of the prostitute, can alone help to ameliorate present conditions.
Wilful shutting of eyes and ignoring of the evil as a social factor
of modern life, can but aggravate matters. We must rise above our
foolish notions of "better than thou," and learn to recognize in the
prostitute a product of social conditions. Such a realization will
sweep away the attitude of hypocrisy, and insure a greater
understanding and more humane treatment. As to a thorough
eradication of prostitution, nothing can accomplish that save a
complete transvaluation of all accepted values--especially the moral
ones--coupled with the abolition of industrial slavery.
[1] Dr. Sanger, THE HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION.
[2] It is a significant fact that Dr. Sanger's book has been excluded
from the U. S. mails. Evidently the authorities are not anxious that
the public be informed as to the true cause of prostitution.
[3] Havelock Ellis, SEX AND SOCIETY.
[4] Guyot, LA PROSTITUTION.
[5] Banger, CRIMINALITE ET CONDITION ECONOMIQUE.
[6] SEX AND SOCIETY.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE
We boast of the age of advancement, of science, and progress. Is it
not strange, then, that we still believe in fetich worship? True,
our fetiches have different form and substance, yet in their power
over the human mind they are still as disastrous as were those of
old.
Our modern fetich is universal suffrage. Those who have not yet
achieved that goal fight bloody revolutions to obtain it, and those
who have enjoyed its reign bring heavy sacrifice to the altar of this
omnipotent deity. Woe to the heretic who dare question that
divinity!
Woman, even more than man, is a fetich worshipper, and though her
idols may change, she is ever on her knees, ever holding up her
hands, ever blind to the fact that her god has feet of clay. Thus
woman has been the greatest supporter of all deities from time
immemorial. Thus, too, she has had to pay the price that only gods
can exact,--her freedom, her heart's blood, her very life.
Nietzsche's memorable maxim, "When you go to woman, take the whip
along," is considered very brutal, yet Nietzsche expressed in one
sentence the attitude of woman towards her gods.
Religion, especially the Christian religion, has condemned woman to
the life of an inferior, a slave. It has thwarted her nature and
fettered her soul, yet the Christian religion has no greater
supporter, none more devout, than woman. Indeed, it is safe to say
that religion would have long ceased to be a factor in the lives of
the people, if it were not for the support it receives from woman.
The most ardent churchworkers, the most tireless missionaries the
world over, are women, always sacrificing on the altar of the gods
that have chained her spirit and enslaved her body.
The insatiable monster, war, robs woman of all that is dear and
precious to her. It exacts her brothers, lovers, sons, and in return
gives her a life of loneliness and despair. Yet the greatest
supporter and worshiper of war is woman. She it is who instills the
love of conquest and power into her children; she it is who whispers
the glories of war into the ears of her little ones, and who rocks
her baby to sleep with the tunes of trumpets and the noise of guns.
It is woman, too, who crowns the victor on his return from the
battlefield. Yes, it is woman who pays the highest price to that
insatiable monster, war.
Then there is the home. What a terrible fetich it is! How it saps
the very life-energy of woman,--this modern prison with golden bars.
Its shining aspect blinds woman to the price she would have to pay as
wife, mother, and housekeeper. Yet woman clings tenaciously to the
home, to the power that holds her in bondage.
It may be said that because woman recognizes the awful toll she is
made to pay to the Church, State, and the home, she wants suffrage to
set herself free. That may be true of the few; the majority of
suffragists repudiate utterly such blasphemy. On the contrary, they
insist always that it is woman suffrage which will make her a better
Christian and homekeeper, a staunch citizen of the State. Thus
suffrage is only a means of strengthening the omnipotence of the very
Gods that woman has served from time immemorial.
What wonder, then, that she should be just as devout, just as
zealous, just as prostrate before the new idol, woman suffrage. As
of old, she endures persecution, imprisonment, torture, and all forms
of condemnation, with a smile on her face. As of old, the most
enlightened, even, hope for a miracle from the twentieth century
deity,--suffrage. Life, happiness, joy, freedom, independence,--all
that, and more, is to spring from suffrage. In her blind devotion
woman does not see what people of intellect perceived fifty years
ago: that suffrage is an evil, that it has only helped to enslave
people, that it has but closed their eyes that they may not see how
craftily they were made to submit.
Woman's demand for equal suffrage is based largely on the contention
that woman must have the equal right in all affairs of society. No
one could, possibly, refute that, if suffrage were a right. Alas,
for the ignorance of the human mind, which can see a right in an
imposition. Or is it not the most brutal imposition for one set of
people to make laws that another set is coerced by force to obey?
Yet woman clamors for that "golden opportunity" that has wrought so
much misery in the world, and robbed man of his integrity and
self-reliance; an imposition which has thoroughly corrupted the
people, and made them absolute prey in the hands of unscrupulous
politicians.
The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to
tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal
suffrage, and, by that right, he has forged chains about his limbs.
The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the
right of boycott, of picketing, in fact, of everything, except the
right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor. Yet all these
disastrous results of the twentieth century fetich have taught woman
nothing. But, then, woman will purify politics, we are assured.
Needless to say, I am not opposed to woman suffrage on the
conventional ground that she is not equal to it. I see neither
physical, psychological, nor mental reasons why woman should not have
the equal right to vote with man. But that can not possibly blind me
to the absurd notion that woman will accomplish that wherein man has
failed. If she would not make things worse, she certainly could not
make them better. To assume, therefore, that she would succeed in
purifying something which is not susceptible of purification, is to
credit her with supernatural powers. Since woman's greatest
misfortune has been that she was looked upon as either angel or
devil, her true salvation lies in being placed on earth; namely, in
being considered human, and therefore subject to all human follies
and mistakes. Are we, then, to believe that two errors will make a
right? Are we to assume that the poison already inherent in politics
will be decreased, if women were to enter the political arena? The
most ardent suffragists would hardly maintain such a folly.
As a matter of fact, the most advanced students of universal suffrage
have come to realize that all existing systems of political power are
absurd, and are completely inadequate to meet the pressing issues of
life. This view is also borne out by a statement of one who is
herself an ardent believer in woman suffrage, Dr. Helen L. Sumner.
In her able work on EQUAL SUFFRAGE, she says: "In Colorado, we find
that equal suffrage serves to show in the most striking way the
essential rottenness and degrading character of the existing system."
Of course, Dr. Sumner has in mind a particular system of voting, but
the same applies with equal force to the entire machinery of the
representative system. With such a basis, it is difficult to
understand how woman, as a political factor, would benefit either
herself or the rest of mankind.
But, say our suffrage devotees, look at the countries and States
where female suffrage exists. See what woman has accomplished--in
Australia, New Zealand, Finland, the Scandinavian countries, and in
our own four States, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. Distance
lends enchantment--or, to quote a Polish formula--"it is well where
we are not." Thus one would assume that those countries and States
are unlike other countries or States, that they have greater
freedom, greater social and economic equality, a finer appreciation
of human life, deeper understanding of the great social struggle,
with all the vital questions it involves for the human race.
The women of Australia and New Zealand can vote, and help make the
laws. Are the labor conditions better there than they are in
England, where the suffragettes are making such a heroic struggle?
Does there exist a greater motherhood, happier and freer children
than in England? Is woman there no longer considered a mere sex
commodity? Has she emancipated herself from the Puritanical double
standard of morality for men and women? Certainly none but the
ordinary female stump politician will dare answer these questions in
the affirmative. If that be so, it seems ridiculous to point to
Australia and New Zealand as the Mecca of equal suffrage
accomplishments.
On the other hand, it is a fact to those who know the real political
conditions in Australia, that politics have gagged labor by enacting
the most stringent labor laws, making strikes without the sanction of
an arbitration committee a crime equal to treason.
Not for a moment do I mean to imply that woman suffrage is
responsible for this state of affairs. I do mean, however, that
there is no reason to point to Australia as a wonder-worker of
woman's accomplishment, since her influence has been unable to free
labor from the thralldom of political bossism.
Finland has given woman equal suffrage; nay, even the right to sit in
Parliament. Has that helped to develop a greater heroism, an
intenser zeal than that of the women of Russia? Finland, like
Russia, smarts under the terrible whip of the bloody Tsar. Where are
the Finnish Perovskaias, Spiridonovas, Figners, Breshkovskaias?
Where are the countless numbers of Finnish young girls who cheerfully
go to Siberia for their cause? Finland is sadly in need of heroic
liberators. Why has the ballot not created them? The only Finnish
avenger of his people was a man, not a woman, and he used a more
effective weapon than the ballot.
As to our own States where women vote, and which are constantly being
pointed out as examples of marvels, what has been accomplished there
through the ballot that women do not to a large extent enjoy in other
States; or that they could not achieve through energetic efforts
without the ballot?
True, in the suffrage States women are guaranteed equal rights to
property; but of what avail is that right to the mass of women
without property, the thousands of wage workers, who live from hand
to mouth? That equal suffrage did not, and cannot, affect their
condition is admitted even by Dr. Sumner, who certainly is in a
position to know. As an ardent suffragist, and having been sent to
Colorado by the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League of New York State to
collect material in favor of suffrage, she would be the last to say
anything derogatory; yet we are informed that "equal suffrage has but
slightly affected the economic conditions of women. That women do
not receive equal pay for equal work, and that, though woman in
Colorado has enjoyed school suffrage since 1876, women teachers are
paid less than in California." On the other hand, Miss Sumner fails
to account for the fact that although women have had school suffrage
for thirty-four years, and equal suffrage since 1894, the census in
Denver alone a few months ago disclosed the fact of fifteen thousand
defective school children. And that, too, with mostly women in the
educational department, and also notwithstanding that women in
Colorado have passed the "most stringent laws for child and animal
protection." The women of Colorado "have taken great interest in the
State institutions for the care of dependent, defective, and
delinquent children." What a horrible indictment against woman's
care and interest, if one city has fifteen thousand defective
children. What about the glory of woman suffrage, since it has
failed utterly in the most important social issue, the child? And
where is the superior sense of justice that woman was to bring into
the political field? Where was it in 1903, when the mine owners
waged a guerilla war against the Western Miners' Union; when General
Bell established a reign of terror, pulling men out of beds at night,
kidnapping them across the border line, throwing them into bull pens,
declaring "to hell with the Constitution, the club is the
Constitution"? Where were the women politicians then, and why did
they not exercise the power of their vote? But they did. They
helped to defeat the most fair-minded and liberal man, Governor
Waite. The latter had to make way for the tool of the mine kings,
Governor Peabody, the enemy of labor, the Tsar of Colorado.
"Certainly male suffrage could have done nothing worse." Granted.
Wherein, then, are the advantages to woman and society from woman
suffrage? The oft-repeated assertion that woman will purify politics
is also but a myth. It is not borne out by the people who know the
political conditions of Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah.
Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigotted and relentless in
her effort to make others as good as she thinks they ought to be.
Thus, in Idaho, she has disfranchised her sister of the street, and
declared all women of "lewd character" unfit to vote. "Lewd" not
being interpreted, of course, as prostitution IN marriage. It goes
without saying that illegal prostitution and gambling have been
prohibited. In this regard the law must needs be of feminine nature:
it always prohibits. Therein all laws are wonderful. They go no
further, but their very tendencies open all the floodgates of hell.
Prostitution and gambling have never done a more flourishing business
than since the law has been set against them.
In Colorado, the Puritanism of woman has expressed itself in a more
drastic form. "Men of notoriously unclean lives, and men connected
with saloons, have been dropped from politics since women have the
vote."[1] Could brother Comstock do more? Could all the Puritan
fathers have done more? I wonder how many women realize the gravity
of this would-be feat. I wonder if they understand that it is the
very thing which, instead of elevating woman, has made her a
political spy, a contemptible pry into the private affairs of people,
not so much for the good of the cause, but because, as a Colorado
woman said, "they like to get into houses they have never been in,
and find out all they can, politically and otherwise."[2] Yes, and
into the human soul and its minutest nooks and corners. For nothing
satisfies the craving of most women so much as scandal. And when did
she ever enjoy such opportunities as are hers, the politician's?
"Notoriously unclean lives, and men connected with the saloons."
Certainly, the lady vote gatherers can not be accused of much sense
of proportion. Granting even that these busybodies can decide whose
lives are clean enough for that eminently clean atmosphere, politics,
must it follow that saloon-keepers belong to the same category?
Unless it be American hypocrisy and bigotry, so manifest in the
principle of Prohibition, which sanctions the spread of drunkenness
among men and women of the rich class, yet keeps vigilant watch on
the only place left to the poor man. If no other reason, woman's
narrow and purist attitude toward life makes her a greater danger to
liberty wherever she has political power. Man has long overcome the
superstitions that still engulf woman. In the economic competitive
field, man has been compelled to exercise efficiency, judgment,
ability, competency. He therefore had neither time nor inclination
to measure everyone's morality with a Puritanic yardstick. In his
political activities, too, he has not gone about blindfolded. He
knows that quantity and not quality is the material for the political
grinding mill, and, unless he is a sentimental reformer or an old
fossil, he knows that politics can never be anything but a swamp.
Women who are at all conversant with the process of politics, know
the nature of the beast, but in their self-sufficiency and egotism
they make themselves believe that they have but to pet the beast, and
he will become as gentle as a lamb, sweet and pure. As if women have
not sold their votes, as if women politicians can not be bought! If
her body can be bought in return for material consideration, why not
her vote? That it is being done in Colorado and in other States, is
not denied even by those in favor of woman suffrage.
As I have said before, woman's narrow view of human affairs is not
the only argument against her as a politician superior to man. There
are others. Her life-long economic parasitism has utterly blurred
her conception of the meaning of equality. She clamors for equal
rights with men, yet we learn that "few women care to canvas in
undesirable districts."[3] How little equality means to them compared
with the Russian women, who face hell itself for their ideal!
Woman demands the same rights as man, yet she is indignant that her
presence does not strike him dead: he smokes, keeps his hat on, and
does not jump from his seat like a flunkey. These may be trivial
things, but they are nevertheless the key to the nature of American
suffragists. To be sure, their English sisters have outgrown these
silly notions. They have shown themselves equal to the greatest
demands on their character and power of endurance. All honor to the
heroism and sturdiness of the English suffragettes. Thanks to their
energetic, aggressive methods, they have proved an inspiration to some
of our own lifeless and spineless ladies. But after all, the
suffragettes, too, are still lacking in appreciation of real
equality. Else how is one to account for the tremendous, truly
gigantic effort set in motion by those valiant fighters for a
wretched little bill which will benefit a handful of propertied
ladies, with absolutely no provision for the vast mass of
workingwomen? True, as politicians they must be opportunists, must
take half measures if they can not get all. But as intelligent and
liberal women they ought to realize that if the ballot is a weapon,
the disinherited need it more than the economically superior class,
and that the latter already enjoy too much power by virtue of their
economic superiority.
The brilliant leader of the English suffragettes, Mrs. Emmeline
Pankhurst, herself admitted, when on her American lecture tour, that
there can be no equality between political superiors and inferiors.
If so, how will the workingwoman of England, already inferior
economically to the ladies who are benefited by the Shackleton bill,[4]
be able to work with their political superiors, should the bill pass?
Is it not probable that the class of Annie Keeney, so full of zeal,
devotion, and martyrdom, will be compelled to carry on their backs
their female political bosses, even as they are carrying their
economic masters. They would still have to do it, were universal
suffrage for men and women established in England. No matter what
the workers do, they are made to pay, always. Still, those who
believe in the power of the vote show little sense of justice when
they concern themselves not at all with those whom, as they claim, it
might serve most.
The American suffrage movement has been, until very recently,
altogether a parlor affair, absolutely detached from the economic
needs of the people. Thus Susan B. Anthony, no doubt an exceptional
type of woman, was not only indifferent but antagonistic to labor;
nor did she hesitate to manifest her antagonism when, in 1869, she
advised women to take the places of striking printers in New York.[5]
I do not know whether her attitude had changed before her death.
There are, of course, some suffragists who are affiliated with
workingwomen--the Women's Trade Union League, for instance; but they
are a small minority, and their activities are essentially economic.
The rest look upon toil as a just provision of Providence. What
would become of the rich, if not for the poor? What would become of
these idle, parasitic ladies, who squander more in a week than their
victims earn in a year, if not for the eighty million wage workers?
Equality, who ever heard of such a thing?
Few countries have produced such arrogance and snobbishness as
America. Particularly this is true of the American woman of the
middle class. She not only considers herself the equal of man, but
his superior, especially in her purity, goodness, and morality.
Small wonder that the American suffragist claims for her vote the
most miraculous powers. In her exalted conceit she does not see how
truly enslaved she is, not so much by man, as by her own silly
notions and traditions. Suffrage can not ameliorate that sad fact;
it can only accentuate it, as indeed it does.
One of the great American women leaders claims that woman is entitled
not only to equal pay, but that she ought to be legally entitled even
to the pay of her husband. Failing to support her, he should be put
in convict stripes, and his earnings in prison be collected by his
equal wife. Does not another brilliant exponent of the cause claim
for woman that her vote will abolish the social evil, which has been
fought in vain by the collective efforts of the most illustrious
minds the world over? It is indeed to be regretted that the alleged
creator of the universe has already presented us with his wonderful
scheme of things, else woman suffrage would surely enable woman to
outdo him completely.
Nothing is so dangerous as the dissection of a fetich. If we have
outlived the time when such heresy was punishable at the stake, we
have not outlived the narrow spirit of condemnation of those who dare
differ with accepted notions. Therefore I shall probably be put down
as an opponent of woman. But that can not deter me from looking the
question squarely in the face. I repeat what I have said in the
beginning: I do not believe that woman will make politics worse; nor
can I believe that she could make it better. If, then, she cannot
improve on man's mistakes, why perpetuate the latter?
History may be a compilation of lies; nevertheless, it contains a few
truths, and they are the only guide we have for the future. The
history of the political activities of men proves that they have
given him absolutely nothing that he could not have achieved in a
more direct, less costly, and more lasting manner. As a matter of
fact, every inch of ground he has gained has been through a constant
fight, a ceaseless struggle for self-assertion, and not through
suffrage. There is no reason whatever to assume that woman, in her
climb to emancipation, has been, or will be, helped by the ballot.
In the darkest of all countries, Russia, with her absolute despotism,
woman has become man's equal, not through the ballot, but by her will
to be and to do. Not only has she conquered for herself every avenue
of learning and vocation, but she has won man's esteem, his respect,
his comradeship; aye, even more than that: she has gained the
admiration, the respect of the whole world. That, too, not through
suffrage, but by her wonderful heroism, her fortitude, her ability,
will power, and her endurance in the struggle for liberty. Where are
the women in any suffrage country or State that can lay claim to such
a victory? When we consider the accomplishments of woman in America,
we find also that something deeper and more powerful than suffrage
has helped her in the march to emancipation.