his apartment, when such moods are upon him, he condemns himself more severely than do the persons he has offended. In most cases the grouch is a creation of the hotels themselves.
     He has pandered to, courtesies to, smiled upon and petted until he is obsessed with the idea that he is a superior service and treatment. But the principal cause of the grouch being the grouch he is, lies in overeating. He is usually a glutton, though if such an insinuation were made in his august presence, he would resent it. It may be summed up briefly that the grouch is a man with a grouchy liver made so by over-indulgence at the table and under-indulgence in physical exercise. He's to be pitied but not petted. In the days to come, the food conservation regime may redeem him and transport him from the valley of gloom to the hilltop of sunshine. 
     The Supreme Court of the United States never intended that relief granted to a petitioner should be controverted into a medium for extortion. Equity can be brought to apply in the matter of copyrighted music privileges as in anything else. 
THAT MUSIC EXTORTION
     The extortionate fees demanded by a small handful of authors, composers and publishers are little less than a hold-up which would make Jesse James turn in his grave.
     Gradually, this so-called society of copyrighted music grafters are getting in their work from state to state. California is the latest to look into the muzzle of its United States Supreme Court-protected gun. 
There appear to be two ways to end this extortion. One by asking relief of the same Court because of the abuse of privilege. The other by united action in advocating legislation in Congress.
     This is in no sense a political issue or question.
     In England the fee for playing copyrighted music is set at the maximum of €5 ($25) per year.
     That is not an unreasonable charge. Our hotel and restaurant men are always more than reasonable -- they are liberal.
     Why then subject them to extortion?
     Nearly every hotel association in this country has discussed this matter.
     The New York State and City Hotel Associations stood the gaff and spent many thousands of dollars fighting the case through the courts. The decision was based on the existing law. 
     The American Hotel Association can develop and prosper only on achievement.
     President Robinson, here is your opportunity.
     Hotel men have claimed that while associations meet and talk and celebrate -- they stop there. Let us disprove this assertion.
     Every sane representative in both houses of Congress will vote for a measure granting relief from extortionate demands.
     One congressman or senator from each state at least should be pledged to such a measure.
     The American Hotel Association should draw the measure and organize during adjournment to fight it through at the next session.
     If the American Hotel Association succeeds in this matter alone its future is assured.
     Why have the hotel and restaurant fraternity bro[?] beaten out of millions of dollars?
     What answer, President Robinson?

     The critical guest should suggest a practical rem[?] otherwise he descends from the height of a critic to [?] level of a common scold.


[*Buffalo NY*]

From Buffalo (New York) Express, 1897.

               THE SILENT WOMAN.

AN EXPRESSION OF ANTI-SUFFRAGIST SENTIMENT--VOTING IS A 
DEAD ISSUE--THE LEADING WOMEN OF A WESTERN STATE
INDIFFERENT TO THE MATTER--SUFFRAGE LECTURES
IGNORED--MUST THE OPPOSITION BREAK SILENCE IN ORDER 
TO BE EFFECTIVE?--FUTURE OF SUFFRAGISTS.

     A New York woman who has spent the winter in a leading city of one of the middle Western States, enjoying exceptional opportunities for meeting the women who are its leaders in social and club life, was asked recently by the Anti-suffrage League of New York, of which she is a member, to make an initiatory movement for the organization of a States anti-suffrage society in the city where she was a guest.  After laying the subject before the women who might be properly chosen to head such a movement, those identified with the best social and intellectual life, her answer to Anti-Suffrage League of New York in substance was as follows:
     "The women of this city are not interested in the suffrage movement; and they fairly represent the women of the State. They look upon the question as a dead issue.  They  say--' Why organize to oppose what we care so little about?  And then, the anti-suffragists of New York are settling the matter for the whole country.' "

     The New York woman had noted that the question never came up in the woman's clubs of the middle-west metropolis.  She had enjoyed that feature of discussions, after what she had known in the clubs at home--where the political equality of woman was rung in, no matter its remoteness from the subject in hand.  Nor was it the indifference of ignorance.  Having had enough of the subject it had been dropped.  A lecture by a prominent suffragist, before one of the Greek letter societies of the university of the city, the lecturer, a graduate of the university, had excited little interest, not even a note of opposition, eloquently as she had depicted the wrongs of her sex, and striven to kindle revolt.  It would have been folly to organize

an anti-suffrage league in such a community, and yet, the suffragists are planning a raid upon the town, and possibly the Silent Woman will yet see that she made a mistake.

It has taken nearly half a century to convince the Silent Woman of those States where the suffragist has a strong support, and assumes to speak for all the women of her State, county and town in her demand for the ballot, that unless she makes open protest against having the ballot thrust upon her against her will, she may yet find herself burdened with what she must not only accept but use; and that her silence is helping the suffragist to win a victory quite as much as if she signed suffragist petitions and spoke from suffragist platforms.
The Silent Woman has been forced, in New York State, at least, to take sides; to protest against being included in the venerable prelude  of the majority of suffrage petitions; "We the women of," etc., etc.
As long as the male citizen would speak for her, and vote for her right to reject the ballot, the Silent Woman had been more than satisfied not to appear in the arena where the suffragists delighted to be.  But when the male citizen chivalrously bowed himself off the field, leaving the women to settle their differences of opinion between themselves, declaring that he was ready to give or without the ballot, as a majority should decide, what help was there for the Silent Woman but to gird herself for battle? to defend her right to be ballotless if so she chose to remain.
Noiselessly, with no flourish of bulletins or platform harangues, the Silent Woman has been in evidence already, on several notable occasions, the dexterity of her sudden checkmate a surprise to her adversary. What did the bulky petition that the suffragist lay before the New York Constitutional convention (an unending list of signatures gathered without discrimination) amount to when offset by the protest of the Silent Woman -- every signature of weight -- "quality counting more than quantity,"  a protest against having the word "male" struck out from the Constitution, as the suffragist pray that it might be. Then, for the first time, the Silent Woman felt her power; and the suffragist recognized the fact "tyrant man" was as nothing in comparison to the Silent Woman. And when the suffragist confronted the Silent Woman again at the St. Louis Convention, saw her actually standing up in a committee and 


protesting in the name of the great majority of the women of the country against the plank the suffragist had ready for the Republican platform (another victory,) what wonder that the suffragist lost her temper quite, and one of the results of that defeat has been the decision to postpone active warfare in New York State for awhile, "whose conservative ideas and a large illiterate population," (to quote from Miss Anthony ("prevent that State from falling into line as soon as some of the Western States undoubtedly will.”

The tactics of the opposing forces have little in common. The suffragist declares that the Silent Woman is a foe in ambush, so secret are her movements, so sudden her descent when least expected. New York State is now well covered with anti-suffrage leagues: as are some of the New England States. There is no holding of conventions, save parlor conferences, unreported by the press. The Silent Woman is proving that almost any one of the leaders of her  cause can do quite as much by personal visits as a platform woman can do on the other side in addressing a mass-meeting.
The Anti-Suffrage Leagues publish and distribute a vast number of leaflets, but they have no special organ; nor does the Silent Woman, like the suffragist, stop her paper when it advocates what she thinks an injury to her cause; nor has she learned to maintain a "Woman's column" in some prominent daily, a column that she can control so far at least as to give it an anti-suffrage trend, if in only a single item or paragraph.

"I don't want the ballot and I won't have it" That sums up all that the average Silent Woman cares to say upon the subject. She is not to be led into a debate with the suffragist. She knows the suffrage argument by heart. Has she not heard it for nearly fifty years? Why waste breath in denying that she is "the slave of man"; that she is "in financial slavery"; that she in indebted to the suffrage movement for legal rights, and for all the advance made by her sex within the last fifty years? The fundamental statements of the suffragists are fallacies to her, particularly that one before all others a foundation-stone: "Man is bad, woman is good, man is a failure as a politician; woman would be a success; the ballot in the hand of a woman will remedy all the ills of higher civilization. ."
The Silent Woman knows better; why discuss the subject? She knows how the woman voted in the three States where they could at the last Presidential election, and gives thanks that there

are no more stars on the suffrage banner.  She does not believe in the total depravity of man, nor in the total righteousness of woman.  She believes that the vote of the illiterate foreign woman of New York would not hasten the arrival of the millenium, and she knows that she can do more for the advancement of every true reform without the ballot than with it.

     There is a pathetic phase in the suffrage ranks just now--an annual eulogizing of the venerable veterans of the movement upon their birthdays--the laying of anticipatory laurels upon their memory.  When that is over--when the heroes of the lost Waterloos have disappeared, who is to take their places?
     The coming leader of the suffragists has not yet put in an appearance.  The signs are that when the veterans are gone, disintegration of the party will follow--petty jealousies dividing it into petty cliques never to be consolidated into a grand army.
     The suffrage movement has been a grand safety-valve for the discontented woman in revolt, a type as old as creation, coeval with that of the dicontented man.  Next?  Something must be already emerging from what Carlyle called the "endless vortices of froth-logic," to fill the gap the suffrage movement will leave in its wake.

     "The signs of the times cease to alarm me," wrote Lowell to a friend, "and seem as natural as to a mother is the teething of her seventh baby.  I take great comfort in God.  I think He is considerably amused with us sometimes, but that He likes us on the whole, and would not let us get at the match-box so carelessly as He does unless He knew that the frame of His universe was fire-proof.  How many times have I seen the fire-engines of Church and State clanging and lumbering along to put out--a false alarm.  And when the heavens are cloudy what a glare can be cast from a burning shanty."

     "It may be a false alarm," says the Silent Woman, "but we don't' want the ballot and we won't have it--so there."
                                                      A. S. W.

[*P
05
A 20*]

                        Mrs. Lyman Abbott on Woman Suffrage.
                                     ADDRESS BEFORE THE 
             ANTI-WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION OF ALBANY, N. Y.

     So much has been so well said on Woman Suffrage that I hesitate to speak to you on the familiar topic, but a new voice under new circumstances may sometimes give a new significance to old ideas, and at the present moment, when the forces demanding the suffrage for women are so active and so aggressive, we, whose convictions are opposed to any extension of the suffrage, should be ready to give reasons for our opinion and should be sure that we use the best methods for our defense.
     These two aspects of our subject I wish you to consider with me this morning:  First, What are the grounds of our opposition to the suffrage, and, Second, What methods should we use to protect ourselves and our yet uninterested sisters from the infliction of the great injustice.
     At the outset let us understand that suffrage is not a right; it is an obligation.  The ballot is not an expression of opinion; it is an act of the will.  If suffrage were a natural right no restriction could be put upon it, every human being could demand it without qualification of age, intelligence or property; it only becomes a right when it becomes an obligation, and that is determined by circumstances.  When our Fathers decided to take the government of the colonies from Great Britain they took upon themselves an obligation to organize and maintain the government, and suffrage is an adjunct of the government, it is not "merely dropping a paper in the box," and they assumed the right to associate with them in the government such others as they deemed it wise to choose.  Unfortunately they did not, I think, sufficiently guard the obligation, and further action alter the civil war increased the difficulties resulting from their error. Through this measurably unrestricted male suffrage  serious complications have arisen which have been disastrous, especially in the South.  The ignorant have been made the tool of the vicious, the weak have been oppressed by the strong,
                    
                                     1

and progress in virtue and wisdom has been hampered if not 
halted in some of our Southern states. Much effort has been 
made to remedy the evil, but it is not easy to take away the 
suffrage once given, and too often the men who have attempted 
to restrict it have been actuated by prejudice and greed, 
and have failed to secure a just regulation of the abused 
right, for, what has been imposed as an obligation has become 
a right, and ignorance always misinterprets its rights. 
This experience should be a lesson to us. If suffrage is imposed 
on women, the vicious in our great cities, the ignorant, 
of whom the numbers in the black race and among the 
so-called poor whites in the South cannot be here reckoned, 
would be used by unscrupulous partisans for their own selfish 
ends, and the women of moral purpose and intelligence 
would be forced to turn aside from the tasks already pressing 
heavily upon them, not merely to drop a paper into a 
box, but to enter into a contest in party affiliations as undesirable 
as their labor would be futile. The number of vicious
women—so registered—in the City of New York is variously
estimated from thirty to sixty thousand and it had been recently
claimed by a prominent suffragist that every one of
these women, voluntarily giving themselves to vice, is an
argument for woman suffrage, "sixty thousand arguments."
How can it be that sixty thousand acknowledged law breakers
should become, by the use of the ballot, sixty thousand 
virtuous law makers. Educative the ballot may sometimes
be, but how would it be reformatory?
The influence of woman should be felt in municipal
affairs, but she can fulfill her duty there better without than
with the ballot. Disentangled from party affiliations she
can more efficiently labor for the best things; freed from the
dust raised by party conflicts her vision will be clearer; untrammeled
by party obligations she can choose her allies, and
her influence on legislators will be greater because her motives
can not be questioned. The fact that she does not vote
is a strength to her, and, may I add, I believe that the men to
whom we must look to settle this question for us, will the 
more thoughtfully and seriously consider it on our behalf because 
they realize that we are not asking anything for ourselves,
not for a class, but are concerned alone for the race
2

as a whole, and think we need for all the purposes of good on
power which we do not now possess.
Exemption from voting does not mean that woman does
not have some power to change the things that are wrong.
With the influence that she has she can do very much
to change the unjust conditions under which "people are
freezing, starving, sickening; girls are trying to live honestly
on a dying wage, children are overworked so that men and
women die of old age at thirty-five and war is going on here
and there." This is the graphic statement recently made of
the evils which woman, the mother, has not only the right
but the sacred duty to attack, and for it she has all the power
necessary, she requires only the will to do it. And she is
doing it bravely. I will not stop to name the groups of 
women who are at work to relieve those who are suffering
from unjust conditions—the neglected children, the girls in
factories and shops, the feeble driven to the wall by circumstance,
the weak oppressed by the strong, the prisoners to
be redeemed from their sin; and not only are these women
striving to relieve the suffering from present unjust conditions
but they are working to change the conditions. They seek
prevention as well as cure. Tens of thousands of women in
our state and as many in other states singly and in associations,
are eagerly, wisely and efficiently working for the improvement
of conditions which are unjust. and many unjust
conditions have by their influence been removed. They have
been vigorously doing things without thinking of the ballot
and have accomplished more than they have taken time to
recount.
If any of us are not having our share in this crusade let us
at once find a place where our influence will be felt, to
abolish child labor, to keep women from that labor that
undermines their health so that they bring into the world
children who will by the greed of selfish men and women—
for women have their part in making the ill conditions—be
put to work still further to deplete the equipment they have
inherited.
The kitchen and nursery are an important part of woman's
domain not to be despised but rather to be respected, but
they are not the limits of her opportunities or her duties.
3

When the babe leaves the nursery the mother's work for him is but just beginning. All his growing interests are hers; his plays, his school, his companions, his religion must be her daily increasing care. His protection is not now so easily provided for as it was. Bars at the windows, a fender before the nursery fire, a gate at the stairs--ah! would it could always be so simple to save him from disaster. But now how complicated her problem and, yet how inspiring thus to guard and guide that life for which she is jointly responsible so that there shall be a sound mind and a pure spirit in a sound body.
And as for the kitchen and what it represents, what woman is equal to it all? What greater problem could a woman desire? All that a college girl can get in her four year's course is not sufficient for its demands in science and in art. Who has the training in power of adaption and in executive action which a well-regulated home calls for? Having ability for this she has ability for anything, and lacking power to manage a small kingdom she need not ask for a larger. 
It is said that woman needs the ballot to give expression to her opinion. I have said before it does not express an opinion it asserts a will. The will may be in harmony with the opinion, and it may not. There may be no opinion back of the ballot. An opinion is the off-spring of reason, feeling affects the will. Crowds of voters at every important election are carried by the force of another's will. Women are more easily swerved by their emotions and would be more at the mercy of the will of others.
Fortunately woman  has not all the work to do either inside the home or out of it. Man has some capabilities and has proved that he can govern fairly well. In spite of great faults yet uncorrected, the advance in morals and intelligence during the last century has been unprecedented. This is unquestionably the best age and under manhood suffrage, with all the ill-conditions yet to be bettered, no country stands so free from abuses to-day as ours. And woman has much to thank her brother for. In spite of all the clamor for "equality" we have to thank him that we are still a "privileged" class, and the sarcastic toast, "Woman once our superiors 
4


now our equals" is not yet applicable. Men have saved women from themselves. In demanding exemption from governmental obligations we do not acknowledge our inferiority, we do insist that difference in sex--a fundamental fact which I assume without discussion--requires different conditions; we emphasize this difference but we emphatically deny that it implies interiority on one side or the other, altho as woman's share in life is finer and more delicate than man's, if there is superiority on either side it is on her side. In specializing their duties she has the most do with those that relate to the inner and higher life and he with those that relate to the outer and the grosser. As one has well expressed it: "Man builds the scaffolding for the convenience and the protection of woman who builds the temple." I am free to acknowledge that many men are my superiors, but I deny that man is the superior of woman. And woman should not admit inferiority by making man and man's work her standard--not what man can do should be her aim but  what woman can do. It was a great mistake of the past which thrust women into employments which should have been left to men, it has resulted in serious complications and evils which social scientists are now trying to unravel and to remedy. Our concern is to secure the best that can be for the race, man, woman, child equally, If we believed that best could be secured by unrestricted suffrage we should cheerfully accept the burden, but is our firm belief, founded on careful study of history interpreted by the best thought of the most unselfish thinkers, that no gain would be made and much evil would be incurred by further extension of the suffrage, and especially by involving woman in governmental duties.  
And now what course shall we take to protect ourselves and those yet without thought on the subject from the imposition of this evil? What shall be our methods? Reason not sentimentality should be our motto. It is easy to say that all things could be made right by the vote of women: we must show that this is a fallacy. We must by thought and study be prepared to use pen and voice and especially the press and our own carefully prepared literature to prove that our contention is right.
5

     We must not be led into hysterical quarrelling with our
opponents. If we are accused of unrighteous alliances let us 
refrain from making doubtful assertions in reply. Our temper 
must be calm, our statements guarded and our attitude 
dignified. The methods in detail must change from time to 
time, but the spirit need not change. When the "entering 
wedge" of a demand for the suffrage for tax paying women 
is presented, we must recognize that it is an entering wedge 
and combat it with vigor. Property qualification is not in 
harmony with our democratic government and would not be 
argued for by the women who have heretofore demanded 
that there should be no class distinction in relation to voting 
except as they intend it to be followed by the demand for 
full suffrage. This we must understand and meet. 
     We have every reason to be encouraged, but the encouragement 
should lead us to greater and more serious effort and 
not to inertia. The position of defence is never easy, and 
our duty requires patience that is not experience, it calls for 
readiness which is not aggressive, and vigorous expression 
of our views which must never be acrimonious. Assured that 
we are right we may pursue our way always with caution 
but certain of success. 

For leaflets apply to Mrs. Geo. Douglas Miller, 125 State street, or, 
Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell, 9 Hall Place, Albany, N. Y.

6


THE COST OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE 
     California citizens will pay approximately $1,637,500 for the privilege 
of exercising the right of suffrage this year. This is an increase of 133  1-3 
per cent. since 1910 and does not include city, county and special elections.- 
Los Angeles Times. 

Women were given the ballot in California October 10, 1911. 
IN SUFFRAGE STATES. 
     The State with the most savage conflicts between capital and labor it 
Colorado - woman suffrage since 1893. 
     The State in which it is alleged that polygamy still survives is Utah - 
woman suffrage since 1896. 
     The State which is the greatest menace to international peace is 
California -
woman suffrage since 1911. 
     The State which has just re-established itself as the country's divorce 
colony is Nevada - which voted for woman suffrage in 1914. 
     The remaining woman suffrage States are Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, 
Arizona, Kansas, Oregon and Montana, not one of which has made the 
nation proud that it is on the country's map.-Buffalo Enquirer.
25

DIAGRAM OF OFFICIAL NEW YORK VOTE, PROVING WOMAN SUFFRAGE CARRIED BY N. Y. CITY CONVERTS TO SOCIALISM AND THAT MAJORITY OF DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS, IN CITY & STATE, VOTED AGAINST SUFFRAGE IN 1917 AND IN 1915.

NEW YORK CITY
(FIVE BOROUGHS)     SCALE, 60,000-1 SQ INCH

Vote for Woman Suffrage By Democrats & Republicans - 208,334 -->
1917
Manhattan | 78,236
Brooklyn | 80,721
Bronx | 22,286
Queens | 20,648
Richmond | 6,443
             208,334
Vote for Woman Suffrage By SOCIALISTS - 145,332 (41.1%)
51,176 | 40%
48,850 | 38%
30,374 | 58%
13,477 | 39%
1,425 | 16%
145,332 | 41%
Total Vote for Suffrage, N. Y. City - 353,666
N. Y. City SUFFRAGE MAJORITY 103,863

Vote for Woman Suffrage by Democrats and Republicans - 206,311 -->
1915
Manhattan | 76,873
Brooklyn | 77,182
Bronx | 27,312
Queens | 19,040
Richmond | 5,904
     206,3[11?]
By Socialists - 31,787
[2012?]
[0220?]
[5995?]
[2355?]
[208?]
[1787?]
SOCIALISTS GAIN, (Converts) 1917
113,545
SUFFRAGE GAIN, (Converts, 1917)
115,568
Total for Suffrage, N. Y. City - 238,098
Vote AGAINST Woman Suffrage by Democrats & Republicans - 249,803 -->
1917
Manhattan | 89,124
Brooklyn | 92,315
Bronx | 36,346
Queens | 26,794
Richmond | 5,224
     249,803
N. Y. City
1917 ANTI-SUFFRAGE
MAJORITY., Among Democrats
& Republicans, 41,469
RATIO - 6 Against Suffrage
to 5 For Suffrage

Vote AGAINST Woman Suffrage By Democrats & Republicans - 320,853 -->
1915
Manhattan | 17,610
Brooklyn | 21,679
Bronx | 40,991
Queens | 33,104
Richmond | 7,469
     320,853
N. Y. City
1915 ANTI-SUFFRAGE
MAJORITY, 82,755

NEW YORK STATE (INCLUDING N. Y. CITY)
SCALE 120,000 = 1 SQ. INCH
Vote for Woman Suffrage By Democrats & Republicans - 507,892 -->
1917 N. Y. City 208,334
"Up State" 299,558
By Socialists 195,327
N. Y. City 145,332
Up State 49,905
Total SUFFRAGE MAJORITY, 102,353
Total Vote for Woman Suffrage, City & State, 703 129

Vote for Woman Suffrage By Democrats & Republicans - 507 404 -->
1915 N. Y. City 206,311
"Up State" 301,093
[Side text illegible?]
By Socialists 45,944
Total SOCIALIST GAIN, (Converts) 149,293
SUFFRAGE GAIN (Converts) 149,781
Total Vote for Suffrage, 553,348

Vote AGAINST Woman Suffrage By Democrats & Republicans - 600,776 -->
1917 N. Y. City 249,803
"Up State" 350,963
ANTI-SUFFRAGE 1917
MAJORITY "Up State," Among Democrats & Republicans, 61,415
Total, City and State 92,884,
RATIO - 6 Agst. to 5 For

Vote Against Woman Suffrage By Democrats & Republicans - 748,332 -->
1915 N. Y. City 320,853
"Up State" 427,479
Total ANTI-SUFFRAGE MAJORITY, 1915 - 194,984

ISSUED BY
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OPPOSED TO WOMAN SUFFRAGE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

NY

Five sixths of the Rep. Congressmen

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