NAWSA                     SUBJECT FILE            College Equal Suffrage League

From the Woman's Journal, Apr. 25, 1914
The Founding of the First College League, by Maud Wood Park Radcliffe, '98

To the Association Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to Women was due my first interest in the suffrage question. In my senior year at college that enterprising association sent a speaker - or rather a reader - to expound the anti-suffrage arguments at a college meeting which a number of my classmates attended. Though I was not present, the reports of the meeting convinced me that a debate on the subject was desirable and set me to seeking speakers pro and con. That there were persons interested in women's rights, I knew vaguely; and vaguely I felt that they were presumably rather queer and disagreeable. But their services were essential to our purpose, and so I set out to find one of them to uphold the suffrage end in our debate. Fortune favored me; I found Miss Alice Stone Blackwell. But I could [[strike-through]] find no one to speak against her, and so our debate resolved itself into a discussion of permanent importance.

After that Miss Blackwell did not forget the Radcliffe women. She made known to us the existence of a suffrage association; and this association, after I left college, she persuaded me to join. More radical still, she persuaded me to go a convention.

By this time I believed in the suffrage principles, but I had as yet met but few of the suffrage leaders, and so it was with a lively curiosity that I set out for that convention. My curiosity centered about Susan B. Anthony. I supposed that she was the person responsible for all the caricatures I had been laughing at, the source of many queer tales. 
My opinion was confirmed by a young man from Rochester, who told me that when the boys wanted some very emphatic ejaculation they used to say, "Susan B. Anthony!"

Then I saw her, and I heard her speak, and in those meetings when one after another of the speakers referred to the [[strike-through]] early days and told about the struggles, the trials, the sacrifices, all the long, persistent efforts of that woman to get college education and industrial opportunities for the women of today, I came to realize what Miss Anthony's life had been. I came to realize what she and other women might have gained for themselves if they had chosen to spend for personal ends the power that had been given them. For I suppose that it is true [[strike-through]] that all through history individual women have been able, sometimes by cajolery, sometimes by personal charm, sometimes by force of character, to get for themselves privileges far greater than any that the most radical advocates of woman's rights have yet demanded. But in the case of Miss Anthony and the other early suffragists, all that force of character was turned not to individual ends, not to getting great things for themselves, but to getting little gains, step by step, for the service of the sex, and so of the whole human race.
 
When I felt that clearly, I felt the obligation of service, not for the individual, but for the cause for which these women had sacrificed so much; and I promised myself that I would try to make more women see these things as I had seen them.

So the summons to the first meeting of the College Equal Suffrage League was sent out from Washington, and the League was begun. In starting it Mrs. Inez Haynes Gillmore was as active as I. We secured fourteen members for our first meeting, and organized with a charter membership of twenty 


page 2.

Many times has the League multiplied this membership, and I believe the increase will go steadily on.

Its object is to bring the question of equal suffrage to college women, to help them realize their debt to the women who have worked so hard for us, and to make them understand that one of the ways to pay that debt is to fight the battle in the quarter of the field in which it is [[strike-through]] unwon; in short, to make them feel the obligation of opportunity.

[*return to Mrs. Park.   Quotation from 
Miss Lucy Salmon of Vassar has been 
inserted on last page.*]

For Miss Comstock and Mrs. Vosburgh

Except from minutes of 
Massachusetts [League] Woman Suffrage Association, March 2, 1900 
and other dates

  Nov. 4, 1898 "The Superintendent of work in colleges reported that 
three Radcliffe Seniors (Maud Wood (Park) Inez Haynes (Irwin now) 
(and ? )  undertook to form a committee, and to have an address soon to 
which all the students should be invited, but so much interest was 
manifested that it was thought best to form a club instead. This 
action is more valuable because it was spontaneous."

Mar. 2, 1900 "Mrs. Park, Superintendent of work among college 
women who had studied at least a year in college, while the president 
and first vice president must have a degree, all others to be 
'associates'.   A Radcliffe play was probably to be given this month 
to raise funds, for the purpose of holding meetings in colleges, and 
for offering a prize for a Suffrage essay."

Mar. 2, 1900 "Miss Turner (Sec. of Assn) gave notice that Mrs. Park 
had called a meeting of college woman suffragists for Sat. P.M. 
to form a [club] college auxiliary to the Mass. Woman Suffrage Association."

Jan. 5, 1900, (page 308) "Miss (Mary Ware) Allen .... also spoke of 
an incipient Suffrage Club at Radcliffe."

Mar. 1, 1901. "Report by Mrs. (Inez Haynes) Gillmore that the 
College Equal Suffrage League has 139 members.)

May 4, 1900. "Mrs. Park reported for the College Dramatic entertainment, 
at which they had made over $150."

Nov. 2, 1900. "Mrs. Park spoke for the College Equal Suffrage League. 
They would probably have a general meeting next month, before the 
School Election. Some notices were being sent to colleges about the 
prizes. They are going to appeal to the college professional and business women of Boston.  One non-resident member is going to vote for 
President in Colorado!  She spoke of a [?] pamphlet "Objections 
answered by College Women", which is being got up, a graduate from 
six or seven colleges each writing an answer to one objection."
   (copy of this pamphlet is in file of Mrs. Park's papers.)
  Sara Cone Bryant, A. B. Boston Univ.
  Helen Leah Reed, A. B. Radcliffe
  Margaret Long, A. B. Smith
  Mary H. Rollins, A. B. Vassar
  Winifred Harper Cooley, A. B. Leland Stanford
  [?] Caroline Jewel Cook, B. A. Wellesley
    LL.B. '99, Boston Un.
  Alice Freeman Palmer, Ex-President Wellesley



Speech - Maud Wood Park

     I have been asked, before introducing the speakers, to give 
a brief account of the history and purpose of the College Equal Suffrage League, the National Council of which has been formed today.
     The first organization of this kind was started in Massachusetts 
in 1900 by a few college women, most of whom had studied at Radcliffe. 
Their purpose as stated in the constitution was primarily to interest 
college women, both graduate and under-graduate, in equal suffrage. It 
was thought at that time that there was no interest in the suffrage cause 
among college women, and those of us who had to do with the League in its earliest stage felt very proud when we succeeded in getting twenty-five 
charter members. In the eight years since then, that number has been 
multiplied many times in the Massachusetts Branch alone; and there are 
now fourteen other state branches, besides organizations in many of the 
best known colleges to which women are admitted - 
      Four years after the Massachusetts League was formed, the New York Branch was started under the leadership of Miss Caroline Lexow. A year 
later there began in Illinois a somewhat different form of the suffrage 
movement among college women, which brought about the formation of an association of under-graduates at Northwestern University. The earlier 
League in Massachusetts and New York had been made up of women no longer in college, but the association at Northwestern was composed chiefly of students.
  Within the last two years College Equal Suffrage Organization has 
gone on with amazing rapidity and enthusiasm all over the country. To 
the first two state branches of which I have already spoken, there have been added thirteen others, four in the East: Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, 
Maryland, and the District of Columbia, six in the Middle West: Illinois, 
Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, and Wisconsin and three in the far 
West: Northern and Southern California and Washington. These are all

Speech Maud Wood Park, page 2.

organizations outside the college, but they hold in auxiliary membership 
a series of under-graduate organizations, or college chapters which also 
stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and which includes Bryn Mawr 
and Wellesley among the separate colleges for women; Barnard among the 
so-called affiliated colleges; the University of Chicago and Leland 
Stanford among the endowed co-educational institutions; and Minnesota, 
Nebraska, Michigan and Wisconsin among the State Universities.
  Until today there has been no central association to unite the 
Branches; but in September a call was sent out by the six Atlantic Coast 
Leagues for a meeting of delegates from all the State Branches here at 
Buffalo, for the purpose of forming a central council. At the risk of 
seeming personal, I want to say a few words about the women who signed 
that call because their names are a guarantee of the dignity and earnestness 
of purpose of the National College Equal Suffrage League. For 
Pennsylvania the representative was Miss M. Carey Thomas, Ph.D. and LL.D. 
President of Bryn Mawr College; for Maryland, Miss Garrett of Baltimore, 
who in 1890 made it possible for the Johns Hopkins University to open 
its medical school to women students. She organized committees of women in 
a number of Eastern and Western cities which raised the sum of one hundred 
thousand dollars, to which Miss Garret herself added over three hundred
thousand dollars, making a total gift of over four hundred thousand dollars 
to the Johns Hopkins University on condition that the Medical School 
should admit women on the same terms as men. For Massachusetts the call 
was signed by Miss Mary G. Woolley, Litt. D., President of Mt. Holyoke 
College; for New York, by Miss Caroline Lexow, A.B. Barnard; for Rhode 
Island, by Miss Florence Garvin, daughter of Ex-Governor Garvin of that 
state; and for the District of Columbia by Mrs. Herbert Parsons, Ph.D., 
who as Miss Elsie Clews was Special Lecturer on Sociology at Columbia.


Speech, Maud Wood Park, page 3.

resolutions which demanded for women equal rights with men in the 
holding of property, in education, in public speech, and in citizenship. 
In none of these directions, has the gain, largely the result of the 
agitation which was organized [?] at the Seneca Falls Convention, been more 
marked than in education. Those of us who have lived and studied in the 
midst of the opportunities of this generation can hardly realize the 
tremendous change in public opinion about the education of women wrought 
by the equal rights movement more than by any other cause.  Secretary 
George H. Martin of the Massachusetts Board of Education says in his 
"History of Public Schools":  "While the voters in town and district 
meeting were wrestling with the question whether girls should be taught 
at all and were grudgingly giving them a few crumbs from the boys' table; 
while the more ignorant were derisively asking whether the girls expected 
to carry pork to market, that they wanted to learn arithmetic; and while 
young women who aspired to be social leaders were trimming the rags of 
their ignorance with the passementerie of Turveydrop manners, some earnest 
souls had awakened to the conviction that girls might be more than drudges 
or dolls."
  Such earnest souls were the workers for equal rights and what they 
accomplished for the higher education of women can hardly be over estimated. 
In comparison with the date of the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, the 
dates of the opening of the first colleges to women are significant. I 
take them from "The Bibliography of the Higher Education of Women", 
compiled by the Association of Collegiate Alumnae:  Oberlin 1833, Antioch 
1852, Kansas, 1864, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Vassar 1865, 
Northwestern, Boston and California Universities in 1869, Michigan in 1870, 
Syracuse in 1871, Cornell and Wesleyan in 1872, Wellesley and Smith in 
1875. With the sole exception of Oberlin, no one of these colleges was 
open to women before the organized movement for woman's suffrage; and 
Oberlin itself was not open until after the first woman's rights speakers

Speech, Maud Wood Park, page 3.

     To the Council meeting this morning there came delegates from 
twelve of the fifteen State Branches; and these delegates have adopted 
a constitution, elected officers, and outlined a plan of work. The 
officers chosen are:  President, Miss M. Carey Thomas of Bryn Mawr, Pa.; 
First Vice-President, Miss Sophonisba Breckenridge, of Chicago; Second 
Vice-President, Mrs. Maud Wood Park of Boston; Secretary, Miss Caroline 
Lexow of New York; and Treasurer, Dr. Margaret Long. It is an interesting
fact that in the case of two of the officers devotion to public service 
seems to be a family characteristic, for Miss Lexow, our Secretary, is a 
daughter of Mr. Clarence Lexow, Chairmen of the famous Investigation Committee in New York, and Dr. Margaret Long is a daughter of Ex-Governor Long of Massachusetts, former Secretary of the Navy. 
     The question has been asked of late why a separate Suffrage 
Organization of college women is needed. Why do they not enter the 
regular suffrage associations and work through them exclusively, The 
answer, I think, is two-fold.
     In the first place, we wish to work among college women, and an 
organization of college women can work among college women better than any other organization. Besides, there is no reason why members of the college associations shouldnot share in the older suffrage movement. On the 
contrary, there is a greater likelihood that the college women will be 
drawn into the regular work by having their interest first aroused in the 
college association. Moreover, the College Equal Suffrage League is 
auxiliary to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the 
President of which is ex-officio a member of the Executive Committee of 
the College League.
     In the second place, college women by forming a separate organization 
can assume the distinctive badge of service which they, more than any 
other [other] women, should wear. Those who were present last evening 
heard the resolutions adopted at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848,

Speech, Maud Wood Park, page 4.
had begun their public lectures. Within the first quarter century 
after the movement was organized women were admitted to the colleges 
that I have mentioned, and doubtless to others not included in the 
A.C.A. list. 
     Such facts as these help us to understand the service which 
the leaders of the suffrage movement performed for college women. In 
the words of Professor Lucy Salmon of Vassar: "It has been a work 
positive rather than negative, active rather than passive, constructive 
rather than destructive, and thus it is coming to appeal to the judgment 
and the reason of the college woman".*

     It therefore seems fitting that college women as such should 
make public recognition of their debt. It was this idea of responsibility 
for benefits received that the first branch of the League was organized. 
The college women are they who have reaped in fullest measure the harvest 
of the past. Those of us who have joined this new association realize 
that the best way to pay our debt to the noble women who toiled and 
suffered, who bore ridicule, insult, and privation for us is in our turn 
to sow the seed of future opportunities.

*Extract from an address delivered on the College Evening of the 
National American Woman Suffrage Association held in Baltimore, February 
8, 1906.

THE COLLEGE EQUAL SUFFRAGE LEAGUE

Supplementary Notes.

   When the First College Equal Suffrage League was organized 
we who were the early members, with the cocksureness of inexperience, 
decided that we could work more effectively if our group was not 
affiliated with the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. 
Though I am sure Miss Blackwell was grieved by our superior 
attitude, she made no complaint and never failed to give us all 
possible help in carrying out our own plans.
   Sometimes our ideas led us into curious situations. One of 
these had to do with an early meeting to which we invited a large 
number of guests. The place was the spacious drawing-room of 
Mrs. Otto Cole, on the top floor of a building in Copley Square. 
Miss Leonora Schlesinger, a former Radcliffe student who was in 
charge of arrangements for the meeting, had been impressed, during 
the debate on woman suffrage in the Massachusetts House of 
Representatives the previous winter, by the speech of an elderly 
member whose Latin quotations and logical arguments seemed to 
indicate a better education than most of his colleagues had 
received. She therefore invited him to be the speaker on what 
seemed to us a very important occasion.
   After he was introduced we were horrified to find that he 
rambled on with a meaningless mixture of phrases from his speech 
in the House and a single sentence, repeated again and again, "As 
a matter of fact I'm frank to say, 'You must strike while the 
iron is hot'." Apparently that sentence was the theme of the 
talk which he had intended for us, but which, except for the 
single exhortation, had slipped from a mind befuddled by alcohol. 

- 2
When there could no longer be any doubt that he was more or 
less intoxicated, Miss Bryant, who was presiding, made obvious 
but unsuccessful efforts to stop him. To add to our discomfort, 
a mouse suddenly appeared on a portiere behind the speaker and 
then disappeared in the direction of the floor. The audience 
was commendably quiet until a woman discovered the mouse in her 
lap and screamed as she shook it off. After that most of us 
watched the floor with apprehension and wriggled frequently to 
safeguard our ankles. Meanwhile the speaker, propped up by his 
stick on one side and the table on the other, and seemingly 
unaware of any disturbance, continued to emulate Tennyson's brook. 
Even when Miss Bryant interrupted him to ask the audience to go 
to the dining-room he continued to address the departing backs 
until Mr. Cole and my own husband led him, almost by force, to 
the elevator, made him don his hat and coat, and then put him 
into a cab, after giving directions to the driver to take him to 
his own house.
   Next morning one of the leading newspapers came out with 
front-page headlines, "'Hickory, dickory dock, a mouse ran up 
the clock' and broke up the college women's suffrage meeting." 
We didn't enjoy the ridicule heaped on us in press accounts, but 
we were thankful that there was no review of the chief speech.
   Our most serious difficulty in those early years came after 
the publication of Miss Sumner's book, in which her effort to be 
completely impartial led her to make several quotations from 
Colorado opponents of woman suffrage. These statements supplied 
the anti-suffragists with material for innumerable speeches, 
though much of the book, including the final summary which the 
antis carefully refrained from quoting, was favorable to votes 
for women.

3
After the National College Equal Suffrage League was
formed I spent two years in a trip around the world.  On my
return I found that several disputes had broken out in the
National American Woman Suffrage Association, all of which were aired
in the "fighting convention" of 1912.  As my support was given
to the side opposed by Miss Thomas, a personal altercation arose
between her and me over my request to be transferred from the
delegation of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association to
that of the National College League; and from that time her
former friendliness for me changed to bitter hostility, a fact
which made me glad to have the National League disbanded.

One of the first college "chapters" to be started was at
Radcliffe.  But not long after its charter was withdrawn by the
college authorities, probably because of active opposition to
woman suffrage on the part of Dean Irwin and Miss Mary Coes.

As I look back on the work done by the college equal suffrage
leagues I am inclined to think that, although they amounted to
little as an active force, they brought to the movement a kind
of intellectual prestige that was needed at the moment, somewhat
as women of acknowledged social position in some of the big
cities gave, a little later, a new and helpful impetus.  In San
Francisco the league that I started came to be a vital factor
in the winning campaign for a state constitutional amendment.

Maud Wood Park
January 1943


Natl College E S League

"HOMO SUM."
Being a Letter to an 
Anti-Suffragist from an
Anthropologist.

Reprinted for circulation in the United States by the National College
Equal Suffrage League with the kind permission of the author, Miss Jane
Ellen Harrison, Hon. D. Litt. (Durham), Hon. LLD. (Aberdeen), Staff Lecturer
and sometime Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge; Corresponding
Member of the German Archaeological Institute.

Copies may be obtained from the Secretary of the National College
Equal Suffrage League, 505 Fifth Avenue, New York City, for 10 cents,
including postage.




"HOMO SUM,"
BEING A LETTER TO AN ANTI-SUFFRAGIST FROM AN
ANTHROPOLOGIST.
DEAR ANTI-SUFFRAGIST,
     Will it induce you to read this letter if I tell you at
the outset that the possession of a vote would grievously
embarrass me? Personally, I have no more interest in
or aptitude for politics than I have for plumbing. But,
embarrassing though I should find the possession of a
vote, I strongly feel that it is a gift which ought to be
given, a gift which I must nerve myself to receive. May
I also add that, had your Society been founded some
ten or twenty years ago, I might very possibly have
joined it. I cannot do so now, because my point of view
has changed. How this change came about, I should
like to explain a little later. For the present, will you,
by way of apology for this letter, accept the fact that
there is between us the deep-down sympathy of a conviction 
once shared?
     And further, by way of preface, may I say that
I do not want to argue, probably because I find that
in my own case disputation rarely, if ever, is an efficient
instrument in my search after truth. What
always interests and often helps me is to be told of any
conviction seriously and strongly felt by another mind,
especially if I can at the same time learn in detail the
avenues by which that conviction has been approached.
3

This is why I venture on the egotism of recounting my
own experiences.
     In my own case, the avenues of approach to what 
I believe to be truth have been circuitous and through
regions apparently remote and subjects irrelevant. I
have been investigating lately the origins of religion
among primitive peoples, and this has led me to observe
the customs of South Sea Islanders and North American
Indians. In order to understand these customs, I
have been further driven to acquire the elements of
psychology and sociology. Without intentionally thinking
about the suffrage question at all, while my thoughts
have been consciously engaged with the multifarious
topics, dimly at first, and strongly of late, the conviction
has grown up in my mind that I ought to be a Suffragist.
I can with perfect candour say that for weeks
and even months I have tried to shirk the formulation
of my own views and the expression of them to you,
partly because I feared their expression might cause
either boredom or irritation, still more because I wanted
to do other things. But the subject, fermenting in my
mind, has left me no peace, and irresistibly I have felt
compelled to embark on this letter.
     Your position is, I think, what mine once was: that 
a woman is better without a vote. The possession and
use of a vote---of political power---is somehow "unwomanly." 
With this position in one sense I still heartily
agree, but I must add a hasty and perhaps unexpected
corollary. Possession and use of a vote by a man is
unmanly. This sounds absurd, because by "man" our
language compels us to mean not only a male thing but
4

a human being; and of the word "woman" we cannot
at present make the correlative statement. In this undoubted
linguistic fact lies hidden a long, sad story, the
secret indeed of the whole controversy.  For the present,
may I summarize my position thus? I share with you
the feeling that a vote is unwomanly. I add to it the
feeling that it is unmanly. What I mean is that, to my
mind, a vote has nothing whatever to do with either sex
qua sex; it has everything to do with the humanity
shared in common by two sexes.
     May I illustrate this statement? We are apt to
speak of certain virtues as "womanly," certain others
as "manly." It is "womanly" to be meek, patient, tactful,
modest.  It is manly to be strong, brave, honourable.
We make there, I think, an initial mistake, or, at
least, over-statement, apt to damage the morality of
both man and woman. To be meek, patient, tactful, 
modest, honourable, brave, is not to be either manly or
womanly; it is to be humane, to have social virtue. To
be womanly is one thing and one only; it is to be sensitive
to man, to be highly endowed with the sex instinct;
to be manly is to be sensitive to woman. About this
sex-endowment other and more complex sentiments may
tend to group themselves; but in the final resort, womanliness
and manliness can have no other than this
simple significance. When we exhort a woman to be
"womanly," we urge her to emphasize her relation to
the other sex, to enhance her sensitiveness, already, perhaps,
over keen, to focus her attention on an element
in life which nature has already made quite adequately
prominent. We intend to urge her to be refined, we are
in peril of inviting her to be coarse.
5

The moral and social danger of dividing the
"humane" virtues into two groups, manly and womanly,
is evident.  Until quite recent years a boy was often
brought up to feel that so long as he was strong, brave,
and honourable, he might leave gentleness, patience,
modesty to his sister.  To her, so long as she was gentle,
tactful, modest, much latitude was allowed in the matter
of physical cowardice and petty moral shifts.  Both
were the losers by this artificial division of moral industry.
The whole convention rested on a rather complex
confusion of thought, which cannot here be completely
unravelled.  The virtues supposed to be womanly are in
the main the virtues generated by subordinate social
position.  Such are gentleness and the inevitable "tact."
They are the weapons of the weaker, physically or
socially, of the man or the woman who dare not either
strike out or speak out; they are virtues practised by
the conquered, by the slave in rude societies, in politer
states by the governess and the companion, but also by
the private secretary and the tutor; they are virtues not
specially characteristic of the average duchess.  In a
word they are the outcome not of sex but of status.

The attempt, then, to confine man or woman within
the limits of sex, to judge of right or wrong for them
by a sex standard, is, I think, dangerous and disastrous 
to the individual, dangerous and disastrous to
the society of which he or she is a unit.  This is felt
and acknowledged about man.  We do not incessantly
say to a man, "Be male, your manhood is in danger."
Such counsel, we instinctively feel, would be, if not
superfluous and impertinent, at least precarious.  A man
sanely and rightly refuses to have his activities secluded
 6 

into the accident of sex.  We have learnt the lesson -
and to this language bears unconscious witness - that
"man" connotes and comprises "humanity."  Dare we
say as much of "woman"?  The whole Woman's Movement
is, to my mind, just the learning of that lesson.  It
is not an attempt to arrogate man's prerogative of manhood;
it is not even an attempt to assert and emphasize
woman's privilege of womanhood; it is simply the
demand that in the life of woman, as in the life of man,
space and liberty shall be found for a thing bigger than
either manhood or womanhood - for humanity.  On the
banners of every suffrage society, one motto, and one
only, should be blazoned: -

Homo sum, humani nihil (ne suffragium quidem)*
a me alienum puto.

In the early phases of the woman's movement this
point was, I think, to none of us quite clear.  The beginnings
of a movement are always dark and half unconscious,
characterized rather by a blind unrest and sense
of discomfort than by a clear vision of the means of
relief.  Woman had been told ad nauseam that she must
be womanly, she was not unreasonably sick to death of
it, stifled by unmitigated womanliness.  By a not unnatural
reaction, she sought relief in what seemed the
easiest exit - in trying to be manly.  She sought salvation
in hard collars and billy-cock hats.   Considering

*To anyone who has patience to read this letter to the end it will, I hope,
be sufficiently clear that I wish to emphasize rather the importance of the general movement for woman's emancipation than the particular question of the
vote.  The words of Terence chosen for my motto mark my attitude:  "I am a
human being, nothing that is human do I account alien."  But that there may
be no ambiguity I have allowed myself the addition of a parenthesis "not even
a vote" - ne suffragium quidem.
 7

the extravagance and inconvenience of the feminine
dress of the day, small blame to her if she did.  I am
ashamed to remember now that a certain superficial
ugliness in the first beginnings of the movement blinded
me for a time to its essential soundness.  It was at this
date that, had your Anti-Suffrage Society existed, I
might have joined it.

The danger, never serious, of any tendency to "ape
the man" is over and past.  The most militant of Suffragists*
never now aims at being masculine.  Rather,
by a swing of the pendulum we are back in an inverse
form of the old initial error, the over-emphasis of sex.
Woman, not man, now insists over-loudly on her own
womanhood, and in this hubbub of man and woman the
still small voice of humanity is apt to be unheard.  This
new emphasis of sex seems to me as ugly and certainly
coarser than the old error.  Still, we are bound
to remember that perfect sanity can never fairly be
demanded from those in bondage or in pain.

The woman question seems, then, somehow to hinge
on the balance between sex and humanity.  Between the
two there seems some sort of rivalry, some antinomy.

But is this possible?  Is there really any conflict,
any dissonance?  And it so, how may we hope for its
resolution?

The real issue of a problem is always best seen
when its factors are so far as possible simplified.  We
may therefore be pardoned if for a moment we go back
to consider conditions of life less complex than our own.

* I cannot bring myself to use the ugly diminutive now current.
[Page]  8

It was indeed in studying the psychology* of primitive
man, in noting how primitive man faced the problems
of sex and humanity, that what may be in part a solution
of the difficulty occurred to me.

That frail, complex, pathetic thing we call our
humanity is built up, it would seem, out of some few
primitive instincts which we share with other animals
and with some plants.  **Sex is one of these instincts,
nutrition another, self-preservation a third.  These
three instincts all work together for the conservation
of life in the individual.  Each in itself gives satisfaction,
and, a noticeable point, they do not normally
clash.  Each makes way for the other, no two acting
simultaneously.  Hunger appeased makes way for love,
and love for hunger.  Instincts on the whole tend to be
recurrent rather than concurrent.  If we had only these
simple instincts to reckon with, if our humanity was
based only on sex, self-preservation, nutrition, there
would be, it seems, no "war in our members."

But to these simple impulses, these life-functions
as it were, man has added another, the gregarious, or,
as sociologists pleasantly term it, the "herd" instinct.***
Why men and some other animals herd together --

* I should like here to acknowledge my debt to Mr. W. McDougall's Introduction
to Social Psychology, a book which should be in the hands of every
student of social phenomena.  My psychology is almost wholly based on the
work of Mr. McDougall and Dr. William James.  It is, perhaps, unnecessary to
add that for my views on the woman's question neither of these writers is in
any way responsible. 

** For brevity's sake I use the word sex as equivalent to what psychologists
term for "instinct of reproduction"; the equivalence is valid for all but the
lowest forms of animal life.

*** See Mr. Trotter's very suggestive papers on "Herd Instinct" in the Sociological
Review, 1908.
[Page]  9  

whether for warmth, for food, for mutual protection, or
from some obscurer sympathetic impulse—is not very
clearly known. But once the "herd" impulse is established,
the "simple life" is, it would seem, at an end.
Up to this point though individuality was but little developed,
the life impulses of the unit were paramount; but,
henceforth, the life impulses of each unit are controlled
by a power from without as well as by instincts from
within—controlled by the life impulses of other units,
a power that acts contemporaneously with the inner
instincts, and that is bound to control them, to inhibit
for its own ends the individualistic impulses of hunger,
of reproduction, even of self-preservation.  With the
"herd" instinct arises the conflict between our life-impulses
and the life-impulses of others.  Out of that
conflict is developed our whole religion and morality,
our sociology, our politics.

Between "herd" instinct and the individual impulses,
all, happily, is not conflict.  The "herd" helps the individual
to hunt and to get food, above all helps the weaker
individual to survive.  But, on the whole, what we
notice most is inhibition.  The history of civilization is
the history of a long conflict between herd-socialism and
individualistic impulse.  What concerns us here is the
effect of "herd" instinct on one, and only one, of these
impulses, the sex instinct.  Herd instinct tends to
inhibit all individualistic impulse, but the conflict is, in
the case of the impulse of sex, most marked, and, it
would seem, most ineluctable.  The herd aggregates,
sex, more than any other instinct, segregates; the herd
is social, sex anti-social.  Some animals—e.g., birds—
are gregarious until breeding time, and then they separate.
10

Had humanity had no sex, it would probably have
been civilized ages ago, only there might have been no
humanity to civilize.

At this point you will, I am sure, exclaim—I am
almost tempted to exclaim myself—"This is impossible,
outrageous."  What about the primal sanctities of marriage?
What about "the voice that breathed o'er
Eden"?  Are not man and wife the primitive unit of
civilization?  From the primitive pair, you will urge,
arises the family, from the family the tribe, from the
tribe the state, from the state the nation, from the nation
the federation, from the federation the brotherhood of
all humanity.  Alas, alas!  To the roots of that fair
Family Tree, whose leaves were for the healing of the
nations, anthropology, sociology, and psychology have
combined to lay the axe.  Alas for Eden!  Adam and
Eve may have learnt there, though they appear to have
forgotten, their Duty towards God, but of their Duty
towards their Neighbour they necessarily knew less than
a pack of hunting wolves.  Society, in so far as it deals
with sex, starts with the herd.  Society is founded, not
on the union of the sexes, but on what is a widely different
thing, its prohibition, its limitation.  The "herd"
says to primitive man not "thou shalt marry," but, save
under the strictest limitations for the common good,
"thou shalt not marry." *

Here again, a glance at primitive conditions may
serve to illustrate my point  Without entering on any
vexed questions of origins, it is now accepted on all
hands that in the social state known as Exogamy we

*I use "marriage" throughout this paper to mean simply the union of man
and woman irrespective of any forms of ceremonies that may attend it.
11

find one of the earliest instances of marriage, or, rather,
anti-marriage law, of inhibition of the sex-impulse by
the herd.  Savages over a large portion of the glove are
still found who form themselves into groups with totems,
sacred animals or plants whose name they bear.  Within
these totem groups they agree not to marry— the Buffalo
man may not marry a Buffalo girl; he may marry an
Antelope girl.  All Antelope women are his potential
wives.  All Buffalo girls are "tabu," are his "sisters," or
his "mothers."  Sex, if it is not, as some sociologists
think, the origin of the pugnacious instinct in man, is
at least often closely neighboured by it.  By the institution
of exogamy, by the tabu on the women of a man's
own group, peace is in this respect secured—secured, be
it noted, not through sex union, but by its limitation, its
prohibition.

All this, you will say, is curious and interesting;
but really too primitive to be of any avail.  We have
shed these savage instincts.  Pugnacity about sex is
really out of date, as irrelevant to humanity as the horns
that the buffalo exhibits in fighting for his mate.  I am
not so sure that pugnacity in relation to sex is really
obsolete, since sex is still shadowed by its dark familiar,
jealousy.  But let that pass.  The instinct of sex is
anti-social, exclusive, not only owing to its pugnacity;
it is, we have now to note, anti-social, exclusive, owing
also to the intensity of its egotism.

Once more I would not be misunderstood.  Egotism,
the self-regarding sentiment, is, like pugnacity, an element
that has worked and does work for civilization.
The self-regarding sentiment is indeed the very heart
and kernel of our volition, and hence of our highest
12

moral efforts.  Moreover, all passion, all strong emotion,
intellectual passion excepted, is in a sense exclusive
and egotistic; but of all passions sex-emotion is nowadays
perhaps the most exclusive, the most egotistic.

The reason of this is so far obscure that it must be
considered a little in detail.  As civilization advances,
the primal instincts, though they remain the bases of
character and the motive power of action, are in their
cruder form habitually satisfied, and therefore not immediately
and obviously operative.  Among the well-to-do
classes, it is rare to find anyone who has felt the stimulus
of acute hunger, and unless he go out into the wilds
to seek it, thanks to generations of good government
and efficient police, a man may pass his whole life without
experiencing the emotion of fear.  But for the prompt
and efficient satisfaction of the sex-impulse, society has
made and can make no adequate provision.  And this
for a reason that demands special attention.

It is very important that we should keep hold of the
initial fact that at the back of sex lies a blind instinct
for the continuance of the race, an instinct shared with
plants and animals.  This instinct is so bound up with
our life, with our keenest and most complex emotions,
that we are inclined to forget that there is an instinct
at all, apt to forget not how low down but how deep
down it lies.  This instinct, it has been well observed,
tends "in mankind to lend the immerse energy of its
impulse to sentiments and complex impulses into which
it enters, while its specific character remains submerged
and unconscious."*  This is not the case with hunger,
nor yet, save to some slight degree, with fear.  But,

* See W. McDougall, Social Psychology, p. 82.
13

if it is important we should not lose sight of the basal
instinct, it is still more important that we clearly recognize 
the complexity of the emotional system into which
that basal instinct enters, because therein lies the complexity
of the problem of relating the individual to the
herd.  So long as the need is simple and instinctive, its
inherent egotism is not seriously anti-social; but when
the simple instinct of sex develops into the complex sentiment
of love, the impulse and its attendant egotism is,
is less violent, far more extensive and all-pervading, far
more difficult to content and to balance.  When any wife
will suffice for any husband, egotisms do not seriously
clash; when two men are in love with one woman, we
have tragic material.

This egotism, this exclusiveness in sex-emotion is
more easily observed in its acuter phases, and in these
analytic days is noted by patient as well as spectator.
Take the letter of the newly-engaged.  Old style
(frankly self-centered and self-projective);  "We feel
that all the world is the richer for our new-found joy."
New style (introspective, altruistic): "We shall try not
to be more selfish than we can help,"  The practical
result is probably much the same; in the intensity of
the new reinforcement of two lives united, all the outside
world, once so interesting, becomes for a time a
negligeable fringe; but the advance in the new intellectual
outlook is marked.  Personality we now recognize
is not a thing that you can tie up in separate parcels,
labelling each parcel with the name of the person to
whom it is addressed.  Any new strong emotion dyes
and alters the whole personality, so that it never is and
14

never can be the same to anyone again.  Analogy is
usually misleading, but the closest and most instructive
analogy to what happens is that of focus.  You cannot
have a strong emotional focus on two things at the
same time.  Of this natural and inevitable sex-egotism
society is, of course, wisely tolerant.  This man and
woman will ultimately do society a supreme service, and
for a time she accepts as inevitable that they should be,
in common parlance, "no good."  Society in masse has
a good deal of common-sense, but in the more intimate
clash of individual relations sentiment is apt to obscure
clear vision, and the necessarily egotistic and exclusive
character of sex-emotion* is sometimes overlooked.
This oversight may be the source of much misunderstanding
and even of obscure suffering.

Sex, then like other strong instincts, is anti-social
and individualistic.  In its primal form it induces, perhaps
more than any other instinct, pugnacity; in its later
and more diffused form, as the emotion of love, it is
exclusive through its intensity of focus.

Now this intensity of focus, this egotism, is often
confused with altruism, and is labelled "Devotion to
another."  Society, it will be urged, many suffer from
the exclusiveness of sex, but is it not ennobled by the
spectacle of utter self-devotion, the devotion of the lover
to his mistress, of the wife to her husband.  A Frenchman
long ago defined love, with a truth that is not at
all necessarily cynical, as Le grand egoisme a deux.

* I apologize to all psychologists, and especially to Mr. McDougall, for a
somewhat loose use (unavoidable in a popular discussion) of the terms instinct,
emotion, sentiment.
  15

No one who has gone through the experience of "falling
in love" will deny that the definition is illuminating.
One secret of the intense joy of loving and being
loved is the immense reinforcement of one's own personality.
Suddenly, to another you become what you
have always been to yourself, the centre of the universe.
You are more vividly conscious, more sure of yourself.
Many motives move a man and a woman to marriage,
but of these not the meanest is a healthy and hungry
egotism.

But surely, it will be urged, self-devotion cannot be
akin to egotism.  The self is "lost in another."  "Hence
the purifying, elevating nature of the flame of love,
which burns up all the dross of selfishness," etc., etc.
But does it?  Can any honest man or woman say that
he or she, with single-hearted devotion, desires solely
the good of the beloved one?  A man desires his wife's
happiness.  That happiness comes to her through another,
not through him.  Is he utterly content?  What he
really desires is not solely her happiness but that her
happiness should be in him.

Surely, though, there is such a thing as utter devotion,
that asks no return.  The spirit of "though he slay
me yet will I trust him," a spirit of self-abasement rather
than self-enhancement.  There is, and it is what modern
psychology calls "negative self-feeling."*  Its recognition
throws a flood of light on the supposed ennobling
devotion of sex, and especially, perhaps, of sex in woman.

*Mr. McDougall (Social Psychology, p. 62) says that "negative and positive
self-feelings" were "first adequately recognized" by M. Ribot (Psychology of
the Emotions, p. 240).
 16

Egotism or self-feeling takes, we are now taught, 
two forms, positive and negative; the instinct for self-assertion,
the instinct, sometimes equally strong, for
self-abasement.  With the first form we are all familiar.
The second form, which is quite as real, and perhaps
more poignant, has been, till lately, somewhat neglected.
This instinct of self-abasement, of negative self-feeling,
appears in animals.  A young dog will crawl on his
belly, with his head sunk and his tail drooping, to
approach a larger, older dog.  The instinct is not fear;
it does not accompany flight.  The dog approaches, he
even wants to attract attention, but it is by deprecation.
It is the very ecstasy of humility.

This negative self-regarding sentiment, this instinct
of subjection, enters into all intensely passionate relations.
It is an ingredient alike of love and of religion,
and accounts for many of the analogies between these
two complex sentiments.  There can, however, be little
question that, though it is rarely, in moments of vehement
emotion, wholly absent in either sex, it is more
highly developed and more uniformly present in women.
In the bed-rock of human -- or, rather, animal -- nature
lies the sex-subjection of woman, not, be it clearly understood,
because man is physically stronger, but because
he is man and his form of sex self-feeling is dominant
and positive; woman's is more usually submissive and
negative.

A superficial thinker may imagine that here I give
my case away.  "Ah! now at last we have the truth.
Man is born to command, woman to obey.  Woman is
by nature unfitted to rule, and hence to vote.  Back to
the hearth and home."  Not at all.  Woman qua woman,
   17

qua sex, is in subjection.  What purpose that serves in
the divine economy I do not know, but it seems to me
a bed-rock fact, one that I have neither the power nor
the wish to alter, one also, I think, that has not been
clearly enough recognized.  But woman qua human
being, and ever qua weaker human being, is not in subjection.
The argument from superior force is an obsolete
as war-paint and woad.  When a man first says to
a woman, "I must insist that you . . . " he had
better take care.  He is in danger of toppling over from
admiration or friendship into love.  The woman, if she
is attracted, yields, with a strange thrill.  This is not because
he is the stronger.  The same evening her brother
also "insists" that she shall not borrow his latch key.  He
is also stronger, but there is no corresponding thrill.

My point is, I hope, clear.  If woman were woman
only "the sex," as she is sometimes called, she would
wish, she would ask, for no vote, no share in dominion.
A claim based on sex is, to my mind, doomed to failure,
and this is not because man is physically or even mentally
stronger, but because qua man he is dominant, he
has more positive self-feeling.  The consciousness of
this haunts, I believe obscurely, the inward mind of
many, both men and women, who object to "women's
rights"; they shrink from formulating this consciousness,
and confuse it with the argument from superior
strength.  It is better, I think, that, if true, it be plainly
faced and stated.  To my mind, one of the most difficult
problems that men and women have to work out together
is how to reconcile this subjection of sex with that
equality and comradeship which is the true and only
based of ever married friendship.
   18

Our analysis of egotism into positive and negative
has important bearings on the subject of "devotion"
and its supposed "hallowing" influences.  Sex-devotion
is not altruism.  This truth women, perhaps, more than
men, need to lay to heart.  I do not think women can
fairly be blamed for their confusion of thought in this
matter, because the sanctity of devotion has been so constantly
impressed upon them.  Their charity is always
to begin, and often end, at home.  What purpose in
evolution this tendency to self-devotion in women
serves, remains, as before said, obscure.  It is the cause
of intense rapture to women, and, so far, is a good.  It
occurs in strong natures as much, and perhaps more,
than in weak.  When unduly fostered, and when not
balanced by sympathy and comradeship, and by a wide
intellectual and social outlook, it acts in married life as
an obscure canker, peculiarly irritating and poisonous,
because masquerading as a virtue.  The egotism of
self-assertion atrophies life by over-focus, but the egotism
of self-abasement adds to this morbid over-focus a
slackening and enfeebling of the whole personality,
which defeats its own end and repels where it would
attract.  The important thing is to clear the air and
see plainly that this sex-devotion, this egotism of self-abasement,
is not altruism.  It causes none of the
healthy reactions of altruism, none of that bracing and
expanding and uplifting of the spirit that mysteriously
comes of "giving ourselves to something other and
greater than ourselves."

But, it may again be urged, granted that sex leads
to egotism, yet because it is intimately bound up with
   19

the parental instinct, it does also lead to altruism.
Bound up with, associated, yes, but of its essence, no.
People do not marry that they may indulge the altruism
of bringing up their children.  Races exist who are not
even aware that marriage has any connection with the
birth of children, and to whom therefore the prospect
can lend no altruistic impulse.  Parental, or, rather,
material instinct is one, and perhaps the greatest source
of "tender" altruistic emotion, of that disinterested love
for and desire to protect the helpless which is the least
egotistical and perhaps the loveliest of human sentiments.
But the maternal instinct in the main is a thing
healthy indeed and happy, but nowise specially holy.  It
is an extended egotism.  Our ego, we are nowadays
taught, is not limited by our own personality.  It extends
to wife and husband, to children and relations, to our
clothes and possessions, to our clubs and associations.
The extended ego, like the personal ego, is apt to be at
war with herd-altruism.  Love of my own children does
not necessarily lead to love of yours.  A woman will
often shamelessly indulge about her children an egotism
that she would blush to exhibit for herself.  Strange
though it may seem, the most altruistic members of
society, the best citizens, are not invariably those with
the largest families.  Here, again, we are bound to
remember that a large tolerance should be extended by
society to the egotism of parents.  It is from parents
that society draws the raw material of which society is
made.

Before leaving the question of sex-egotism and sex-exclusiveness,
may I guard against any possible exaggeration
20

or misunderstanding?  The instinct of sex, by
its association with pugnacity, and by the intensity of
its mutual egotism, is, we are obliged to admit, to an
extend beyond that of the other instincts, exclusive and
anti-social.  Under the influence of sex and the intensified
self-assertion it brings with it, a man will demand
that society should be a sympathetic spectator; here
comes in his positive self-feeling; he will be sensitive
and alert to resent any shadow of criticism as to his
choice, but share his emotion he cannot.  Most highly
civilized human beings have moments when, if they look
facts in the face, they feel that under the influence of
passion they fall, somehow, a little below themselves,
just because of this intense egotism, this inexorable
inability to share.  The social conscience is sensitive
nowadays.  Our very religion has come to be not a 
matter of personal salvation, but rather the sense of
sharing a life greater than our own and somehow common
to us all.

And yet, all said and done, a man or woman is
generally (not always) the better and the bigger for
passing through the experience of le grand egoisme a
deux.  Because of the frailty of our mortal nature he
can have this experience only towards one human being
at a time, and that one must be of the opposite sex.  But
through that one,

"Earth's crammed full of Heaven
And every common bush ablaze with God."

To almost every mortal it is granted once in his life
to go up into the Mount of Transfiguration.  He comes
down with his face shining, and of the things he saw on
the Mount he may not speak.  But through that revelation
 21

he is suddenly humbled before all the rest of the
world whom he cannot thus utterly love.

To resume:  Sex, we have found, is a splendid and
vital instinct with a singular power of inter-penetrating
and reinforcing other energies.  But it is an
instinct that has for its attendant characteristics, among
primitive peoples, pugnacity, in later civilization, intense
egotism.  Always and everywhere it tends to be exclusive
and individualistic.  This exclusiveness of sex seems
permanently and inexorably imposed by ineluctable
nature.  Now, if the object of life were the reproduction,
the handing on of life, we should say, and rightly
say, to woman:  "Be womanly: be wife and mother."
And we should say to man: "Be manly: be husband and
father."  So best would our purpose be served.  But
the problem before us is more difficult, more complex.
We want to live life, and human life, for woman as for
man, is lived to the full only in and through the "herd,"
is social.  We want, in a word, for the sake of this fulness
of life, to co-ordinate our individualistic instincts,
of which sex seems to be the strongest and most exclusive,
with our altruistic, herd instincts.

The old view, while we were yet untroubled by
ethnology, sociology, and psychology, was that life is a
sort of Sunday-school, which we entered at birth to fit
us for a future life.  It had rules we were bound to obey,
virtues and vices to be acquired and shunned, praise and,
above all, blame, to be duly apportioned.  Alas! for the
Sunday-school and its virtues; it has gone the way of
the Garden of Eden.  We may well nowadays sometimes
sign for their lost simplicity.  The life we know
   22

now is more like a great maelstrom of forces out of
which man, in tardy self-consciousness, just uprears his
head.  And the maelstrom is not only of mechanical
forces, which he might compute and balance, and which
by counterpoise negate each other, but of vital spiritual
and mental forces, which grow by counterpoise and
whose infinite intricacy baffles computation.  Not the
least difficult, and certainly among the most intricate and
complex of the problems before us, is the due counterpoise
of sex and humanity.

The problem is not likely to grow simpler.  Sex
shows no signs of a tendency to atrophy.  In view of
evolutionary laws, how should it?  It is by and through
sex that the fittest survive.  On the while, it is those
least highly dowered with sex who remain unmarried
and die out.  It is true, however, that, though the sex-impulse
does not atrophy, it becomes milder and less
purely instinctive by being blended with other impulses.
From a blind reproductive force it becomes a complex
sentiment.  Therein, in the diffusion and softening of
the impulse lies the real hope, but therein lies the complexity
of the problem.  It is interesting, and may be,
I think, instructive, to note a very early and widespread
attempt at solution made, and still being made, by
primitive man, an attempt in some respects curiously
analogous* to the efforts to-day of beings more highly
civilized.

*  I should like to state distinctly that the ethnological observations introduced
from time to time are to be regarded not as arguments supporting my
thesis but merely as illustrations.  The desirability of the emancipation of women
is no wise bound up with their acceptance, and should they be discredited
to-morrow or otherwise interpreted it would remain untouched.  The story of
primitive custom has, however, helped me to my present point of view, and may,
I hope, help others.
   23

Over the greater part of the world, from the South
Pacific Islands, through Australia, Melanesia, Polynesia,
Africa, and America, an institution has been
observed common to nearly all savage tribes called the
"Man's House."  The savage, instead of living a simple
domestic life with wife and child, lives a double life.  He
has a domestic home and a social home.  In the domestic
home are his wife and family; in the Man's House
is passed all his social, civilized life.  To the Man's
House he goes when he attains maturity.  It is his public
school, his university, his club, his public-house.  Even
after marriage, it is in the Man's House he mainly lives.
For a woman to enter the Man's House is usually taboo;
the penalty is often death.  Oddest of all to our minds,
the Man's House is not only his social home but also
his church.  A woman among savages must not go to
the Man's Church.  To join in the mysteries of the
Man's Church, or even sometimes to behold them from
a distance, is to a woman death.  At the sound of the
church-bell, the sacred Bull-roarer, woman must flee, or
fall flat with her face to the ground.  The home is to
us the place of hospitality for strangers.  Not so for
primitive man.  The entertainment of strangers, all
contact with and news from the outside world, is
reserved for the Man's House.  There, too, he discusses
the affairs of the tribe, there holds his parliament, in a
word, a Man's House is "the House" and has all its
"inviolable sanctity."  From religion, from politics, from
social life, from contact with the outside world, woman
is rigidly secluded.  She is segregated within her sex.
She is invited to be "womanly."

From these undoubted and world-wide facts the
  24

learned German,* who has contributed so much to our
knowledge of them, draws a conclusion singularly Germane.
The province of woman, he urges, always has
been, always must be, that of natural ties, of sex and of
the blood relationships that spring from sex.  Her
emotional sphere is that of the family.  Man, on the
other hand, is by nature apt for society.  He is naturally
drawn to artificial associations made not under the compulsion
of sex, but by free choice, through sympathy,
equality of age, similarity of temperament.  Woman is
the eternal guardian and champion of the union of the
sexes.  She sets her face always against comradeship,
against the free association of equals, which leads to
advanced social complexes, to clubs, brotherhoods, artificial
societies of every sort.  In fact, broadly speaking,
woman is of the individualistic instincts; man is of the
herd sentiments.  Ethnologically speaking, woman is
of the family; man of the Man's House.

This mutatis mutandis is the position occupied by 
many at the present day.  But, be it observed, this position
must not be based on arguments drawn from primitive
sociology.  Our learned German, had he read to
the end of his own book must have seen the refutation 
of his own theory.  The Institution of the Man's House
almost invariably breaks down.  The doors, once so
rigidly closed to all but the initiated man, open inch by
inch.  Gradually the Man's House alters in character,
becomes more religious, the centre of a Secret Society
to which woman begs or buys admission; it ends as a
mere sanctuary or temple, or as a club-house whose

* Heinrich Schurtz, Altersklassen and Mannerbunde, 1902, and for English
readers see Hutton Webster Primitive Secret Societies, 1908.
  25

taboos are less and less stringent, and whose last survivals
are still precariously entrenched in the precincts of
Pall Mall.

The institution of the Man's House was unquestionably
an advance in civilization; but what is good for
a time is not therefore good for all time.  The full reasons
for its breakdown are too complex for discussion
here, but one cause of inadequacy is clear.  Good and
useful though the Man's House was for man, it left out
half of humanity, woman.  It civilized man by releasing
him from sex, or, rather, by balancing his sex instincts
which gather round his home with her "herd" instincts,
his comradeship which centred round the Man's House.
But the solution was crude, and by segregation.
Release was sought, as too often to-day, not by a wise
asceticism, but by the banishment of temptation, by the
seclusion of women within their sex.  It is as noticeable
to-day as then that the less self-restraint a man is prepared
to exercise, the more rigorously will he insist that
woman shall be secluded.  It is only the man who has
his passions well to heel who is prepared to grant liberty
to woman.  Man had, and, in part, still has yet to learn
that one half of humanity cannot be fully humanized
without the other.

We are now at the second chapter in the history of
the relation of the sexes.  Woman, as well as man, is
asking to be civilized, woman, who bore man, and who
will bear his children.  In woman, too, is this tremendous
sex-impulse, that may devastate, and that should
fertilize.  Is woman to live life to the full, or is her
function only to hand on life?  If she is to live it to the
   26

full, there is for her as for him only one solution.  Sex
must be not ignored or atrophied, still less must it, by a
sort of mental jugglery, be at one and the same moment
ignored and over-emphasized.  Woman cannot be
moralized through sex, because sex is a non-moral, that
is a non-social instinct.  But, for woman as for man,
non-moral sex, the greatest of life forces, can be
balanced, blended with other and humane sentiments.
Man, because he is physically stronger, has got a little
ahead in civilization.  Women, not because he is
stronger, but merely qua sex impulse, is at present subject
to him.  It is for him, surely, to hand on to her the
gospel that has been his salvation, to teach her the
words: "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alieunum puto."

If sex, then, is egotistic, exclusive, if it needs
balance by a broader humanity, what are the chief non-egotistic
humanizing tendencies?  What master passions
can we oppose to the individualism, the exclusiveness,
the pugnacity, the egotism of sex?  The answer
 is clear.  We have two great forces at our disposal, the
desire for knowledge,* or, as psychologists call it, the
"instinct of curiosity," and pure altruism, the desire to
use our strength and our knowledge for the welfare of
the herd, and specially its weaker members.  Now, it is
the emergence of these two desires which have marked
the two stages of the Woman's Movement, I mean the
demand for higher education, the demand for political
freedom.

*As Professor Gilbert Murray has said:  "The love of knowledge must be a
disinterested love; and those who are fortunate enough to possess it, just in
proportion to the strength and width of their love enter into a great kingdom
where the strain of disturbing passions grows quiet and even the prosecuting
whisper of egotism dies at last almost completely away."
   27

At this point I must make a somewhat shameful
confession.  For long, very long, I was half-hearted as
to the Woman's Movement.  I desired higher education,
freedom to know, but not, as I explained before,
the vote, not freedom to act and control.  The reason
was mainly pure selfishness, and, for this is always
at the back of selfishness, a sluggish imagination.  I
myself intensely desired freedom to learn; I felt it to be
the birthright of every human being.  The thing was
self-evident to me, I did not care to argue about it; it
was a faith held with a passionate intensity beyond any
reasoned conviction.  Man had always most generously
held out to me the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; I
not unnaturally placed him on a pedestal, and did homage
to him as my Sacred Serpent.

But as to the vote, politics seems to me, personally,
heavy and sometimes rather dirty work, and I had
always, on principle, preferred that a man-servant should
bring in the coals.  I am not ashamed of my lack of
interest in politics.  That deficiency still remains and
must lie where it has always lain, on the knees of the
gods.  But that I failed to sympathize with a need I did
not feel, of that I am truly ashamed.  From that inertia
and stupidity I was roused by the Militant Suffragists.
I read of delicate and fastidious women who faced the
intimate disgusts of prison life because they and their
sister-woman wanted a vote.  Something caught me in
the throat.  I felt that they were feeling, and then,
because I felt, I began to understand.

To feel keenly is often, if not always, an amazing
intellectual revelation.  You have been wandering in
that disused rabbit-warren of other people's opinions and
 28

prejudices which you call your mind, and suddenly you
are out in the light.  If this letter should meet the eye
of any Militant Suffragist (pugnacity, may I say, is not
my favourite virtue, though my sympathies are always
apt to go more with the church militant than the church
triumphant), I should like, though I do not fight in her
camp, to thank her from my heart for doing me a signal
service, for making me feel, and thereby teaching me to
understand.

An eminent novelist has recently told us that women
are to have higher education, but not political power,
not the Parliamentary vote.  Women are "unfit to
govern."  An eminent statesman has only yesterday
told us that women may have university training, they
may even look for that priceless boon, that crown of
intellectual effort, the degree of Bachelor of Arts; they
may have knowledge, and the label that guarantees them
as knowing, but membership of the university, power to
govern, power to shape the teachings by which they
have profited, No.

Have Mrs. Humphrey Ward and Lord Curzon,
in their busy and beneficent lives, found time to read M.
Henri Bergson's "L'Evolution Creatrice"?  Long ago
Socrates told us that we only know in order that we may
act.  M. Bergson has shown us how this is, and why.
Intellect, as contrasted with instinct, is the tool-maker,
is essentially practical, always ultimately intent on
action.  To a few of us, and we are happy, if sometimes
lonely, knowledge, which began with practical intent,
becomes an end in itself, an object for rapturous contemplation.
But to most human beings, and these are
  29

the best of our citizens, knowledge is the outcome of
desire, and is always forging on towards action, action
which necessarily takes shape as increased dominion
over the world of nature and humanity.  You can, it
is true, shovel ready-made information into the human
mind, without seriously affecting life and character.
But the awakening of the desire to know is primarily
nothing but the awakening of the intention to act, to act
more efficiently and to shape the world more completely
to our will.

Mrs. Humphrey Ward and Lord Curzon are half-a-century
too late.  They may entrench themselves on
their castle of sand, but the tide has turned, and the
sea is upon them.  When women first felt the insistent
need to know, behind it, from the beginning, unconscious
though they were, was for most of them the more imperative
impulse to act.

Woman qua women remain, for the better continuance
of life, subject to men.  Women as human beings
demand to live as well as to continue life.  To live
effectively they must learn to know the world through
and through, in order that, side by side with men, they
may fashion life to their common good.

I am, dear Anti-Suffragists,
Sincerely yours,
AN ANTHROPOLOGIST
30

NATIONAL COLLEGE EQUAL SUFFRAGE LEAGUE
AUXILIARY TO THE NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION
REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION AND SUFFRAGE LITERATURE MAY BE ADDRESSED
TO THE SECRETARY, 505 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY
TELEPHONE, MURRAY HILL 4990

OFFICERS
President
Miss M. Carey Thomas
President of Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania

Vice-Presidents
Rev. Anna Howard Shaw
President of National American Woman Suffrage Association
Dean Sophonisba P. Breckinridge
Dean in the University of Chicago
Miss Frances W. McLean
1829 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, California
Mrs. Maud Wood Park
585 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts
Professor Lucy M. Salmon
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York
President Mary E. Woolley
President of Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts

Secretary
Miss Martha Gruening
505 Fifth Avenue, New York City

Treasurer
Miss Mary E. Garrett
101 West Monument Street, Baltimore. Maryland

STANDING COMMITTEES
ORGANISATION: Chairman, Mrs. Maud Wood Park
585 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts
MEMBERSHIP: Chairman, Dean Marion Reilly
Dean of Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
FINANCE: Chairman, Mrs. Herbert Parsons
1229 Nineteenth Street, Washington. D.C.
LECTURES:
(East) Chairman, Mrs. Susan Walker Fitz Gerald
184 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts
(Middle West) Chairman, Professor Anna Roberta Van Meter
Professor in the University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois
(Pacific Coast) Chairman, Mrs. Alexander F. Morrison
2022 California Street, San Francisco, California
(South) Chairman, Mrs. Warren Newcomb Boyd
194 Washington Street. Atlanta, Georgia
PUBLICATION: Chairman, President M. Carey Thomas


Study the Map!
Shall Rhode Island Remain Black?
?

Votes for Women a Success

White States-Full Suffrage Shaded States- Partial Suffrage Black States- No Suffrage

Imitation is the Sincerest Flattery

Suffrage Granted                   

1869 Wyoming 

1893 Colorado
      Bounds Wyoming on south

1893 Utah
        Bounds Wyoming and Colorado

1896 Idaho
         Bounds Wyoming and Utah

Suffrage Granted

1910 Washington 
          Bounds Idaho on west

1911 California

1912 Oregon
         Bounds California on south

1912 Arizona
         Bounds California on east  

Suffrage Granted 

1912 Kansas 
         Bounds Colorado on east

1913 Alaska

1913 Illinois
         Starts new cycle

[*1914 Nevada.
1914 Nebraska*]         

Would any of these States have adopted Equal Suffrage if it 
had been a failure just across the border?         



Shall Rhode Island Remain Black? 

Four million women now vote for presidential elections in ten states and in Alaska 
territory. 

Legislatures of many other states are soon to submit to their voters the question of 
presidential equal suffrage. 

The Legislature of Rhode Island has full power to grant presidential suffrage to its 
women this year, since the United States Constitution, the supreme law of the land, states 
that the presidential electors from each State must be appointed in such manner as the 
Legislature thereof may direct. 

The National Grange has indorsed Woman Suffrage.

The American Federation of Labor has indorsed Woman Suffrage.        

The National Womens' Trade Union has indorsed Woman Suffrage. 

Editorials from the current press state:

"Women's rights to full citizenship have now been sufficiently 
conceded to arouse their full recognition and enactment throughout the 
United States. If for no other reason, political necessity will compel 
every State in the Union to follow Illinois in legislating votes to women. 
The balance of power in the national convention of every party has been 
disturbed by the act of the first of the great States to make women presidential 
electors. The number of votes and not the census of population 
will surely determine the number of delegates to which each state is entitled 
in the national conventions. Illinois has added 1,500,000 citizens who are 
eligible to vote by enfranchising all its women. If New York continues 
to restrict its suffrage to men, the man and woman voters of Illinois will 
send enough representatives to their party conventions to outvote the 
Empire State."

The Rhode Island Legislature can double its importance in the electoral college by 
giving its women presidential suffrage. 

"By doing so, it would place Rhode Island in the very forefront of the New England 
States. Ten States of the Union have given women the vote already, and year by year the 
number grows. Even the opponents admit that equal suffrage is surely coming: it is only a 
question of time. Rhode Island was a leader in granting religious liberty. It would be 
most appropriate that she should lead New England also in Granting Political Liberty to 
Women."

Compliments of
The Rhode Island College Equal Suffrage League

College Equal Suffrage League of Boston
Boston, January 28, 1919
To the Members of the College Equal Suffrage League:
You will be interested to know something of the writing room in the Suffrage Coffee House at Ayer which you furnished so promptly and so generously in response to our appeal.
The writing-room was a great success. The boys loved it. The good taste appealed to them and the comfort gave them a cordial feeling for college women and for suffragists; two quite worthwhile results if we reflect that those boys are going home to influence community sentiment on college education for women and on woman's suffrage. If you could have heard their college yell, "Are we for suffrage? Yes, we ARE!" you would be sure of the worthwhileness.

ANOTHER APPEAL
The United Canteen is still carrying on its work at Trinity Place, and the College Equal Suffrage League wants money for its Saturday work. The boys are pitifully in need of friendly care. In some cases influenza has wiped out whole families so that a returned soldier finds himself desolate indeed.
They all need a little cheering and a little mothering. If you can't do it yourself let your dollar do it!
This is a Dollar Drive. We want a dollar from every member. Speed up, and send it to
MISS ETHEL L. THAYER,
463 Blue Hill Ave., Roxbury.

I might have sent you neckties
  I might have sent you socks
I might have bought suspenders
  Or handkerchiefs by the box.

Humidors tempted purchase
  All porcelain-lined within
[[?]] [and] pouches lured me
  And many a gay scarf pin.

But No! Italian briar wood
  The "coolest smoke for men"
Commanded all attention
  I would I could send you ten!

So I purchased one in a hurry---
  This wonder-pipe of wood.
So have and beautifully mature,---
  Here's to a smoke that's good!


The College Equal Suffrage League
of Massachusetts

REPORT FOR 1906--1907

REPORT.

There have been two meetings of the League during the year
1906-7. At the Fall meeting, held at No. 6 Marlborough
Street, on December 5, 1906, Miss MacFeaters of the Hat 
Trimmers' Union, and Miss Withington of the Executive Board
of the Woman's Trade Union League, talked on the question :
"Does the Wage earning Woman Need the Ballot?"  Resolutions
for the establishment of a life membership fund, to be
known as the Lucy Stone Memorial Fund, were adopted at
this time. The second and annual meeting, in the form of a 
roof-garden party, was held at the house of Mrs. Otto B. Cole,
551 Boylston Street, on Friday evening, May 24, 1907, when
the following members read selections from their own writings
-- Mrs. R. H. Gillmore (Radcliffe), Miss Alice Stone Blackwell
(Boston University), Miss Sara Cone Bryant  (Boston 
University), Miss Edith Mendall Taylor (Radcliffe), and Miss
Maud Hartwell (Smith). 
   Officers for the year 1906-7 were elected as follows :
President : Miss Rosa Heinzen, Radcliffe. 
1st Vice-President : Miss Eva Channing, Boston University.
2d Vice-President : Miss Frederica Cliff, Radcliffe.
Secretary : Mrs. Bryan S. Permar, Wellesley. 
Treasurer : Dr. Margaret Long, Smith and John Hopkins. 
   The Treasurer's report for the year just ended, shows a balance
on hand of $229.42, besides the note of the New York
Suffrage League for the loan of $50 used in defraying the expenses 
of Miss Sumner in her investigation of the woman question
in Colorado. 
   During the year, various committees have, as usual, carried 
on the work of the League.
   The most important of these has been the special work for the
establishment of the Lucy Stone Memorial Fund, the object of 
which is, not only a definite recognition of the gratitude of
collegiate and professional women to Lucy Stone and the other
early suffragists, but also the promotion of suffrage sentiment
among collegiate women.  For this purpose the income of the
Fund, after the auxiliary dues of the life members shall have 
been paid to the National American Woman Suffrage Association,
is to be devoted to one of the following three objects :
  I. The organization of chapters of the College Equal Suffrage
League in colleges admitting women.


   II.   The publication of suffrage articles for circulation among
college women, if possible, through college publications. 
   III.   The expenses of a lecturer on equal suffrage in colleges 
admitting women.
   Appeals for contribution have been made to collegiate and
professional women from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast.
Over two hundred responses have been received.   In almost all
instances the contributions have been in ten dollar life membership
fees, or in smaller amounts. 
   The Fund at the present writing stands at $1208.50, with 54
life members and 32 contributors.
Cash paid in  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   $785  50
Pledges      .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .      223.00
Note of the N.Y. League laid aside for the Lucy
  Stone Fund at the annual meeting  .  .  .   50.00
Appropriation from our own treasury at the annual
meeting       .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .      150.00  $1208.50
          Total     .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . $1208.50
   It is hoped that the rest of the $2,000 desired will soon be 
raised, in order that the Fund may be put to use.  Miss Mabel
Willard (Wellesley) as Chairman, assisted by Miss Channing
(Boston University), and Miss Power (Boston University), has
worked constantly and vigorously for the success of this project.
   It was decided not to give the usual amateur theatricals this 
year, but in their place, if possible, to have the marionettes of 
the Italian theatre brought up to Huntington Chambers, for an 
evening's performance, the proceeds to be turned over to the 
Lucy Stone Fund.  Satisfactory arrangements, however, could
not be effected.  The plan was, therefore, abandoned, and all
efforts were turned towards raising the Fund through contributions
and life memberships.  Mrs. Charles Park (Radcliffe) was
Chairman of this Committee. 
   The Membership Committee has made a most gratifying
report of increase in our numbers.  Forty-three new names
have been added to our membership, making a total of 288
enrolled.  Of the Seven resignations received, two have
transferred their membership to the New York branch ; two have
been dropped for non-payment of dues ; and one has been lost
through death.  Miss Marie Molineux (Boston University) has
had charge of this Committee.
  Mrs. Charles Park's appointment by the Boston Equal 
Suffrage Association for Good Government, as Secretary of 
the Special Committee on Equal Suffrage Lectures for College
Students, has afforded unusual opportunities towards the organi- 


zation of new Suffrage Leagues in many of the western and
southern colleges for women. In November, at the request 
of the Illinois Woman Suffrage Association, Mrs. Park made
ten addresses at various Illinois colleges. At one of these
colleges,  Northwestern, a small Suffrage League had been
formed the previous Spring.  At three other place -- the University
of Chicago, Eureka, and Lombard -- organizations have
been formed recently in consequences of the meetings.  At Normal
and Wesleyan Colleges organizations are promised. Again, 
in January, Mrs. Park spoke in the chapel of the Woman's 
College of Brown University,  Providence, R. I., as a result of
which preliminary steps have been taken to form a College
Equal Suffrage League which is to be made up chiefly of 
alumnae, thus falling into line with our own League and that of 
New York, rather than with those of Illinois.  An address was 
also made later in the year before the History Club of Radcliffe.
In May, addresses were made by Mrs. Park at Swarthmore and
Bryn Mawr Colleges, before the Washington Branch of the
Association of Collegiate Alumnae, at the Acorn Club, Philadelphia, 
and the Country Club of Baltimore.  As a result, many
students at both Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore expressed enthusiastic 
willingness to join a Suffrage League, and details of organization
were placed in the hands of special committees.  The
formation of Washington and Pennsylvania branches of the 
College Equal Suffrage League were also promised. and committees 
for further organizations appointed.  Also in the hope 
of arousing interest in the question of Equal Suffrage, the College
Meeting's Committee,  Miss Rosa Heinzen (Radcliffe) 
Chairman, issued last June to all graduates of our Massachusetts
colleges for women for the year 1906, Miss Jane Adams' pamphlet
on Suffrage, together with a copy of arguments for
Suffrage, and the leaflets, describing our work, with membership
blank attached. 

The hearty co-operation of every member of the League will
be greatly appreciated in carrying on the work of the League,
especially in the completion of the Lucy Stone Fund.  Any
contributions for the latter will be most gratefully received by 
the Secretary.  Members are also requested to notify the Secretary 
promptly of any change of address. 
                  
                      WARRENE ROBY PERMAR, Secretary. 

830 Beacon Street, Boston, May 31, 1907.




College Equal Suffrage League
of Boston 
1913-1914
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY
 May 28, 1914.

  On May 21, 1913, the membership of the League
numbered 463, of this number 80 being life members
and 12 associate.  On May 28, 1914, the membership
is 604, (81 life members and 24 associate members). 
   The Executive Board of the League has held twelve
meetings this year.  There have been three resignations
from the Board, Miss Eleanor Raymond as secretary
and Miss Eleanor Garrison and Miss Florence Luscomb
as directors.  The Board elected Miss Eleanor 
Piper (Wellesley) secretary and replaced Miss Garrison 
by Dr. Mabel Southard (University of Minnesota),
Miss Luscomb by Miss Eleanor Fisher (Smith) and
Miss Piper, who resigned as director to become secretary,
by Miss Margery Bedinger (Radcliffe).
   The Executive Board has arranged for four meetings
of The League in accordance with the vote of the 
annual meeting of 1913.  The first was a Banquet at
the Twentieth Century Club in October at which 
there were many distinguished speakers.  The second
was in The New England Woman's Club rooms in 
February and consisted of a business meeting followed
by singing by Mr. James White and the presentation
of Bernard Shaw's "Press Cuttings" by the Junior 
Equal Suffrage League.  The third was held in Huntington
Hall in April, following the canvass of the college
women of Massachusetts at which the Hon. George P.
Chamberlain, Mrs. Wenona Pinkham and Mrs. Lewis
Johnson spoke.  The Parade May 2 and the meeting

following it in Tremont Temple were counted as the 
fourth meeting of the year.
   The League has taken part in two parades, the one
on Columbus Day when it was represented by a float
and the Suffrage Parade May 2 in which it had a 
delegation of over 700 in caps and gowns. 
    In connection with the Suffrage Parade, a canvass of 
all the 6000 Massachusetts college women not in the 
League was made, sending them a leaflet of reasons for
believing in Equal Suffrage, a notice of the April 24
meeting and a postal-card asking the following questions,
"Are you in favor of Equal Suffrage?  Are you
indifferent?  Are you opposed?  Are you willing to
join the College League?  Are you willing to march 
in the Parade?"  716 replies were received.  413 were 
in favor, 215 opposed,  70 indifferent and 18 undecided.
Of the 433 in favor, 111 have joined the League
and 90 others have said they will join.  To all those 
who asked for information in regard to certain arguments
for suffrage and to those who are "open to conviction"
literature and a list of worth-while books will
be sent. 
   Another important work of the League has been 
the Press work.  The purpose has been to send suffrage
items to those newspapers in the cities and towns
of Massachusetts who would print them. Thirty-five
newspapers are now on the League's list and the
work is ably carried forward by Miss Edith Bradford.
   The League assisted at the Bay State Suffrage
Festival given by the Massachusetts Association in
November and realized $308.50 from a Bag Table.
   Plans for the work of the League for the coming 
year are enclosed. The attention of all members is 
called to this notice. 
   Respectfully submitted,
                     ELEANOR PIPER,
                               Secretary. 



REPORT OF THE TREASURER
May 28, 1914.

RECEIPTS
Balance May 18, 1913  .  .  .  .  .  .  . $  89.37
Annual dues from members .  .  .  .  . 289.50
Appropriation from Lucy Stone Fund .  . 100.00
Proceeds of dinner at Twentieth Century Club 124.20
Collection at Huntington Hall meeting .  .  7.65
Donations for carrying on the Press Work . 75.94
Unrestricted  gifts .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 45.00
Total receipts .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . $728.66
               EXPENDITURES
Treasurer and Secretary's Expenses for postage,
coin cards, account books, etc.  .   .  37.85
Fee for use of B. E. S. A. rooms .  .  .  . 2.00
Columbus Day Float .  .  .  .  .  .  . 34.86
Canvass of 1913 graduates .  .  .  .  .  .7.62
Expenses of dinner at Twentieth Century Club 109.75
Canvass of Alumnae of Massachusetts .  .  131.90
Annual dues to the National C.E.S.L. .  . 95.50
Press Work .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 102.45
Meeting at N.E. Woman's Club .  .  .  . 24.50
Parade, May 2 .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 69.43
Annual meetings expenses .  .  .  .  .  . 8.75
Balance May 28, 1914 .  .  .  .  .  .  . 104.05
                                                   $ 728.66
                   Respectfully submitted, 
                          WARRENE R. PERMAR, 
                                              Treasurer. 
  By a vote of the League on February 17, 1914, the 
dues of the League were raised to one dollar.
   All members who have not paid their dues for 1914-15
are urgently requested to send one dollar to Mrs. Bryan
S. Permar, 41 Crafts Rd., Chestnut Hill, Mass., at once. 

OFFICERS OF THE LEAGUE
1914-1915

President:
Mrs. RUTH SIBLEY HASKELL
Jackson, 1906

Vice-President:
Mrs. EDITH TAYLOR SPEAR
Radcliffe, 1897

Secretary:
Miss ELEANOR PIPER
Wellesley, 1908

Treasurer:
Miss ELEANOR RAYMOND
Wellesley, 1909

Delegate to the National Convention:
Miss LILLIAN LANDY
Smith, 1910

Directors:
Mrs. MARGARET STARR DOWST, Wellesley, 1897
Mrs. MAUD WOOD PARK, Radcliffe, 1898
Miss ELEANOR FISHER, Smith, 1911
Dr. MABEL F. SOUTHARD, Univ. of Minnesota, 1893
Miss ANNE SHERWIN, Bryn Mawr, 1908
Miss MARGERY BEDINGER, Radcliffe, 1913
Miss ELEANOR MANNING, M. I. T., 1906
Miss GLADYS C. GILMORE, Smith, 1908
Miss PAULINE GARDNER, Smith, 1912

COLLEGE WOMEN'S DRAMATICS.

[May 5, 1900]

The College Equal Suffrage League gave
its first dramatic entertainment at Association
Hall, Boston, presenting "The
Weathervane of Love," by Rufus Hamilton
Gilmore, and "The Judgment of
Minerva," by Mrs. Florence Howe Hall.

The affair was a brilliant success.  There
was a large audience, and the performers
took their parts with great spirit.  An
experienced spectator said: "The array of
amateur talent was really remarkable.
Every one of them did well - some better
than others, of course, but there was not
a poor one among them."

"The Weathervane of Love," a pretty
love-drama, was received with great applause.
Mrs. Gilmore maintained the 
reputation for fine acting that she won at
Radcliffe, and was ably supported by Miss
Fox, Mr. Haynes, and Mr. Gillett.

"The Judgment of Minerva" presented
a series of beautiful tableaux.  It opens
with Olympus, showing Zeus dozing under
his crown; Here, waving her fan of
peacock feathers; Pallas Athene with tablets
and quill; Aphrodite with her mirror,
and Artemis with her bow.  A band of
suffragists come before Zeus to ask for
the ballot, and a band of "Antis" to protest.
The two parties plead their respective
causes, while the immortals look on
in amazement, with occasional comments.
An effective feature was a broom drill by
the "Good Government Club," five young
girls in white, from the City Point League,

carrying brooms adorned with red, white,
and blue ribbons, who brought down the
house as they went through their evolutions,
and sang, to a lively air:

We are the Good Government Club;
We cleanse and we rub and we scrub;
Like the Lexow Committee,
We want a clean city;
Dishonest officials we snub!

Mrs. Helen A. Shaw led a minuet gavotte
by the "Antis" (performed by the Wentworth
Dramatic Club), which the Boston
Herald describes as "a very fetching
dance," accompanied by a song with the
refrain (from Oudia's much discussed
article against equal suffrage), "Kick them
back to the harem!"

When a lordly doctor of divinity came
forward and assured Zeus that the suffragists
had made their plea "only for
oratorical effect," every one who had been
present at the little tilt between Dr. Lyman
Abbott and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe at the
State House, laughed with especial relish.
Mrs. Livermore's granddaughter made so
spirited a remonstrant that it is lucky she
is not really on that side.  When Pallas
Athene (Miss Hards) finally awarded the 
ballot to Mrs. Park (in white robe and 
green wreath, as Poetess), the leading 
"Anti" fainted in the arms of Miss Diana
Hirschler, who made a sturdy and smiling 
little Portia in cap and gown, and came
forward as the best available substitute
for a man to catch the swooning lady as
she fell; and the curtain descended on a 
tableau of rejoicing suffragists, and "Antis"
fainting away in all directions.

It seems invidious to single out any for
special praise where all, from Zeus down,
did so well; and as for beauty, the stage
was a flower-garden of lovely girls.  But
especial credit for the evening's success
was due to Mrs. Helen Adelaide Shaw,
who gave her valuable aid as stage-director
and manager, drilling the twenty-eight
performers in "The Judgment of
Minerva" unweariedly.  The play cleared
about $150.

These first dramatics of the College
Equal Suffrage League were so successful
that the tickets for the next entertainment 
which the League may undertake
ought to go off "like hot cakes."

Ballot - May 28, 1914
Officers -
Pres.     Mrs. Ruth L. Haskell Jackson '06
Vice P.   Mrs. Ellwood V. Spear  Rad '97
Sec        Eleanor Piper  W. '08
Treas.    Eleanor Raymond  W. '09

Directors
1 yr.  Miss Eleanor Fisher  S. '11
1 yr.  Mrs. Park  R. '98
1 yr.  Mrs. M.S. Doust  W. '97
2 yr.  Miss Margery Bednizer  R. '13
2 yr.  Dr. Mabel F. Southland  U. of Minn. '93
2 yr.  Miss Anne Sherwin  Bryn Maur
3 yr.  Miss Eleanor Manning  W.I.T '06
3 yr.  Miss Gladys C. Gilmore  Smith '08
3 yr.  Miss Pauline Gardner  Smith

Delegate  I National
Miss Lillian Landy  Smith '10

Respectfully submitted -
Edward  Hutchins,
Chairman Nominating
Committee



Report on Suffrage Libraries.

In a State where every town has a free 
public library, is there a field for loan 
libraries on Suffrage? As a free-lance, I put 
this question in the summer of 1914 to the Chairman of the State 
Library Commission. Mr. Belden expressed the 
opinion that there was no demand for 
suffrage books by readers generally, little 
for any books except fiction, but that the 
demand ought to be created. He recommended, 
as an experiment that five 
duplicate cuts of books, costing five or six 
dollars each, be put in circulation. He was 
cordially ready to co-operate, but was 
then on the point of sailing for Europe. 
The librarian in charge of the loan 
libraries of the Mass. Woman's Education 
Association (from which Suffrage books are 
excluded as "political") also thought that 
there is no demand, although herself, a 
suffragist; and that, consequently, it would 
be necessary not only to make no charge 
for the use of books, but also to pay 
the transportation both ways.

The first person approached, contributed 
$5.00. A little reflection convinced me 
that whatever money were raised would probably 
be at the expense of other forms of 
propaganda already adopted for the campaign. 
So waited for circumstances to give an opening.



2
A few correspondents in small places 
showed interest in the project, and their 
names were sent to Mr. Belden's office. 
On his return both the State Suffrage and the 
Anti-Suffrage associations at his request 
contributed five duplicate sets of books, to which I 
added five copies of Dr. Arthur's "Votes for 
Women." These sets are sent out, free of 
all charges for renewable periods of 
 three months each, on request through local 
librarians, preference being given to 
towns having a valuation of $1000000 or 
less. I made an effort to see that these 
sets were kept in constant circulation.

Mr. Belden co-operated further by purchasing 
single books, as loans to small town libraries, 
as requests came to me.

In June, 1915, the College Equal Suffrage 
League voted to give this movement 
support, appropriating $5.00 for the 
purchase of new books; and though 
Miss Piper obtained from the Wellesley College league, 
a loan for the summer vacation of 14 volumes, placed in their 
care by the National College Equal Suffrage 
League. Soon after Mrs. George Howland Shaw 
unexpectedly sent a gift - of $20.00 and 
Dr. A.R. Emerson gave $200. Gifts of books, 
nine volumes in all, were received from

3
Mrs. G.H. Shaw, Mr. Eugene A. Hecker, Miss 
C.B. Runkle and from Headquarters, (Blue Book). 
The Boston Equal Suffrage Association also 
gave generous support, lending all pertinent 
duplicate volumes, and supplying complete 
sets, when opportunities [?] after when 
resources had been exhausted.

Where sets were sent to club-houses or 
summer hotels, in order to attract attention 
and interest, a few yellow boxes were 
made, bearing artistically lettered quotations 
from Dr. [Crother's?] Votes for Women. These 
labels were designed and contributed by 
Miss Lois Howe and Miss Manning.

Although the angles of the boxes were reinforced 
with muslin, they did not stand 
the rough handling of mail-carriers and 
expressmen. Another time, stouter ones should 
be provided.

Various publishers were generous in the 
conditions granted for the purchase of books, 
and profits from sales, with the 
active cooperation of the "Literature Department" 
increased the fund for buying 
additional books. As a rule, a charge of 
$1.00 per month and return transportation 
was made of borrowers. The chief exceptions to this rule 
were men's clubs in the weeks immediately 
preceding election day. The total receipts


4
from all sources were $83.86;  the total expenses
$82.68, leaving a balance of $1.18 which
was turned over to Miss Eleanor Raymond,
treasurer of (the) College League.
(Loan) libraries were sent out to the free
public libraries of the following Towns:
Berlin, Douglas, Eufield, Gilbertville, Harvard
Hudson, Lee, Osterville, Smithfield, Richmond, 
Uxbridge.
To the Employees Rest Room of Filene's
Store;
To Easton, Mass, through the interest of
(?Misses) Sylvester and Kimball, who arranged
(/strikethrough to) with a local storekeeper to help (?)
volumes in circulation.
to local leagues at Holyoke, (insert ?) Worcester (?thus) Miss Rumkle and Richmond.
Cohasset, (/strikethrough and) Harvard (library)
to the Cuto Chest House at Wiairio, 
through Miss Frances Elder
To the Y.M.C.A at Northampton, at
Mrs. (D?y's) Expense
and to the following clubs.
Civic Service House, Salem W. Boston.
American Trust Co. Club House at
Kenberna -
Harvard Club, Boston
 Men's City Club. Boston and

5.
to the Neighborhood House on Moore Street, 
Cambridge. After the Election, a set was 
loaned Miss Margaret Foley. When not 
otherwise in circulation, single volumes were 
loaned to a number of personal acquaintances, 
with good results.
An alphabetical list of books offered 
for choice was printed in the Cambridge 
Tribune for July 19, 1915, and extra copies 
struck off. An annotated list of the 
same books was printed in the Bulletin 
of Bibliographies for October 1915. The 
latter entailed a great deal of careful 
reading and work.
Between June and the middle of October, 
I believe over 150 letters were received and 
over 200 written.
As this work was started after most 
of the leagues had held their last 
meetings, after the summer migration 
was well under way, and carried on 
in the midst of an exciting campaign 
when few workers had leisure or could 
spare attention from other, pressing forms 
of propaganda, it is difficult to 
estimate the results, yet the general 
agitation ought to have helped in some 


6.
degree stimulate interest in their libraries. 
Announcements of the offer of these 
books were inserted in the annual 
report of the College League, in more 
than one Bi-Weekly Bulletin, on the 
Bulletin boards of the Boston League 
and of the Mass. Office, and at the 
Sun Flower Lunch Room in Cornhill; in 
the showcase on the side walk at 
595 Boylston Street, where new publications were 
also exhibited. A specimen library was 
kept at Headquarters. The Chairman of 
the Organization Committee, at the meeting 
on June 29, urged the various chairmen 
and organizers to make all possible 
use of the books. Yet, sets lay on 
my table, waiting like Macawber, until 
my impatience forced me to create a 
demand.
So long as people continue in unequal 
stages of development as suffragists, the 
slow process of conversion by education must 
continue a necessary form of propaganda. 
This committee has contributed its experience 
and over fifty volumes to the cause.
Respectfully submitted, 
Alice Hayes.
To the Secretary of the College Equal Suffrage League.

SENATORS vs. WORKING-WOMEN

Sentimentality of New York Senators in Equal Suffrage Debate Answered by Common Sense of Working Women

JOINT MASS-MEETING

Wage-Earners' League and Collegiate
Equal Suffrage League

Copper Union, April 22d, 8 p. m.

  "Now there is nobody to whom I yield in respect and admiration and devotion to the sex."
    Answered by MOLLIE SCHEPPS, Shirt Waist Maker.

  "Cornelia's Jewels. Where are they to-day?"
    Answered by MELINDA SCOTT, Hat Trimmer.

  "The anti-suffragists tell me: 'Be careful, be careful, how you destroy the incentive to motherhood. We speak for motherhood. Save that.'"
    Answered by LEONORA O'REILLY, Shirt Maker.

  "Women -- they are peaceful ; they are sympathetic ; they minister to man in the home."
    Answered by MRS. HEFFERLY, Neckwear Maker.

  "Now there is no question in the world to my mind but what the family and family relation are a more important thing than any law or any law-making or holding of office."
    Answered by MAGGIE HINCHEY, Laundry Worker.

  "We want to relieve women of the burdens and responsibilities of life."
    Answered by CLARA LEMLICH, Shirt  Waist Maker.

  "Get women into the arena of politics with its alliances and distressing contests -- the delicacy is gone, the charm is gone, and you emasculize women."
    Answered by ROSE SCHNEIDERMANN, Cap Maker.

Instructions for the Suffrage Parade, May 4th
Elizabeth Freeman of England

Free tickets can be obtained at the Women's Trade Union League, 43 East 22nd Street. Admission without ticket after 8 P. M.
Working Women! Don't fail to come and hear what Senators McClellan, Thomas, Sage and some of the Assemblymen have said about women

They forgot all about the four-hundred thousand working women in New York City. They forgot the eight hundred thousand working women in New York State. Come just to show the gentlemen we have arrived.

COLLEGE EQUAL SUFFRAGE LEAGUE
AUXILIARY TO THE NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION
REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION AND SUFFRAGE LITERATURE MAY BE ADDRESSED TO
THE SECRETARY, 505 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY
TELEPHONE, MURRAY HILL 4990

OFFICERS
President, Miss M. Carey Thomas
President of Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania

First Vice-President, Ex-officio, Miss Anna Howard Shaw
President of National American Woman Suffrage Association

Vice-President, Miss Sophonisba P. Breckinridge
Dean in the University of Chicago

Vice-President, Miss Frances W. McLean
1829 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, California

Secretary, Miss Carolina Lexow
505 Fifth Avenue, New York City

Vice-President, Mrs. Maud Wood Park
Care of Baring Brothers, London, England

Vice-President, Mrs. Cora Stranahan Woodward
Adviser of Women, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin

Vice-President, Miss Mary E. Woolley
President of Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts

Treasurer, Miss Mary E. Garrett
101 West Monument Street, Baltimore, Massachusetts

STANDING COMMITTEES
Organization:  Chairman, Miss Caroline Lexow
505 Fifth Avenue, New York City

Membership:  Chairman, Miss Marion Reilly
Dean of Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania

Finance:  Chairman  Mrs. Herbert Parsons
1229 Nineteenth Street, Washington, DC

Lectures:
(East)  Chairman, Mrs. Susan Walker Fitz Gerald
585 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts

(Middle West)  Chairman, Miss Anna Roberta Van Meter
Professor in the University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois

(Pacific Coast)  Chairman, Mrs. Alexander F. Morrison
2022 California Street, San Francisco, California

(South)  Chairman, Mrs. Warren Newcomb Boyd
194 Washington Street, Atlanta, Georgia

PUBLICATION:  Chairman, President M. Carey Thomas

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