Washington, DC, 1993.
Preceding element provides place and date of transcription only.
For more information about this text and this American Memory collection, refer to accompanying matter.
The National Digital Library Program at the Library of Congress makes digitized historical materials available for education and scholarship.
This transcription is intended to have an accuracy of 99.95 percent or greater and is not intended to reproduce the appearance of the original work. The accompanying images provide a facsimile of this work and represent the appearance of the original.
RARE BOOK COLLECTION
National American
Woman Suffrage Association
DEBATERS’ HANDBOOK SERIES
WOMAN SUFFRAGE
DEBATERS’
HANDBOOK SERIES
Enlargement of the United States Navy (3d ed. rev. and enl.)
Direct Primaries (3d ed. rev. and enl.)
Capital Punishment
Commission Plan of Municipal Government (3d ed. rev. and enl.)
Election of United States Senators (2d ed. rev.)
Income Tax (2d ed. rev. and enl.)
Initiative and Referendum (2d ed. rev. and enl.)
Central Bank of the United States
Woman Suffrage (2d ed. rev.)
Municipal Ownership
Child Labor
Open versus Closed Shop
Employment of Women
Federal Control of Interstate Corporations
Parcels Post
Compulsory Arbitration of Industrial Disputes
Compulsory Insurance
Conservation of Natural Resources
Free Trade vs. Protection
Government Ownership of Railroads
Reciprocity
Trade Unions
Other titles in preparation
Each volume, one dollar net
Although Woman Suffrage has been discussed for many years, interest in the subject has by no means diminished. It is in response to a very lively demand for material and especially for a Debaters’ Handbook on the subject that the present volume has been compiled. This book is similar to the other volumes of the series, and contains a bibliography and reprints of the best available material both in favor of and opposed to the extension of the suffrage.
For the sake of convenience, the reprints have been grouped under three main headings: General Discussion, Affirmative, and Negative Discussion. Owing to the vast amount of literature on this subject, a complete bibliography would be an impossibility and has not been attempted. It is believed, however, that this bibliography will be found adequate for the needs of the average reader or debater. While a much larger number of references were examined than appear here, only those have been selected that would be valuable and at the same time easily accessible to the average library or individual.
September, 1910.
So much has been published on Woman Suffrage since the first edition of this book was issued, that it has seemed advisable to make the second edition practically a new work. Nearly all of the articles formerly included have been replaced with later material, and the bibliography has been greatly enlarged and brought up to date. Two entirely new features—a brief and an introductory chapter—have also been included.
August, 1912.
Brief
Introduction
Affirmative
Negative
Bibliography
Bibliography
General References
Affirmative References
Negative References
Introduction
General Discussion
Blackwell, Alice S. Gains in Equal Suffrage
Anthony, Susan B. Woman's Half-Century of Evolution
Harper, Ida H. World Movement for Woman Suffrage
Harper, Ida H. Woman Suffrage in Six States
Harper, Ida H. Votes for Women
Harper, Ida H. Votes for Women
China Grants Woman Suffrage
Portugal Gives Votes to Women
Affirmative Discussion
Denney, Joseph V. Votes for Women Should Be Granted
Phillips, Mrs. Elsie C. Statement
Catt, Carrie C. Will of the People
Eastman, Max. Is Woman Suffrage Important?
Mead, Edwin D. Suffrage and Soldiering
Voting and Fighting
Johnston, Mary. Woman's War
Borah, William E. Why I Am for Suffrage for Women.
Objections to Woman Suffrage
Howard, Clifford. Man Needs Woman's Ballot
Brewer, David J. Summing up the Case for Woman Suffrage
Addams, Jane. Women and Public Housekeeping
Fitzgerald, Susan W. Women In the Home
Blackwell, Alice S. Do Teachers Need the Ballot?
Phelan, Raymond V. Division of Labour and the Ballot
Harper, Ida H. Evolution of the Woman Suffrage Movement
Creel, George, and Lindsey, Ben B. Measuring up Equal Suffrage
Answers Queries Concisely
Blackwell, Alice S. Minnie Bronson's Fallacies
Suffrage Fills the Bill
Blackwell, Alice S. Ministers on Votes for Women
Family Suffrage in New Zealand
Suffrage Helps Homes
Korff, Alletta. Where Women Vote
Negative Discussion
Jones, Mrs. Gilbert E. Some Facts About Suffrage and Anti-Suffrage
Dwight Frederick. Taxation and Suffrage
Root, Elihu. Address before the New York State Constitutional Convention
Brown, Ex-Justice. Woman Suffrage
Cope, Edward D. Relation of the Sexes to Government
Knapp, Adeline. Problem of Woman Suffrage
Knapp, Adeline. Do Working Women Need the Ballot?
Chittenden, Alice H. Inexpediency of Granting the Suffrage to American Women
Facts and Fallacies about Woman Suffrage
Why the Home Makers Do Not Want to Vote
Bissell, Emily P. Talks to Women on the Suffrage Question
Women Voters’ Views on Women's Suffrage
Woman Suffrage and Child Labor Legislation
George, Mrs. A. J. Address before the Brooklyn Auxiliary
Resolved, That the women of the United States should be granted the suffrage on the same terms as men.
I. The granting of educational privileges to women during the last fifty years had led to a demand for all the privileges that men now enjoy.
II. The most important of these demands is that for woman suffrage.
III. In many states and countries the suffrage has been granted to women.
A. Full suffrage.
B. School, local, or municipal suffrage.
IV. In nearly every country of the world where it does not now exist, women are agitating for the suffrage on the same terms as men.
The Affirmative is in favor of extending the suffrage to women, for
I. Woman suffrage is logical and just. A. It is the next and last step in the full governmental recognition of woman as a personality. I. The other rights and privileges of citizenship have been granted. B. The right to vote is based on the democratic theory that each one shall have a voice in the government that rules over his affairs. 1. There can be no true democracy where one-half C. There are many women tax-payers who without the suffrage have no representation in the legislation affecting taxation. II. Woman suffrage is expedient. A. For the state. I. Women are well qualified for the suffrage. a. The argument that in order to vote one must be able t fight, is unsound. b. The percentage of illiterate and foreign-born women is less than the percentage of illiterate and foreign-born men. c. Statistics show a similar percentage of criminals, drunkards, etc., among women than among men. 2. The participation of women would improve political life. a. The influence of the home would be increased. b. A much needed element would be introduced. c. Better laws would be secured and better candidates elected. 3. Women are needed in municipal government. a. Municipal government is now largely civic housekeeping to which women are especially adapted. b. Women cannot adequately care for their homes without a voice in municipal affairs. I
4. The argument that the home would suffer by the participation of women in political life, is unsound. a. Voting takes little time from other duties. b. Differences of opinion cannot disrupt families worth holding stronger. c. Family ties will be strengthened by the new community of interests which suffrage will introduce. 5. The argument that women will not vote is disproved by the facts. B. For women themselves. I. Political knowledge and experience will develop women. a. It will equip them more thoroughly for the duties of motherhood and the home. b. It will make them better fitted for social and public life. 2. It would be a benefit to women legally, politically, and economically. a. Women now suffer from many legal, political and industrial inequalities and discriminations. b. The ballot is the only effective way of securing equal rights and privileges with men. c. The argument that women are represented by men is unsound. I
3. It is not true that women do not wish to vote. a. A large an constantly increasing number are asking for the privilege. b. The fact that some are apathetic is no reason for withholding it. III. The results of woman suffrage are favorable to its extension. A. Full suffrage where it has been granted has been successful. 1. Better candidates have been selected. 2. Much good legislation has been secured. 3. The elections have been more orderly. 4. The best women have voted. 5. The character of women has not deteriorated. 6. The home has been benefitted. 7. Interest in the study of political questions has been aroused. B. Municipal and school suffrage have been successful. C. An extension of the suffrage has generally followed its adoption.
The Negative is not in favor of extending the suffrage to women, for
I. Women cannot claim the vote on the ground of justice. A. It is not a natural or inherent right. 1. It is not so recognized by the Constitution and the Supreme Court. 2. It is granted for the good of the state and not for the individual. B. Voting has nothing to do with taxation. 1. Many vote who are not taxed. 2. Many are taxed who may not vote. C. Suffrage is not a question of justice, but of policy and expediency. II. Woman suffrage would not be expedient. A. It would not be for the best interests of society. 1. Women are unfitted to exercise the franchise. a. They are physically unable to enforce the laws. b. They are not informed on public questions. c. They are swayed by sentiment rather than justice. 2. The home would suffer by the participation of women in the affairs of state. a. Families would be internally divided. b. The home would be neglected. c. Divorce would be increased. 3. The vote would be redoubled. a. Our voting body is already too large and unwieldy for public safety. 4. The evil element in politics would be greatly increased. a. Many good women would be indifferent. b. The bad women would vote. B. It would not be for the best interests of women themselves. 1. Socially. a. Their power to influence good legislation would be impaired. b. They would be made less womanly. c. They would lose the respect of men. 2. Politically. a. Women have many legal rights and privileges which they would lose if they could vote. b. The laws for women are no better in suffrage states than elsewhere. 3. Industrially. a. Women now have every opportunity to engage in industry. b. Wages are regulated by the law of supply and demand and not by the ballot. III. Woman suffrage is unnecessary. A. Women will not gain anything by the suffrage that they cannot get without. B. All the legal and educational advantages which they enjoy have been gained without it. IV. The majority of women do not want it. A. Many women are actively protesting against the extension of the franchise. B. They show little interest in public questions. C. They have never exercised the privilege largely where it has been granted. V. The results of the suffrage where it exists are not favorable to its extension. A. Suffrage has accomplished little where it has been tried. 1. The position of women has not improved. 2. It has not resulted in purifying politics. 3. Better laws have not been passed, nor better candidates elected. B. More harm than good has been done. C. The countries and states where suffrage exists for women, are too small and unimportant for their experience to be valuable. 1. In regard to size and character of population. 2. The franchise is mostly a limited one.
An asterisk (*) preceding a reference indicates that the entire article or a part of it has been reprinted in this volume.
Brookings, W. Du Bois, and Ringwalt, Ralph C. Briefs for Debate. pp. 8-10. Longmans, Green & Co., New York. 1911.
A brief is also included.
National American Woman Suffrage Association. Catalog and Price List of Woman Suffrage Literature and Supplies. 505 Fifth Av., New York City. 1911.
Sent free on request.
Ringwalt, Ralph C. Brief on Public Questions. pp. 8-16. Longmans, Green & Co., New York. 1908.
Contains a brief also.
Robbins, E. Clyde. High School Debate Book. pp. 1896-203. A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago. 1911.
Contains a brief also.
Wisconsin University. Woman Suffrage. Bull. Serial. No. 214; General Series, No. 22.
A brief is also included.
Abbott, Edith. Women in Industry; a Study in American Economic History. D. Appleton & Co., New York. 1910.
Allen, William H. Woman's Part in Government, Whether She Votes or Not. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. 1911.
Bayles, G. J. Woman and the Law.
*Blackwell, Alice A. Gains in Equal Suffrage. 2p. pa. National American Woman Suffrage Ass'n, New York.
Bliss, William D. P., ed. New Encyclopedia of Social Reform. 1908. pp. 1295-303.
Book of Woman's Power; with an Introduction by Ida M. Tarbell. The Macmillan Co., New York. 1911.
Bryce, James. American Commonwealth. 3d ed. Vol. II. Chap. XCIII. Commonwealth Publishing Co., New York. 1908.
Buffalo Conference for Good City Government. Proceedings. 1910. pp. 317-27. Practical Workings of Woman Suffrage in Colorado Municipalities. Mary Winsor.
Clough, Emma R. Study of Mary Wollstonecraft and the Rights of Woman. Longmans, Green & Co., London. 1908.
Hard, William. Women of To-Morrow. Baker & Taylor, New York. 1911.
Harper, Ida H. Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony. 3v. 1899-1908. National American Woman Suffrage Ass'n, New York.
Hecker, Eugene A. Short History of Women's Rights from the Days of Augustus to the Present Time. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. 1910.
Howe, Julia Ward. Reminiscences. p. 372-99. Houghton, Miffin & Co., Boston. 1899.
Jones, Chester L. Readings on Parties and Elections in the United States. pp. 232-43. The Macmillan Co. New York. 1912.
Lecky, William E. H. Democracy and Liberty. Vol. II. pp. 504-59. Longmans, Green & Co., New York. 1896.
New International Encyclopedia. Woman's Suffrage.
New York Constitutional Convention. Debates on Woman. Suffrage. 1894.
Ostrogorski, Moisei I. Rights of Women. Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.
Pankhurst, E. Sylvia Suffragette: The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905-1910. Sturgis & Walton, New York. 1911.
Reeves, William P. State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand. Chap. III E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. 1903.
Rembaugh, Bertha, comp. Political Status of Women in the United States; a Digest of the Laws concerning Women in the Various States and Territories. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. 1911.
Schreiner, Olive. Woman and Labor. 2d ed. Frederick A. Stokes Co., New York. 1911.
Squire, Belle. Woman Movement in America. A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago. 1911.
Stanton, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady. Eighty Years and More. T. Fisher Unwin, London. 1998.
Stanton, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady, and Others. History of Woman Suffrage. 4v. National American Woman Suffrage Ass'n, New York.
Sumner, Helen L. Equal Suffrage: Results of an Investigation in Colorado Made for the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League of New York State. Harper & Brothers, New York. 1909.
*United States. Senate. Hearings before a Joint Committee of the Committee of the Judiciary and the Committee on Woman Suffrage, March 13, 1912. Gov. Ptg. Office. 1912.
American Magazine. 70: 611-9. My. ‘10. American Woman: After the War. Ida M. Tarbell.
American Magazine. 69: 468-81. F. ‘10. American Woman: Her First Declaration of Independence. Ida M. Tarbell.
Amercian Magazine. 72: 611-9. Ss. ‘11. Getting Out the Vote. Helen M. Todd.
Annals of the American Academy. 35: sup. 1-37. My. ‘10. Significance of the Woman Suffrage Movement.
Contains seven papers, four in favor of woman suffrage and three against.
Arena. 41: 414-24. Jl. ‘09. Suffrage Question in the Far West. Elsie W. Moore.
Atlantic Monthly. 102: 343-6. S. ‘08. English Working-Woman and the Franchise. Edith Abbott.
Canadian Magazine. 19: 81-2. My. ‘02. Woman Suffrage in Colorado.
Chautauquan. 13: 72-7. Ap. ‘91. A Symposium—Woman's Suffrage.
Consist of four papers—two for the affirmative by Lucy Stone and Frances E. Willard, and two for the negative by Rose Terry Cooke and Josephine Henderson.
Chautauquan. 34: 482-4. F. ‘02. Woman Suffrage in Colorado. William M. Raine.
Chautauquan. 37: 334-5. J1. ‘03. Woman Suffrage Defeated.
Chautauquan. 58: 97-108. Mr. ‘10. Woman Suffrage Movement in Great Britain. Mrs. Philip Snowden.
Chautauquan. 58: 166-83. Ap. ‘10. Social Idealism and Suffrage for Woman. George W. Cooke.
Chautauquan. 59: 69-83. Je. ‘10. Woman Suffrage Movement.
Chautauquan. 59: 84-9. Je. ‘10. New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. Mrs. Barclay Hazard.
Collier's. 43: 26-7. Ap. 3, ‘09. Woman's Battle for the Ballot in Chicago. Caroline M. Hill.
Collier's. 43: 14-5. Ap. 17; 14-5. My. I; 23. My. 8, ‘09. Woman Who Votes. Sarah Constock.
Collier's. 45: 22-4. Ag. 20, ‘10. Women's Political Methods. Frances M. Björkman.
Collier's. 46: 25, 28. Ja. 7, ‘II. Woman's Victory in Washington.
Collier's. 48: 20. O. 28, ‘11. Co-Citizens of California. Bertha D. Knobe.
Collier's. 48: 19. D. 28, ‘11. Asquith's Betrayal of the Suffragists. Ida H. Harper.
Collier's. 48: 17-8. Ja. 6, ‘12. Women's Demonstration: How They Won and Used the Vote in California. Mabel C. Deering.
Collier's. 49: 13. My. 18, ‘12. Women March. Mary A. Hopkins.
Columbian. 8: 27. O. ‘10. Governor Spry of Utah, on Woman Suffrage.
Current Literature. 52: 627-8. Je. ‘12. Parading in New York for Woman Suffrage.
Delineator. 74: 294. S. ‘09. Being a Woman Legislator. Alma V. Lafferty.
Delineator. 74: 299. O. ‘09. Recollections of a Woman Campaigner. Minnie J. Reynolds.
Delineator. 75: 37-8, 70. Ja. ‘10. Suffrage Enters the Drawing-Room. Mabel P. Daggett.
Delineator. 77: 270. Ap. ‘11. Where the Women Made Good. W. Farmer Whyte and Sarah W. MacConnell.
Fortnightly Review. 88: 890-902. N. ‘10. Government and Woman Suffrage. Teresa Billington-Greig.
Fortnightly Review. 96: 328-35. Ag. ‘II. French Woman and the Vote. Charles Dawbarn.
Forum. 17: 413-24. Je. ‘94. Result of the Woman-Suffrage Movement. Mary A. Greene.
Forum. 43: 264-6. Mr. ‘10. Woman Suffrage as It Looks Today. Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont.
Forum. 47: 451-61. Ap. ‘12. Stumbling Block in English Politics. H. E. Manhood.
Harper's Bazar.
Nearly all the monthly numbers, beginning January, 1909, to date, contain articles by Ida H. Harper and others.
*Harper's Bazar. 46: 148. Mr. ‘12. Votes for Women. Ida H. Harper.
*Harper's Bazar. 46: 258. My. ‘12. Votes for Women. Ida H. Harper.
Harper's Weekly. 48: 121-2. Ja. 23, ‘04. Women Voters in Australia.
Harper's Weekly. 51: 975-6. Jl. 6, ‘07. Improved Prospects of Woman Suffrage.
Harper's Weekly. 52: 20-1. Ap. 25, ‘08. Votes for Women: An Object Lesson. Bertha D. Knobe.
Harper's Weekly. 53: 5. My. 1, ‘09. Pope on Equal Suffrage.
Harper's Weekly. 53: 10. Je. 12, ‘09. Norway's Leader of Women. Hanna A. Larsen.
Harper's Weekly. 53: 28. Ag. 21, ‘09. How Woman Suffrage Came to Wyoming. Estelline Bennett.
Harper's Weekly. 54: 8. S. 10, ‘10. Women's War in England. Sydney Brooks.
Hearst's Magazine. 21: 2497-501. Je. ‘12. Marching for Equal Suffrage.
Hibbert Journal. 8: 721-38. Jl. ‘10. Woman Suffrage: Review and Conclusion. W. M. Childs.
Independent. 56: 1309-11. Je. 9, ‘or. Women's Suffrage In Australia. Lady Holder.
Independent. 61: 198-9. Jl. 26, ‘06. Object Lesson. Alice S. Blackwell.
Independent. 63: 615-7. S. 12, ‘07. Women in the Finnish Parliament. Baroness Gripenberg.
Independent. 65: 192-5. Jl. 23, ‘08. International Woman Suffrage Congress. Ida H. Harper.
Independent. 66: 1056-70. My. 20, ‘09. Woman Suffrage: An Experience Meeting.
Independent. 67: 418-20. Ag. 19, ‘09. Woman Suffrage in South Africa. Irene M. Ashby-Macfadyen.
Independent. 68: 1442-5. Je. 30, ‘10. Woman Suffrage in Great Britain. Ida H. Harper.
Independent. 68: 686-9. Mr. 31, ‘10. How Can Women Get the Suffrage? Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont.
Independent. 69: 32-4. Jl. 7, ‘10. Woman Movement in England and in America. Dora B. Montefiore.
Independent. 69: 410-2. Ag. 25, ‘10. English Woman Suffrage Bill. Ida H. Harper.
Independent. 69: 1109-10. Nov. 17, ‘10. Fifth Star in the Woman's Flag.
Independent. 71: 804-10. OO. 12, ‘11. Spectacular Woman Suffrage in America. Bertha D. Knobe.
*Independent. 71: 967-70. N. 2, ‘11. Woman Suffrage in Six States. Ida H. Harper.
Independent. 71: 1104-5. N. 16, ‘11. Crumbs for Women.
Independent. 72: 399-403. F. 22, ‘12. Woman Suffrage Crisis in Great Britain. Ida H. Harper.
Independent. 72: 835-7. Ap. 18, ‘12. Argument of Broken Windows. Annie G. Porritt.
Lippincott's. 85: 123-5. Ja. ‘10. Leaven of Woman Suffrage ‘Round the World. George A. England.
Literary Digest. 40: 860-1. Ap. 30, ‘10. President on Woman Suffrage.
Literary Digest. 451: 970-1. N. 26, ‘10. Fifth Woman-Suffrage State.
Nineteenth Century. 56: 833-41. N. ‘04. Check to Woman Suffrage in the United States. Frank Foxcroft.
This article may be obtained in pamphlet form from the Secretary of the Massachusetts Association opposed to further extension of suffrage to women.
Nineteenth Century. 71: 372-7. F. ‘12. Legal Position of Women in Norway. J. Castberg.
*North American Review. 175: 800-10. D. ‘02. Woman's Half-Century of Evolution. Susan B. Anthony.
North American Review. 183: 1272-9. D. 21, ‘06. Australian Woman and the Ballot. Alice Henry.
North American Review. 183: 1333-5. D. 21, ‘06. Good Women a Majority.
North American Review. 186: 55-71. S. ‘07. Woman Suffrage Throughout the World. Ida H. Harper.
Reprinted in condensed form in the Review of Reviews. 36: 481-2. October, 1907.
North American Review. 189: 502-12. Ap. ‘90. Status of Woman Suffrage in the United States. Ida H. Harper.
Outlook. 82: 167-78. Ja. 27, ‘06. How Woman's Suffrage Works in Colorado. Lawrence Lewis.
Outlook. 83: 675-6. Jl. 21, ‘06. Woman Suffrage. Florence Kelly.
Outlook. 87: 35-9. S. 7, ‘07. Woman Suffrage in Finland. G. H. Blakesless.
Outlook. 95: 117-22. My. 21, ‘10. Where the Women Vote. P. Kennaday.
Outlook. 100: 262-6. F. 3, ‘12. Women's Rights; and the Duties of Both Men and Women. Theodore Roosevelt.
Review of Reviews. 35: 499-500. Ap. ‘07. Finland's Women to the Front.
Review of Reviews. 42: 361-2. S. ‘10. Ought French Women to Vote?—What Some Leading Frenchmen Think.
Westminster Review. 169: 29-40. Ja. ‘08. Justice Between the Sexes. Elizabeth C. Wolstenholme Elmy.
Westminster Review. 170: 629-42. D. ‘08. Woman and the State. F. W. Hatton Reed.
Westminster Review. 173: 511-5. My. ‘10. Year's Work of the National Women's Social and Political Union. Adriel Vere.
Westminster Review. 174: 508-13. N.’10. Mr. Asquith and the Women's Liberal Federation.
*Woman's Journal. 43: 97. Mr. 30, ‘12. China Grants Woman Suffrage.
*Woman's Journal. 43: 223. Jl. 27, ‘12. Portugal Gives Votes to Women.
World To-Day. 11: 1264-8. D. ‘06. Present Status of Woman Suffrage. Ida H. Harper.
World To-Day. 13: 1008-12. O. ‘07. Electing Women to Parliament. Ida H. Harper.
World To-Day. 15: 1066-71. O. ‘08. Suffragists and Suffragettes. Winnifred H. Cooley.
*World To-Day. 19: 1017-21. S. ‘10. Evolution of the Woman Suffrage Movement. Ida H. Harper.
World To-Day. 21: 1055-60. S. ‘11. Woman Suffrage in New Zealand. Theresa H. Russell.
World's Work. 17: 11419-20. Ap. ‘09. What Woman Suffrage Does.
The conclusions of Judge Lindsey concerning woman suffrage in Colorado.
World's Work. 22: 14733-45. Ag. ‘11. Recent Strides of Woman's Suffrage. Bertha D. Knobe.
Addams, Jane. Newer Ideals of Peace. p. 180-208. The Macmillan Co., New York. 1906.
*Addams, Jane. Women and Public Housekeeping. 2p. pa. National American Woman Suffrage Ass'n, New York.
Barnes, Earl. Woman in Modern Society. B. W. Huebsch, New York. 1902.
*Blackwell, Alice S. Do Teachers Need the Ballot? 4p. pa. National American Woman Suffrage Ass'n, New York.
*Blackwell, Alice S. Ministers on Votes for Women. 2p. pa. National American Woman Suffrage Ass'n, New York.
*Brewer, David J. Summing up the Case for Woman Suffrage.
Congressional Record. 18: 34-8. D. 8, ‘86. Joint Resolution Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States Extending the Right of Suffrage to Women. Speech Delivered by Henry W. Blair.
Curtis, George W. Orations and Addresses, edited by Charles Eliot Norton. Vol. I, pp. 181-213. Right of Suffrage. Harper & Brothers, New York. 1894.
An address given before the constitutional convention of the State of New York, at Albany, in 1867, following the proposal of an amendment in favor of woman suffrage.
Dorr, Rheta C. What Eight Million Women Want. pp. 287-318. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston. 1910.
*Family Suffrage in New Zealand. 4p. pa. National American Woman Suffrage Ass'n, New York.
Fawcett, Henry & Millicent G. Essays and Lectures on Social and Political Subjects. pp. 230-91. Macmillan & Co., London. 1872.
*Fitzgerald, Susan W. Women in the Home. 4p. pa. National American Woman Suffrage Ass'n, New York.
Harvey, G. H. Power of Tolerance and Other Speeches. pp. 203-36. Harper & Bros., New York, 1911.
Higginson, Thomas W. Common Sense about Women. pp. 303-403. Lee & Shepard, Boston. 1882.
*Howard, Clifford. Man Needs Woman's Ballot. 1p. pa. Minnesota Woman Suffrage Ass'n, St. Paul, Minn.
Tacobi, Mary P. Common Sense Applied to Woman Suffrage. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. 1894.
Mathew, Arnold H. Woman Suffrage. T. C. & E. C. Jack, London. 1907.
Mill, John S. Subjection of Women. Longmans, Green & Co., London. 1869.
Parsons, Frank. Story of New Zealand. Chap. VIII. C. F. Taylor, Philadelphia. 1904.
*Voting and Fighting. 4p. pa. National American Woman Suffrage Ass'n, New York.
Reports, pamphlets and leaflets may be obtained from the National American Woman Suffrage Ass'n 505 fifth Ave., New York City, and 936 Fine Arts Bldg., Chicago, Ill. A catalog will be sent on request.
American Magazine. 67: 288-90. Ja. ‘09. Problem of the Intellectual Woman. C. M. H.
Compares the status of woman with that of the negro.
American Magazine. 68: 292-301. Jl. ‘09. Votes for Women. William I. Thomas.
Arena. 40: 92-4. Jl. ‘08. Shall Our Mothers, Wives and Sisters Be Our Equals or Our Subjects? Frank Parsons.
Atlantic Monthly. 102: 196-202. Ag. ‘08. What It Means to Be An Enfranchised Woman. Ellis Meredith.
An account of woman suffrage in Colorado.
*Atlantic Monthly. 105: 559-70. Ap. ‘10. Woman's War. Mary Johnston.
Canadian Magazine. 33: 17-21. My. ‘90. Why I Am a Suffragette. Arthur Hawkes.
Century. 48: 605-13. Ag. ‘94. Right and Expediency of Woman Suffrage. George F. Hoar.
Collier's. 48: 18. Mr. 16, ‘12. Why I Want Woman Suffrage. Frederic C. Howe.
Contemporary Review. 83: 653-60. My. ‘03. Justice for the Gander—Justice for the Goose. Frances P. Cobbe.
Contemporary Review. 94: 11-6. Jl. ‘08. Liberalism and Woman's Suffrage. Bertrand Russell.
Contemporary Review. 101: 493-501. Ap. ‘12. Sermons in Stones. Elizabeth Robins.
*Delineator. 76: 85, 142. Ag. ‘10. Why I Am for Suffrage for Women. William E. Borah.
*Delineator. 77: 85-6 F. ‘11. Measuring up Equal Suffrage: An Authoritative Estimate of Results in Colorado. George Creel and Ben B. Lindsey.
Era. 10: 409-16. O. ‘02. Equal Suffrage in Colorado. Helen M. Wixson.
Everybody's Magazine. 21: 723-38. D. ‘09. Why? Elizabeth Robins.
Fortnightly Review. 89: 634-44. Ap. ‘08. Ideals of a Woman's Party. Agnes Grove.
Fortnightly Review. 90: 258-71. Ag. ‘08. Sex-Disability and Adult Suffrage. Teresa Billington-Greig.
Fortnightly Review. 90: 445-57. S. ‘08. Constitutional Basis of Women's Suffrage. C. C. Stopes.
Forum. 43: 264-8. Mr. ‘10. Woman Suffrage As It Looks To-Day. Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont.
Forum. 43: 595-602. Je. ‘10. Will of the People. Carrie C. Catt.
Forum. 45: 91-3. Ja. ‘11. Platform for Women. Rebecca J. Lose.
Good Housekeeping. 54: 146-55. F. ‘12. Feminine Charms of the Woman Militant. Mary H. Kinkaid.
Hampton's 26: 426-38. Ap. ‘II. “Women Did It” in Colorado. Rheta C. Dorr.
Harper's Bazar. 41: 196. F. ‘07. Good Women a Majority.
Reprinted in full from the North American Review. 183: 1333-5. December 21, 1906.
Harper's Bazar. 42: 1183-6. D. ‘08. Woman Suffrage in England. Sydney Brooks.
Harper's Weekly. 47: 933. Je. 6, ‘03. Political Women. Mary G. Hay.
Harper's Weekly. 50: 1702-3. D. 1, ‘06. Positive Arguments for Woman Suffrage.
Harper's Weekly. 52: 6. Ap. 11, ‘08. Stock Argument against Woman Suffrage.
Harper's Weekly. 53: 15-6. Mr. 13, ‘09. Campaigning for Equal Franchise. William Hemmingway.
Harper's Weekly. 53: 6. Jl. 31, ‘09. Influence not Government. H. S. Howard
*Harper's Weekly. 55: 6. D. 2, ‘11. Objections to Woman Suffrage.
Hibbert Journal. 9: 275-95. Ja. ‘11. Woman Suffrage: A New Synthesis. George W. Mullins.
Independent. 67: 261-2. Jl. 29, ‘09. Counter Influence to Woman Suffrage.
An answer to Miss Chittenden's article in the Independent. 67: 246-9. July 29, 1909.
Independent. 68: 902-4. Ap. 28, ‘10. President and the Suffragists. Ida H. Harper
Independent. 70: 1370-1. Je. 22, ‘11. Women Should Mind Their Own Business. Edward J. Ward.
Independent. 72: 1316-8. Je. 13, ‘12. Woman and the California Primaries. Meta Marquis.
Ladies’ Home Journal. 27: 21-2. Ja. ‘10. Why Women Should Vote. Jane Addams.
La Follette's. 3: 10-1. D. 16, ‘11. Benefits of Woman Suffrage. Anna Blount.
Lippincott's. 82: 101-4. Jl. ‘08. Woman Suffrage in America. Annie R. Ramsey.
*National Geographic Magazine. 21: 487-93. Je. ‘10. Where Woman Vote. Alletta Korff.
Nineteenth Century. 56: 105-12. Jl. ‘04. Political Woman in Australia. Vida Goldstein.
Nineteenth Century. 61: 472-6. Mr. ‘07. Women and Politics: A Reply. Eva Gore-Booth.
Reprinted in full in Living Age. 253: 131-4. April 20, 1907.
Nineteenth Century. 63: 819-24. My. ‘08. Protection of Women. Jessie P. Margoliouth.
Nineteenth Century. 64: 495-506. S. ‘08. Women and the Suffrage. Eva Gore-Booth.
Reprinted in full in Living Age. 259: 131-40. October 17, 1908.
North American Review. 143: 371-81. O. ‘86. Woman Suffrage. Mary A. Livermore.
North America Review. 163: 91-7. Jl. ‘96. Why Women Should Have the Ballot. John Gibbon.
North American Review. 178: 362-74. Mr. ‘04. Would Woman Suffrage Benefit the State and Woman Herself? Ida H. Harper.
An answer to “Woman's Assumption of Sex Superiority.” A. N. Meyer. North American Review. 178: 103-9. January, 1904.
North American Review. 179: 30-41. Jl. ‘04. Why Women Cannot Vote in the United States. Ida H. Harper.
North American Review. 183: 484-98. S. 21, ‘06. Suffrage—A Right. Ida. H. Harper.
North American Review. 183: 689-90. O. 5, ‘06. Necessity of Woman Suffrage.
Reprinted in full in Harper's Bazar. 41: 34-5. January, 1907.
North American Review. 183: 830-1. O. 19, ‘06. Women's Inherent Right to Vote.
Reprinted in full in Harper's Bazar. 41: 300-1. March, 1907.
North American Review. 183: 1203-6. D. 7, ‘06. Woman Suffrage in Colorado.
Reprinted in full in Harper's Bazar. 41: 193-4. February, 1907.
North American Review. 188: 650-8. N. ‘08. Woman Movement in England. Charles F. Aked.
North American Review. 190: 664-74. N. ‘09. Woman's Right to Govern Herself. Alva E. Belmont.
North American Review. 191: 75-86. Ja. ‘10. Appeal of Politics to Woman. Rosamond L. Sutherland.
North American Review. 191: 527-36. Ap. 5, ‘10. Woman and Democracy. Borden P. Bowne.
North American Review. 191: 701-20. My. ‘10. Inherent Right. G. Harvey.
North American Review. 192: 107-16. Jl. ‘10. Woman's Vote. Hugh H. Lusk.
North American Review. 193: 60-71. Ja. ‘11. Is Woman Suffrage Important? Max Eastman.
North American Review. 194: 271-81. Ag. ‘11. Woman Suffrage. Gwendolen Overton.
North American Review. 195: 803-19. Je. ‘12. Electorate of Men and Women. Francis H. Blackwell.
Outlook. 75: 997-1000. D. 26, ‘03. Women in Colorado under the Suffrage. Mary G. Slocum
Outlook. 82: 622. Mr. 17, ‘06. Child Labor and Woman Suffrage. Florence Kelly.
Outlook. 85: 1002. Ap. 27, ‘07. Plea for Unconscious Slaves. Raymond V. Phelan.
Outlook. 90: 774-5. D. 5, ‘08. Woman Suffrage. I. A. W.
Outlook. 91: 780-4. Ap. 3, ‘09. Case for Woman Suffrage. Julia W. Howe.
Outlook. 99: 50-1. S. 2, ‘11. Woman Suffrage on Trial. Winifred Smith.
Overland, n.s. 51: 513-4. Je. ‘08. Woman Suffrage Movement. Kate Ames.
Public. 11: 77. Ap. 24, ‘08. Demand of Women for Woman Suffrage.
Public. 11: 205-6. My. 29, ‘08. Women Who Know That They Need the Ballot. Jane Addams.
Reprinted from Woman's Journal, March 28, ‘08.
Public. 12: 393. Ap. 23, ‘09. Heart of the Suffrage Question. Daniel Kiefer.
Public. 14: 981-2. S. 22, ‘11. Woman Suffrage in Colorado.
Public. 14: 983-4. S. 22, ‘11. Theodore Parker on Women in Public Affairs.
Review of Reviews. 37: 484-6. Ap. ‘08. Campaign of the English Suffragettes.
*Review of Reviews. 44: 725-9. D. ‘11. World Movement for Woman Suffrage. Ida H. Harper.
Survey. 28: 367-8. Je. 1, ‘12. Votes for Women and Other Votes. Jane Addams.
Westminster Review. 162: 255-61. S. ‘04. Are Women Ready for the Franchise? Sarah E. Saville.
Westminster Review. 163: 266-71. Mr. ‘05. How the Vote Has Affected Womanhood in Colorado.
Westminster Review. 168: 622-4. D. ‘07. Woman and Sweated Industries. I. D. Pearce.
Westminster Review. 169: 292-8. Mr. ‘08. Suffragists Again! Gladys Jones.
Westminster Review. 169: 444-51. Ap. ‘08. Awakening Womanhood. I. D. Pearce.
Westminster Review. 169: 523-31. My. ‘08. Historic Franchise. Trevor Fletcher.
Westminster Review. 170: 43-53. Jl. ‘08. Woman Movement in New Zealand. Edith S. Grossmann.
Westminster Review. 170: 525-30. N. ‘08. Militant Tactics and Woman's Suffrage. Mona Caird.
Westminster Review. 171: 383-95. Ap. ‘09. Women's Industries. Frances Swiney.
Her argument is that the economic position of woman will be benefited by the suffrage.
Westminster Review. 171: 396-9. Ap. ‘09. Plainer Truths about Woman Suffrage. F. W. Hatton Reed.
Westminster Review. 171: 491-9. My. ‘09. Our Modern Bunyans. James A. Aldis.
Westminster Review. 172: 186-90. Ag. ‘09. Heredity: A Plea for Woman's Suffrage. Annabel C. Gale.
Westminster Review. 172: 263-6. S. ‘09. Girl and the Vote. H. G. Turnbull.
Westminster Review. 173: 400-12. Ap. ‘10. From Chattel to Suffragette. Bernard Houghton.
*Westminster Review. 174: 386-91. O. ‘10. Division of Labour and the Ballot. Raymond V. Phelan.
Westminster Review. 175: 254-6. Mr. ‘11. Greatest Political Question of the Day. A. B. W. Chapman.
Woman's Home Companion. p. 20. Ap. ‘08. Working Woman and the Ballot. Jane Addams.
Woman's Journal.
Files of this journal contain perhaps the most valuable material on the subject. Subscription price, $1.00 a year, 585 Boylston St., Boston, Mass.
*Woman's Journal. 43: 57. F. 24, ‘12. Votes for Women Should Be Granted. Joseph V. Denney.
*Woman's Journal. 43: 58. F. 24, ‘12. Suffrage and Soldiering. Edwin D. Mead.
*Woman's Journal. 43: 117. Ap. 13, ‘12. Suffrage Fills the Bill.
*Woman's Journal. 43: 120. Ap. 13, ‘12. Answers Queries Concisely.
*Woman's Journal. 43: 179. Je. 8, ‘12. Suffrage Helps Homes.
*Woman's Journal. 43: 180. Je. 8, ‘12. Minnie Bronson's Fallacies. Alice S. Blackwell.
World To-Day. 12: 418-21. Ap. ‘07. Housekeeper's Need of the Ballot. Molly Warren.
World To-Day. 21: 1171-8. O. ‘11. Why I Am a Suffragist. Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont.
World's Work. 23: 418-21. F. ‘12. Woman the Savior of the States. Selma Lagerlöf.
Abott, Lyman. Rights of Man. p. 231-4. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1901.
*Bissell, Emily P. Talk to Women on the Suffrage Question. 8p. pa. N. Y. State Ass'n Opposed to Woman Suffrage, New York.
*Brown, Ex-Justice. Woman Suffrage. 16p. pa. Mass. Ass'n Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women, Boston, Mass.
Buckley, James M. Wrong and Peril of Woman Suffrage. The Fleming H. Revell C., New York. 1909.
*Chittenden, Alice H. Inexpediency of Granting the Suffrage to American Women. 12p. pa. N. Y. State Ass'n Opposed to Woman Suffrage, New York.
*Cope, Edward D. Relation of the Sexes to Government. 10p. pa. N. Y. State Ass'n Opposed to Woman Suffrage, New York.
*Dwight, Frederick. Taxation and Suffrage. 4p. pa. N. Y. State Ass'n Opposed to Woman Suffrage, New York.
*Facts and Fallacies about Woman Suffrage. 8p. pa. Illinois Ass'n Opposed to Woman Suffrage, Chicago, Ill.
*George, Mrs. A. J. Address before the Brooklyn Auxiliary, April 30, 1909. N. Y. State Ass'n Opposed to Woman Suffrage, New York.
Johnson, Helen K. Woman and the Republic. D. Appleton & Co., New York. 1897.
Harrison, Frederic. Realities and Ideals. p. 123-37. The Macmillan Co., New York. 1908.
*Knapp, Adeline. Do Working Women Need the Ballot? 8p. pa. N. Y. State Ass'n Opposed to Woman Suffrage, New York.
*Knapp, Adeline. Problem of Woman Suffrage. 4p. pa. N. Y. Ass'n Opposed to Woman Suffrage, New York.
McCracken, Elizabeth. Women of America. Chap. IV. Macmillan & Co., New York. 1904.
*Reot, Elihu. Address Delivered before the New York State Constitutional Convention, August 15, 1894. N. Y. State Ass'n Opposed to Woman Suffrage, New York.
Seawell, Molly E. Ladies’ Battle. The Macmillan Co., New York. 1911.
Smith, Goldwin. Essays on Questions of the Day. pp. 197-238. Macmillan & Co., New York. 1894.
United States. 52d Congress, 2d Session. Senate Miscellaneous Document 28. Memorial of Caroline F. Corbin for American Women Remonstrants to the Extension of Suffrage to Women, Praying for a Hearing before Congress.
Printed with this memorial is a letter from the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M. P., remonstrating against female suffrage.
United States. 54th Congress, 1st Session. Senate Report 787. Minority Report of the Committee on Woman Suffrage.
*Why the Home Makers Do Not Want to Vote. 4p. pa. Illinois Ass'n Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to Women, Chicago, Ill.
*Woman Suffrage and Child Labor Legislation. 8p. pa. N. Y. State Ass'n Opposed to Woman Suffrage, New York.
Reports and pamphlets may be obtained from Mrs. M. E. Loomis, Secretary of the New York State Ass'n Opposed to Woman Suffrage, 29 W. 39th St., New York City. Also from the secretaries of the Illinois Ass'n Opposed to Woman Suffrage, 1523 Dearborn Ave., Chicago, Ill., and the Mass. Ass'n Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women, Room 615 Kensington Bldg., Boston, Mass.
Arena. 2: 175-81. Je. ‘00. Real Case of the Remonstrants against Woman Suffrage. O. B. Frothingham.
Atlantic Monthly. 65: 310-20. Mr. ‘90. Woman Suffrage Pro and Con. Charles W. Clark.
Atlantic Monthly. 92: 289-96. S. ‘03. Why Women Do Not Wish the Suffrage. Lyman Abbott.
Atlantic Monthly. 96: 750-9. D. ‘05. Woman Suffrage in the Tenements. Elizabeth McCracken.
Atlantic Monthly. 105: 297-301. Mr. ‘10. Change in the Feminine Ideal. Margaret Deland.
Atlantic Monthly. 106: 289-303. S. ‘10. Ladies’ Battle. Molly E. Seawell.
Annals of the American Academy. 35: sup. 28-32. My. ‘10. Answer to the Arguments in Support of Woman Suffrage. Lyman Abbott.
Annals of the American Academy. 35: sup. 36-7. My. ‘10. Inadvisability of Human Suffrage. Charles H. Parkhurst.
Bibliotheca Sacra. 67: 335-46. Ap. ‘10. Is Woman's Suffrage an Enlightened and Justifiable Policy for the State? Henry A. Stimson.
Bookman. 31: 312-4. My. ‘10. Miss Johnston and Woman Suffrage.
Century. 48: 613-23. Ag. ‘94. Wrongs and Perils of Woman Suffrage. James M. Buckley.
Century. 83: 790-2. Mr. ‘12. Grace Before Lawlessness.
Collier's. 49: 27. Ap. 20, ‘12. Anti-Suffrage Argument. M. E. Henderson.
Current Literature. 48: 177-9. F. ‘10. Moral Objections to Woman Suffrage.
Edinburgh Review. 208: 246-63. Jl. ‘08. Women and the Franchise.
Reprinted in full in Living Age. 258: 451-63. August 22, 1908.
Educational Review. 36: 398-404. N. ‘08. Some Suffragist Arguments. Mrs. Humphry Ward.
*Forum. 43: 495-504. My. ‘10. Facts about Suffrage and Anti-Suffrage. Mrs. Gilbert E. Jones.
Good Housekeeping. 55: 75-80. Jl. ‘12. Non-Militant Defenders of the Home. Grace D. Goodwin.
Good Housekeeping. 55: 80-2. Jl. ‘12. Concerning Some of the Anti-Suffrage Leaders. I. T. Martin.
Gunton's Magazine. 20: 333-44. Ap. ‘01. Scientific Aspects of the Woman Suffrage Question. Mrs. Mary K. Sedgwick.
Harper's Bazar. 43: 525-6. My. ‘09. Ideal of Equality for Men and Women. Priscilla Leonard.
Harper's Bazar. 43: 1169-70. N. ‘09. Working Woman and Anti-Suffrage. Priscilla Leonard.
Hibbert Journal. 9: 163-8. O. ‘01. Principal Childs on Woman Suffrage: a Rejoinder. Francis H. Low.
Independent. 67: 246-9. Jl. 29, ‘09. Counter Influence to Woman Suffrage. Alice H. Chittenden.
Ladies’ Home Journal. 22: 7-8. O. ‘05. Would Woman Suffrage Be Unwise? Grover Cleveland.
His arguments are: 1. Woman's sphere is the home; 2. The majority of women are not in favor of the suffrage; 3. The results where tried are not favorable.
Ladies’ Home Journal. 25: 15. N. ‘08. Why I Do Not Believe in Woman Suffrage. Mrs. Humphry Ward.
Ladies’ Home Journal. 27: 21-2. F. ‘10. Why the Vote Would Be Injurious to Women. Lyman Abbott.
Ladies’ Home Journal. 27: 56. Ap. ‘10. Before the American Woman Votes. Jessie A. McGriff.
Ladies’ Home Journal. 27: 15-6; 68-9. N. 1, ‘10. What Women Have Actually Done Where They Vote. Richard Barry.
This article is refuted in a pamphlet entitled “Richard Barry Answered,” issued by the National American Woman Suffrage Ass'n New York.
Ladies’ Home Journal. 28: 17. Ja. 1, ‘11. Do You, as a Woman, Want to Vote?
Ladies Home Journal. 28: 6. Ap. 1, ‘11. Is Mrs. Goddard Alone in Her Opinion That Woman Suffrage in Colorado Is a Failure?
Lippincott's. 83: 586-92. My. ‘09. Shall Women Vote? Ouida.
Reprinted in condensed form in the Review of Reviews. 39: 624-5. May, 1909.
Living Age. 225: 774-80. Je. 23, ‘00. Growing Bureaucracy and Parliamentary Decline. Alice S. Green.
Living Age. 260: 323-9. F. 6, ‘09. Suffrage and Anti-Suffrage. M. E. Simkins.
The burden of the suffrage would come on the working woman who is unequal to the task.
Living Age. 261: 240-3. Ap. 24, ‘09. “Seems so”—The Suffragettes. Stephen Reynolds.
Living Age. 262: 462-7. Ag. 21, ‘09. Modern Surrender of Women. Gilbert K. Chesterton.
Living Age. 271: 633-6. D. 9, ‘11. Manhood Suffrage.
Living Age. 272: 587-92. Mr. 9, ‘12. Feminine versus Feminist.
Nation. 94: 132. F. 8, ‘12. Question of Suffrage.
Nineteenth Century. 61: 227-36. F. ‘07. Women and Politics. Caroline E. Stephen.
Reprinted in full in Living Age. 252: 579-86. March 9, 1907.
Nineteenth Century. 61: 595-601. Ap. ‘07. Women and Politics. Two Rejoinders.
Reprinted in full Living Age. 253: 271-6. May 4, 1907.
Nineteenth Century. 63: 381-5. Mr. ‘08. Woman's Plea against Woman Suffrage. Edith M. Massie.
Reprinted in full Living Age. 257: 84-8. April 11, 1908.
Nineteenth Century. 64: 64-73. Jl. ‘08. Woman and the Suffrage. A. M. Lovat.
Nineteenth Century. 64: 342-52. Ag. ‘08. Women's Anti-Suffrage Movement. Mrs. Humphry Ward.
Reprinted in full in Living Age. 259. 3-11. October 3,1908.
Nineteenth Century. 64: 1018-24. D. ‘08. Representation of Women: A Consultative Chamber of Women. Caroline E. Stephen.
Nineteenth Century. 64: 1025-9. D. ‘08. Representation of Women, Edward A. Goulding.
Nineteenth Century. 66: 1051-7. D. ‘09. Then and Now. Ethel B. Harrison.
Nineteenth Century. 68: 220-6. Ag. ‘10. Pageantry and Politics. Ethelberta Harrison.
Nineteenth Century. 71: 599-608. Mr. ‘12. Woman Suffrage and the Liberal Party. Charles E. Mallet.
North American Review. 178: 103-9. Ja. ‘04. Woman's Assumption of Sex Superiority. Annie N. Meyer.
Her argument is that women have not shown the character necessary for success in political life.
North American Review. 190: 158-69. Ag. ‘09. Impediments to Woman Suffrage. Mrs. Gilbert E. Jones.
North American Review: 191: 549-58. Ap. ‘10. Woman's Relation to Government. Mrs. william F. Scott
Outlook 75: 737-44. N. 28, ‘03. Woman's Suffrage in Colorado. Elizabeth McCracken.
Outlook 91: 784-8. Ap. 3, ‘09. Assault on Womanhood. Lyman Abbott.
Outlook 91: 836-40. Ap. 10, ‘09. Profession of Motherhood. Lyman Abbott.
Outlook 93: 868-74. D. 18, ‘09. Melancholia and the Silent Woman. Edwina S. Babcock.
*Outlook 97: 143-4, Ja. 28. ‘11. Woman Voter's Views on Woman's Suffrage.
Outlook 100: 3027-4. F. 10, ‘12. Women's Rights. Lyman Abbott.
Outlook 101: 26-30. My. 4, ‘12. For the Twenty-Two Million; Why Most Women Do Not Want to Vote. Ann Watkins.
Outlook 101: 105-6. My. 18. ‘12. Right of the Silent Woman.
Quarterly Review. 210: 276-304. Ja. ‘09. Woman Suffrage. Albert V. Dicey.
Reprinted in full in Living Age. 261: 67-84. April 10, 1909.
Westminster Review. 175: 91-103. Ja. ‘11. Economic Criticism of Woman Suffrage. C. H. Norman.
World To-Day. 15: 1061-6. O. ‘08. Should Women Vote? Virginia B. Le Roy.
One fact that early impresses the student of this question is that Woman Suffrage is not a subject of academic discussion merely, it is an active political movement. Not only in the United States but in nearly every country of the civilized world there are well-established organizations of women, and, often, men also, actively engaged in promoting or opposing the extension of the suffrage to women. As one of their methods of propaganda, these organizations publish and distribute vast quantities of literature including weekly and monthly periodicals. This literature is extremely valuable for reference, and as the length of the bibliography forbids more than a brief statement of how this material may be secured, it seems advisable to give place here to a list of the more important of these organizations and their publications.
The most prominent of the societies organized for the extension of the suffrage to women in the United States, is the National American Woman Suffrage Association, with headquarters at 505 Fifth Avenue, New York City. This organization publishes an immense amount of literature and has issued a catalog of its publications, which is sent free to any address on request. The Woman's Journal, a weekly publication edited by Alice Stone Blackwell, has a wide national circulation, and is published at 585 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass., subscription price one dollar a year. Auxiliary
There is no national organization opposed to the extension of the suffrage to women, but societies have been organized in many of the states and are publishing and distributing literature. Those with whom the student will find it most profitable to correspond are the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, with headquarters at 29 West Thirty-ninth Street, New York City, the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women, Room 615 Kensington Building, Boston, Mass., and the Illinois Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, 1523 Dearborn Avenue, Chicago, III. The Massachusetts Association publishes “The Remonstrance” the subscription price of which is twenty-five cents a year.
In addition to the above-mentioned periodicals there are a few published abroad which will be valuable as sources of up to date information to those making an exhaustive study of the subject. Among those issued by the advocates of Woman Suffrage are the Jus Suffragii, 92 Kruiskade, Rotterdam, Holland, organ of the International Suffrage Alliance, subscription price eighty-two cents a year; Votes for Women, 4 Clements Inn, The Strand, London, organ of the Women's Social and Political Union (the “militant” organization); The Common Cause, 2 Roberts Street, Adelphi, London, W. C., organ of the National Union of Woman Suffrage Societies; and The Vote, 1 Robert Street, Adelphi, London, W. C., organ of the Woman's Freedom League. On the other side of the question there is one important periodical, the Anti-Suffrage Review, published by the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage, 515 Caxton House, Tothill Street, Westminster, S. W. London, of which the subscription price is about thirty-eight cents a year.
A second fact that impresses the reader or student is the rapidity with which events come to pass in this movement for the enfranchisement for women. One must keep almost daily in touch with what is published on the question in order that his stock of information may always be reliable and up to date. Many of the latest facts and statistics could not be incorporated into the following discussions because they could not be secured in any but the most fragmentary form, and for this reason, it has been decided best to include them in this introductory article.
To the list of the gains for equal suffrage summarized, in the following article, to the close of 1911, may be added those already secured during 1912. These are, in brief, as follows: Full suffrage for women in China, on the same terms as men; the Parliamentary franchise for a limited number of women in Portugal; women made eligible as borough and district councellors in Ireland, and to almost all state offices in Norway; school suffrage restored in Kentucky. Other partial gains are the endorsement of equal suffrage by many national and affiliated trade, social, political and religious organizations, and its incorporation into the platforms of state and national political conventions, especially those of the Socialist, Prohibition and the newly-organized Progressive Parties.
That other gains for Woman Suffrage will be made before the close of 1912 seems probable, for the legislatures of Oregon, Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin and the constitutional convention of Ohio have already voted to submit amendments to their state constitutions allowing women to vote on the same terms as men. These amendments will be voted upon at the November elections in every state but Ohio where action is to be taken on the work of the constitutional convention, on the third of September. A similar amendment was passed by the last legislature of Nevada, but must pass the legislature a second time before going to the voters. The legislature of Louisiana has resolved to submit an amendment granting school suffrage to women and this will also be voted on in November, 1912. The state legislature
An examination of statistics for foreign countries shows similar movements on foot in may of them to remove the political disadvantages to which women are now subject. Action has already been taken by the Parliaments of Norway, Denmark and Iceland to give women the Parliamentary suffrage on the same terms which men now enjoy and from Hungary now comes the semi-official report that the government intends soon to introduce a bill into Parliament for the enfranchisement of woman owners of property, proprietors of business and holders of the title of doctor. The limits of this volume make impossible any further description of present status of Woman Suffrage in England or other countries than our own more than is included in the following General Discussion. The bibliography provides many articles, however, for those wishing to read extensively on this phase of the question.
August 28, 1912.
Eighty years ago women could not vote anywhere, except to a very limited extent in Sweden, and in a few other places in the old world.
The status of woman in the United States fifty years ago, the progressive steps by which it has been improved, present conditions, future probabilities—in fact, a résumé of the great movement in which Elizabeth Cady Stanton has been the central figure through two generations—this is the subject
The title I claim for Mrs. Stanton is that of leader of women. Women do not enjoy one privilege to-day beyond those possessed by their foremothers, which was not demanded by he before the present generation was born. Her published speeches will verify this statement. In the light of the present, it seems natural that she should have made those first demands for women; but at the time it was done the act was far more revolutionary than was the Declaration of Independence by the colonial leaders. There had been other rebellions against the rule of kings and nobles; men from time immemorial had been accustomed to protest against injustice; but for women to take such action was without a precedent and the most daring innovation in all history. Men of old could emphasize their demands by the sword, and in the present century they have been able to do so by the ballot. While they might, indeed, put their lives in peril, they were always supported by a certain amount of sympathy from the public. Women could neither fight nor vote; they were not sustained even by those of their own sex; and, while they incurred no physical risk, they imperilled their reputation and subjected themselves to mental and spiritual crucifixion. Therefore I hold that the calling of that first Woman's Right Convention in 1848 by Mrs. Stanton, Lucretia Mott and two or three other brave Quaker women, was one of the most courageous acts on record.
It must be remembered that at this time a woman's convention never had been heard of, with the exception of the few which had been called, early in the anti-slavery movement, by the women who had been driven out of the men's meetings and had formed their own society; but even these were almost wholly managed by men. A few individual women had publicly advocated equality of rights—the number could be more than counted on one's finger—but a convention for this purpose and an organized demand had been till then undreamed of. The vigor and scope of the declaration
“The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world:
“He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.
“He has compelled her to submit to laws in the formation of which she has no voice.
“He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men—both natives and foreigners.
“Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
“He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
“He has taken form her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
“He has made her morally an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant or marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master—the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty and to administer chastisement.
“He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper cause, and to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of woman—the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.
“After depriving her of all rights as married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognize her only when her property can be made profitable to it.
“He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.
“He has closed against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. In theology, medicine, and law she is not known.
“He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education—all colleges being closed against her.
“He allows her in church, as well as state, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the church.
“He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.
“He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming
“He has endeavored in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.
“Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because woman do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.
“In entering upon the great work before us we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the state and national legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this convention will be followed by a series of conventions, embracing every part of the country.”
Firmly relying upon the final triumph of the Right and the True, we do this day affix our signatures to this declaration.”
To emphasize these most radical sentiments the following resolutions also were adopted:
“The great precept of nature is conceded to be, ‘that man shall pursue his own true and substantial happiness.’ Blackstone, in his Commentaries, remarks, that this law of Nature being coeval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this, and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their validity and all their authority, mediately and immediately, from this original; therefore,
“Resolved,
That such laws as conflict, in any way, with the true and substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the great precept of nature and of no validity; for this is ‘superior in obligation to any other.’
“Resolved,
That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature and therefore of no force or authority.
“Resolved,
That woman is man's equal—was intended to be so by the Creator—and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.
“Resolved,
That the women of this country ought to be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they live, that they may no longer publish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position, nor their ignorance by asserting that they have all the rights they want.
Resolved,
That inasmuch as man, while claiming for himself intellectual superiority, does accord to woman moral superiority, it is pre-eminently his duty to encourage her to speak and teach, as she has an opportunity, in all religious assemblies.
Resolved,
That the same amount of virtue, delicacy and refinement of behavior that is required of woman in the social state should also be required of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman.
“Resolved,
That the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so often brought against woman when she addresses a public audience, comes with a very ill-grace from those who encourage
“Resolved.
That woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.
Resolved,
That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.
“Resolved,
That the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities.
“Resolved,
therefore. That, being invested by the Creator with the same capabilities and the same consciousness of responsibility for their exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every righteous cause by every righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching them, both in private and in public, by writing and by speaking, by any instrumentalities proper to be used and in any assemblies proper to be held; and this being a self-evident truth, growing out of the divinely implanted principles of human nature, any custom or authority adverse to it, whether modern or wearing the hoary sanction of antiquity, is to regarded as a self-evident falsehood and at war with the interests of mankind.”
In all the conventions which have been held during the past fifty-four years, the impassioned address made, the resolutions presented, the hearings before legislative bodies, there has been nothing to add to these declarations made by a woman only thirty-three years old, born and bred in the midst of the most rigid social, civil and religious conservatism. They illustrate vividly the conditions which existed in that day, when the simplest rudiments of education were deemed sufficient for women; when only a half-dozen unremunerative employments were open to them and any work outside the home placed a stigma on the worker; when a woman's right to speak in public was more bitterly contested than her right to the suffrage is to-day. The storm of ridicule and denunciation which broke over the heads of the women who took part in this convention never has been exceeded in the coarsest and most vituperative political campaign ever conducted. The attacks were led by the pulpit, whose influence fifty years ago was far greater than at present and whose power over women was supreme. The press of the country did not suffer itself to be outdone; but, taking its cue from the metropolitan papers of New York, contributed its full quota of caricature and misrepresentation.
At the beginning of 1848, the English Common Law was in force practically everywhere in the United States. Its treatment of women was a blot on civilization only equalled in blackness by the slavery of the negro. The latter, technically at least, has now disappeared. The former dies slowly, because it cannot be eradicated by fire and sword. Lord Coke called this Common Law “the perfection of reason.” Under its provisions the position of the wife was thus stated by Blackstone:
“The very being or existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband, under whose wing, protection and covert she performs everything. She is, therefore, called in our Law-French a
femme-covert,
is said to be
covert-baron,
or under the protection and influence of her husband, her baron or lord.
“The husband also, by the old law, might give his wife, moderate correction. For, as he is to answer for her misbehavior, the law thought it reasonable to intrust him with this power of restraining her by domestic chastisement in the same moderation that a man is allowed to correct his apprentices or children. But this power of correction was confined within reasonable bounds, and the husband was prohibited from using any violence to his wife, except as lawfully and reasonably belongs to a husband for the sake of governing and disciplining his wife. The Civil Law gave the husband the same or a larger authority over his wife, allowing him for some misdemeanors to beat his wife severely with whips and cudgels; for others only to administer moderate chastisement.”
Other provisions of this law were as follows:
“By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law, that is, the legal existence of the women is merged in that of her husband. He is her baron or lord, bound to supply her with shelter, food, clothing and medicine, and is entitled to her earnings and the use and custody of her person, which he may seize wherever he may find it.”
“The husband, being bound to provide for his wife the necessaries of life, and being responsible for her morals and the good order of the household, may choose and govern the domicile, select her associates, separate her from her relatives, restrain her religious and personal freedom, compel her to cohabit with him, correct her faults by mild means, and, if necessary, chastise her with moderation, as though she was his apprentice or child. This is in respect to the terms of the marriage contract and the infirmity of the sex.”
It does not seem necessary to add further particulars as to the condition of women in the middle of the century just closed and at the time Elizabeth Cady Stanton began the almost superhuman task of setting them free from the bondage of centuries. The first cleft in the infamy of the Common Law was made almost simultaneously by the legislatures of New York, and Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1848, by
To follow in detail the steps by which women have reached their present position of comparative social, educational, financial and legal independence, would be to write a chapter for each of the fifty years which have intervened since the first few brave souls dared lift up their voices in a cry for liberty. The organized movement for the emancipation of women began in earnest soon after the close of the Civil War. Every one of the past thirty-five years has witnessed the breaking of a link in the chain. The going forth of hundreds of thousands of men from the farm, the work-shop, the factory, the store—from every field of employment—to swell the ranks of the army, made it absolutely necessary for women to step into their places in order that the countless wheels of the world's work should not stop. The vacancies left by those who never returned, and the rapidly-growing tendency to remove domestic products from the home to the factory, practically settled the question of woman's entering the wage-earning occupations.
The period immediately after the war was marked by the speedy increase and enlargement of state universities and the admission of women. Their example was followed by many of the other colleges and universities of the country, and in 1890 by the founding of the two great endowed institutions, Stanford and Chicago, with the admission of women to every department. Although the latter has just made the egregious blunder of modifying its original plan, this action represents only the individual scheme of one man and not a reactionary tendency. The question of the higher education of woman may be regarded as decided in her favor.
The right of women to organize for public work is now universally recognized and approved. They have at present in the United States over one hundred national organizations,
The legal features of the revolution have been quite as marked as its other phases. An examination, doubtless, would show that in not one state does the Common Law now prevail in its entirety. In many of them it has been largely obliterated by special statutes. There has been no retrogressive legislation with respect to the status of women before the law. In the majority of the states, a married woman may now own and control property, carry on business and possess her earnings, make a will a contract, bring suit in her own name, act as administrator and testify in the courts. In one-fifth of the states, she has equal guardianship with the father over the minor children. Where formerly there was but one clause for divorce, the wife may now obtain a divorce in almost every state for habitual drunkenness, cruelty, failure to provide and desertion on the part of the husband; and he can no longer, as of old even though the guilty, retain sole possession of the children and the property. The general tendency of legislation for women is progressive, and there is not a doubt that this will continue to be the case.
I do not wish to be understood for a moment, however, as maintaining the woman stands on a perfect equality with men in any of the above-mentioned departments—in the industries, education, organization, public speaking or the laws. She simply has made immense gains in all, and her standing has been completely revolutionized since Mrs. Stanton announced the beginning of a new Reformation. Woman never will have equality of rights anywhere, she never will hold those she now has by an absolute tenure, until she possesses the fundamental right of self-representation. This fact is so obvious as to need no argument. Had this
It is not necessary to consider the minor reasons why the enfranchisement of women has been so long deferred; but, in spite of the almost insuperable obstacles, there has been considerable progress in this direction. In some states, the legislatures themselves can confer a fragmentary suffrage without the ratification of the voters. This has been done in about half of them, Kansas granting the municipal franchise, Louisiana, Montana, and New York, a taxpayers’ franchise, and twenty-two states a vote on matters connected with the public schools. Within the last twelve years, four states have conferred the full suffrage on women—Wyoming and Utah by placing it in the constitutions under which they entered statehood; Colorado and Idaho through a submission of the question to the voters. There is a strong basis for believing that within a few years several other states will take similar action.
The effect upon women themselves of these enlarged opportunities in very direction has been a development which is almost a regeneration. The capability they have shown in the realm of higher education, their achievements
In 1888, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the leaders of this movement in the United States, where it began, attempted to coöperate with other countries, they found that in only one—Great Britain—had it taken organized shape. By 1902, however, it was possible to form an International Committee, in Washington, D.C., with representatives from five countries. Two years later, in Berlin, the International Woman Suffrage Alliance was formed with accredited delegates from organizations in nine countries. This Alliance held a congress in Stockholm during the past summer with delegates from national associations in twenty-four countries where the movement for the enfranchisement of women has taken definite, organized form.
At the November election, 1910, the men of Washington, by a vote of three to one, enfranchised the women of that state. Eleven months later, in October, 1911, a majority
It was believed then that woman suffrage would soon be carried in all the western states, but at this time there began a period of complete domination of politics by the commercial interests of the country, through whose influence the power of the party “machines” became absolute. Temperance, tariff reform, control of monopolies, all moral issues were relegated to the background and woman suffrage went with the rest. To the vast wave of “insurgency” against these conditions is due its victory in Washington and California. It seems impossible that Oregon, which is to pass on the question next year, will longer withhold the ballot from women. Kansas and Wisconsin also have submitted it to the election of 1912, with a good chance of success especially in the former. As many women are already fully enfranchised in this country as would be made voters by the suffrage bill now under consideration in Great Britain, so that American women taken as a whole cannot be put into a secondary position as regards political rights. While women householders in Great Britain and Ireland have the municipal franchise, a much larger number in this country have a partial suffrage—the municipal in Kansas; a vote on questions of special taxation, bonds, etc., in Louisiana, Iowa, Montana, Michigan and in the villages and many third-class cities in New York, and school suffrage in over half of the states.
The situation in Great Britain is now at its most acute stage. There the question never goes to the voters but is decided by Parliament. Seven times a woman suffrage bill has passed its second reading in the House of Commons by a large majority, only to be refused a third and final reading by the Premier, who represents the ministry, technically known as the government. In 1910 the bill received a majority of 110, larger than was secured even for the budget, the government's chief measure. In 1911 the majority was 167, and again the last reading was refused. The vote was wholly nonpartisan—145 Liberals, 53 Unionists, 31 Nationalists (Irish), 26 Labor members. Ninety town and county councils, including those of Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin and those of all the large cities sent petitions to Parliament to grant the final vote. The Lord Mayor of Dublin in his robes of state appeared before the House of Commons with the same plea, but the Liberal government was unmoved.
In the passing years petitions aggregating over four million signatures have been sent in. Just before the recent election the Conservative national association presented one signed by 300,000 voters. In their processions and Hyde Park gatherings the women have made the largest political demonstrations in history. There have been more meetings held, more money raised and more workers enlisted than to obtain suffrage for the men of the entire world.
From the beginning the various associations have asked for the franchise of the same terms as granted to men, not all of whom can vote. For political reasons it seemed impossible to obtain this, and meanwhile the so-called “militant” movement was inaugurated by women outraged at the way the measure had been put aside for nearly forty years. The treatment of these women by the government forms one of the blackest pages in English history, and the situation finally became so alarming that the Parliament was obliged to take action. A Conciliation committee was formed of
His sudden announcement on November 7, that the Government would bring in a manhood suffrage bill—one vote for every adult male but none for women—has altered the whole situation, and the struggle for the conciliation bill will probably be changed to one for recognition of women in this new measure.
Women in England have been eligible for school boards since 1870; have had the county franchise since 1888; have been eligible for parish and district councils and for various boards and commissions since 1894, and hundreds have served in the above offices. In 1907, as recommended in the address of King Edward, women were made eligible as mayors and county and city councillors, or aldermen. Three or four have been elected mayors, and women are now sitting on the councils of London, Manchester, and other cities. The municipal franchise was conferred on the women of Scotland in 1882, and of Ireland in 1898.
The Irishwomen's Franchise league demands that the proposed home rule bill shall give to the women of Ireland the same political rights as it gives to men. This demands is strongly supported by many of the Nationalist members of
In the Isle of Man women property owners have had the full suffrage since 1881, and women rate- or rent-payers, since 1892.
The Parliament of New Zealand gave school suffrage to women in 1877, municipal in 1886, and parliamentary in 1893. It was the first country in the world to grant the complete universal franchise to women.
The six states of Australia had municipal suffrage for women from the early days of their self-government. South Australia gave them the right to vote for its state parliament, or legislature, in 1894, and West Australia took similar action in 1899. The States federated in a Commonwealth in 1992 and almost the first act of its national parliament was to give the suffrage for its members to all women and make them eligible to membership. New South Wales immediately conferred state suffrage on women, and was soon followed by Tasmania and Queensland. Victoria yielded in 1909. Women of Australia have now exactly the same franchise rights as men.
In all the provinces of Canada for the last twenty years widows and spinsters who are rate-payers or property owners have had the school or municipal suffrage, in some instances both, and in a few this right is given to married women. There has been some effort to have this extended to state and federal suffrage, but with little force except in Toronto, where in 1909 a thousand women stormed the House of Parliament, with a petition signed by 100,000 names.
When the South African Union was formed its constitution took away from women tax-payers the fragmentary vote they possessed. Petitions to give them the complete suffrage, signed by 4000 men and women, were ignored.
There are cities in India where women property owner have a vote in municipal affairs.
Parliament of Norway in 1901 granted municipal suffrage to all women who in the country districts pay taxes on an income of 300 crowns (about $75), and in the cities on one of 400 crowns; and they were made eligible to serve on councils and grand and petit juries. After strenuous effort on the part of women the Parliament of 1907, by a vote of 96 to 23, conferred the complete franchise on all who possessed the municipal. This included about 300,000 of the half-million women. They were made eligible for Parliament, and at the first election in 1909 one was elected as alternate or deputy, and last year took her seat with a most enthusiastic welcome from the other members. In 1910, by a vote of 71 to 10, the tax-paying qualification for the municipal vote was removed. In 1911, a bill to abolish it for the full suffrage was carried by a large majority in Parliament, but lacked five vote of the necessary two-thirds. It will pass next year. More than twice as many women as voted in 1907 went to the polls in 1910 at the municipal elections. Last year 178 women were elected to city council, nine to that of Christiania. This year 210 were elected and 379 alternates to fill vacancies that may occur.
Sweden gave municipal suffrage to tax-paying widows and spinsters in 1862. At that time and for many years afterward not one-tenth of the men had a vote. Then came the rise of the Liberal party and the Social Democracy, and by 1909 the new franchise law had been enacted, which immensely increased the number of men voters, extended the
Denmark may claim this honor. Her Parliament in 1908 gave the municipal suffrage to women on the same terms as exercised by men—that is, to all over 25 years of age who pay any taxes. Property owned by husband or wife or in common entitles each to a vote. At the first election 68 per cent of all the enfranchised women in the country, and 70 per cent in Copenhagen, voted. Seven were elected to the city council of 42 members and one was afterwards appointed to fill a vacancy, and 127 were elected in other places. Women serve on all committees and are chairmen of important one; two are city treasurers. There are two suffrage associations whose combined membership makes the organization of that country in proportion to population the largest of the kind in the world. They have 314 local branches and one of the associations has held 1100 meetings during the
Iceland, a dependency of Denmark, with its own Parliament, gave municipal suffrage in 1882 to all widows and spinsters who were householders or maintained a family, or were self-supporting. In 1902 it made these voters eligible to all municipal offices, and since then a fourth of the council members of Reykjavik, the capital, have been women. In 1909 this franchise was extended to all those who pay taxes. A petition signed by a large majority of all the women in Iceland asked for the complete suffrage, and during the present year the Parliament voted to give this all women over 25 years old. It must be acted upon by a second Parliament, but its passage is assured, and Icelandic women will vote on the same terms as men in 1913.
First place must be given to the Grand Duchy of Finland, far more advanced than any other part of the empire. In 1905, by permission of the Czar, after a wonderful uprising of the people, they reorganized their government and combined the four antiquated chambers of their Diet into one body. The next year, on demand of thousands of women expressed by petition and public meetings, this new Parliament, almost without a dissenting voice, conferred the full suffrage on all women. Since that time from 16 to 25 have been elected to the different Parliaments by all the political parties.
In Russia women as well as men are struggling for political freedom. In many of the villages wives cast the votes for their husbands when the latter are away; women have some suffrage for the zemstvos, local governing bodies; the Duma has tried to enlarge their franchise right, but at present these are submerged in the general chaos.
In Poland an active League for woman's right is coöperating with the Democratic party of men.
A very strong movement for woman suffrage is proceeding against great difficulties in the seventeen provinces of Austria, where almost as many languages are spoken and the bitterest racial feuds exist. Women are not allowed to form political associations or hold public meetings, but 4000 have paraded the streets of Vienna demanding the suffrage. In Bohemia since 1864 women have had a vote for members of the Diet and are eligible to sit in it. In all the municipalities outside of Prague and Liberic, women taxpayers and those of the learned professions may vote by proxy. Woman belong to all the political parties except the Conservative and constitute 40 per cent of the Agrarian party. They are well organized to secure the full suffrage and are holding hundreds of meetings and distributing thousands of pamphlets. In Bosnia and Herzegovina women property owners vote by proxy.
In Hungary the National woman suffrage association includes many societies having other aims also, and it has branches in 87 towns and cities, combining all classes of women from the aristocracy to the peasants. Men are in a turmoil there to secure universal suffrage for themselves and women are with them in the thick of the fight. The International woman suffrage alliance will meet in Budapest in 1913.
Bulgaria has a Woman suffrage association composed of 37 auxiliaries and it held 456 meetings during the past year.
In Servia women have a fragmentary local vote and are now organizing to claim the parliamentary franchise.
It was not until 1908 that the law was changed which forbade women to take part in political meetings, and since then the Woman suffrage societies, which existed only in the free
A few years ago when the Liberal party was in power it prepared to revise the constitution and make woman suffrage one of its provisions. In 1907 the Conservatives carried the election and blocked all further progress. Two active suffrage associations approximate a membership of 8000, with nearly 200 branches, and are building up public sentiment.
Belgium in 1910 gave women a vote for members of the Board of Trade, an important tribunal, and made them eligible to serve on it. A woman suffrage society is making considerable progress.
Switzerland has had a woman suffrage association only a few years. Geneva and Zurich in 1911 made women eligible to their boards of trade with a vote for its members, and Geneva gave them a vote in all matters connected with the state church.
Italy has a well-supported movement for woman suffrage, and a discussion in Parliament showed a strong sentiment in favor. Mayor Nathan, of Rome, is an outspoken advocate. In 1910 all women in trade were made voters for boards of trade.
The woman suffrage movement in France differs from that of most other countries in the number of prominent men in politics connected with it. President Falliöres loses no opportunity to speak in favor and leading members of the
The constitution of the new Republic of Portugal gave “universal” suffrage, and Dr. Beatrice Angelo applied for registration, which was refused. She carried her case to the courts, her demand was sustained and she cast her vote. It was too late for other women to register, but an organization of 1000 women was at once formed to secure definite action of Parliament, with the approval of President Braga and several members of his cabinet.
The Spanish Chamber has proposed to give women heads of families in the villages a vote for mayor and council.
A bill to give suffrage to women was recently introduced in the Parliament of Persia but was ruled out of order by the president because the Koran says women have no souls.
Siam has lately adopted a constitution which gives women a municipal vote.
Several women voted in place of their husbands at the recent election in Mexico. Belize, the capital of British Honduras, has just given the right to women to vote for town council.
Throughout the entire world is an unmistakable tendency to accord women a voice in the government, and strange to say, this is stronger in monarchies than in republics. In Europe
When no November 8, 1910, the state of Washington, by a very large majority vote of its electors, gave the complete franchise to women citizens the subject of woman suffrage passed from the stage of academic discussion to that of a live, practical question; and when on October 10, 1911, California fully enfranchised the women of that state it became one of the political issued of the day. This fact was evident at once in the attitude of the press, which in its news reports gave woman suffrage equal if no superior place to the referendum, recall and other important constitutional amendments which were passed upon at this recent California election. It was equally noticeable in the editorials, especially of papers heretofore opposed, such, for instance, as the New York
Tribune,
which said: “Now that Washington with 1,142,000 population and California with 2,377,000, have shown their desire to put the political equality idea into practice, the pressure behind it will become more acute and the larger and older states will have to take more serious notice of its existence.”
The experiment heretofore in the United States has been made in the four comparatively new and sparsely settled states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho, where women are greatly outnumbered by men and no large cities exist with their complicated political and social problems. While it is true that human nature is the same everywhere, yet it must be admitted that it these four states there has not been
Now that the question of woman suffrage is to receive more attention it may be of interest to examine its history in the United States up to date. The very first demand for it was made by women of Eastern States, which will be the last to grant it—Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, of New York; Lucretia Mott, of Philadelphia; Lucy Stone, of Boston, and a score or two more of the most distinguished women of sixty years ago. The first recognition of the principle by any state was made by progressive Kansas, which came into the Union om 1861 with school suffrage for women in its Constitution. No further advance was made until 1869, when the first legislative council was in session after the organization of Wyoming as a territory. Mrs. Esther Morris, who with her husband had gone out from New York as a pioneer, appealed to the president of the council Col. William H. Bright, for a bill enfranchising women. She was sustained by his wife, and he succeeded in having the bill passed. The council was Democratic and it hoped to embarrass the Republican Governor, John A. Campbell, whom it expected to veto the bill. On the contrary, he signed it; and when two years later the council repealed it he vetoed the repeal. The council was unable to pass it over his veto and no effort to abolish woman suffrage was ever again made in Wyoming. Mrs. Morris was appointed justice of the peace, and of the nearly forty cases she tried none ever was appealed to a higher court. Women sat on juries from the beginning and have continued to fill various offices down to the present day.
In 1889 a convention composed entirely of men met to form a constitution for statehood, and after twenty years’ experience they adopted unanimously as its first clause “equal political rights for all male and female citizens.” The constitution was ratified by more than a three-fourths majority
We come now to the second state which has fully enfranchised women—Colorado. When it made its constitution for statehood in 1876 it refused the entreaties of the women to provide in this for their enfranchisement, but it gave them school suffrage. The curious provision was made that the Legislature of the new state might at any time by a majority, instead of the two-thirds required for amendments, enact a law to extend the suffrage without amending the Constitution, but the law must be approved by the majority of the voters; and it was ordered that such a law should be submitted at the first election after the state came into the Union. This was done in 1877 and the men, glorying
The women entered at once upon their new duties and the official records show that during all the past eighteen years they have voted in quite as large a proportion as men. They have evinced no especial desire for office, but more than a dozen have been elected to the Legislature and scores to the various country offices. The office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction has always been filled by a woman. They serve on state boards and commissions and are eligible to jury service. The testimony in favor of the way they have used their ballot is overwhelming and from the highest sources—justices of the Supreme Court, governors, presidents of colleges, clergymen, editors. Not one Colorado man or woman of prominence has ever given public expression to a derogatory word. The strongest proof of the success of woman suffrage in this state, however, came ten years after it had been in operation. The suffrage clause in the Constitution permitted immigrants to vote on their first papers and six month's residence. An amendment was submitted in 1903 requiring a year's residence and using the words “he or she.” It was adopted by 18,000 majority and it safely intrenched woman suffrage in the constitution of the state. With the Populist party eliminated the vote for it was three times as large a before it had been tried. If this increase was due to the women it showed they appreciated their voting power and wished to make it secure; if it was due to men it proved they were satisfied. In either case the result was decisive.
In 1895, two years after the Colorado victory, a convention of Utah men assembled to make a constitution for Statehood. The Legislature in 1870 had given full suffrage
The story of Idaho is short and there is no great struggle for the ballot to record. It was admitted into the Union in 1890. Before and after that year Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, the pioneer suffragist of Oregon, had canvassed territory and state and appealed to the Legislature and constitution convention. She was strongly supported by individual men and women of Idaho, but there was no organized effort until 1893. The Republicans were in full control of the Legislature in 1895 and the resolution to submit an amendment was almost unanimous. The next year Republican, Democratic, Populist and Free Silver party conventions endorsed it and it was carried at the November election by a vote of almost two to one. At the next election three women were sent to the Legislature; one State Superintendent of Instruction; fifteen county superintendents, four county treasurers elected. This proportion has been kept up and there have been a number of deputy sheriffs elected. There is nothing but the highest testimony as to the part of women
After this gain of four states in six years by the suffragists the opponents took active measures to prevent the submission of the question in other states. In the few cases where this was done the combination of corporations, liquor interests and party “machines” was impossible to overcome. The domination of politics by these forces was so complete that there was no chance for any moral questions, and nothing was left but the slow process of educating public sentiment to demand that the voice of women should be heard in this wilderness. Then came the great “insurgent” movement in the western states and, as the direct result, the submitting of a woman suffrage amendment in 1910 by almost unanimous vote of the Washington Legislature. Here again there had been practical experience. In 1883 the Territorial Legislature gave to women the full rights of the ballot and at the spring election and again in the autumn they cast one-fourth of the votes, altho there were less than one-third as many women as men in the territory. During the three and a half years that they possessed the suffrage the official returns several times showed a larger percentage of women than of men voting, even with all the physical handicaps of these pioneer days. In 1886, some question of constitutionally having arisen, the Legislature strengthened the act. In 1887 the vicious elements secured a court verdict that the bill was not properly titled and the Legislature passed in a third time perfect in every respect.
A convention was about to prepare a constitution for statehood and these elements were determined it should not include woman suffrage. It was arranged that at the spring election of 1889 the vote of a certain saloon keeper's wife should be refused. Her case was rushed thru to the Supreme
In 1910 came the political revolution in Washington, where the voters threw off the “machine” yoke and honest men of all parties secured a free election and a fair count. The women made the ablest campaign for the suffrage ever known, with the splendid result that it was carried in every county in the state and received a majority of nearly three to one—the largest victory ever achieved. The way in which they registered by the tens of thousands in Seattle the following month, “recalled” the Mayor, turned out the council and chief of police and regenerated the city—and later performed the same service for Tacoma—this is of too recent date to need extended mention. It advanced the cause of woman suffrage thruout the whole country and across the ocean on either side.
The first results were seen in California, which in the state at large had been swept clean of its corrupt political forces by the great wave of insurgency. The press representatives who had been going to Sacramento for years said they never had seen so able, sincere and upright a body of men as the legislators who submitted the reform amendments,
In opening the new Parliament the King has announced that the government will present a bill for this purpose [total enfranchisement of women], and as the government means the party in power, this bill is sure to pass. At the elections last fall the Conservatives were voted out of office and the Liberals and Social Democrats were voted in. The women of the Suffrage association worked very hard to achieve this result, as the Conservatives had defeated their bill more than once and intended to keep on doing so, while the other parties were pledged to its support.
No women more fully deserve the franchise than those of Sweden. They have worked for many years to obtain it, and it is said that a larger proportion are enrolled in the Suffrage association than in any other country. In their never-ceasing efforts they have used always the most orderly and dignified methods, appealing to man's sense of justice and standing on their right to a voice in their own government. For half a century tax-paying widows and unmarried
This proposed act of the Swedish Parliament will hasten the day when all the women of the Scandinavian countries will be fully enfranchised. In all of them now they have everything but the parliamentary suffrage, that is, in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. In Norway they have the complete franchise with a very small tax-paying qualification which will probably be removed by the present Parliament. It has just passed a bill making women eligible to all public offices except that of membership in the King's cabinet, those of the church and those in the diplomatic and military service. They were already eligible as members of Parliament and one was elected last year. Hundreds have been elected to own and county councils. A number are sitting on the council in Copenhagen and other cities in Denmark, while one-third of the council of Reyjavik, the capital of Iceland, is composed of women. A bill to give women the full suffrage has passed one Icelandic Parliament and is sure to have its final passage in the next. A similar bill has twice been adopted by the Danish Lower House and will ultimately get through the Upper House, which is largely composed of the aristocracy. Thus it will be seen that political freedom for the women of Scandinavia is near at hand.
In our country there is encouragement on every side. The Kentucky Legislature by a large majority in both Houses has granted to all women who can read and write a vote on all matters connected with the public schools and eligibility to all school affairs. The most significant feature of this victory is the bill was sponsored by the State federation of women's clubs.
The convention of 119 men, sitting at Columbus, Ohio, to remodel the constitution of that state, has voted more than two to one to add an amendment giving full suffrage to women. All amendments must be acted upon by the electors and this one must run the risk of defeat.
In Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas and Oregon constitutional amendments have been submitted to confer the complete suffrage on women, and these will be voted on in November. In Oregon the suffragists are receiving an unusual amount of assistance from men, who have formed a strong Men's suffrage league. They feel that it is high time they should do for the women of their state what the men of California to south, Washington the north and Idaho to the east have done, and it is almost unthinkable that they would allow the enemies of woman suffrage to defeat the measure. Here, too, it is a great joy to see the women's clubs aroused to their responsibilities and allying themselves with the work of the Suffrage association.
In Kansas the wives of the governor, chief justice of the supreme court, chancellor of the university and a former governor are at the head of the organized work, while women in all parts of the state are opening a lively campaign.
Proximity in Chicago will enable Wisconsin and Michigan to have the help of that city's leading suffragists, among them the beloved Jane Addams.
The legislatures of Maryland and Virginia have rejected the woman-suffrage bills by large majorities. Over six hundred
New York has caused the suffragists the longest contest of any state. Only a few times has it ever been possible to get the bill out of the committees so as to compel the legislators to show their colors. This winter has been one of those times, and the bill passed both houses, but was reconsidered and laid on the table. The women of New Jersey succeeded in forcing the bill out of committee and may get a vote on it. These instances show that the suffragists are gaining.
In California and Washington the women have passed beyond this phase of the struggle. They say it still seems like a dream, that it is all over, and that they can now take up the great work they have longed to do but could not because they were absorbed in trying to get the means by which to do it. They are being placed on boards and committees of all kinds and say that never before did they know the true meaning of the word “chivalry.”
Press despatches report that the Chinese National Parliament at Nankin has granted equal suffrage to the women of China, the law to take effect immediately, and that one woman, Yik Yuan Ying, a college graduate, has been elected a member of Parliamentary from the province of Canton. Women voters, according to this despatch, will be subject to the same restrictions as men—that is, they must be able to read and write, must be property owners, and 20 years of age.
A letter to the Boston Herald from Canton, the head and heart of the modern progressive movement in China, says:
“The Provincial Assembly, since the fire which destroyed its beautiful hall, has been meeting in the new theatre near the east end of the river front. It is composed of representative revolutionists from the different districts. As a sign of the progressive character of the people here, ten women have been seated as representatives.”
From the new Portuguese Republic comes the report that under the Electoral law, just passed, a limited number of women in Portugal have been given the parliamentary franchise. The same law puts a property qualification on the men, but so slight a one that manhood suffrage is practically established. However, the number of women enfranchised by this law will be comparatively small because of the age limit and educational test.
About a year ago Dr. Carolina Angelo, a woman who since died, entered her name on the registry as a citizen. Her application for the vote formed a test case. The judge ruled that she was entitled to citizenship. By this legal decision women in Portugal were declared eligible for the franchise on the same grounds as men. By the new law, the Senate has now partially confirmed this legal decision by granting the vote to women over 25 years of age, who have passed a certain educational test.
The movement to secure equal suffrage is part of the larger movement to realize the democratic ideal in human society. Its growth is coincident with society's growing esteem for the individual.
In the progress of legislation and judicial interpretation concerning women and their rights and privileges, one fact stands out in prominence. Each concession has been an acknowledgment of individual personality. At the time when our forefathers declared that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, it was not recognized anywhere in law or in human society that a woman is a complete and self-competent personality. Now that fact has been so far established in human society and law as to warrant full government recognition. The mark and badge of full governmental recognition of personality is the ballot.
If full recognition is not the logical end, the granting of partial rights should never have been begun. Women should have been kept in complete subjection, higher education should have continued to be a thing denied and the theoretical unity of every woman with some man should not have been invaded by the humane progress of legislation and legal interpretation. Logically, the granting of partial suffrage calls for the granting of complete suffrage. Most of our states have been suffrage to women on some subjects, and six have granted complete suffrage. It is no wonder that English women, even though they have voting power on practically everything except for members of parliament, still remain unsatisfied, nay, are more discontented
The proposal for a plebiscite of women to decide in any state whether that state should provide for their complete enfranchisement is based upon no fundamental idea of suffrage. It is not even a fundamental question to ask whether they would use the ballot if they had it. No set of people, either in America or in Europe, on the eve of possible enfranchisemet, was ever required to meet such tests. Rights have always been extended on high grounds of public justice and morality, and in recognition of personality. Suffragists do not fear such tests; but the tests, if applied, would not be decisive. The case does not rest finally on the wishes of the set of people to be benefitted, or upon the use they will make of the privilege. It rests finally upon the moral obligation of a free state to recognize a person as a person. The statement of the British statesman applies with much greater force to the women of to-day than it did to any class ever before enfranchised—“A free government and a large number of people excluded from its privileges cannot exist together.”
There is sometimes danger in any great question of this kind, which presents a thousand phases, that we are going to lose sight of the underlying principles involved, and I think it best, even though it seems simple, to go back to first principles and consider the real basis of the ballot.
Now, the right to vote is based, first and foremost and primarily, on the democratic theory of government, the theory of government to which this country was committed in the great phrase that “That just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed.” What does that mean? Does it not mean that there is no class so wise, so benevolent that it is fitted to govern for any other class, no matter how wise or benevolent that ruling class may be? Does it not mean that, in order to have a democratic government, we must be sure that every adult in the community has an opportunity to express his opinion as to how he wishes to be governed, and to have that opinion counted? A vote is, in the last analysis, an expression of a need—either a personal need known to you as an individual, as it can be known to no one else, or an expression of a need of those in whom you are interested—sister-women or children, for instance. The moment that one gets that concept of the ballot, the moment one grants that it rests on that democratic theory—upon which is based the whole claim for any adult suffrage, men or women—that moment a large part, practically all, of the antisuffrage argument is done away with. For instance, take the theory that women are “represented” by men. The theory of republican government rests, does it not, on the theory of delegated authority? Now, it is perfectly obvious to any reasonable being that one can not delegate what he never had. Until women have the vote, they can not delegate the vote. Again, even if
I will give an instance, right from the progressive state of Wisconsin, of which we are all justly proud. The men there are noted throughout the country for having put through the legislature the most progressive social legislation that this country has yet seen. No one doubts for a moment that the men in that progressive state desire to see justice for women just as much as for men. But there are certain frightful gaps in that legislation that show that it is impossible for men, with the best intentions in the world, to understand and legislate for the needs of women. To take an instance, there is no reformatory for women in the state of Wisconsin. If a woman commits a crime or a misdemeanor in the state of Wisconsin, it is either jail or prison; there is no halfway substitute. More fundamental, and very much more important than that, is the fact that in this progressive state, where undoubtedly the men wish to protect the women, there still remains the fact that women have not equal guardianship of their children. In the state that is regarded as the foremost in progressive legislation women have no right in their children; not only have they no right in the husband's lifetime, but he may, in his will, will those children to anyone whom he selects, even if the child is born after his death.
Now we can have, it seems to me, no better proof of the fact that it is impossible for the women to have their needs and views expressed by the men than such facts as these concerning a truly progressive body of men, such as the Wisconsin legislators are.
Again, there is the fact that the ballot is fundamentally a means of protecting the weak. From one point of view we might say that that little slip of paper represents all that
Now, if this is true, as it seems to be, for the pages of history show how in the workshop of time, on the anvil of life, shaped and reshaped by the hammer and blow of social experience, there has been forged at last this so potent weapon, ask yourself for what it has been forged? Is it to strengthen the hands of the strong? Oh, no; it is to put into the hands of the weak a weapon of self-protection. And who are the weak? Those, of course, who are economically handicapped, first and foremost the working classes in their struggle for better conditions of life and labor. And who among the workers are the weak? Wherever the men have suffered, the women have suffered more. That point will be brought out to you again and again in the plea of the wage-earning women.
But I would also like to point out to you how this affects the home-keeping woman, the wife and mother, of the working class, aside from the wage-earning women who have been pushed by economic necessity into the struggle of life. Consider the woman who is at home and must make both ends meet on a small income. Who better than she knows whether or not the cost of living advances more rapidly than the wage does? Is not that merely a true statement, in the most practical form, of the problem of the tariff? And who better than she knows what the needs of the workers are in the factories? Take the tenement-house woman, the wife and mother who is struggling to bring up a family under conditions which constantly make for evil. Who, better than the mother who has tried to bring up six or seven children in one room in a dark tenement house, knows the needs of a proper building? Who better than the mother who sees her boy and her girl playing in the streets and in the gutter, knows the needs of playgrounds? Who, better than a mother, knows what it means to a child's life—
“But,” you may say, “these women are ignorant; how can we afford to allow that ignorant vote to come into the national councils?” Well, you know, after all, ignorance is a relative term, is it not? Certainly this body is too intelligent to think that educational in the schools and colleges makes necessarily for intelligence in living. Certainly you recognize that there is a practical wisdom that comes out of the pressure of life, and an educational force in life itself which very often is more efficient than that which comes through textbooks or college.
When the ownership of property was deemed a necessary qualification for the vote, as it still is in most lands, “Taxation without representation is tyranny” was the only plea offered for the extension of the suffrage in new classes of men. The colonial battle cry did not mean the ballot; it meant the collective right of the American settlements to representation. Very soon, however, when they new constitutions were being formulated, it was interpreted to apply to individual men. Upon that basis, and for that reason, the vote was extended to men in the United States, and by that claim they held it until a broader principle eliminated the tax qualification. That argument still holds good; women are taxed. In the one state of New York, women hold property in total valuation considerably higher than that held by all the Colonists at the time of the Revolution. It is manifestly a tyrannical discrimination to take from citizens that which is theirs for the purpose of creating a common fund to be expended for the common good, when some citizens
Evidently the Colonists were not equal at the beginning to the enforcement of the second and bolder principle of the Declaration of Independence: “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Later, under the teachings of Thomas Jefferson, it was interpreted as a workable proposition. Its advocates said in its defense that every man had a stake in the government, and therefore he must have a corresponding ballot's share in the law making and law enforcing power of the nation, in order to defend his stake; that every man must be equally interested with every other to develop the common welfare to the highest degree possible, and therefore he must have his opinion counted.
These arguments won, and for this reason all white men not yet enfranchisement received the vote.
A century ago, government by the “will of the people,” in the country meant the rule of rich white males over poor white and black males. Later in meant the rule of white, Negro and Indian males, born or naturalized in the United States, over all women. But women are people; they are taxed, they are governed, and they have an interest in the common good to be defended. Every reason ever urged for the enfranchisement of men speaks as logically for the enfranchisement of women. Manifestly, if the powers of government are only just when founded upon the “consent of the governed,” and this plea gave the vote to men, the powers of the United States government are not just, since they have been derived from the consent of half the governed. Therefore, women are asking the old question with the modern application: How does it happen that men are born to govern, and we to obey? Are men divinely ordained to be perpetual hereditary sovereigns, and women to be hereditary
The fears of the Czar of Russia, the Sultan of Turkey, the Shah of Persia tell them as certainly that men have no claim to the suffrage, as those of the American legislator tell him that women have no political rights. The fears of China forbid a woman to walk on natural feet and the fears of the Turk put his womankind in the harem. The fears of Mrs. Humphry Ward tell her it is consistent with the natural and divine order of things that women should vote in municipal elections, but contrary to God and Nature for them to vote for members of Parliament. An anti-suffragist not long since made a public plea that the Board of education in the City of New York should be elective, and that women as well as men should elect its members; yet her fears told her that the highest order of society would be overturned should the same women vote for mayor. The American would not hesitate to pronounce the fears of China and Turkey which deny personal liberty to woman as expressions of brutal barbarism. The Australian who has yielded to the inevitable, enfranchised women, and recovered from the shock, would declare with as firm conviction that the American who grants the sovereignty of a vote to the immigrants from all quarters of the globe, the Negroes and Indians, and yet denies it to women, is a mere democratic
Under the influence of steady agitation the issue grows simpler every year. Woman suffrage is already an established fact on one fifteenth of the earth's territory; and from Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Norway, Finland, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the Isle of Man, Denmark, Iceland, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho comes the same overwhelming testimony. With opportunity to do so, women vote as generally as do men. They vote as independently and as intelligently. They do not neglect their husbands, or children, of homes of politics. They do not become unsexed and poor imitations of men. There is no increase of divorce, no falling off in number of marriages, or the number of births. No harm in any way has come to women, to men, to children, or to the states, while on the contrary, much positive good has been accomplished.
“Women do not want to vote, why thrust the suffrage upon them?” The incontrovertible fact is that no class of unenfranchised men any land ever wanted the ballot in such large proportion to the total number as do women of the United States; nor is there a single instance of a man suffrage movement, so persistent, uncompromising and self-sacrificing as the woman suffrage movement. Sooner or later, just men will answer this excuse for postponing legislative action in the matter by the counter question, why demand of women a test never made of men? Since it is proved that women will vote when they may, is that not sufficient? The suffrage is permissive, not mandatory; those who want to vote, will do so, while those who do not want to vote, will refrain from so doing. It must be remembered, too, that the same type of women who now protest against the extension of the suffrage, have opposed with equal vigor every step of progress in the woman movement. They pronounced the effort to secure to married women the control of their own property, an insult to men. They united their anathemas to those of the press and pulpit in bitter condemnation of the early women college graduates, women
When an equal proportion of all classes of the women's votes is called out, our educated and our American-born vote will be increased, and our uneducated and foreign-born vote decreased, in the final proportion. Therefore, while we cannot look to women's votes for such an inundation of purity as certain chivalric souls would love to think, we can assure ourselves of no deterioration, but on the contrary an increase through them of the average intellectual culture and acquaintance with American institutions in the electorate.
Moreover, we cannot ignore the fact that women, even when their opportunity and the demands we make of them are as great as they should be, will remain in certain ways normally different from men. Women are mothers, and men are not. When all psychic marvels and parlor non-sense are laid aside, that is the scientist's difference between men and women. Women inherit, with instinctive motherhood, a body of passionate interests that men only partially share. And when we say that those interests are needed in government, we but extend to the state as a whole a generalization already applied to every essential part of it.
Governments are more and more approaching the real concerns of humanity. All those moral and social problems, the preservation of health and safety, the regulation of hours and conditions of labor, the guidance of competition, even the determination of wages and the cure of poverty—problems that used to be handled by a few supernormal individuals under the name of “Charity”—are now creeping into the daily business of bureaus and legislatures. This civilizing of government is a process which we must further with all our might, that ultimately even the greatest questions of democratic equality, which are still only agitated by a handfull of noteworthy idealists, may become the substance of party platforms and the fighting-ground of practical politics.
It is not justice as a theoretical ideal, nor feminine virtue as a cure for politics, but democratic government as the practical method of human happiness that compels our minds. The Anglo-Saxon race has progressed so far as it has, in intellectual and moral and material culture, largely because it has carried forth the great venture of popular government. We have learned to take it for granted, and so to forget, that civil liberty is the foundation of our good fortune, but we ought to remind ourselves of it every morning. We ought to remind ourselves that we are the van of a great exploit. Had we been alive when the daring plans were laid, we should remember. The greatest hypothesis in the history of moral and political science was set up in this laboratory, and our business is to try out the experiment until the last breath of hope is gone out of us.
The democratic hypothesis is that a state is good, not when it conforms to some general eternal ideal of what a
Not only have the thinkers of the world waked up to the fact that women are individuals, and so to be counted under this theory of government, but the world itself has so changed that the practical necessity of applying the theory to them drives itself home. We need but open our minds to the facts. With the advance of industrial art the work of women has gone from the house to the factory and market. Women have followed it there, and there they must do it until this civilization perishes. In 1900, approximately one women in every five in the United States was engaged in gainful employment, and the number is increasing. Most of these women have no choice as to whether they will work or not, and many of them are working in circumstances corruptive of health and motherhood. It is, therefore, a problem vital to the future of the race how to render the condition of industry compatible with the physical and moral health of women. And to him who knows human nature and the deep wisdom of representative government, it is clear that the only first step in solution of that problem is to give to the women themselves the dignity and defence of political recognition.
Compared to the variety of their needs, and the subtlety of the disadvantages under which they enter a competitive system, it is a small thing to give them. But it is the first and manifest thing. It is the ancient antidote of that prejudice
Such is the argument from the ideal of democracy—theoretic, practical, and coercive in the concrete present. Yet, in so far as we are believers in the progressive enrichment of life, we have something more to do than live up to our ideals. We have to illumine and improve them continually. The Athenian youths had a running-match in which they carried torches, and it was no victory to cross the tape with your torch gone out. Such is the race that is set before us. And we may well remember—we in America who scorn the contemplative life—that no amount of strenuousness with the legs will keep a flame burning while you run. You will have to take thought.
And it is out of a thoughtful endeavor, not merely to live up to an ideal of ours, but to develop it greatly, that the suffrage movement derives its chief force. I mean our ideal of woman and motherhood. It is not expected by the best advocates of this change that women will reform politics or purge society of evil, but it is expected, with reasoned and already proved certainly, that political, knowledge and experience will develop women. Political responsibility, the character it demands and the recognition it receives, will alter the nature and function of women in society to the benefit of themselves, and their husbands, and their children, and their homes. Upon that ground they declare that it is of vital importance to the advance of civilized life, not only to give the ballot to those women who want it, but to rouse those women who do not yet know enough to want it, to a better appreciation of the great age in which they live.
The industrial era—for all the ill we say of it, we must
That this political reform will have deeper effects than its effect upon politics is proven by the outcries that oppose it; “You are bringing dissension into our homes! You are striking a blow at the family, which is the corner-stone of society!”—Hysterical outcries, I think, from persons whose families are already tottering. Certain it is that many of these corner-stones of society are tottering. And why are they tottering? Because there dwell in them triviality and vacuity. It is these that prepare the way of the devil! Who can think that intellectual divergence, disagreement upon a great public question, could disrupt a family worth holding together? On the contrary, nothing save a community of great interests, agreeing and disagreeing, can revive a fading romance. When we have made matrimony synonymous with a high and equal comradeship, we shall have done the one thing that we can do to rescue those families which are the tottering corner-stones of society. And that we cannot do until men and women are both grown up.
A greater service of the developed woman, however, will be her service in motherhood. For we are in extreme need of mothers that have the wisdom of experience. To hear the sacred office of motherhood advanced as a reason why women should not become public-spirited and active and effective, you would think we had no greater hope for our race and nation than to rear in innocence a generation of grown-up babies. Keep your mothers in a state of invalid remoteness from genuine life, and who is to arm the young with wise virtue? Are their mothers only to suckle them, and then for their education pass them over to some one who knows life? For to educate a child is to lead him out into the world of his experience; it is not to propel him with ignorant admonitions from the door. A million lives wrecked at the off-go can bear witness to the failure of that method. I think that the best thing you could add to the mothers of posterity is a little of the rough sagacity and humor of public affairs.
Once in so often nowadays, somebody rises to say that no woman should be allowed to vote unless she is able and ready to become a soldier or a policeman, and use a gun or a billy upon occasion to preserve order or defend the state. We suddenly learn that only potential fighters are proper citizens, and that the true state is a latent army. “Government is based on force” is the fashionable phrase which seems to be giving very considerable glee to a little coterie of opponents of woman suffrage. “Eliminate from government this element of force,” writes one of them recently to a Boston newspaper, “and its sole excuse for existence is removed. All public functions requiring merely voluntary concerted action of citizens, without force, can be and are performed by private or non-governmental agencies.”
This notion is to most democratic people at this time of day a little surprising. We are accustomed to think that the conception of the state as the voluntary coöperation of the people for promoting their common ends in an efficient and adequate manner, as could not be done individually or by little groups, is the true conception. This would appear to be not only an “excuse” for the existence of the state, but most modern men would certainly agree that it was its real end and definition. That governments require police and military force for various purposes is unquestionable; nobody certainly ever heard of woman suffragists questioning it. Boston has a few thousand policemen; and the United States has perhaps a hundred thousand soldiers, quite enough for every need of its ninety million people. It has many more butchers and bakers, equally indispensable to every people, and rendering services equally necessary to all citizens, men and women, although, in the proper division of labor, the service, like the police service, is the service of men. Neither the one thing nor the other has anything to do with the voting system, or with qualification for voting.
The curious thing is that it is only nowadays and for the sake of opposing woman suffrage that this silly contention has made its appearance. Nobody ever heard eligibility for military service urged as a condition or qualification for man's suffrage. There is no nation on earth where a man is allowed to vote because he can fight, or where he is not allowed to vote because he cannot fight. The mere proposition to subject voting men to such a test or definition would produce a popular outcry about military despotism from the very men now urging the test against women. Yet the only possible excuse or pretext for such a test belonged to the military past, when war was often the regular and almost the chief business of nations. It has no relevancy whatever to the present, when war has long ceased to be that. No contingency is conceivable when even a little of our able-bodied young men would be required for national defence.
If ever such exigencies should arise as once arose at Harlem and Leyden, we have no doubt that the women in the
I have said that no man ever escaped military service because he was not a voter, or was allowed to vote because he was a soldier. I wonder how many of our people know how many of our soldiers in the Civil War were voters? Out of less than three millions who enlisted, more than two millions were not twenty-one years old; there were about 600,000 voters. The millions were literally “boys” in blue.
It is said that, if women vote, they ought to fight and do police duty.
If no men were allowed to vote except those who are able and willing to do military and police duty, women might consistently be debarred for that reason. But so long as the old, the infirm, the halt, the lame and the blind are freely admitted to the ballot box, some better reason must be found for excluding women than the fact that they do not fight.
By a comic fatality, this objection is almost always urged by some man who could not fight himself—some peaceful, venerable old clergyman, or some corpulent, elderly physician who would expire under a forced march of five miles. I have been even heard it used by a man who had been stone blind ever since he was three years old.
It is said that we have to legislate for classes, not for individuals; and that men as a class can fight, while women can not. But there are large classes of men who are regarded as disqualified to fight, and are exempt from military service, yet they vote. All men over 45 years of age are exempt. So are all who are not physically robust. Of the young men who volunteered for the Spanish war, more than half were rejected as unfit for military service. Col T. W. Higginson says:
“It appears by the record of United States military statistics
Of unskilled laborers, on the other, only a small fraction were found physically disqualified. Since unskilled laborers as a class can render military service, and professional men as a class cannot, does it follow that suffrage ought to be taken away for professional men and limited to unskilled laborers?
As for police duty, men are not drafted, but out of those who volunteer, and who come up to the prescribed conditions of strength, weight, etc., a sufficient number are hired, and they are paid out of tax money which is levied on the property of men and women alike. Women contribute to the policing of the country in just the same way that the majority of men do—i. e., they help to pay for it.
Again, it must be remembered that it is women who furnish the soldiers. Mrs. Z. G. Wallace, of Indiana, from whom Gen. Lew Wallace drew the portrait of the mother in “Ben Hur,” said: “If women do not fight, they give to the state all its soldiers.” Lady Henry Somerset says “She who bears soldiers does not need to bear arms.” Lucy Stone said: “Some woman risks her life whenever a soldier is born into the world. For years she does picket duty beside his cradle. Later on she is his quartermaster, and gathers his rations. And when that boy grows to be a man, shall he say to his mother, ‘If you want to vote, you must first go and kill somebody’? It is a coward's argument!” Mrs. Humphry Ward's sister tells us that every year, in England alone, 3,000 women lose their lives in childbirth. This ought, in all fairness, to be taken as an offset for the military service that women do not render.
It is said that the laws could not be enforced if women vote. Suppose most men voted one way and most women the other, would not the men refuse to abide by the result?
Women have he school ballot in about half the states of the Union. Their votes occasionally turn the scale in a school election. Do the defeated candidates and their friends refuse to abide by the result? In England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Kansas, Norway, Sweden and elsewhere women have the municipal ballot, and their votes occasionally turn the scale at a municipal election. Has there ever been an armed uprising against the result? In Wyoming, Colorado. Utah, Idaho, Finland, Norway, Australia and New Zealand women vote for all elective officers, including the highest. No trouble has ever resulted. The laws are as well enforced there as in adjoining states and countries, where women do not vote. What reason is there to suppose that our men are less civilized that the men of other countries or of other states?
Either the ability to fight is a necessary qualification for suffrage, or it is not. If it is, the men who lack it ought to be excluded. If it is not, the lack of it is no reason for excluding women. There is no escape from this conclusion.
The best fighters, the young men between 18 and 21, are not allowed to vote; while the wisest voters, those over 45 years of age, are not required to fight.—William I. Bowditch.
In Colorado, men in general regard to military argument against woman suffrage as too absurd for serious comment. If all thee men who cannot or do not fight should be disfranchised, the polls would be as lonesome as a sea bathing resort in December.—Gen. Irving Hale of Denver.
Think of arguing with a sober face against a man who solemnly asserts that a woman should not vote because she cannot fight! In the first place, she can fight; in the second, men are largely exempt from military service; and in the
There are perhaps twenty-five million women in the United States—over five million of them wage-earning. There are more wage-earning women in this country to-day than there were men, women and children in the day of the Declaration of Independence. What does it mean to say that of the adult population of a country, one moiety furnishes to the prisons ninety-four and one-half per cent of the inmates, and the other moiety five and one-half per cent? What is the meaning of the enormous discrepancy shown by the drink statistics? The prostitutes? Yes; but to the making of one harlot there go, as a minimum, two rakehells. The silly, the common, the frivolous, the selfish, the dishonest, the unscrupulous, the adventuress? All exist and in large numbers. We hope to reduce them. But we think that even there, were statistics available, the feminine hemisphere might be found less heavily shaded than the masculine. We think that that is the opinion of the world.
It would seem that there is an inference to be drawn from two simple facts. First: the militarists, the employer of cheap and of child labor, the bribed politician, the contemner of education, the liquor interest, the brothel interest, every interest that sets its face against reform, from reform of the milk-supply of disarmament of nations, is opposed to the political liberty of women. Second: the biologist, the political economist, the statesman, the sociologist, the eugenist, the physician, the educator, the student, and the moralist, are to be found, in ever-increasing number, advocates of her enfranchisement.
Idaho extended to her women the right to vote in the early days of her statehood. We do not become at all excited over the effect of woman suffrage in our state. But we do declare it to be our deliberate judgment that her presence in politics armed with the power to enforce her demand, has been substantially and distinctively for the benefit of politics and of society. It has aided materially in the securing of better laws along particular lines; especially has it tended to cleaner politics in particular and essential matters. Our women have not always been so active in politics as they should be, but it has been observed that when a moral question is up for consideration, the majority vote of the women has been a power upon the right side.
It is sometimes argued that women will vote largely with their brothers or husbands, but I have observed that there comes a time upon certain question when the brothers and husbands vote with the women. We should not be misled by the idea that the American woman will put aside with entire complacency her views and her convictions upon a large class of questions which are coming more and more to be dealt with in politics. And upon these questions her intuitions are far more valuable than the sometimes sordid judgment of men.
We have in economics what some are pleased to call potential competition. Translating this into a common and homely phrase or sentence, it is the fear of a scoundrel that if the robs the public too severely or too outrageously some one will administer punishment by getting in and establishing an honest business with fair prices, and likely put the unjust one out of business. The trust, therefore, they say, hesitate to put their prices beyond a certain mark for fear of this potential competition.
This element of strength is not to be overlooked in politics in connection with this question which we are now discussing.
Those who expect to win at the polls will never take the chance of the women vote remaining away upon that occasion. They will not do something which they feel would incur the opposition of the women on the theory that they will not go to the polls anyway. They are practically as potential, indeed in some instances more so, than if they were in charge of the convention. I have seen “slates” broken out of absolute regard for or fear of the women vote when there were not two women delegates in the convention among some two hundred.
Some politicians act upon such occasions out of a high regard for the opinion of those whose vote they are considering; others out of fear. But, whatever the cause or the reason, every man who has been in practical politics in a state where women vote knows that what I say is true. The woman vote, as a political potentiality, is a powerful factor at all times in shaping the politics of a state campaign and in determining in some measure, although not to the same extent, the qualities of the candidates. And this factor is always for the good, for whether women may make mistakes or not in the matter of actual voting, men universally accredit to them the aptitude for getting upon the right side of these great moral and quasi-moral questions which are entering more and more into state campaigns.
I read some time ago a leaflet sent out by some good and cultured women presenting a protest against woman suffrage. One of the arguments advanced was that but a small proportion of the women vote in those states where they have been given the right to vote. This, as I have observed the actual practise, is an error. I think a remarkably
But what shall we say of the thousands of men among the most prosperous citizens of the community who, election after election, fail to vote? It is no unusual thing to find a hundred thousand men absent from the polls in a single state even at a presidential election. Shall we take from the more active, the more patriotic, the right of franchise because the surfeited or business-ridden or politically discontented remain away? I hold it to be the duty of every citizen to take an active interest in politics, to study measures and to vote. Instead of its being an evidence of purity and patriotism to remain out of politics, it is generally an evidence of utter selfishness or political disappointment or an ostentatious display of modern Phariseeism.
The good women surrounded by all the comforts and culture of prosperous and happy homes may feel a reluctance to enter the arena of politics even to the extent of exercising the right of franchise. But the thousands of women who stand alone and must depend upon their own efforts in the struggle for existence; who feel the injustice of laws or the cruelty of politics; the thousands of women who must join with their husbands in seeking homes and educating families, these ought not to be deprived of a voice in selecting those who are to determine politics and make laws.
The next startling argument which those good women advance is that woman suffrage would confuse the functions of men and women and would lay heavy burdens of responsibility upon women which men now chivalrously await an
But truly, “Summer is not so bad as painted.” We find no such evil effects flowing from the exercise of the right of franchise. The functions are not confused—far less confused, indeed, than already in the business world. The mother is no less a mother, the home no less a home, the husband no less a husband, and even often more a husband. It is absurd, perfectly absurd, to suppose that woman will change her sphere in life by reason of an increased opportunity to enlarge and ennoble that peculiar sphere in which she is by nature placed and from which all the laws and politics of the world will never take her. This is the same doctrine that woman has had to meet in every single initiative of her fight for a higher and broader sphere of action. I know,—everybody who thinks knows—that the woman who deals in care and sincerity with those questions which lighten the burdens and adjust the equity of humanity is a noble, stronger, more womanly woman that the woman who sits in enforced idleness, sips her tea and discusses the decline and retirement of some departed social queen.
The suggestion, that, should the ballot be given to women, the less desirable class of women would avail themselves of this right and the desirable remain aloof, is not sustained in practice or experience. The argument having been called to the attention of the public some time ago, a public expression was secured from a number of women in my state. I quote from their published utterances. An elderly lady, long most active in matters connected with the suffrage cause and one of our oldest and most highly respected families,
A young lady who has taken a most efficient and active part in state politics for several years, who had to do with the public service, who is familiar with all parts of the state and thoroughly qualified to give an opinion, said: “In my experience of seven years in politics in Idaho, which has taken me over the entire state, I have found the thinking women alive to every issue.” And she added: “I believe there is a class of men who are just as unfit for the ballot as are Hottentots.”
The mother of a fine family, who has been interested in educational work, said: “I do not think it is true that the desirable women do not vote and the undesirable do; emphatically no.” Another, a former regent of our state university, universally respected and loved, with as beautiful a home as may be found in the West, said: “I am sure that the majority of the intelligent women in this state vote. I think the undesirable class vote at times, but never any more as a unit than any other class of women.” I think these expressions convey the opinion of practically all who have observed the effect of woman suffrage in Idaho.
The most startling doctrine, however, comes to me in a bulletin published in Chicago. It asserts that woman suffrage means socialism, and it is part and parcel of the worldwide movement for the overthrow of the present order of civilized society, and the establishment in its place of a revolutionary scheme based upon principles that have been tried and found wanting and which are unalterably opposed to those that form the foundation of the free government under which we live. How it could be effected, what part woman suffrage would have in the movement, is not made clear. This is all left to the imagination, already well aroused and somewhat bewildered by the promised catastrophe.
We can not help recurring to a former argument against woman suffrage so often advanced and which indeed is advanced
If these women could see the ease, the imperceptible methods by which a state confers woman suffrage and the people take up the duties under the new regime, the unrevolutionary way in which all things continue to exist, they would at least discard such prophecies as those above. They can go into those states where women vote and have been voting for years, and while they will find good and noble women wheo are not enthusiastic about the privilege or zealous at all times in its use, they will find, on the other hand, thousands of refined, homeloving, family-rearing women who do exercise the right to the advantage of all and in no wise to the detriment of themselves.
Another familiar method of coping with the subject is to ask why women should demean themselves to demand political rights when it is perfectly simple to get anything they want for thee mere asking. Accepting that
One great fear of the adult-suffrage opponents is that the vote unsexes women. Surely those who indulge in so ungrounded a fear may rest easy. Sx is older than our civilization, and the sex of woman is as solidly grounded as that of man. There is no more reasons to fear that a change of method will unsex women that to fear that a man who sews will become a woman. One might as well fear that if a woman votes she will develop a bass voice.
Another superstition that ought to be faced is the one which takes if for granted that women in the mass are supported by men and have no need of representation other than that offered by their natural protectors. As a matter of fact, when Lloyd-George recently raised objection to the conciliation bill granting suffrage to the taxpaying women of England, on the grounds that it would admit only a few well-to-do ladies, it was found on taking the census that eighty-five per cent of the women of England were taxed either as
If the question is, Are women ready for the suffrage? then no thoughtful person could say anything but “No.” All women are not capable of voting intelligently, nor all men. It may be a long time before the mass of women live down their long ostracism from national interests. But there is one hopeful fact to contemplate in the matter—women are not only by tradition and long training conservative, they are biologically conservative. “If the greater variability of men,” writes Dr. Charles Otto Glaser, of the University of Michigan, “is the gift that fits them to explore new fields, nothing is more certain than that the less erratic organization, both physical and mental, of women fits them for administration, conservation, tradition and culture.” “Society to-day is losing the service of a specialist in these matters,” continues the same writer; “one, too, who is not only endowed by nature, but strengthened by education.” “When once this becomes clear, shall we continue to doubt her ability to breast the waves of jingoism that periodically unsettle our markets and industries, distort the price of living, and even carry us into trivial yet costly war?”
Now do we for an instant believe that men will be the losers when women have wider interests and full lives. One of the sad spectacles of modern life is the broad gulf between the interests and pleasures of the average woman and the average man. Men and women can work together, but they take shockingly little pleasure in one another's society. Husbands and wives, once the accounts and the children are settled, have often not a single subject of mutual interest for refuge. Instead of the emancipation of women resulting in the estrangement of the sexes, as the genial editorial
Not alone from our knowledge of women, not merely as a matter of theory, but from the records of history as revealed in the states and commonwealths in which woman suffrage now exists we know that the woman will be guided always in the selection of a public official by the character and the worth of the man. Is he worthy? Is he honest? Can he be depended upon to enforce the laws in behalf of decency and purity and righteousness? Those are the determining considerations in the eyes of a woman. She may have her political affiliations, she may be a Democrat or a Republican or a Socialist, but in any case involving a moral issue, in any case involving the welfare of the child or the home—the foundation corners of the nation—she is above all else the Woman, the Mother. If, therefore, for no other reason than this, we need the woman's ballot, the woman's help. We need the feminine in our electorate. Every man of us who stands for honesty and decency and cleanliness needs the woman to help in the selection of good and worthy men. We need her judgment, her intuitions, her instinct. We cannot hope to attain our ideals without her.
Always the man of America has needed the help of the woman, and he has always had it in every national crisis. In the colonial days, when the fate of the future nation rested upon the grit and endurance and the intelligence of our pioneer ancestors, it was the women who upheld the faith and the courage of the men. They stood by their sides and shared equally with them the dangers and the trials and the hardships of those pregnant days; and in order that the man might have the full help and co-operation of the woman,
Now, again, are we come upon pioneer days. We are standing to-day upon the frontier of a new social world, a new democracy, faced with new and menacing problems, with tasks and duties untried and unprecedented, and upon the proper performance of which depends the fate of our Republic. We are not threatened with external enemies—the savage Indian and the wild beast of the forest—but with enemies just as dangerous and for more to be dreaded—the internal foes of the social body, vice, corruption, disease, poverty. And would we succeed in any warfare against these evils we must have the full help and co-operation of the woman, even as our forefathers had the help of the woman in their troublous days. And even as they gave her the musket, the final and most efficient weapon at their command, so today must we give her the best within our gift, in order that she may be fully equipped to stand with us in our mutual struggle in behalf of the nation and the home. If, therefore, it be our wish that we shall endure and prosper we must, of necessity, give her the ballot.
The real question is a practical one. How does woman's suffrage work when tried? In this nation, six States—Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington and California—have granted full suffrage, and in at least the first four of them it has been in existence long enough for substantial results.
One thing is true of all; there has been no organized effort to repeal the grant. Whatever may be isolated opinions, the general mass of the voters are satisfied. Indeed, few have expressed antagonistic views. If the citizens of these states find nothing objectionable in woman's suffrage, a natural conclusion is that no injury has resulted. Especially is this true when the declarations of its friends in its favor are many and strong.
Doubtless some opposition may come from personal ambition defeated by the woman voters. Thus Judge Lindsey, of the Juvenile Court in Denver, who has attracted much attention by his good work in that court, after having been denied a renomination by each of the great political parties, came out as an independent candidate, and was elected mainly, it is said, by the votes of women who appreciated his labors and determined that the young culprits of that city should not be deprived of the benefit of his judgment and experience. It would be strange if the defeated candidates did not feel and express themselves against woman's suffrage. But their complaint is really testimony to its value.
The change in the position of woman in the past fifty years must be noticed. Then the only vocations open to her were teaching and sewing. But within the last half century she has entered into active outdoor life and is not longer a necessary home-body. Not that home has lost its charms, or that it will ever cease to be the place which she most loves and where she reigns supreme, but choice or necessity has driven her into varied pursuit, many of them calling for familiarity with public affairs and executive ability.
You see them not only doing clerical work in offices, but acting as shopgirls in stores, or laborers in a factory. Many who have charge of large administrations, are presidents of colleges, heads of corporations, and indeed engaging in almost every avocation of their brothers, and doing so with success. There is a host of female doctors. Women have invaded the pulpit and are pastors of churches. They are found in the court room, and not a few are efficient and successful practitioners. Indeed, it may truly be affirmed that they have fully entered into the active life of the world.
A city is in many respects a great business corporation, but in other respects it is enlarged housekeeping. If American cities have failed in the first, partly because officeholders have carried with them the predatory instinct learned in competitive business, and cannot help “working a good thing” when they have an opportunity, may we not say that city housekeeping has failed partly because women, the traditional housekeepers, have not been consulted as to its multiform activities? The men of the city have been carelessly indifferent to much of its civic housekeeping, as they have always been indifferent to the details of the household. They have totally disregarded a candidate's capacity to keep the streets clean, preferring to consider him in relation to the national tariff or to the necessity for increasing the national navy, in a pure spirit of reversion to the traditional type of government, which had to do only with enemies and outsiders.
It is difficult to see what military prowess has to do with the multiform duties which, in a modern city, include the care of parks and libraries, superintendence of markets, sewers and bridges, the inspection of provisions and boilers, and the proper disposal of garbage. It has nothing to do with the building department, which the city maintains that it may see to it that the basements are dry, that the bedrooms are large enough to afford the required cubic feet of air, that the plumbing is sanitary, that the gas pipes do not leak, that the tenement house court is large enough to afford light and ventilation, that the stairways are fireproof. The ability to carry arms has nothing to do with the health department maintained by the city, which provides that children are vaccinated, that contagious diseases are isolated and placarded, that the spread of tuberculosis is curbed, that the water is free from typhoid infection. Certainly the military conception of society is remote from the functions of the
Because all these things have traditionally been in the hands of women, if they take no part in them now they are not only missing the education which the natural participation in civic life would bring to them, but they are losing what they have always had. From the beginning of tribal life, they have been held responsible for the health of the community, a function which is now represented by the health department. From the days of the cave dwellers, so far as the home was clean and wholesome, it was due to their efforts, which are now represented by the Bureau of tenement house inspection. From the period of the primitive village, the only public sweeping which was performed was what they undertook in their divers dooryards, that which is now represented by the Bureau of street cleaning. Most of the departments in a modern city can be traced to woman's traditional activity; but, in spite of this, so soon as these old affairs were turned over to the city they slipped from woman's hands, apparently because they then became matters for collective action and implied the use of the franchise—because the franchise had in the first instance been given to the man who could fight, because in the beginning he alone could vote who could carry a weapon, it was considered an improper thing for a woman to possess it.
Is it quite public spirited for woman to say, “We will take care of these affairs so long as they stay in our own houses, but if they go outside and concern so many people that they cannot be carried on without the mechanism of the vote, we will drop them; it is true that these activities which women have always had are not at present being carried on very well by the men in most of the great American cities,
We are forever being told that the place of woman is in the home. Well, so be it. But what do we expect of her in the home? Merely to stay in the home is not enough. She is a failure unless she does certain things for the home. She must make the minister, as far as her means allow, to the health and welfare, moral as well as physical, of her family, and especially of her children. She, more than anyone else, is held responsible for what they become.
She is responsible for the cleanliness of her house.
She is responsible for the wholesomeness of the food.
She is responsible for the children's health.
She, above all, is responsible for their morals, for their sense of truth, of honesty and of decency, for what they turn out to be.
She can clean her own rooms, but if the neighbors are allowed to live in filth, she cannot keep her rooms from being filled with bad airs and smells, or from being infested by vermin.
She can cook her food well, but if delegates are permitted to sell poor food, unclean milk or stale eggs, she cannot make the food wholesome for her children.
She can care for her own plumbing and her refuse, but if the plumbing in the rest of the house is unsanitary, if garbage accumulates and the halls and stairs are left dirty, she cannot protect her children from the sickness and infection that these conditions bring.
She can take every care to avoid fire, but if the house has been badly built, if the fire-escapes are insufficient or
She can open her windows to give her children the air that we are told is so necessary, but if the air is laden with infection, with tuberculosis and other contagious diseases, she cannot protect her children from this danger.
She can send her children out for air and exercise, but if the conditions that surround them on the streets are immoral and degrading, she cannot protect them from these dangers.
Alone, she cannot make these things right. Who or what can?
The city can do it, the city government that is elected by the people to take care of the interest of the people.
And who decides what the city government shall do?
First, the officials of that government; and, Second, those who elect them.
Do the women elect them? No, the men do. So it is the men and not the women that are really responsible for the
Unclean houses,
Unwholesome food,
Bad plumbing,
Danger of fire,
Risk of tuberculosis and other diseases,
Immoral influences of the street.
In fact, men are responsible for the conditions under which the children live, but we hold women responsible for the results of those conditions. If we hold women responsible for the results, must we not, in simple justice, let them have something to say as to what these conditions shall be? There is one simple way of doing this. Give them the same means that men have, let them vote.
Women are by nature and training, housekeepers. Let them have a hand in the city's housekeeping, even if they introduce an occasional house-cleaning.
It is the general testimony of educators, from President Eliot of Harvard down, that the amount of money appropriated for schools is not nearly as large as it ought to be. Both pupils and teachers suffer from overcrowding, and from the necessity of giving each teacher too many pupils for the best educational results.
What is the reason for this lack of money for the schools? One reason is that the mother and the teachers have no votes. Money can be found for purposes in which voters are interested. Hon. Frederic C. Howe says: “We spend millions for business purposes, for the promotion of industry. And yet, when any organization goes to the city hall for thousand for school purposes, it is met with the response that the city is too poor. We can spend millions for docks, but not thousand for playgrounds.” In New York, it is estimated that there are 80,000 fewer seats in the public schools than there are children of school age. Many children cannot go to school at all, and thousands of others have to be put on “half time.” This is an injustice both to the children and to the teacher. The children get only half the time in school to which they are entitled, and the teacher has her strength worn out by having to teach two relays of children daily.
In Philadelphia, the Superintendent of schools lately called attention to the fact that there were 20,000 fewer seat in the schools than there were children applying for admission; thousand could not get in, and for those who did get in, the accommodations were so poor that children were sitting on broken benches, on boards stretched across the aisles, on window sills and even on the floor. All this was for lack of money. Yet just at this time the city fathers voted $50,000 of public money to entertain the “Elks,” and $10,000 more to entertain the Order of patriotic sons of America. This $60,000 came largely from women's taxes, but the women had no vote as to how it should be spent.
Almost everywhere, the schools are pinched for money; but in the equal suffrage states this is not the case. The Colorado State Superintendent of public instruction said to me, “Some people in Colorado grumble about the size of the School tax, but our schools have money enough.” Gen. Irving Hale of Denver says: “The extension of suffrage to women has made it easier to secure liberal appropriations for education.” Colorado appropriates more money per capita for education than any of the eastern states, which are so much older and richer.
Of the inadequate amount of money provided for school purposes, the women teachers do not get their fair share. In Massachusetts, the average pay of a woman teacher in the public schools is about one-third that of a man. In New York, the richest city in America, the women teachers are paid so poorly that there are hundreds of vacancies in the public schools for which no teachers can be found. The women teachers of New York have for years been using their “indirect influence” to the utmost to secure equal pay for equal work, but without avail. In Wyoming, where women vote, the law provides that women teachers shall receive the same pay as men, when the work done is the same. (Revised Statutes of Wyoming, Section 614.)
The news that Utah had granted women the ballot was quickly followed by the announcement that the Legislature had passed a bill to give women teachers the same pay as man when they held certificates of the same grade. (Revised Statutes of Utah, Section 1853.) The Colorado State Superintendent of public instruction says, “There is no difference made in teachers’ salaries on account of sex.”
President Thomas of Bryn Mawr College says: “Experience proves that women as well as men need the ballot to protect them in their special interest and in their power to gain a livelihood. In Philadelphia no woman teacher receives the same salary as men teachers for the same work, and no women, however successful, are appointed to the best-paid and most influential positions in the schools. What is true of Philadelphia is true in the main, of the public
Another bane of the schools, and especially of the women teachers, is the influence of partisan politics. Mrs. Helen L. Grenfell, who served three terms as State Superintendent of public instruction for Colorado, and is highly esteemed by educators there, says:
“After twenty year's experience, I can say that our school boards are absolutely non-political and party affiliation is never considered in the appointment of teachers. I have never heard of a member of a school board being elected because he belonged to this or that party. Generally both parties are represented on the same board. Sometimes a board principally Democratic is found in a Republican community, and vice versa. Our teachers are free to vote according to their now consciences. I have seen or heard of more party politics in school matters in one block in Albany, Buffalo or Philadelphia than on the 103,925 square miles of Colorado soil.”
That the old-fashioned woman needs political power may be a startling idea, but it is just as true as that the new-fashioned woman demands such power as a final step in her gradual emancipation. Those who are able to see the full and true relation of woman to modern economical conditions, and the relation of such conditions to political power and action, very sensibly demand political equality. This demand the old-fashioned woman and the old-fashioned man meet with the dictum “woman cannot be a soldier,” or “I believe in a division of labour between the sexes.” The fact is, however, that the conservative cannot logically insist upon such a division of labour without insisting also upon suffrage for women. This may seem strange and contradictory, but it is nevertheless true.
That politics and law affect every department of woman's activity is fully apparent. That they affect the industrial and business condition under which she works as factory hand, clerk, teacher, lawyer, physician, or business woman, is plainly evident. They affect also her business of house-keeper and home-maker. The girls in the New York shirtwaist makers’ strike of 1910-11 were very vitally and seriously affected by the kind of police-officers and magistrates New York politics had put into or allowed to get into the police administration of the city. They were affected by the attitude taken towards them because they were not men strikers with votes. These girls were affected also by the lack of sufficiently enforced sanitary regulations in the shirtwaist factories. They are vitally concerned besides with the effect of a tariff on hides or of combinations in the manufacture of leather, either of which may affect the quality of the shoes that they can buy for a certain price. The school teachers of Chicago were formerly affected in a decidedly adverse way by a political condition in their city which emphasized the Chicago school system as a menus of selling books, whether good or poor, and of making contracts favourable to business or to politics, instead of emphasizing it as a system of developing the best efficiency, character, and future citizenship in the children of Chicago. These teachers managed, however, to change that lamentable condition, when, led by brave and energetic Margaret Haley, they secured the support of men's labour unions, unions with votes to lend, compelling emphasis to their protests and to their demands for a school administration that emphasizes the welfare of the child, and furthers that they welfare by making his teacher's tenure safe, and by allowing her to use the books with which she can best fulfill her obligation to her pupils. Higher wages, too, and just wages, such as the women teachers of New York, under the leadership of District Superintendent Grace Strachan, have bee contending for in their well-supported and just struggle of four years for equal pay for equal service, often means more contentment, less worry, and better teaching. Can it be possible
“But,” protests the old fashioned woman, “woman's place is in the home; her proper concern is with children, with education, with the happiness and welfare of the family.” This contention of the conservative, upon analysis, reveals a strong argument for suffrage. In apportioning the work of the world to man and the work of the home to woman, the conservative, undoubtedly quite unconsciously, established a very sufficient basis for insistence upon votes for women. For is not the education of children affected by politics through political effects upon school systems, and school administration; is not the sanitation of the neighborhood so affected; are not the prices paid by the housewife and the quality of the things that she buys affected by politics—by tariffs, by industrial combination, by railroad rates, by well-drawn and well-administered food laws or by their lack, by the provisions in her community regulating the price and the quality of light and water? Numerous instances can be cited to show that the progressive man wants more business, and that in his pursuit of business he too often fails to have a due regard for public health; while the progressive woman wants a community fit to live in. Is the woman's aim and desire of less public and social consequence than that of the man, whose mind is necessarily and desirably filled with business? In view of the much proclaimed sacredness and blessedness of the home, ought not its priestess
Two things drive women into business, industry, and the professions—necessity and self-respect. The conservative, notwithstanding, often denies to women outside of the home any right to political power, declaring in justification of his refusal that they are out of their sphere. On the very basis of his contention, however, the conservative, cannot logically deny the ballot to the woman, who, within her so-called sphere, has the too often difficult task of serving as the
All over the world women are managing little workshops where the necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life are collected, and often transformed to afford health, efficiency, and happiness to the family. In the home woman is a manufacturer and a business manager. She buys supplies and material; some of these she transforms in her kitchen; she hires help many times; she studies the markets for her supplies; she studies the market for her products; that is, the needs and the desires of her family. Often her money capital is so small as compared with her business that she is obliged to add to her rôle of captain of industry that of general of high finance. She is running a business, this home-maker is. Her husband is only the capitalist who furnishes the money capital for her business. His work is outside of the home. There is another difference, too. The spirit of associations and of combination in the business world is fast making, if it has not already made, the average man a mere cog in a great industrial organization; while, because of the persistence of individualism in home-making, the average woman continues to be an independent producer and business manager, and a business manager, too, whom increasing education—both along general lines and in domestic science and home economics—and an increasing sense of individuality are making more and more effective.
To deny woman the ballot is equivalent either to putting off upon man political duty and obligation not connected with his business of earning money capital for the home, or to denying the home political opportunity to secure law and administration favourable to its interests, and to prevent unfavourable law of administration. Two seeming objections
The army of women who will eventually demand and obtain the franchise is being rapidly recruited. Partly because
The teacher's federations in various states, fighting their unequal battle for equal pay, are realizing the terrible handicap of disfranchisement. The question is taking hold upon the colleges and those of thirty states are already organized into a National Suffrage League, its members bringing into the work the freshness and enthusiasm of youth, the independence and assertion of their rights characteristic of modern young women, who will not endure the injustices practiced toward their mothers.
In every locality can be seen this new tendency, and it is very largely the development of the last two or three years. There will be no retrogression. This fact may now be accepted without further question: the women of the United States intend to have the suffrage. No power on earth can shake them in this determination.
Colorado, better, perhaps, than any other state, affords an opportunity for a fair appraisal of equal suffrage's value, of its merits and demerits, its efficiency or its failure. This
It has been one of the great bells that has aroused Colorado to the work of flushing filth from its politics, bettering economic conditions, mitigating the cruelties of industrialism, promoting equal and exact justice, and making for a more wholesome and expansive environment. To these ends, in the short space of seventeen years, it has aided in placing a score of needed laws on the statute books. It has raised new standards of public service, of political morality and of official honesty. It has helped to lift the curse of corporation control from the government. It has gone far to bit and bridle the lawless “liquor interests.” It has made for a fuller, finer participation in public affairs, and by the introduction of a distinctly independent element into partizan politics, it has compelled the adoption of progressive platforms and the nomination of better candidates than the “old way” ever knew.
If the reform were pinned down to a specific result, and discussion limited to one concrete outcome, equal suffrage could well afford to rest its case on the findings of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The globe-circling organization of men and women, who play important parts in the public affairs of their various countries, is on record as declaring that “Colorado has the sanest, the most humane, the most progressive, most scientific laws relating to the child to be
The list is as long as splendid: laws establishing a state home for dependent children, three of the five members of the board to be women; making mothers joint guardians of their children with the fathers; raising the age of protection for girls to eighteen years; creating juvenile courts; making education compulsory for all children between the ages of eight and sixteen, except the ailing, those taught at home, those over fourteen who have completed the eight grade, those who support themselves, or whose parents need their help and support; establishing truant or parental schools; forbidding the insuring of the lives of children under ten; making it a criminal offense for parents or other persons to contribute to the delinquency of children; forbidding children of sixteen or under to work more than eight hours a day in any mill, factory or store or in any other occupation that may be deemed unhealthful; requiring that at least three of the six members of the Board of county visitors be women; establishing a state industrial home for girls, three of the five members of the Board of control to be women; including instruction concerning the humane treatment of animals in the public school course; providing that any person employing a child under fourteen in any mine, smelter, mill, factory or underground works, shall be punished by imprisonment in addition to fine; abolishing the binding out of industrial-home girls until twenty-one, and providing for parole; forbidding prosecuting and arresting officer from collecting fees in cases against children; providing that at least two thousands dollars of the estate of a deceased parent shall be paid to the child before creditors’ claims are satisfied.
These laws, directly concerned with the welfare of the child, are supplemented by the following safeguards thrown about motherhood, the home, and general sociological conditions:
Laws making father and mother joint heirs of deceased children; requiring joint signature of husband and wife to every chattel mortgage, sale of household goods used by the family, or conveyance or mortgage of homestead; making it a misdemeanor to fail to support aged or infirm parents; providing that no woman shall work more than eight hours a day at labor requiring her to be on her feet; requiring one woman physician on the board of the insane asylum; providing for the care of the feeble-minded, for their free maintenance, and for the inspection of private eleemonsynary institutions by the State board of charities; making the Colorado Humane Society a state bureau of child and animal protection; enforcing pure-food inspection in harmony with the national law; providing that foreign life or accident insurance companies; when sued, must pay the costs; establishing a state traveling library commission to consist of five women from the State federation of women's clubs; and making it a criminal offense to fail, refuse or neglect to provide food, clothing, shelter and care in case of sickness of wife or minor child.
The woman voter has boldly and intelligently dealt with the “criminal problem,” the “labor problem,” and the “suffrage problem.” Not only has the “indeterminate sentence” been written on the statute books, and probation laws of greatest latitude adopted, but women serving on the penitentiary and reform school boards have practically revolutionized the conduct of penal institutions in Colorado. Broken men are mended now, not further cowed and crushed. A State free employment bureau, with offices in all Colorado cities of more than twenty-five thousand, has worked wonders, and the bitter cry of the unemployed is less and less heard; and women have largely engineered the effective campaign in favor of direct legislation, and have been almost solidly behind the fight for the initiative and referendum, and direct primary, and the commission form of government.
At the last Denver election, held May 27, 1910, both Republican and Democratic parties were compelled to recognize the popular demand, and present charter amendments providing for the initiative, refendum, recall and a water commission. But, under the control of public service corporations, and practically financed by the water monopoly, which was asking for a new franchise, “fake” amendments were framed by the old parties. Skilful indeed was the wording—every amendment “looked good”—yet not one but had a “joker” in it. At the last moment a Citizen's Party took the field, women behind it and a woman on the ticket. Real initiative, referendum and recall amendments were prepared, and a distinguished water commission named with power to either buy the water company's plant at a fixed figure, or build a new one.
Against both organizations, corporation money, and every professional politician and party henchman, the Citizens’ ticket won an overwhelming victory. Denver now possesses the initiative, referendum and recall; and by virtue of a bond issue carried September 6, 1910, Denver will build its own water plant, and be forever freed from as arrogant and rapacious a monopoly as ever cursed a community.
And the women voters led!
Equal suffrage has been one of the great first causes of these laws, reforms and revolts. Surely, in the face of such results, fair-minded people must be shown a tremendous counterbalancing of injury and evil before they can justly condemn the movement. And what is it that the anti-equal-suffragists chiefly urge? That “It destroys the home.”
Since it is admittedly the case that equal suffrage has safeguarded the home by scientific laws, and sweetened and bettered communal conditions directly bearing upon the home, this charge must be regarded as specifically leveled at the women in the home. In fact, the more blackguardly critics have not hesitated to declare that “the character of the Colorado woman is steadily deteriorating under the influence of the ballot.”
It is, of course, a charge that defies detailed disproof.
Why, in the name of reason, should the mere fact of voting work deterioration in any woman? It does not take any mother “away from her home duties” to spend ten minutes going to the polls, casting her vote, and returning to the bosom of her family, but during those ten minutes she wields a power that is doing more to protect her home, and all other homes, than any other possible influence.
Just as all the laws passed by the women significantly concern the home and its environment, just so does participation in public affairs seem to have given Colorado women a deeper, more intelligent and energetic interest in their homes. By the legal establishment and recognition of woman's citizenship, the intellect and character and reciprocal estimation of both sexes has been raised. The possession of the ballot has given women an interest in general as well as political affairs, and this has naturally stimulated the men. Instead of the old perfunctory chit-chat of the average domestic circle—the relation of personal doings and gossip as the base of conjugal conversation—there has been an injection of ideas, the dawning of an intelligent and more intimate companionship. The woman, instead of being shut off from her husband's larger thoughts and outside interests, now shares in them; and even where the partnership is not particularly illuminative, it is certainly an improvement.
What statistics there are all fail to show that the home broadening has been attended by “coarsening and deterioration.” The Colorado birth-rate has increased steadily, and the school population has gained twenty-five per cent in five years. The most careful investigation of court records proves that there has never been a divorce where the wife's political activity was assigned as the cause. The United States reports show fewer women in the wage-earning class in Colorado
In this connection it is fair to consider club life, which plays an important part in the feminine activities of every town and city in the land. Under equal suffrage, the woman's club has undergone a startling transformation. Instead of being confined to the old innocuous topics, the impracticalities of “culture” and “near thought,” these organizations, stripped of their inutility, now aim to specific purposes and achieve useful ends. The delibertions cover such subjects as educational problems, local option, joint property, election reforms, direct legislation, pure food, domestic science, the proper conduct of city, country and state institutions, sociology, and all manner of political and industrial reforms.
In addition to the “culture clubs” that have been given breadth and purpose, there are women's political clubs is almost every town in the state, not for the securement of offices, but for intelligent study of measures, conditions and remedies. Legislators and public men have come to regard it as a privilege to appear before these organizations. And when this permission is granted, it is not in the interests of candidacies or schemes, but out of a desire to get a clearer understanding of some pending or proposed measure. Contrary to the general belief, women have proved notoriously slow in giving their approval and support, but, once committed, their enthusiasm knows no bounds. Against this open and publicly-exerted influence of the voting woman, the “silent influence” preached by the anti-suffragist makes a most sorry showing. Before Colorado women had the franchise, they vainly used the great “silent influence” in an effort to have kindergartens made part of the public-school system. After the adoption of equal suffrage, they forced the reform within a year.
Massachusetts, where the women “keep their place in the
The fact that comparatively few women have been elevated to high official position in Colorado is entirely traceable to the voting woman's own initial desire. After equal suffrage had been granted them in 1893, there was a tacit agreement, a sort of “unwritten law,” that women should not rush into office-seeking.
But while there has been no office-seeking, women have not shirked responsibility. When the masculine mind came to the conclusion that educational matters called for feminine supervision, the women responded, and have invariably made splendid records. Since 1840 both parties have nominated women for the office of state superintendent of public instruction, and out of the sixty county superintendents of schools in Colorado, forty are women. Quite a number of women have held, and are holding, important municipal and county offices; some ten odd have sat in the Legislature four women worked masterfully on a Denver charter board, and all the state boards have women members who are a credit to the state.
It is to be wished that a Colorado election day could be taken on tour. If “tourist critics” are to be believed, and credence given the anonymous liars that “stuff” the Eastern press, the Colorado election is a rare combination of Moulin Rouge orgy and western dance-hall scene. It is a shame to spoil so colorful an illusion, but truth compels the humiliating admission that election day in Colorado is marked by the most absolute matter-of-factness, the very quintessence of normality. Excited by accounts of the doings of English “suffragettes,” and keyed to high expectation by lurid slanders, the visitor comes primed for something beyond the ordinary, and is pained and disappointed to find no departure from the usual. The day, except for an entire lack of drunkenness and disorder, is not one whit different from election days in states where only make suffrage obtains.
Mr. Helen Grenfell, three times elected state superintendent of public instruction, has made three campaigns through the state, visiting every county, and may properly be regarded as an expert witness. “In seventeen years’ exercise of the franchise,” Mrs. Grenfell testifies, “I have yet to see an intoxicated man, to hear an oath, or see discourteous action toward any woman at the polling places, although informed that in rare instances such things have occurred in a few of the less desirable localities.”
It is not the Colorado custom for women to electioneer but even in those cases where they remain about the polling places, distributing literature or cards, dignity is rarely laid aside and even the familiarities of persuasiveness are not employed. There is an unwritten law among them that forbids this sort of thing, and the woman, and the woman who wishes to play an important part in politics must carefully guard against the disapproval of her sex.
This, of course, applies to the residence wards and the average family woman. The ballot does not endow the unskilled laborer's ignorant wife with the manners of a Vere de Vere, nor lift the prostitute above her shame. And in this connection, let the vote of the “red light” district be considered. For if the word of slander is to be taken, Colorado elections are controlled by the “immoral vote,” and every election day affords opportunity for prostitution's triumph.
This is a charge that is easily made, and one that is very effective with many worthy people, for bare mention of the social evil excites a certain repugnance that is opposed to fair consideration. It has the terror of the leper's bell, the horror of things unclean. But, in leveling the charge, one or two assumptions must be made. Either there are more prostitutes than decent women in Colorado, or else the prostitutes vote and the decent women do not. Honest inquiry, however, meets with few difficulties. In Colorado prostitution is confined to its four or five cities, and only exists in the balance of the state as a wind-blown evil that follows the rise and fall of mining camps.
Denver, as the largest city in the state, contains the largest number of prostitutes. In considering Denver then, the anti-equal suffragist would seem to have the fairest chance of proving his contention, while the equal-suffragist might well claim unfairness in taking the metropolis instead of the average town. But what do the figures show?
Chief of Police Armstrong puts the number of professional prostitutes in Denver at five hundred, and establishes the “red light district” as precincts, 1, 2, and 3 in the fourth ward. The board of election commissioners furnishes these figures on female registration and voting in those precincts:
The commissioners, by reason of facts stated on the registration books, advise that ten per cent of this number be considered as respectable women—wives of unskilled laborers, etc. Deducting this ten per cent, the total Denver registration of prostitutes at the last election was 159, with only 130 voting.
A little intelligent thought will quickly prove that the professional prostitute does not want to vote. In nine cases out of ten, she plies her unhappy trade under an assumed name, and the exercise of the suffrage right forces her into the open and entails admissions she would fain conceal. The class is, of course, under the thumb of the police, and there have been campaigns when certain “City Hall machines” did drag the unfortunate creatures to the polls. But public sentiment has declared against this so furiously, that the practice has entirely ceased. A political party in Colorado could not invite surer doom than by herding the “immoral vote” to the polls.
But even did the whole 500 vote instead of 130, and cast their ballots solidly at some behest, how could it
And now for that other assumption—the inference that the “good women” do not vote, and do not “want to vote.” The following figures are furnished by Denver in the election of 1908:
Reliable statistics with regard to voting are not obtainable, but such figures as are at hand prove that the percentage of women who register is larger than that of men. But, returning to Denver, the election commissioners furnish these figures, taken from the last general election:
In explanation, Precinct 14, Eighth Ward, is a well-to-do residence district with a large percentage of professional people; Precinct 7, Tenth Ward, is a wealthy, fashionable neighborhood, and Precinct 1, Fifteenth Ward, is an average section in a working-class district. So it may be seen that women of all classes do vote, and are availing themselves of the suffrage right. Statistics compiled for the last ten years show that from thirty-two to forty-eight per cent of Colorado's vote is cast by women—a remarkable record when it is considered that women constitute forty-five per cent of the population.
And, another item of interest and importance, the percentage of registration to voting population runs higher in Colorado than in any other state. Feminine interest in public, affairs has forced a keener activity on the part of men; for what head of the family would let his women folk outdo him in something that has long been considered a purely masculine prerogative? Colorado even proportionately furnishes no such figures as Boston, where 40,000 men failed to vote at one election.
There has always been outcry against the “apathy and indifference” of the man voter, and the history of male suffrage is thick with stupidities, crimes and ignorances. Why, then, is it fair to demand that women straightway vote in enthusiasm, with superhuman intelligence and unerring honesty? And yet, even though the most rigid test be applied, what fair man can deny that the seventeen years’ record of equal suffrage in Colorado has not been its ample justification?
Under male suffrage there were three “dry” towns in the State of Colorado. Under equal suffrage a local-option law was put on the statute books, and there are now fifty “dry” towns and twelve “dry” counties. And it may also be mentioned that Denver is one of the few cities in the land that has no saloon-keepers in its council.
The liquor interests hate the voting woman because they can not fool her out of her antagonism. The public service corporations fear the voting woman because they can not “handle” her. And who so blind as to deny the political partnership of the saloon and the franchise-grabbing corporations? These corrupt and malign influences have always worked together, and are working together now in the desperate endeavor to prevent the spread of equal suffrage. The gambler, saloonkeeper, macquereau and barrelhouse boss—the respectable criminals who fatten on franchises and the exploitation of the people—these are the people at the bottom of the anti-suffrage agitation! They constitute the secret influence that is inflaming conservatism and traditional prejudices!
The honest man is not vicious in his opposition to equal suffrage. At worst it is, as has been explained, no more than a matter of sex antagonism or a survival of the feudel instinct. Is it not significant that no reputable Colorado man has yet come out in denunciation of equal suffrage? Men are in the majority in Colorado, and surely, if the Colorado man is opposed to the law, and desires its repeal, a candidate could not have a more profitable platform that the law's abolition.
As a matter of fact, equal suffrage was practically resubmitted in 1901, when people voted on the proposition to strike “male” out of the constitution of the state. Equal suffrage has had an eight years’ trial, and benefits were much less marked than now. Yet the proposition carried by 35,000.
Discussion of equal suffrage in other states may be governed by tradition and prejudice, but experience and practice have made the Colorado man come down to “brass tacks.” Some may still retain a vague antagonism, but not one but has more sense than to advance the arguments that enjoy vogue in the East.
The chief conceded faults of women are the faults of a mind that has been cooped up, circumscribed by small household activities. The Colorado man has come to understand that the broadening influence of equal suffrage remedies these faults, and works for their elimination.
It is claimed that woman should not have the ballot because she has shown unfitness in grappling with the “servant problem.”
In Colorado the “servant problem” is recognized as a “labor problem,” and what man will claim that male votes have solved it? President Taft's own answer to the request for solution was “God knows!”
The attainments of culture—these “parlor accomplishments” that are urged upon women—what are they, in the last analysis, but self-adornment? The broadening of politics is different from the broadening of culture, for the one has a social and public purpose, and the other is personal and selfish.
The Colorado man has come to the recognition of this truth, and knows that the Colorado woman has grown in strength and effectiveness without loss of essential womanliness or sacrifice of valuable traits.
The following are a few queries lately addressed by a texas school girl to Ellis Meredith of the Denver election commission, together with her answers. As the are queries which have to be answered again and again in nearly all the states where the women do not vote, The Woman's Journal is glad to publish them.
Q. What have Colorado women and the women in the other states where they vote accomplished?
A. It would take a book to answer. Tracts have been printed from time to time enumerating legislative enactments secured by the women, but these show only a small part of what they have accomplished. It is safe to say that in every state where women have had the vote over at least one legislative assembly, they have modified, changed, amended or enacted laws so that shall better protect women and children. The have made the liquor laws more stringent, and increased the amount of “dry territory.”
In Idaho they have passed a “search and seizure law,” to stop boot-legging; another making saloons outside of an incorporated town illegal, and a third requiring the would-be purchaser in a drug store to subscribe to an before liquor can be supplied him.
In Utah they passed a local option law for cities and towns, the counties to be “dry” unless voted “wet.”
In Colorado, before equal suffrage, there were about ten so-called “dry” towns in the state, most of them dry because the sale of liquor was prohibited by their charters. Now there are twelve counties that are “dry” territory, and
Nearly, if not all, these states have strict legislation regarding the sale of narcotics, cigarettes and tobacco. This kind of legislation is practically always the result of the work of women, but where they do not have the vote, they find themselves unable to secure the enforcement of laws; indeed, it is not easy to do this even with the ballot, as good men have long ago learned to their sorrow.
Washington, Idaho and Colorado have pure food laws, and regulations providing for the inspection of all places where food is kept.
Utah has a nine-hour day and Washington an eight-hour day for women employees; Colorado had an eight-hour day, which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Several of them, including Colorado, have laws restricting the hours of employment of children.
In Utah and Wyoming, women teachers holding the same grade certificate receive the same salary as men in similar positions. Kindergartens, manual training, instruction in physiology and hygiene, libraries in connection with schools, traveling libraries, compulsory school laws, chairs of domestic economy in state institutions, the medical inspection of school children, with proper treatment for defective sight and hearing, removal of adenoids and the care of the teeth, are among the changes brought about by the votes of women.
Q. Have the women purified politics?
. In some respects. Elections are conducted much more quietly; there is rarely any disorder at the polling places, and conventions are by no means so exciting as
In Colorado the women succeeded in getting the emblems removed from the ballots, and have long prosecuted the fight for the pure Australian ballot, by the which the voter must put his mark opposite each candidate, and can no longer vote a straight ticket by writing a party name at the top of his ballot. Colorado women began working for the Initiative and Referendum 20 years ago, when most of the men knew little about it, and finally secured the passage of this amendment to the constitution and its adoption two years ago. Washington women also won this great reform for that state. The Colorado women have long worked for a primary law; finally one has been passed, and, while it is not all they desired, still it is felt that it is a step in the right direction. The recall and subsequent defeat of Mayor Gill of Seattle was a “reform due to women.”
This however, has really nothing to do with the question of the enfranchisement of women. Unless men were disfranchised, it cannot be expected that women will entirely change the political atmosphere in a few elections. It must be borne in mind that the men outnumber the women in every state in which women vote, and men will do themselves and permit others to do things in a campaign that they would not think of doing at any other time.
Anti-suffragists are circulating a pamphlet by Miss Minnie Bronson, in which she claims that the chief reason why protective legislation for the working woman is adopted is because she lacks the ballot, and that where she has it, “the inference is that she must give as many hours of toil per day as man.” Miss Bronson affirms also that the suffrage
There are six suffrage state—California, Washington, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Idaho. California and Washington have eight-hour laws for women. Miss Bronson says that these were enacted “under male suffrage.” As regards Washington, this statement is directly contrary to fact. Before women got the ballot, the advocates of shorter hours in Washington had tried for eight years to secure an eight-hour law for women without success. After equal suffrage was granted the Legislature promptly passed the bill.
In California, the eight-hour law was passed a short time before the ballot was granted; but, as it was passed by the same Legislature which also passed the woman suffrage amendment to the state constitution by a vote of 33 to 5 in the Senate and 65 to 12 in the Assembly, it certainly does not bear out Miss Bronson's claim that such legislation for the working woman is adopted “above all because she is not herself a law-maker.”
Colorado passed an eight-hour law for women in 1903, but in 1907 it was thrown out by the State Supreme Court as unconstitutional. In the last Colorado Legislature, a more comprehensive eight-hour law for women passed the lower house with only one dissenting vote, but was blocked in the Senate, like almost all other legislation in that year, by the deadlock over the U. S. Senatorship.
Utah adopted a nine-hour law for women in 1911. Mrs. Elizabeth M. Cohen of Salt Lake City, chairman of the Industrial Committee of the State federation of women's clubs, told in The Woman's Journal of May 27, 1911, how the passage of the bill was secured. It was backed by women's organizations with an aggregate membership of 50,000 Mrs. Cohen says:
“The large number of women represented was both inspiring and appalling—inspiring the women's committee to give the best that was in them, and appalling to the legislator who would like to be re-elected two years hence, and
Idaho and Wyoming as yet lack laws for the protection of women in industry because they have so few women engaged in industry outside their homes. In answer to a complaint from an Eastern anti-suffragists that Idaho had no law limiting factory hours for women, Mrs. Eva Hunt Dockery, for ten years a member of the Legislative committee of the State federation of women's clubs, wrote in The Woman's Journal of Dec. 17, 1910: “Idaho has no factories where women are employed, so the need of this law has not been felt. Up to a very few years ago there was not a department store in the state, and the clerks in the stores were treated as they were in the good old days in the East, like members of the family.” The census of 1900 showed only 59 women in Idaho engaged in factory work, and only 47 in Wyoming, as against 126,093 in Pennsylvania, 143,109 in Massachusetts, amd 230,181 in New York.
Anti -suffragists often charge that the tendency of woman suffrage will be to take women out of the home and put them into industry. As it happens, all the states in which enormous numbers of women are working for wages outside their homes are non-suffrage states. The need of protective legislation for working women, therefore, has not been nearly so urgent in the suffrage states as elsewhere; yet a much larger proportion of the suffrage states have passed eight or nine-hour laws for women than of the non-suffrage states.
They have also done it with more ease. Massachusetts has just secured a 54-hour a week law as the culmination of about 40 years of effort for improved conditions for working women. The Utah women got the nine-hour law from the first Legislature from which they asked it.
The discussion of woman suffrage by the Ohio Fourth Constitutional Convention called forth the following expressions from the Governors of five suffrage states:
Denver, Colo., Feb. 19, 1912.
I am glad that Ohio is contemplating adopting a constitution which will give equal suffrage to women. It has been a great success in Colorado; women always will be found upon the moral side of every question. It cannot be that our mothers, sisters and wives would have anything but an elevating influence on government.
John F. Shafroth, Governor.
Boise, Idaho, Feb. 21, 1912.
Am gratified to learn through press reports that Constitutional Convention will submit woman suffrage to vote of people of Ohio, and feel certain the Buckeye State will follow her progressive sister commonwealths in the enfranchisement of her women. All Idaho wishes your cause success, as experience here has justified its wisdom.
James Hawley, Governor.
Cheyenne, Wyo., March 1, 1912.
In this state for many years women have had the right to vote and hold office. I have watched the operation of the law conferring these rights upon women with a great deal of interest, and I have been unable to see any disadvantages or any objection that could be raised against it. We have never had any militant suffragists in this state. Women exercises her rights to vote and hold office as a matter of courses.
We are a new state; in a certain sense a frontier state. I am satisfied that women's influence in political matters has been good. I know it has been a great advantage to
I think that woman has as many inherent rights in a political way as man has, and she is as fully competent to exercise those rights. There is scarcely a man who is deprived of the right to vote and hold office. In this state about the only restrictions upon those who have reached their majority and are citizens, are such as inability to read the Constitution of the United States, being a convict or insane. The same restrictions, and only the same, apply to men and women alike.
Within the last few years I have been more strongly impressed that it is right that women should vote and hold office, because of the fact that many women have come into very important and responsible positions.
Joseph M. Carey, Governor.
Olympia, Wash., Feb. 20, 1912.
During the short time woman suffrage has been in effect in this state, a profound interest has been manifested among all women in the study of civic questions and the promotion of legislation and projects designed to advance the best interest of the people of the state. They are taking their responsibility seriously and providing a powerful agency of progress.
M. E. Hay, Governor.
Sacramento, Cal.
I cannot do better than to say that since the adoption of the Equal Suffrage Amendment in California, three important city elections have been held. One of these city elections, that at Los Angeles, was the most exciting and most bitterly contested ever held in this state, and, it was believed, fraught with the gravest consequences to that community. In these elections, the first test of equal suffrage with us, the women of California acquitted themselves with firmness, courage, ability, and with the very highest intelligence. If
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, a short time before her death, sent a circular letter, asking whether the results of equal suffrage were good or bad, to all the Episcopal clergymen, and to the Presbyterian, Congregational, Methodist and Baptist ministers in the suffrage states; to all the Congregational Sunday school superintendents (the other denominations do not publish the names of the superintendents in their religious year-books), and to the editors of the newspapers. In all, 624 answers were received. Of these, 62 were opposed, 46 in doubt, and 516 in favor.
The replies from the Episcopal clergymen were favorable, more than two to one; those of the Baptist ministers, seven to one; those of the Congregational ministers, about eight to one; of the Methodists, more than ten to one, and of the Presbyterians, more than eleven to one.
Of the Sunday school superintendents, one was opposed and one in doubt; all the rest were favorable.
The editors expressed themselves in favor, more than eight to one.
The ministers and editors are practically unanimous in saying that equal suffrage has made women more intelligent companions for their husband and better able to instruct their children. Almost all are agreed that it has broadened women's minds and led them to take more interest in public questions. A large number say that it has helped to obtain liberal appropriations for school purposes and for humanitarian objects, and has made it harder for notoriously corrupt candidates to be nominated or elected; that equal suffrage does not lead to divorces, and that women enjoy increased influence because of having the ballot. Most of the
The testimony is practically the same from all four states and from all parts of those states.
Hon. Hugh H. Lusk, an ex-member of the New Zealand Parliament, traveling in America for his health, spoke as follows in an address at the May festival of the New England Woman suffrage association:
“Up to 1877, we had no idea of giving woman suffrage in New Zealand.
“It was done, not be argument, but by experiment. I had a little to do with the first experiment, which was the extension of suffrage to a small class of women.
“By the Education act of 1877, the householders of each district were empowered to elect a committee of seven of their number to have charge of the schools of the district. I had much to do with this fact. While the bill was in committee, another member suggested to me that it would be a good thing to leave out the word ‘male’ before ‘householder.’
“I saw no objection and move it. This was the first thin end of the big wedge by which full suffrage has been given to all the women in New Zealand.
“The women got the school vote, and used it. They did not say, ‘Oh dear, no, it wouldn't be proper!” They went to the polls and voted for the best men. They took so much interest that at the next election some women were elected to the school boards, and they showed so much aptitude for this sort of work that when, in 1882, the license question came up, it was proposed that women ratepayers, as well as men ratepayers, should help choose the board of commissioners in each district who control the issuing of licenses.
“This met with great objection. We were told that now indeed we should utterly destroy the character of the ladies, for all the worst elements would be brought in contact with them, and would make things very unpleasant for them. We
“Then we felt that we could go a little further, and gave the women the right to vote at municipal elections and to serve on municipal boards. I know one woman who acted for two years as mayor (not mayoress) of a very prosperous little town, and did as well as any mayor could have done.
“I have always, said what I thought, and in some cases have said it till I was in danger of being pelted off the platform. This is one minor reason why I believe in woman suffrage. No one is pelted now.
“Women attend all the political meetings, and it has done an immense deal of good. When men congregate by themselves, they get excited and sometimes misbehave. Women, perhaps, do the same. It is not good for women, either, to be alone.
“It seemed queer at first to find half the benches at a political meeting occupied by ladies; but when the men have got accustomed to it, they do not like the other thing.
“When they found that they could take their wives and daughters to these meetings, and afterwards take them home and talk about it, it was the beginning of a new life for the family, a life of ideas and interest in common, and a unison of thought.
“The influence of equal suffrage has been rather against the milliners and dressmakers; there is not so much time for criticizing one's neighbors’ bonnets and cloaks. Gossip cannot be cured in any way so well as by taking an interest in public affairs.
“The family is the foundation of the state. We find that equal suffrage is the greatest family bond and tie, the greatest strengthener of family life. Under equal suffrage, the family is taking the place of the individual. People are
“The members of a family generally vote alike, though it is impossible to swear to this, as the ballot is absolutely secret. But we see in it the changed character of the men who are elected. The men who are successful now are not just the same sort that were successful before. Character is more regarded that cleverness. It is asked about every candidate, ‘Has he a good record? Is he above suspicion, an honorable man, a useful citizen, pure of any suspicion of complicity with corrupt politics?’ That is the man who, under the combined suffrage of men and women, gets the largest number of votes and is elected. This is the greatest benefit that comes from suffrage.
“I do not deify suffrage. There might be a state of things in which universal suffrage would become the worst of tyrannies; but with both men and women voting, there is little danger of this. I see in New York the grievous results of half-universal suffrage; but I believe these would be swept away by the other half.”
“Women in Australian Politics” is the title of a very interesting article by Theresa Hirschl Russell in the Coming Nation of May 25. The author has lately visited the antipodes, and made many interesting observations. She says, in part:
“It is a curious fact that in the United States today arguments for and against woman's enfranchisement still partake so largely of generalities of sentiment and of what Mark Twain calls the ‘easy form of prophecy.’ While we are still engaged in this conflict of abstractions, two English-speaking countries, remote from us in miles, but not in civilization, might furnish the practical demonstration of experience.
“In Australia and New Zealand theorizing about woman's suffrage is extinct as the dodo. In these countries everybody knows the practical results and can hardly believe that the rest of the world is unaware of them. ‘A woman's place is the home’ or ‘unsexing womankind,’ as the subject of an argument against woman's suffrage, would awaken in the average Australian or New Zealander today as much amazement as a discussion of the propriety of a woman's appearing in public with unveiled features.”
Mrs. Russell found that in Australia and New Zealand, as elsewhere, women are divided into progressives and conservatives; but the progressives were the more numerous. She says:
“Contrary to prediction, in Australasia women are proving to be as an electorate more radical than men. They are on the whole less bound by traditional and the sacred rights of property when these conflict with human rights, less ready to continue to tolerate oppression and injustice merely because they have become sanctioned by the ages.
“While the female electorate can scarcely in any case be said to vote as a unit, they have undoubtedly been largely instrumental in both Australia and New Zealand in the passing of various acts protection women and children and looking to the removal of those sex disabilities under whose injustice, through the inheritance of barbarous English laws, the sex has labored for centuries.
“The majority of them have supported also the various progressive and humanitarian measures initiated by the labor government, such as workingmen's compensation, old-age pensions, the minimum wage law and other measures bettering the hard conditions of labor in mines and factories, in respect to which these antipodal countries have advanced beyond other nations, and far beyond the United States.”
Mrs. Russell quotes the resolution passed in 1910 by the National Parliament of the Federated Australia:
(1) That the extension of the suffrage to the women of Australia for state and commonwealth Parliaments has had the most beneficial results. It has led to the more orderly conduct of elections, and at the last federal elections the women's vote in a majority of the states showed a greater proportionate increase than that cast by men. It has given a greater prominence to legislation particularly affecting women and children, although the women have not taken up such questions to the exclusion of others of wider significance. In matters of defence and imperial concerns they have proved themselves as discriminating and farseeing as men. Because the reform has brought nothing but good, though disaster was freely prophesied, we respectfully urge that all nations enjoying representative government would be well advised in granting votes to women. (2) That a copy of the foregoing resolution be cabled to the British Prime Minister.
This passed the lower house unanimously, and the Senate with only four dissenting votes. The four Senators said nothing against woman suffrage per se, but urged that it was not becoming for a young country like Australia to give the mother country advice. Senator de Largie replied: “We have experience of woman suffrage. In this respect being politically older than the mother country, we have the right to proffer her advice.”
Mrs. Russell found the man in the street to be of the same opinion:
“The average man in Australia, asked his opinion on the subject, gives testimony that is at least a pleasing departure from the time-worn theme of ‘neglect of home duties’ with which we in this country are still being edified, a reproach for some reason not applied to time spent at bridge or the
Before the suffrage was granted to women the vast majority of requests made by them for the investigation of the conditions of life among women workers—for example, women factory-workers—were treated with polite indifference; now that women have the vote, all of their official requests receive serious consideration. Two women factory inspectors have been appointed, and a special appropriation has been made for the work of an investigating committee.
No one who followed the heated debates aroused by the bills concerning the “Married woman's property act,” the “Extension of the mothers’ rights over their children,” and the “Abolition of the husband's guardianship over his wife,” can doubt the practical advantage that women have gained by having women representatives in Parliament. An article which appeared in the Jus Suffragii while the bills were pending says: “The women members of the Law committee, to which the bills are referred, have had to stand a hard fight. The men members in the committee, of all parties, whether bourgeois of Social Democrat, held that only the ‘women's-rights women’ urged the revision of the marriage laws, and the rest of woman kind was content with the status quo. When this became known, protests came from all sides. Women of all sorts and conditions sent signed petitions to some of the women members of Parliament urging the revision of the marriage laws, and most of the
Moreover, the possession of the franchise has been of practical use to women, not only by giving them the possibility or improving the conditions of their work and extending their legal rights, but also by helping them directly to better their economic position. Not long ago a test case was brought up by a woman teacher in one of the high schools, who claimed that as she was doing the same work as the men teachers and had passed the same examination, she should be given the same salary. After a short discussion her request was granted, whereas similar requests made before women had the franchise had not been granted.
But as might be expected, the chief interest of the women has been to improve the condition of children. Over 50 per cent of the bills introduced into the three successive Diets have concerned the welfare of children. Many have been for rendering medical aid to poor women throughout the country districts, and for instructing them in the proper methods of caring for infants; may have treated of the improvement and extensions of the public-school system and the care of school children; still others have dealt with special classes of children, orphans, waifs, and juvenile delinquents.
Now that the system of home instruction and private tutoring have passed perhaps forever—practically all children of nine or ten are sent to schools, and a large number of them to public schools— it seems only natural that women should take a tolerably intelligent interest in the management and direction of those schools and the state or municipal laws which govern them. When, too, in these days of democracy, the great majority of boys and a large number of girls also must look forward to earning own living, it is only to be expected that women should feel the vital
One of the noteworthy reforms undertaken by the women has been the establishment of schools of domestics training throughout the country—schools intended to teach young girls to become efficient and capable wives and mothers. These schools are of great importance, especially in the country districts and among the poorer class of people. They are becoming most valuable factors in the cultured development of the country, and are doing more than could perhaps be done in any other way to raise the general standards of living.
Thus the women have succeeded in materially bettering their own position; but they have done much more, for they have also carried through reforms of wide-reaching importance to the moral and social life of the whole community. A striking proof of this may be shown by the fact that in the church synod held in 1908 it was decided to grant women the elective suffrage for sundry church offices.
This motion was brought before one of the most conservative bodies in the country by a member of the synod who had previously been opposed to granting the political suffrage to women, and who introduced the motion of his own accord, saying that since the women had proved themselves such efficient social and political workers, he felt that it would be an advantage to the church if they should be made eligible to many church offices.
The experience of three years of woman suffrage in Finland has proved, I think, beyond doubt that the emancipation of women is not a thing to be feared or dreaded, but merely a natural step in the evolution of modern society.
When the suffrage was extended to the women they responded with interest and enthusiasm, and have shown themselves capable of serving on all the various legislative committees. They have not disturbed the political balance of power, but have maintained it precisely as before, uniting as women only for the furtherance of social and legal reforms of importance to women, but also of very vital importance
Families have not been broken up by the woman's vote; rather have they tended to become more united by a strong bond of common interest. Instead of lessening the interest that woman have in the education and the welfare of their children, the suffrage has greatly intensified that interest by making it possible for them to regulate and, in some degree at least, to improve the schools to which their children are sent and the different branches of work which they later undertake.
Experience has shown, too, that when the doors are opened, not all women rush madly into political life, but only those who are specially qualified for it; that for the vast majority of women the duties of the franchise consist in little more than casting their ballots, and that even the women who participate actively in political life devote no more time to it than they devoted previously to their extra domestic occupations or professions—that is, that even the small number of women who actually sit in Parliament need not neglect their homes unduly. But last and most important of all, it has shown that the cause that women have most at heart is the care and welfare of children.
What is wanted in politics is real work, thorough work, honest and more efficient work, not mere sham. Are women ready for better work, than men are now doing? Hardly, and women will find it no easy task to do sufficiently well to outstrip the best class of political workers. The man is in constant contact with men, and face to face with events. He is in the larger world; he is everywhere, and he has become familiar with the workings of the political machinery. Woman will always take observation from some protected quarter. She will generally obtain such fragments of legislation and activities, as appear on the surface. But of the vital, fighting political struggle which constantly goes on, and not generally in public view, the woman necessarily will learn what she knows only by hearsay or from some male informer. Women are not concerned equally with men in the character of government, and they very rarely have an equal knowledge of political events, even when their fathers, husbands and brothers are statesmen or politicians.
Woman suffragists proclaim that women need the ballot for their own protection,—and that men make laws for women which are unjust and oppressive, and that women must have the law-making power in their own hands in order to secure fair play. American women do not need a law-making power,—for on the whole, the laws are even far more favorable to women (in many states) than they would have been if women, with their smaller understanding of vital conditions, had made the laws for themselves.
Have we come to the point when women must defend themselves against men or women? One man is generally stronger than one woman! And do women propose to
fight
laws into existence to protect them? The voting power is based on force. The rule of the majority is at the bottom the rule of force. Sixty thousand voters yield to a hundred thousand voters, not because they believe them to be wiser than themselves, but because they know them to be stronger. When they do not believe them to be stronger, they do not yield, they resist, and we have a rebellion. Women who ask for the ballot do not know the real meaning and significance of universal manhood suffrage, or they would never use the term “equal suffrage.”
Constitutional government is not a haphazard, unformed, shapeless institution, as many women seem to think. It has distinct form, established restrictions, and a very valid reason for
not
asking woman to have a voice in government.
A republic vests the power of the government in the will of the people. But if had that power rests in a portion of the people that cannot sustain their will,—if the voting power is in the hands of an aristocracy or a favored class, that cannot uphold or retain that power unto themselves—then we are entertaining a false state of affairs, which is contrary to the fundamental principles of our constitutional government.
All voting at the pools must ultimately feel the pulse of a national and vital force back of it, and women cannot be that enforce. Men not only
can,
but
must
be that, if they accept the privileges of the franchise. Their allegiance to the state is a guarantee for its safety, its stability, and its maintenance in time of war and of peace.
The reason why men vote in this country is because they can be made
liable
for the continuance of law and order, and can be called upon for state duty and service. Uncle sam permits a full-grown man of the age of twenty-one years to be a voter, with only a few qualifications such as age, place or residence, etc. Women are within the age and residence qualifications, and they offer morality, intelligence and tax-paying vote
because they are moral, intelligent, or taxpayers
only.
Government asks the man to accept the responsibility of maintaining it, or preserving its very existence. Man forms the ONLY basis on which any government
can
rest. In a democracy this is, and must be, the keynote of the whole structure. The man is the rock on which the government is built, whatever its form. The woman never was and never will be. Giving the man the vote is nothing more than a recognition of this fact. Giving women the vote would be to deny it.
Citizenship is a granted right, not a natural one, derived and regulated by each country or state according to its ideas of government. The argument of the suffragist that a voter and a citizen should be one and the same is incorrect. Citizens can be and have been disfranchised, but can still remain citizens and have all of a citizen's privileges.
Chief Justice Waite of the United States Supreme Court decided that citizenship carried with it no voting power or right, and the same decision has been handed down by many courts in disposing of other test cases. A citizen of the District of Columbia has all the privileges of citizenship, but the cannot vote, since that is a state right and the District of Columbia is not a state.
Citizenship merely, does not entitle a man to vote. Government grants that privileges and enrolls on its lists of voters those who must be made liable for the state's safety and stability. Government does not let a man vote just to express this viewpoints by dropping a bit of paper in the ballot box. I demands the service and allegiance of a voter to the point of giving his life, as 500,000 men did during the civil war.
Men and women could not enjoy our present civilization if government had not that backing. In time of peace citizens must have a guarantee for life and property; it is just this force of the male voter that can be called upon when needed. This is a part of our strong constitutional, democratic government.
Men and women are both citizens and enjoy exactly the same privileges of governmental administration, such as gas, light, police, schools, sound money, protection of life and property, sewers, paved streets, transportation, hospitals, courts, judges, law and order, and what not?
In no other country, and at no other time has the world seen such material progress, such social and moral advancement, as in our own land during the last 130 years; and investigation shows that woman's progress has been no less marked than that of population, wealth and industry.
We find in the general advancement of women, in the improvement of her economic position, in her social and civic influence, and in her opportunity for culture, a thing without parallel in the history of the world. And we anti-suffragists, can say with pride that all this has been accomplished without granting women the ballot.
Women should organize and form associations, as men have done if they intend to command a standard wage. Supply and demand will do the rest. Miss Summer in her book
Equal Suffrage
clearly shows that women and children are no better paid in the four states where women vote than in the states where they do not vote.
In suffrage states, taking public employment as a whole, women receive considerably lower remuneration than men. As teachers, women receive lower salaries on the average, than men, as is shown in Table 19 of Miss Summer's book. The conclusion is inevitable that, on the whole, men teachers are better paid in Colorado than women teachers. “Equal pay for equal work” does not exist in woman suffrage states any more than it does elsewhere. These suffrage states are not very encouraging as object lessons for us in the east.
Colorado was admitted into the Union in 1876, and great efforts were made by suffragist to secure the “Centennial” state. This resulted in a submission of the question to the people, who rejected it by a majority of 7,443 in a total vote of 20,665. From the first of the agitation for the free coinage of silver, Colorado has been enthusiastically in favor of that measure. In 1892 her devotion to it caused all parties
Colorado is most frequently cited as the banner suffrage state; yet there, the granting of the ballot has not yet purified politics.
The effect upon party politics has been very slight. Politics are as corrupt in Colorado as in any state in the Union. Judge Lindsay has just written an article in
Everybody's Magazine,
entitled “The Beast and the Jungle,” which certainly does not indicate either peace or purity in politics.
Probably the Juvenile Court of Colorado has been most often pointed to as a triumph of a woman's ballot.
Yet, in
nineteen
out of the twenty-two states which have juvenile courts to-day, women do not vote. Moreover, in the four in which they do,
two
are without such courts.
Nor was Colorado the
first
to establish such a court, but instead, Massachusetts, where three years before the women of the state had rejected equal suffrage.
In other words, it would appear that the Juvenile Court
can be
and
is
achievable
without
the
female ballot
In Colorado, divorces are more easily obtained than in our own state, and after a very short period of time.
Suffragists say women should make their own laws—but after forty years of woman suffrage in Utah and Wyoming, we find that like all other states men make the laws and women derive many benefits from them. Women do not do jury duty, and are not judged by peers of their own sex, nor is there any demand for such a state of affairs.
Utah was the first territory in this country in which woman suffrage gained a foothold.
Woman Suffrage was co-incident with the establishment of the Mormon church, and it came as a legitimate part of
The
dangers
that especially threaten a Constitutional or
Republican form
of government are
anarchy, communism,
and
religious bigotry;
and two of these found their fullest expression in this country, in the Mormon creed and practice.
Woman Suffrage was secured in Wyoming by means that bring dishonor upon democracy.
Wyoming was organized as a Territory in 1868. Many of its native settlers were from Utah.
The
History of Woman Suffrage
records the fact that the measure was secured in the first territorial legislature through the political trickery of an illiterate and discredited man, who was in the chair.
Mr. Bryce, in
The American Commonwealth
alludes in a note to the same fact.
Women voted in 1870. In 1871 a bill was passed repealing the suffrage act, but was vetoed by the governor, on the ground that, having been admitted, it must be given a fair trial.
An attempt to pass the repeal over his veto was
lost
by a
single vote.
Certainly, the entrance of woman suffrage into Wyoming was not a
triumph
of
democratic progress
and
principle.
In 1894 the Populist party of Idaho put a plank in its platform favoring the submission of a woman-suffrage amendment to the people. In 1896 the Free Silver Populist movement swept the state. A majority of the votes cast on the suffrage question were cast in its favor, but not a majority of all the votes cast at the election. The supreme courts have generally held that, in so important a matter, a complete majority vote was required, but the Supreme Court of Idaho did not so hold, and woman suffrage is now established in that state. This, also, is hardly a success of sound democracy.
Those who advocate woman suffrage are fond of quoting the colonial dictum that taxation without representation is tyranny, and declare that this, one of “the fundamental principles upon which the country was founded,” is shamefully violated under present circumstances as far as women are concerned. Women, they say, are taxed. But women have no votes. Having no votes, they are not represented in the tax-laying body. Hence, they conclude, here is taxation without representation.
Any one who has examined the “argument” critically, and realizes what a total lack of connection there is between the dictum and the interpretation put upon it, is inclined to smile at the display of logic and to dismiss the whole matter as nonsense. But, as undoubtedly many people who have not looked into the question sincerely believe that women have here a real grievance, a few words of explanation may not be superfluous.
The colonists declared that taxation without
representation
was tyrannical—which is one thing. The suffragists pretend they said that taxation without
votes
was tyrannical—which is quite another thing. There is nothing unjust in requiring all citizens who can afford it to contribute to the support of the government, whether they vote or not. They get in exchange for their taxes the government's protection to life, liberty and property and all the other benefits of a well-ordered society. The colonist never said or thought that taxation and votes went together and nothing of the kind has ever been attempted. Thousands upon thousands of men, as well as women, in this country are taxed without being able to vote. That is the condition of the residents of the District of Columbia. The property of minors is taxed, yet they have no votes. A man may own taxable property in a dozen different states and yet can vote in only one. Finally the tariff is a tax upon every man, woman and child, citizen and alien alike, in the country.
The truth is, that the phrase “taxation without representation” did not refer to individuals at all, but to the dealings of one commonwealth with another. It did not mean that neither this man or not that woman should be taxed unless he or she were personally represented in the government. The slightest reflection will show the absurdity of such a construction. At most, only those would be personally represented who voted for successful candidates. A man who has not only not voted for those who are elected, and so have power to tax him, but has endeavored to keep them out, cannot be said to be “represented” by them. Yet would any one contend that all adherents of defeated candidates should be absolved from paying taxes because they were not “represented?”
One question to be determined in the discussion of this subject is whether the nature of woman is such that her taking upon her the performance of the functions implied in suffrage will leave her in the possession and the exercise of her highest powers or will be an abandonment of those powers and on entering upon a field in which, because of her differences from man, she is distinctly inferior. Mr. President, I have said that I thought suffrage would be a loss for women. I think so because suffrage implies not merely the casting of the ballot, the gentle and peaceful fall of the snowflake, but suffrage, if it means anything, means entering upon the field of political life, and politics is modified war. In politics there is struggle, strife, contention, bitterness, heart-burning, excitement, agitation, everything which is adverse to the true character of woman. Woman rules to-day by the sweet and noble influences of her character. Put woman into the arena of conflict and she abandons these great weapons which control the world, and she takes into her
Mr. President, in the divine distribution of powers, the duty and the right of protection rests with the male. It is so throughout nature. It is so with men, and I, for one will never consent to part with the divine right of protecting my wife, my daughter, the women whom I love and the women whom I respect, exercising the birthright of man, and place that high duty in the weak and nerveless hands of those designed by God to be protected rather than to engage in the stern warfare of government.
It is now proposed to extend the right not simply to those who have been unjustly excluded it, but practically
If I have betrayed an opinion adverse to the bestowal of female suffrage, I am sure it will not be attributed to any opposition to the advancement of the sex in anything that
The first thought that strikes us in considering the woman-suffrage movement is, that it is a proposition to engage women once more in that “struggle” from which civilization has enabled them in great measure to escape; and that its effect, if long continued and fairly tried, will be to check the development of woman as such, and to bring to bear on her influences of a kind different from those which have been hitherto active. And it becomes an impartial thinker to examine the question more closely, and see whether investigation bears out these impressions or not. We inquire, then, in the first place, Is government a function adapted to the female character, or within the scope of natural powers? We then endeavor to discover whether her occupation of
In endeavoring to answer the first question we are at once met by the undoubted fact that woman is physically incapable of carrying into execution any law she may enact. She cannot, therefore, be called on to serve in any executive capacity where law is to be executed on adults. Now service in the support of laws enacted by those who “rule by the consent of the governed” is a
sine qua non
of the right to elect governors. It is a common necessity to which all of the male sex are, during most of their lives, liable to be called on to sustain. This consideration alone, it appears to me, puts the propriety of female suffrage out of the question. The situation is such that the sexes cannot take a equal share off governmental responsibilities even it they should desire to do so. Woman suffrage becomes government by women alone on every occasion where a measure is carried by the aid of woman's votes. If such a measure should be obnoxious to a majority of men, they could successfully defy a party composed of a minority of their own sex and a majority of the women. That this would be done there can be no question, for we have a parallel case in the attempt to carry into effect negro suffrage in some parts of the South. We know the history too well. Intimidation, deception, and the manipulation of the count have nullified the negro vote. How many governors, legislatures, and even presidents have attained their positions in violation of the rights of the ballot during the last twenty-years, we may never know. In times of peace and general prosperity these things have excited indignant protest, but nothing more. But when serious issues distract the nation or any part of it, frauds on the ballot and intimidation of voters will be a more serious matter, and will lead to disastrous consequences. We do not want to increase possibilities of such evil portent. Unqualified negro suffrage is, in the writer's estimation, a serious blunder, and woman suffrage would be another. And it is now proposed that we have both combined.
Immunity from service in executing the law would make most women irresponsible voters. But there are other reasons why the questions involved in government are foreign to the thoughts of most women. The characteristics of the female mind have been already described. Most men who have associated much with girls and women remember how many needed lessons they have learned from them in refinement and benevolence; and how they have had, on the other hand, to steel their minds against their aimlessness and pettiness. And from youth to later years they have observed one peculiarity for which no remedy has been yet found, and that is, a pronounced frailty of the rational faculty in thought or action. This characteristic is offset by a strength and elevation of the emotional nature, which shines with inextinguishable luster in the wife and mother. It is to this that man renders the homage of respect, admiration, and such devotion as he is capable of. But are these the qualities for our governors? Men who display personal bias in ever so small a degree, unless accompanied by unusual merits of another kind, are not selected by their fellows for positions of responsibility and trust. Strong understanding, vigorous judgment, and the absence of “fear, favor, and affection,” are what men desire in their governors; for only through minds of that character can justice be obtained.
On account of their stronger sympathies girls always think themselves the moral superiors of boys, who are often singularly devoid of benevolence, especially toward the lower animals. Some women imagine, for this reason, that their entire sex is morally the superior of the male. But a good many women learn to correct this opinion. In departments of morals which depend on the emotional nature, women are the superior; for those which depend on the rational nature, man is the superior. When the balance is struck, I can see no inferiority on either side. But the quality of justice remains with the male. It is on this that men and women must alike depend, and hence it is that women so often prefer to be judged by men rather than by their own sex. They will not gain anything, I believe, by assuming the right of
In the practical working of woman suffrage, women would either vote in accordance with views of their husbands and lovers or they would not. Should they do the former habitually, such suffrage becomes a farce, and the only result would be to increase the aggregate number of votes cast. Should women vote in opposition to the men to whom they are bound by ties sentimental or material, unpleasant consequences would sooner or later arise. No man would view with equanimity the spectacle of his wife or daughters nullifying his vote at the polls, or contributing their influence to sustain a policy of government which he should think injurious to his own well-being or that of the community. His purse would be more open to sustain the interests of his own political party, and if he lived in the country he would probably not furnish transportation to the polls for such members of his family as voted against him. He would not probably willingly entertain at his house persons who should be active in obtaining the votes of his wife and daughters against himself; and on the other hand the wife might refuse entertainment to the active agents of the party with which she might not be in sympathy. The unpleasantness in the social circle which comes into view with the advent of woman suffrage is formidable in the extreme, and nothing less than some necessity yet undreamed of should induce us to give entrance to such a disturber of the peace. We need no additional causes of marital infelicity. But we are told by the woman-suffrage advocate that such objections on the part of men are without good reason, and are prejudices which should be set aside. But they cannot
The effect of sexual discord is bad on both sexes, but has its greatest influence for evil through women. While it does not remove her frailties it suppresses her distinctively feminine virtues. This suppression, continued for a few generations, must end in their greater or less abolition. The lower instincts would remain, the flowers which blossom on that stem would wither. No matter what their intellectuality might be, such women would produce a race of moral barbarians, which would perish ultimately through intestine strife. “The highest interests and pleasures of the male man are bound up in the effective preservation of the domestic affections of his partner. When these traits are weak, he should use every effort of develop them by giving them healthy exercise. As in all evolution, disuse ultimately ends in atrophy, and the atrophy of the affections in woman is a disaster in direct proportion to its extent. It may be replied again that woman suffrage carries with it no such probable result. But I believe that it does, unless the relations of the sexes are to be reversed. But it will be difficult to reduce the male man to the condition of the drone bee (although some men seem willing to fill that role); or of the male spider, who is first a husband and then a meal for his spouse. We have gone too far in the opposite direction for that. It will be easier to produce a reversion to barbarism in both sexes by the loss of their mutual mental hyperæsthesia.
If women would gain anything with the suffrage that they cannot gain without it, one argument would exist in its favor to the many against it; but the cause of women has made great progress without it, and will, I hope, continue to do so. Even in the matter of obtaining greater facilities for
When we consider the losses that women would sustain with the suffrage carried into effect
bona fide,
the reasons in its favor dwindle out of sight. The first effect would be to render marriage more undesirable to women than it is now. A premium would be at once set on unmarried life for women, and the hetæra would become a more important person to herself and to the state, than the wife, because more independent. The number of men and women who would adopt some system of marriage without obligation would greatly increase. Confidence and sympathy between married people would be in many instances impaired; in fact, the first and many other steps would be taken in the process of weakening home affection, and there would follow a corresponding loss of its civilizing influences and a turning backward of the current of moral progress. The intervention of women in public affairs is to be dreaded also by those who desire peace among men. Both women and their male friends resent treatment for them which men would quite disregard as applied to themselves; and woman suffrage would see the introduction of more or less women into public life.
The devotional nature of women must not be left out of the account in considering this question. While this element is of immense value to that sex and to society when expended upon ethical themes, when it is allied to theological issues it becomes an obstruction to progress of the most serious nature. Were woman suffrage granted, theological questions would at once assume a new political importance, and religious liberty and toleration would have to pass through new perils and endure the test of new strains. What
Many objections would be nullified if women should vote under the immediate direction of their responsible male associate, except the one based on their exemption from the execution of the laws; but, should they so vote, woman suffrage becomes a farce, as it is to that extent where it now prevails. The very essential support given by women voters to polygamy in Utah is an illustration of this. In Wyoming men load up wagons with their women to drive them to the polls to
vote their own ticket,
as I have had the opportunity of seeing in that territory; and so they would do everywhere. If they wished to vote otherwise, they might stay at home; and it is to be expected that women would sometimes wish to vote “otherwise.”
What I have written does not include any reference to supposed inherent right to the suffrage or to any principles of representative government. This is because the view that suffrage is not a right but a privilege appears to the writer to be the most rational one, and because any system of government which tends to disturb the natural relations of the sexes I believe to be most injurious. In the absolute governments of Europe the home is safe whatever else may suffer; but a system which shall tend to the dissolution of the home is more dangerous than any form of absolutism which at the same time respects the social unit.
What America needs is not an extension, but a restriction of the suffrage.
The possibility of extending the suffrage to women must come into serious question. Our voting body is to-day so large, so unwieldy, as to form a serious menace to the institutions
This brings us to the question of whether the ballot is,
per se,
a human right. If it is, then it must be granted that there is no reason in logic why it should not be in the hands of women as well as of men. There is, however, no Nation that has not reserved to itself the right to declare who shall exercise its suffrages. The United States government has opened widest this door, but it is a growing question among statesmen, at home as well as abroad, whether it has done wisely in this respect. It must be remembered and can be remembered, too, with pure and partiotic loyalty, that this government is still in an experimental stage. We may believe it the republican idea, the American idea if you prefer so to style it, we may love our country, none the less that we are sorely troubled for her future; we may hope earnestly to see her ride triumphantly into safe harbor, but our faith, our love, our earnest hope cannot establish the success of this experiment if the logic of time shall prove to be against it. There is no argument from the Declaration of Independence to establish the natural right of women to the ballot. This government is not based upon the Declaration of Independence, but upon the Constitution, drawn and adopted by men who establish the government, and this Constitution defines who shall be entitled to vote.
It is claimed for the ballot that it would give to women a sense of responsibility which they do not possess. It is claimed by thoughtful friends, as well as by enemies of the Nation, that a serious defect in American character is the failure to accept and to discharge grave responsibilities in matters of government, as our blood-kin, the English, for instance, accept and discharge such. The sense of responsibility toward the government is not a characteristic of voting
The claim is made that working women in this state are handicapped as wage-earners, because they have not the franchise. If this claim can be substantiated it has a very direct bearing upon the whole question of enfranchising women; but those who make it are not very definite in explaining how this alleged handicap operates.
Certainly it does
not
operate to close the door of opportunity to women. The industrial field is to-day wide open to them, in this country, and American women have not been slow to enter it.
Several years ago I made a trip to the Orient. The last person I spoke to on American soil was a woman customs inspector, on the wharf at San Francisco. In Yokohama, going into store to make a purchase, I was waited upon by an American woman, and needing a stenographer, in Manila, I secured the services of an American girl who was one of the Court stenographers there.
It would be difficult, indeed, to find any employment in this country into which women may not enter, with no other handicap than their own limitations. We see them working side by side with men, in the arts and in the sciences; practically all the trades are open to them; all the industries; even the suffrage advocates admit that every avenue of employment is free to them.
These avenues, moreover, not as a result of the ballot, or of agitation for the franchise, but in the general course of the world's progress, in which women have had
But the claim is that this handicap operates against women as wage-earners. We are told that they must have the ballot to help them obtain the same pay as men, for equal services. We are not, however, told how the ballot will do this. Nor do the facts, under present circumstances, bear out the claim for it.
For a concrete instance: in the state of California, where, several years ago, a woman suffrage measure was defeated by popular vote, the salaries of women teachers in the public schools are the same as those of men holding similar positions; while in the state of Massachusetts, where women enjoy school suffrage, the women teachers are greatly underpaid, and in no case do they receive the same salaries as are paid to men for the same services.
The ballot is not one of the influences governing wages, either of men or of women. The conditions which regulate women's wages differ in different communities, in obedience to industrial conditions, and the law of supply and demand, In an agricultural state, like California, for instance, or a mining state, like Colorado, or in the great ranging states, like Wyoming and Montana, and others in the West, the men are largely in other than mercantile pursuits. The more usual industrial fields are left more open to women, who are not themselves sufficiently numerous to make competition excessive, and so their wages are higher.
In New York state, on the other hand, and throughout New England, where factories and commercial houses afford occupations to women, there are many applicants for every available position, women crowd the working ranks and wages are brought down. In these older and more crowded communities, too, the competition is greater, of women who need not be wholly self-supporting, and are therefore willing to work for less than a living wage. This is a potent factor in keeping women's wages down, and a factor which the ballot could not change.
Women who have passed the civil service examinations,
Men had the ballot for years, during which they strove, ineffectively, to keep wages up. In many cases the working-man's vote was but one more factor in the unscrupulous employer's power over the employe, and the enforced vote of labor kept oppression in power. Organization and co-operation are the means by which working men have been able to raise the scale of wages, and to keep it up; and these are means which women have not yet learned to use.
And how helpless the working man really is when he essays to become a political factor, has been demonstrated to us by the recent terrible object lesson in San Francisco, where a solidly united labor vote, of unquestionably honest working men, put into power men from among the working men's own leaders, who betrayed their constituency, robbed them, and well-nigh wrecked their city's government.
With the best of will to see things bettered, the working men were powerless to control the agents their own votes had elected. They were helpless to bring about a change until there arose in that city an independent leader; a man with no political ambitions, no political affiliations or obligations, whose boast it was that although a native-born American, he had never voted in his life.
We are told that when women can vote we shall have fairer and juster laws for woman's government; but the laws of this state, relating not merely to working women, but to all women, are exceedingly fair, and give women a distinct advantage over men in many ways.
By these laws women are afforded equal protection with men, in their property, and in their lives and liberties. In cases where the law does discriminate, it is in the women's favor. A married woman, for instance, has far freer control over her own property, however acquired, than a married man has over his. Her earnings, if she is a wage-worker,
A woman in business is exempt from arrest in an action for debt fraudulently contracted, though a man is not. A woman against whom a judgment for debt is obtained enjoys certain exemptions from execution that a man does not enjoy except when he has a family to provide for. There are, moreover, many special statutes designed to benefit and protect women employed in New York, as, for instance, the one which provides that a man may be imprisoned without privilege of bail, and that none of his property is exempt from execution, if he fails to pay the wages of a female employe up to fifty dollars.
We have seen, then, that in this state every field of employment is open to women; we have seen that the scale of women's wages is determined by considerations entirely apart from their political status, and that state legislation has been more than liberal in making laws for the protection and advantage of working women. Women are exempt, moreover, from all of the many personal taxes which are put upon male citizenship, such as the requirement to serve on jury, to help put out fires, to make arrests, to help quell riots, and to bear arms when the country's need requires it.
History furnishes many instances where people suffering under some injustice of a tyrannous government have banded together and demanded the suffrage to right their wrongs. But it has remained for the enlightened 20th century to witness the birth and development, not only in this country but also in England, of a well organized movement among an unenfranchised class against having the suffrage forced
We claim that it would be inexpedient—contrary to all the interests of good government merely to double the electorate in this country by giving the ballot to all women, unless such an increase would insure a higher standard of intelligence in the majority of votes cast. In considering this point we cannot afford to ignore the fact that all women are not cultured, educated, intelligent and upright, but that unfortunately there are those among our sex who are ignorant, vicious and depraved. An advocate of woman suffrage has recently said, “No person, however unreasonable, maintains that all women
are
honorable, and no reasonable person fails to realize that political power will uncover a certain amount of moral weakness in women now passing as honorable. But the vote is not withheld from men on the plea that politics give dishonorable men a chance to profit by their crookedness; nor reasonable person then can agree that it should be withheld from women for that cause.” This is scarcely a plea for good government. Two wrongs do not make a right. If we have made the mistake of giving dishonorable
Every woman who has the welfare of humanity at heart welcomed the famous decision of the Supreme Court at Washington two years ago which declared constitutional a law limiting the hours of woman's work in factories on the ground that as the mother of the race she had a right to such protection which the man working by her side did not possess. Within the past two months the Supreme Court of Illinois has handed down a similar opinion based on practically the same grounds, upholding as constitutional a law in that state limiting the work of women in factories, mechanical establishments or laundries to ten hours. Such decisions are bound to be far reaching in effect, and will serve to crystallize public opinion to the necessity of shorter hours and better protection for the women worker if we are to have a strong and vigorous race.
A brief review of some of the laws of the several states shows how much has been done in this direction, but the assertion that the laws for the protection of working women are better in the states where women vote than they are in the states were they do not vote, is not borne out by the facts of the case. In 38 states there are special laws of some kind for the comfort or safety of working women. There is no law of this kind on the statute books of Idaho. In 20
Equal pay for men and women teachers does not hold good in Colorado, for we are told that the difference in the salaries of men and women teachers in that state, instead of being unusually small, is unusually large.
A brief review of some of the laws affecting a woman's property rights will suffice to show that in this respect also woman is as well off in the non-suffrage states as she is in those where she does her own voting. Women's rights of inheritance in their husbands’ estate, for instance, are either equal or greater than those of the husband in forty states. In Idaho, not only are the property rights in favor of the husband, but a woman's property may be seized to pay a husband's debts. In that state also and five other states the husband has control of the community property, whereas in 27 states all of a married woman's property is free. In 38 states the earnings of married women are secured to them.
No one will deny that under the old Common Law woman suffered from many legal disabilities, but during the past fifty years these have not only been removed, but men have granted her legal rights and privileges which in many instances far exceed his own. Are the women who are demanding the suffrage ready to foreswear these privileges and immunities the day the ballot is placed in their hands? If so, will they not be striking rather a poor bargain by giving up more than they will get? Yet this seems to be a very fair proposition. Why should they retain all their rights and privileges if what they wish is to be man's equal?
This question suggests another point. Will man continue to feel the same responsibility for woman's welfare if women have the ballot and can legislate for themselves? I fear not, and I believe that any change in our social order which tends to lessen man's responsibility toward woman is greatly to be regretted, for as woman's natural protector some of the noblest traits in a man's character are developed.
We grant there may still be minor instances in some state where the law discriminates against women, but there is sufficient evidence that “the subjection of woman” is a worn-out phrase, since she is not suffering from any gross injustice by reason of our so-called man-made laws. To force her into the political arena to fight her own battles when man has legislated so greatly in her favor, would seem like flying in the face of Providence.
Many earnest and sincere women declare they want to vote because they wish to take a hand in what they call municipal house-cleaning. More schools are needed, more parks and playgrounds; better tenements and cleaner streets. Give us the ballot, they argue, and all these things shall come to pass. Now there enthusiastic would-be-house-cleaners fail to take one point into consideration, and a very important point it is. Under our form of government clean streets and model tenements are not voted for at the polls. In other words, men do not vote for measures, but for men whom they hope will carry out policies in which the voter believes. But a candidate for political office may be elected
Under the present conditions of government woman as a non-partisan citizen is a power in any community, for untrammelled by party affiliation or obligations, she can go before any legislative committee or board of officials and urge the passage of any law or measure, and her recommendations will be considered on their merits, and not because she voted with this or that party at the last election. There are probably many in this audience this evening who could speak with authority on this subject and cite instances where they have been sponsors for some remedial measure which is now on the statute books of some city or state. The Equal guardianship law in New York is a case in point. That bill was introduced in the Legislature through the influence of the Woman's educational and industrial union in Buffalo. In speaking of this law the President of that Association said, “It passed both Houses without a dissenting
It is a mistake to suppose that the great majority of women want to vote. They do not. In proof of which we state the following facts, which can easily be verified. We mention first the Massachusetts referendum of 1895, in which the women of that state, which was one of the earliest and strongest advocates of suffrage for women, were invited to put themselves on record, by the same means that men do, and under the same conditions, as to whether or not they desired the ballot. Less than four per cent of all the women of the state, of voting age, expressed such a desire, and that in spite of the earnest efforts of the suffragist agitators to call out a large affirmative vote. The propositions was ingloriously defeated all over the state, from Cape Cod to the Berkshire Hills, no measure having ever met with so overwhelming an overthrow in the state. Very naturally a proposition for a similar referendum in New York state in 1910 was strongly opposed by the suffragists.
School suffrage, now granted in about half our states, has been a lamentable failure, the woman vote averaging scarcely 2 per cent in any state. In the state of Ohio the number of women responding to the privilege has been so small, and the expense of registering and counting it has been so relatively large, that it has been seriously proposed to withdraw it altogether.
In Chicago, in the election of November 8, 1910, where women are allowed to vote for university trustees, in spite of the earnest efforts of the suffragists to bring out the full woman vote of the city, its population being counted by millions, 490 females registered, and of these but 243 voted.
Several years ago it was proposed to send a monster petition, signed by a million women, to the Congress of the United States. The changes upon this petition were continually rung in our ears, and the petition itself was circulated throughout the country, and women's names were sought, begged, entreated and cajoled in every possible way. During the last session of Congress (1910) the petition was carried to Washington, with great noise of trumpets and tooting of automobiles, but when the signatures were examined they were found to number less than half a million; to be exact, women 163,438, men 122,382, and 119,005 described by the presenters as “unclassified.” We do not know exactly what this term implies, but it has been suggested that they may be babes and children, whose names were enrolled on the supposition that when they were grown up they would not doubt be suffragists. The population of the United States according to the census of 1910, is considerably more than 90,000,000. We decline to figure out the insignificant percentage of the number which the names signed to this petition, represent.
But it is said that women vote in Colorado and the other states where the full vote is allowed, as freely as the men. To this we reply, that the rivalry of parties forces out many unwilling voters, on both sides, including women who vote at the solicitation of men anxious for the passage of certain measures, as well as the illiterate and immoral who are the prey of bosses and ringsters. We have testimony to this fact from both suffrage and anti-suffrage sources. We cite first a long and impartial article in the Ladies’ Home Journal of November 1st, 1910, a paper having a circulation of more than a million copies. It sent Mr. Richard Barry, a well known writer on sociological topics to Colorado with instructions to prepare a full and accurate account of the results of woman suffrage in the suffrage states, and his statements we know to be confirmed by the testimony of many estimable women in Colorado, who state that they are not nearly as free in working for philanthropic measures as in
Mr. Barry's testimony on this as well as upon many other points is very strong, but too long to be transcribed entire. For our present purpose we prefer to quote from a book prepared by Dr. Helen L. Sumner, a woman suffragist, who spent two years in Colorado at the request of an Equal suffrage association in New York, to prepare a true and unbiased account of the effect of suffrage upon the individual and society. Her statement of facts coincides so generally with that of Mr. Barry, that if her individual theories and conclusions were cut out of it, the book might almost as well be used an ant-suffrage as suffrage campaign literature.
Dr. Sumner says (page 258), speaking of the woman vote, “Its effect upon party politics has been slight.” “In 1906 a woman sat through the sessions of one of the long tedious conventions in Denver with a nine-weeks-old baby in her arms. Neither she nor her husband believed in woman an suffrage but her husband held a political position.” She also quotes, with apparent approval, “Woman's sense of honor has been blunted,” “Women have been made bolder and more self assertive.” A county chairman over his own signature testified “In the last campaign women who sold their influence agreed to work for both parties for cash—the highest price paid $25, lowest $5. I myself bought one woman for $10 when the Democrats bought her for $15, and we have her endorsement on both checks.” There are many pages in Dr. Sumner's book which strikingly confirm Mr. Barry's statements.
As regards the boasted improvement in morals consequent upon the woman's vote, in a table of statistics, gathered from public sources in Colorado, where women have voted since 1896, Mr. Barry shows conclusively that there has been a steady decline in the morals of the states of idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado in regard to marriage and divorce since they were admitted to suffrage. Illiteracy is
Woman does not need the ballot to make her equal with man. If she faithfully performs the duties which nature lays upon her, and upon her alone, she is not only his equal, but more than his equal. It is as the mother of men that she reigns supreme. To lower this attitude by claiming for her a material equality is to reduce her from a powerful and beneficent necessity, to a weak and lamentable copy of the original type from which she was so wisely and beneficently segregated.
As a proof that without the ballot women are to a good degree and increasingly, fulfilling this intention, we instance the progress which has been made during th last decade in the pursuits of the domestic arts and sciences, in the care and proper upbringing of children, in the regulation of the hygienic and moral conditions in our schools, and in bringing to light and commenting upon the evil and vicious social theories, which have so long hidden themselves from the public view, and many other needed and valuable reforms. In all these lines of progress women have been either the originators of public beneficence, or its faithful and untiring helpers.
The public part of this work has not been, could not have been done by the universal suffrage of all women, young and old, wise and foolish, indifferent and thoughtful, as it has been done by voluntary or appointed officials, chosen from the ranks of tried and experienced women, upon whose judgment and unselfishness the public has learned to rely, and the reason that as a rule stand higher in the world's
The independent position of American women in the home and society is the wonder of Europe. Scarcely an intelligent foreigner, man or woman, who comes to us, but expresses this astonishment. The burdens which nature puts upon women everywhere, they bear in common with their sex, but under circumstances of such freedom, homage and chivalrous respect as obtain nowhere else in the world. Their rights, privileges and immunities as faithful wives and mothers, although they may not attain to the perfect ideal, are nevertheless beyond what any other body of women enjoy.
The history of American legislation proves that for fifty years or more men have been busy, often quite of their own unsolicited good-will, in improving the legal status of women in matters of property rights, inheritance rights and the custody of their children. And these prerogatives extend far beyond woman's immediate social and domestic sphere. It is the testimony of many excellent women workers in philanthropic enterprises, both public and private, that when legal aid is necessary in carrying out their plans for the well being of the poor and unfortunate, if they go to the legislatures as women, not as politicians working in connection with any political party, they have no difficulty in gaining their ends; while as members of opposing parties their bills would be held up session after session. Thoughtful women who are engaged in the highest enterprises of womanhood, home making and soul building, the work of social amelioration, and the care of the poor and unfortunate, cannot see how they would be the gainers by possessing the ballot.
There are three points of view from which woman today ought to consider herself—as an individual, as a member of a family, as a member of the state. Every woman stands in those three relations to American life. Every woman's duties and rights cluster along those three lines; and any change in woman's status that involves all of them needs to be very carefully considered by every thoughtful woman.
The proposal that women should vote affects each one of these three relations deeply. It is then a propsal that the American woman has been considering for sixty years, without accepting it. Other questions, which have been only individual, as the higher education for such individual women as desire it, or the opening of various trades and professions to such individual women as desire to enter them have not required any such thought or hesitation. They are individual, and individuals have decided on them and accepted them. But this great suffrage question, involving not only the individual, but the family and the state, has hung fire. There are grave objections to woman suffrage on all these three counts. Sixty years of argument and of effort on the part of the suffragists have not in the least changed these arguments, because they rest on the great fundamental facts of human nature and of human government. The suffrage is “a reform against nature” and such reforms are worse than valueless.
Let us take these three points of view singly. Why, in the first place, is the vote a mistake for women as individuals? I will begin discussing that by another question. “How many of you have leisure to spare now, without the vote?” The claims upon a woman's time, in this twentieth century, are greater than ever before. Woman, in her progress, has taken up many important things to deal with, and has already overloaded herself beyond her strength. If she is working-woman, her day is full—fuller than that of a workingman, since she has to attend, in many cases, to home
For no good woman lives to herself. She has always been part of a family as wife or sister or daughter from the time of Eve. ... The American home is the foundation of American strength and progress. And in the American home woman has her own place and her own duty to the family.
It is an axiom in physics that two things cannot be in the same place at the same time. Woman, as an individual,
The family demands from a woman her very best. Her highest interests, and her unceasing care, must be in home life, if her home is to be what it ought to be. Here is where the vote for woman comes in as a disturbing factor. The vote is part of man's work. Ballot-box, cartridge box, jury box, sentry box, all go together in his part of life. Woman cannot step in and take the responsibilities and duties of voting without assuming his place very largely. The vote is a symbol of government, and leads at once into the atmosphere of politics; to make herself an intelligent voter (and no other kind is wanted) a woman must study up the subject on which she is to vote and cast her ballot with a personal knowledge of current politics in every detail. She must take it all from her husband, which means that he is thus given two votes instead of one, not equal suffrage, but a double suffrage for the man.
Home is meant to be a restful place, not agitated by the turmoil of outside struggles. It is man's place to support and defend the family, and so to administer the state that the family shall flourish in peace. He is the outside worker. Woman is the one whose place it is to bear and rear the
The individualism of woman, in these modern days, is a threat to the family. There is one divorce in America nowadays to every dozens marrages. There are thousands of young women who crowd into factory or mill or office in preference to home duties. There is an impatience of ties and responsibilities, a restlessness, a fever for “living one's own life,” that is unpleasantly noticeable. The desire for the vote is part of this restlessness, this grasping for power that shall have no responsibility except to drop a paper into a ballot box, this ignorant desire to do “the work of the world” instead of one's own appointed work. If women had conquered their own part of life perfectly, one might wish to see them thus leave it and go forth to set the world to rights. But on the contrary, never were domestic conditions so badly attended to. Until woman settles the servant question, how can she ask to run the government?
This brings us to the third point, which is, the effect on the state of a vote for women. Let us keep in mind , always, that in America we cannot argue about municipal suffrage, or taxpaying suffrage, or limited suffrage of any kind—“to one end they must all come” that of unrestricted woman suffrage, white and colored, illiterate and collegebred alike having the ballot. America recognized no other way. Do not get the mistaken idea—which the suffragists cleverly present all the while that the English system of municipal or restricted suffrage, or the Danish system, or any other system, is like ours. It is
not
. Other countries have restricted forms of suffrage by which individual women can be sorted out, so to speak. But America has equal manhood suffrage ingrained in her very state, in her very law. Once begin to give the suffrage to women, and there is but one end in this country. The question is always with us, “What effect will unrestricted female suffrage have on the state?” We must answer that question or beg the subject.
One thing sure—the women's vote would be an indifferent one. The majority of women do not want to vote—even the suffragists acknowledge that. Therefore, if given the vote, they would not be eager voters. There would be a number of highly enthusiastic suffrage voters—for a whole. But when the coveted privilege became a commonplace, or even an irksome duty, the stay-at-home vote would grow larger and larger. The greatest trouble in politics to-day is the indifferent vote among men. Equal suffrage would add a larger indifferent vote among women.
Then there is the corrupt vote to-day. Among men it is bad enough. But among women it would be much worse. What, for example, would the Tenderloin woman's vote be in New York? for good measures and better city politics? In Denver, it has been found to work just as might be supposed, and in Denver the female ward politics appeared full-fledged in the Shafroth case, in the full swing of bribery and fraud. Unrestricted suffrage must reckon with all kinds of women, you see—and the unscrupulous woman will use her vote for what it is worth and for corrupt ends.
Today, without the vote, the women who are intelligent and interested in public affairs use their ability and influence for good measures. And the indifferent woman does not matter. The unscrupulous woman has no vote. We get the best, and bar out the rest. The state gets all the benefit of its best women, and none of the danger from its worst women. The situation is too beneficial to need any change in the name of progress. We have now two against one, a fine majority, the good men and the good women against the unscrupulous men. Equal suffrage would make it two to two—the good men and the good women against the unscrupulous men and the unscrupulous women—a tie vote between good and evil instead of a safe majority for good.
Then, beside the indifferent vote and the corrupt vote, there would be, in equal suffrage, a well-meaning, unorganized votes—it is run by organized parties. To get results, one vote is absurd. An effectual vote means organization; and organization means primaries and conventions and caucuses and office-holding, and work, and work, and more work. A ballot dropped in a box is not government, or power. This is what men are fighting out in politics, and we women ought to understand their problem. One reason that I, personally—do not want the ballot is that I have been brought up in the middle of politics in a state that is full of them, and I know the labor they entail on public-spirited men. Politics, to me, does not mean unearned power, or the registering of one's opinion on public affairs—it means hard work, incessant organization and combination, continual perseverance against disappointment and betrayal, steadfast effort for small and hard-fought advance. I have seen too many friends and relatives in that battle to want to push any woman into it. And unless one goes into the battle the ballot is of no force. The suffragists do not expect to. They expect and urge—that all that will be necessary will be for each woman to “register her opinion” and cast her ballot and go home.
Where would the state be then—with an indifferent vote,
No one expects woman's suffrage to be refused in any country where popular self-government prevails whenever the majority of women themselves make it clear that they desire to vote. Heretofore the greatest obstacle to woman's suffrage has been the indifference of women themselves. To those who advocate the bestowal of the ballot upon women whether they wish it or not this indifference has been particularly irritating, because they feel that such indifference cannot be overcome until women themselves experience the exhilaration of voting. A news item in the London “Times,” however, indicates that even the experience of dropping ballots into a box does not necessarily convert women to the view that it is their duty to bear the burden of the suffrage. According to this item, the Women's national anti-suffrage league has made a canvass of women who have the franchise in municipal elections. It has inquired of them whether they were in favor of extending their duties to include political franchise. For this purpose, districts were selected representing a variety of population—typical of London, of large provincial cities, of country towns, and of agricultural villages.
Mr. Owen Lovejoy, Secretary of the National child labor committee, in his report of the proceedings at Birmingham, Alabama in March, 1911 says:
“The States which do not require proof of the child's age or at least any proof worthy the name are Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Wisconsin, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
“Our agents have frequently found eight, nine and ten year old boys applying for work in these states upon affidavits certifying them to be fourteen or sixteen years of age.
“When we lay upon the greedy parent the temptation to deceive in order to secure employment for a child we are guilty of placing the burden upon the weak, where it does not belong and promoting perjury by process of law.”
It will be noticed that the four equal suffrage states are all in Mr. Lovejoy's list. The truth is that the suffrage states, far from being in the van of remedial legislation for children, have been laggards in the work. Not one of them has been a pioneer in the movement, but they have always followed the lead of other states in child labor laws and usually long after these laws have been incorporated in the statutes of adjoining states.
The Juvenile law of Colorado is deservedly famous
The National child labor committee has prepared a model child labor law for uniform legislation. It has followed the principle of embodying in the text the best provisions contained in the laws of the various states. The bill contains 49 sections and the following table shows the number of these model provisions already enacted in the suffrage states, and those of similar locality and conditions. Of 49 provisions of this model law we find the law of—
Wyoming contains none
Idaho contains none
Colorado contains 7
Utah contains 8
California contains 12
Oregon contains 14
Oklahoma contains 15
North Dakota contains 15
Minnesota contains 20
Nebraska contains 25
Wisconsin contains 27
These facts are not given with intention of disparaging the work of the four equal suffrage states, but merely to disprove the claim of the suffragists that if women were given the ballot they would bring about better laws, for the protection of children than exist under male suffrage. Neither can they claim that the inadequacies of the law are due solely to the conditions of life and labor in a western and chiefly agricultural community, for we find Montana, Nebraska, Oregon and Oklahoma with better provisions and more inclusive laws.
Mrs. Florence Kelley, Secretary of the National consumer's league says:—
“It is perhaps not surprising that the state with the most sweeping provision that no child below the age of sixteen years shall be employed in any gainful occupation is Montana which has no occasion for employing children except as telegraph or messenger boys and is subject, therefore to less temptation than the rest of us”: and she adds, “next best perhaps after Montana comes a great industrial state.”
“In Ohio after six o'clock at night no girl under eighteen years old and no boy under sixteen can be employed in gainful occupation. If we take down the receiver of a telephone in Cleveland or Cincinnati at night, it is not a young girl's voice that answers any more than it would be in New Orleans. Louisiana and Ohio share, I believe, alone the honor due to their humane provision that all night work, to which elsewhere we are so cruelly accustomed shall be done not by young girls, not be any young person—a boy under 16 or a girl under 18 years old—but by older people, who do not suffer so cruelly from loss of sleep.” Would women with the ballot have accomplished more for child labor in these states than they have accomplished without it? The experience of equal suffrage states disproves it.
Women have a restricted suffrage in India, in Cape Colony, in Italy, in Austro-Hungary, even in Russia, but in each of these instances it is the woman who holds property who votes because of that property and not the woman who votes because of her need of representation as a woman.
In 1906 the Czar granted adult suffrage for the men and women of Finland over 24 years of age, and in the present Diet of that Province, 26 women are seated out of a total membership of 200; but this Diet is not a representative assembly with the power of taking initiative in legislation, or enforcing legislation. Twice a week for about three months in the year, the members meet to consider laws proposed by
Votes for women is apparently not what the French women ask for. In October, 1908, for the first time, women as well as men employed in trade and business had by a new law a vote for the election of “Conseils de Prudhommes” the judge of special commercial courts. The returns show that only 24 per 1,000 women availed themselves of this new privileges. Moreover, this small minority consists entirely of female clerks employed in one on two large banks, whose names in every case had been put down by their employers themselves. Not one single woman engaged in trade had taken the trouble even to enter her name in the registers. The matter is an important one, as all trade disputes are decided by that tribunal. Yet up to date exactly eight women in France have put their names down on the registers out of the thousands who are principals or partners of business of their own in France, where there are probably more trade and industrial undertakings in feminine hands than in any other country. Perhaps that is why they present a sublime indifference to the suffrage.
But what of Norway, Sweden and Denmark—countries more closely allied in institutions to our government? A recent suffrage writer names Norway as a country where women have
full
suffrage. What are the facts? In June, 1907, the Storthings rejected a bill providing for universal suffrage, but adopted a bill granting women the parliamentary franchise on the same conditions as are prescribed in the case of municipal electors. That is, all women over 25 years of age who pay taxes on an income (they have an income tax in Norway) enjoyed by themselves or husbands, have the vote. Here again we have a property qualification and it is worthy of notice that the population of Norway is one of common origin, a homogeneous people, whose problem is one of emigration rather than of immigration, and that the entire country has a population about one-half that of New York City. A year after this limited parliamentary franchise was granted to women in Norway, a bill was
In April, 1908, Denmark gave a communal vote to women, with qualifications similar to those in Norway; that is, “females over 25 years of age, who are tax-payers or the wives of tax-payers, are entitled to vote.” On March 12th last, for the first time, women of Denmark exercised this franchise. A writer in the New York
Sun
says that “half the city voters in the new franchise are women and they seemed to dominate the election. There were crowds of women around the polling booths before they opened. Shelters were specially provided for children-laden perambulators while the mothers voted. They were largely patronized.”
Queen Louise of Denmark, in addressing the women employees of a great millinery establishment, urged these women to use their right to vote, and said: “When women have secured the suffrage, they should use it.” A claim anti-suffragists have always urged when they were told that only those need use the ballot who wished so to do. Denmark, like Norway, has a homogeneous people, and a government so free from corruption as to amaze visiting Americans. The population of the entire kingdom is less than the population of the city of Paris. Norway and Denmark together scarcely equal the population of New York City and Boston. These comparisons will point the way to a very careful consideration of how far the success of woman suffrage in communities so unlike our own can be taken as a proof that this “revolutionary change” as Mr. Gladstone called full suffrage for women, is desirable in our country.
Many interesting speakers have come to us from England recently; some of them have admitted that woman's condition here without the ballot is so superior to the condition of women in England that were they citizens of this country, they would hesitate to ask for the ballot lest they by so doing exchanged substance for shadow. Many of these speakers,
New Zealand has had woman suffrage now in municipal and general elections for 16 years, and we are told to look at New Zealand if we would see how woman suffrage works, as if Macaulay's New Zealander were already sitting on the ruined arch of London Bridge. Mr. Reeves in 1900 said that woman suffrage had been a negative success in New Zealand, not altering the results of elections; and he also said that he could not imagine woman suffrage operating for good here where we have so large a proportion of illiteracy. In Massachusetts there are 50,000 illiterate men out of 550,000 voters, not quite 9 per cent. The proportion of illiterate women would be as great. But in New Zealand less than 1 per cent of the population is illiterate. New Zealand's distress because of financial difficulties, her loss in population, her many communistic theories, are slow in proving that woman suffrage has been of help in that country.
Turning to England, we find that no woman has the parliamentary vote and as the scope of parliamentary legislation includes all that is delegated in this country to our state as well as to our national assemblies, plus something of municipal legislation, it will be seen that is left a portion only of municipal suffrage as that term is generally understood here. Municipal suffrage for women as petitioned for in this country is not like municipal suffrage as exercised by women in Great Britain or anywhere else. Mr. Albert Shaw in his volume on Municipal government in Great Britain says: “Every woman who is at the head of a family,—that is, has no husband to act for her, or is at the head of a business, and pays up to prescribed rate of tax,—is given the right to vote for municipal officers and also for parish officers.” Under the local government act of 1894 married as well as single women are allowed to vote for or be chosen as parish counsellors, guardians or district counsellors, or as members of London vestries and district boards, positions practically equivalent to membership on our boards of philanthropy and education. In 1907, the Campbell-Bannerman government by the Woman's qualification act granted the right to serve on all local government bodies to all qualified women, the qualifications being almost the same as for men. Outside of London no married woman—that is, no woman whose husband is living, can vote or served on a town or country council, but in London there is no such disqualification. The London
Times,
under date of September 6, 1907, fittingly says: “The position of woman and
Women in American without the ballot are much more widely represented in various bodies appointed by governors and elected by the people than in England. And the laws of this country affecting women and children are far in advance of those in Great Britain. If we are ready to copy England's municipal suffrage for women, are we also prepared to adopt her cumulative vote for school boards, or plural vote whereby owners and, as they call renters in England, “occupiers” are like entitled to from one to six
Here in New York within a week you have seen sandwich women walking about whose boards declared “In Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado, women vote on equal terms with men; why not in New York?” The answer is not far to seek. For forty years women have had full suffrage in Wyoming. The population of that state is about equal to that of Albany. The laws of these four states are not superior to the laws of the older states where women do not vote. The entire population of that four states is less than the population of the state of Maryland, and about one-third the population of New York city, while the total area of these four states is about eight times the area of New York state. Colorado is the only one of these states where conditions are in any way comparable to those which exist in our more densely populated areas, but so good an authority as the late General W. J. Palmer declared that woman suffrage in his state was a failure and did more harm than good. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman said to a gathering of college women this winter that woman suffrage where it existed has not purified politics. These four western equal suffrage states are the only states recognized on the suffrage flag. They are “the true states”—stars of yellow on a field of blue. Oregon, in June of 1908, by a decisive majority—twice that of the majority of 1906 refused a constitutional amendment. Twenty-nine counties gave a majority of 21,000 and over against woman suffrage. Four counties (there are 33 counties in the state of Oregon) gave majorities of 7, 18, 31, and 34 in favor of woman suffrage; two of these latter are on the Pacific Ocean; one is in the center of the state; and one borders on the state of Idaho, where women have had full
In some states of the Union women have a vote on questions of taxation, that is, women tax-payers have a right to vote upon question submitted to
tax-payers.
The only states which has municipal suffrage for women is Kansas, where it was granted in 1887. Repeated attempts to enlarge this municipal suffrage to state and federal suffrage in Kansas have failed. Happy augury for us, if we remember the dictum of Kipling's walking delegate: “What the horses of Kansas think of to-day, the horses of America will think to-morrow
an’ I tell you
that when the horses of America rise in their might, the day of the oppressor is ended.” Since the legislatures of 1908 and 1909 have convened, the suffragists have been particularly active; yet they have been defeated in Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Iowa, in the latter by a three to one vote. Your Committee on the Judiciary reported eleven to two in favor of the conservative woman, and Massachusetts on a question of submission to the voters of a proposition to strike out the word “male” from the qualification of voters in the Constitution of Massachusetts went on record with the largest majority ever given in that state to a similar proposition, 171 noes to 54 yeas.
In 1838 widows in Kentucky were given the school suffrage. From time to time women in 29 states have been given a vote in the election of school officers. In 1879, after repeated demands for women suffrage, the Massachusetts Legislature granted school suffrage to women. No poll tax is even assessed; a woman who is a citizen of Massachusetts, may merely register and vote. The suffrage leaders said in those days of 1879, “Give us the school suffrage and we will show you that women are in earnest when they ask for the ballot. Women can easily be informed on school matters; the school is an interest near to every woman's heart. We will show you what women can do.” And they have shown
The problem for solution to-day is the administration of our cities. More than one-quarter of our population lives within these cities. It is in the government of our cities that our political machinery is breaking down under universal manhood suffrage and graft and corruption are creeping in. The education, the training of the present great number of voters, many of them uninformed in our American traditions, is task enough for those who would make our municipalities clean and sound. Any patriotic woman must hesitate before she asks that a body of voters, untrained in matters of politics, unused to habits of thought along business or political lines, shall be added to the already complicated problem which faces those who would make sound our boy politics. American woman to-day, as women of all times have done, set the standards and ideals of society. Out task is before us. The formation of public opinion is in our hands and in the last analysis, we are governed by public opinion. The exceptional woman is more powerful to-day in her civic work because she works without a partisan motive. To admit all women to the franchise would double the number of voters and unless we are prepared to assume that woman has greater political wisdom than man, the result would not benefit the state, while the process would cripple the energies, the activities, and the influence of public-spirited women.
JK1881
.N357
Sec. VII, no. 76
Rare BK
Coll.