Many German-Americans are warm friends of woman suffrage; but the editors
of "Puck," it seems, are not. In a certain number of that comic journal,
there was an unfavorable cartoon on this reform; and in a following
number,--the number, by the way, which contains that amusing illustration
of the vast seaside hotels of the future, with the cheering announcement,
"Only one mile to the barber's shop," and "Take the cars to the
dining-room,"--a lady came to the rescue, and bravely defended woman
suffrage. It seems that the original cartoon depicted in the corner a
pretty family scene, representing father, mother, and children seated
happily together, with the melancholy motto, "Nevermore, nevermore!"
And when the correspondent, Mrs. Blake, very naturally asks what this
touching picture has to do with woman suffrage, Puck says, "If the
husband in our 'pretty family scene' should propose to vote for the
candidate who was obnoxious to his wife, would this 'pretty family
scene' continue to be a domestic paradise, or would it remind the
spectator of the region in which Dante spent his 'fortnight off'?"
It is beautiful to see how much anxiety there is to preserve the family.
Every step in the modification of the old common law, whereby the wife was,
in Baron Alderson's phrase, "the servant of her husband," was resisted as
tending to endanger the family. The proposal that the wife should control
her own earnings, so that her husband should not have the right to collect
them in order to pay his gambling debts, was declared by English advocates,
in the celebrated case of the Hon. Mrs. Norton, the poetess, to imperil all
the future peace of British households.
Even the liberal-minded "Punch," about the time Girton College was founded
in England, expressed grave doubts whether the harmony of wedded unions
would not receive a blow, from the time when wives should be liable to know
more Greek than their husbands. Yet the marriage relation has withstood
these innovations. It has not been impaired, either by separate rights,
private earnings, or independent Greek: can it be possible that a little
voting will overthrow it?
The very ground on which woman suffrage is opposed by its enemies might
assuage these fears. If, as we are told, women will not take the pains to
vote except upon the strongest inducements, who has so good an opportunity
as the husband to bring those inducements to bear? and, if so, what is the
separation? Or if, as we are told, women will merely reflect their
husbands' political opinions, why should they dispute about them? The mere
suggestion of a difference deep enough to quarrel for, implies a real
difference of convictions or interests, and indicates that there ought to
be an independent representation of each; unless we fall back, once for
all, on the common-law tradition that man and wife are one, and that one is
the husband. Either the antagonisms which occur in politics are
comparatively superficial, in which case they would do no harm; or else
they touch matters of real interest and principle, in which case every
human being has a right to independent expression, even at a good deal of
risk. In either case, the objection falls to the ground.
We have fortunately a means of testing, with some fairness of estimate, the
probable amount of this peril. It is generally admitted--and certainly no
German-American will deny--that the most fruitful sources of hostility and
war in all times have been religious, not political. All merely political
antagonism, certainly all which is possible in a republic, fades into
insignificance before this more powerful dividing influence. Yet we leave
all this great explosive force in unimpeded operation,--at any
moment it may be set in action, in any one of those "pretty family scenes"
which "Puck" depicts,--while we are solemnly warned against admitting the
comparatively mild peril of a political difference! It is like cautioning a
manufacturer of dynamite against the danger of meddling with mere
edge-tools. Even with all the intensity of feeling on religious matters,
few families are seriously divided by them; and the influence of political
differences would be still more insignificant.
The simple fact is that there is no better basis for union than mutual
respect for each other's opinions; and this can never be obtained
without an intelligent independence, "I would rather have a thorn in my
side than an echo," said Emerson of friendship; and the same is true of
married life. It is the echoes, the nonentities, of whom men grow tired; it
is the women with some flavor of individuality who keep the hearts of their
husbands. This is only applying in a higher sense what Shakespeare's
Cleopatra saw. When her handmaidens are questioning how to hold a lover,
and one says,--
"Give way to him in all: cross him in nothing,"--