WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE IN GREATER BRITAIN
"Wake up, Mother Country."--Speech by King George V. when Prince of
Wales.
The debate on Sir Albert Rollit's Bill in 1892 brought out a full
display of oratorical power from all quarters of the House, both
for and against women's suffrage. Mr. James Bryce, Mr. Asquith, and
Sir Henry James (afterwards Lord James) spoke against the Bill. Mr.
Balfour, Mr. (now Lord) Courtney, and Mr. Wyndham supported it. When
Mr. Bryce spoke he used the timid argument that women's suffrage was
an untried experiment. "It is a very bold experiment," he said; "our
colonies are democratic in the highest degree; why do they not try it?"
and again, "This is an experiment so large and bold that it ought to
be tried by some other country first." Mr. Asquith, in the course of
his speech, said much the same thing: "We have no experience to guide
us one way or the other." Mr. Goldwin Smith, an extra-Parliamentary
opponent of women's suffrage, pointed, in an article, to its solitary
example in the State of Wyoming, where it had been adopted in 1869, and
asked why, if suffrage had been a success in Wyoming, its example had
not been followed by other states immediately abutting on its borders.
Now it has frequently been noticed that when this line of argument is
adopted it seems to be a sort of "mascot" for women's suffrage. When
Mr. Bryce inquired in 1892 "why our great democratic colonies had
not tried women's suffrage," his speech was followed in 1893 by the
adoption of women's suffrage in New Zealand and in South Australia.
When Mr. Goldwin Smith asked why the States which were in nearest
neighbourhood to Wyoming had not followed her example, three States
in this position, namely Colorado in 1893, Utah in 1895, and Idaho in
1896, very rapidly did so. When Sir F. S. Powell, in 1907, said in the
House of Commons that no country in Europe had ever ventured on the
dangerous experiment of enfranchising its women, women's suffrage was
granted in Finland the same year, and in Norway the year following.
When Mrs. Humphry Ward wrote in 1908 that our cause in the United
States was "in process of defeat and extinction," this was followed by
the most important suffrage victories ever won in America--the States
of Washington in 1910, and California in 1911.
The question arises why so well informed and careful a political
controversialist as Mr. James Bryce spoke as he did in 1892 of the
fact that none of our great democratic colonies had adopted women's
suffrage, in evident ignorance of the fact that two at any rate
were on the point of doing so. The answer is probably to be found
in the attitude of the anti-suffrage press. No body of political
controversialists are so badly served by their own press as the
anti-suffragists. The anti-suffrage press appears to act on the
assumption that if they say nothing about a political event it is the
same as if it had not happened. Therefore, while they give prominence
to any circumstances which they imagine likely to be injurious to
suffrage, they either say nothing about those facts which indicate
its growing force and volume, or record them in such a manner that
they escape the observation of the general reader. The result is that
only the suffragists, who are in constant communication with their
comrades in various parts of the world and also have their own papers,
are kept duly informed, not only of what has happened, but of what is
likely to happen. Mr. Bryce cannot have known of the imminence of the
success of women's suffrage in New Zealand and South Australia in 1892.
Mrs. Humphry Ward did not know in February 1909 that women's suffrage
had actually been carried in Victoria, and had received the royal
assent in 1908. She could have known very little of the real strength
of the suffrage movement in the United States, when she said it was
virtually dead, just at the moment when it was about to give the most
unmistakable proofs of energy and vigour. For all this ignorance the
anti-suffrage press of London is mainly responsible. "Things are what
they are and their consequences will be what they will be," whether the
newspapers print them or not, and to leave the controversialists on
your own side in ignorance of facts of capital importance is a strange
way of showing political allegiance.[19]
It is a mistake to represent that women's suffrage was brought about
in New Zealand suddenly or, as it were, by accident. The women of New
Zealand did not, as has sometimes been said, wake up one fine morning
in 1893 and find themselves enfranchised. Sustained, self-sacrificing,
painstaking, and well-organised work for women's suffrage had been
going on in the Colony for many years.[20] The germ of it may be
traced even as early as 1843, and many of the most distinguished
men whose names are connected with New Zealand history as true
empire-builders have been identified with the movement, including Mr.
John Ballance, Sir Julius Vogel, Sir R. Stout, Sir John Hall, and
Sir George Grey. It is curious that Mr. Richard Seddon, under whose
Premiership women's suffrage was finally carried, was not at that
time (1893) a believer in it. He was a Thomas who had to see before
he could believe, but when he had once had experience of women's
suffrage, he was unwearied in proclaiming his confidence in it. When
he was in England in 1902 for King Edward's Coronation he hardly ever
spoke in public without bearing his testimony to the success of women's
suffrage. Much good seed had been sown in New Zealand by Mrs. Müller,
an English lady, who landed in Nelson in 1850. One of her articles,
signed "Femina" (she was obliged to preserve her anonymity for reasons
of domestic tranquillity), won the attention of John Stuart Mill, and
drew from him a most encouraging letter, and the gift of his book
_The Subjection of Women_. Mrs. Müller died in 1902, and thus had the
opportunity of seeing in operation for nearly ten years the successful
operation of the reform for which she had been one of the earliest
workers. An American lady, Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt, visited New
Zealand in 1885 on behalf of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.
Mrs. Leavitt was a great organiser and arranged the whole of the work
of the Temperance Union in definite "Departments," and a general
superintendent was appointed to each. There was a Franchise Department,
the general superintendent of which was Mrs. Sheppard, who, from 1887,
became an indefatigable and, at the same time, a cautious and sensible
worker for the extension of the Parliamentary franchise to women.
She was in communication with Sir John Hall and other Parliamentary
leaders, and kept in close touch with the whole movement until it was
successful.
Just as it is now in England with us, differences arose among New
Zealand suffragists as to how much suffrage women ought to have, or at
any rate for how much would it be wise to ask, and the parties were
called the "half loafers" and the "whole loafers." The "no bread"
party watched these differences just as they do in England, and tried
unsuccessfully to profit by them. In the debate on Sir John Hall's
Women's Suffrage resolution in 1890, Mr. W. P. Reeves, so long known in
England as the Agent-General for New Zealand, and later as the Director
of the London School of Economics, and also as an excellent friend
of women's suffrage, announced himself to be a "half loafer"; indeed
he advocated the restriction of the franchise to such women, over
twenty-one years of age, who had passed the matriculation examination
of the university. There is an Arabic proverb to the effect that the
world is divided into three classes--"the immovable, the movable, and
those who actually move." It is unwise to despair of the conversion
of any anti-suffragist unless he has proved himself to belong to the
"immovables." In 1890 Mr. Reeves, now so good a suffragist, had only
advanced to the point of advocating the enfranchisement of university
women. His proposal for a high educational suffrage test for women did
not meet with support. It was rejected by more robust suffragists as
"not even half a loaf, only a ginger nut." The anti-suffragists used
the same arguments which they use with us. They professed themselves
to be intimately acquainted with the views of the Almighty on the
question of women voting. "It was contrary to the ordinance of God";
women politicians were represented as driving a man from his home
because it would be infested "with noisy and declamatory women." After
the Bill had passed both Houses a solemn petition was presented by
anti-suffragists, who were members of the Legislative Council, asking
the Governor to withhold his assent on the ground that "it would
seriously affect the rights of property and embarrass the finances of
the colony, thereby injuriously affecting the public creditor." Others
protested that it was self-evident, that women's suffrage must lead
to domestic discord and the neglect of home life. Of course all the
anti-suffragists were certain that women did not want the vote, and
would not use it even if it were granted to them.
The French gentleman who called himself Max O'Rell was touring New
Zealand at the time, and deplored that one of the fairest spots on
God's earth was going to be turned into a howling wilderness by women's
suffrage. Mr. Goldwin Smith wrote that he gave women's suffrage ten
years in New Zealand, and by that time it would have wrought such havoc
with the home and domestic life that the best minds in the country
would be devising means of getting rid of it. A New Zealand gentleman,
named Bakewell, wrote an article in _The Nineteenth Century_ for
February 1894, containing a terrible jeremiad about the melancholy
results to be expected in the Dominion from women's suffrage. The last
words of his article were, "We shall probably for some years to come
be a dreadful object lesson to the rest of the British Empire." This
was the prophecy. What have the facts been? New Zealand has become an
object-lesson--an object-lesson of faithful membership of the Imperial
group, a daughter State of which the mother country is intensely proud.
Does not everybody know that New Zealand is prosperous and happy and
loyal to the throne and race to which she owes her origin.[21] New
Zealand was the first British Colony to enfranchise her women, and was
also the first British Colony to send her sons to stand side by side
with the sons of Great Britain in the battlefields of South Africa; she
was also the first British Colony to cable the offer of a battleship
to the mother country in the spring of 1909. She, with Australia, was
the first part of the British Empire to devise and carry out a truly
national system of defence, seeking the advice of the first military
expert of the mother country, Lord Kitchener, to help them to do it
on efficient lines. The women are demanding that they should do their
share in the great national work of defence by undergoing universal
ambulance training.[22]
New Zealand and Australia have, since they adopted women's suffrage,
inaugurated many important social and economic reforms, among which may
be mentioned wages boards--the principle of the minimum wage applied
to women as well as to men--and the establishment of children's courts
for juvenile offenders. They have also purged their laws of some of the
worst of the enactments injurious to women. If it were needed to rebut
the preposterous nonsense urged by anti-suffragists against women's
suffrage in New Zealand eighteen years ago, it is sufficient to quote
the unemotional terms of the cable which appeared from New Zealand in
_The Times_ of July 28, 1911:--
"Parliament was opened to-day. Lord Islington, the Governor, in his
speech, congratulated the Dominion on its continued prosperity. The
increase in the material well-being of the people, was, he said,
encouraging, and there was every reason to expect a continuance and
even an augmentation of the prosperity of the trade and industry of
the Dominion.... The results of registration under the universal
defence training scheme were satisfactory. The spirit in which this
call for patriotism had been met was highly commendable."
The testimony concerning the practical working of women's suffrage in
Australia and New Zealand is all of one kind. It may be summarised
in a single sentence, "Not one of the evils so confidently predicted
of it has actually happened." The effect on home life is universally
said to have been good. The birth-rate in New Zealand has steadily
increased since 1899, and it has now, next to Australia, the lowest
infantile mortality in the world. In South Australia, where women
have been enfranchised since 1893, the infantile death-rate has
also been reduced from 130 in the 1000 to half that number. Our own
anti-suffragists are quite capable of representing that this argument
means that we are so foolish as to suppose that if a mother drops a
paper into a ballot-box every few years she thereby prolongs the life
of her infant. Of course we do nothing of the kind; but we do say
that to give full citizenship to women deepens in them the sense of
responsibility, and they will be more likely to apply to their duties a
quickened intelligence and a higher sense of the importance of the work
entrusted to them as women. The free woman makes the best wife and the
most careful mother.
The confident prediction that women when enfranchised would not take
the trouble to record their votes has been falsified. The figures
given in the official publication, _The New Zealand Year Book_, are as
follows:--
+-------+---------------------------------------------+
| | Men. Women. |
+ +-----------+----------+-----------+----------+
| Date. | Electoral | Actually | Electoral | Actually |
| | Roll. | Voted. | Roll. | Voted. |
+-------+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+
| 1893 | 193,536 | 129,792 | 109,461 | 90,290 |
| 1896 | 196,925 | 149,471 | 142,305 | 108,783 |
| 1899 | 210,529 | 159,780 | 163,215 | 119,550 |
| 1902 | 229,845 | 180,294 | 185,944 | 138,565 |
| 1905 | 263,597 | 221,611 | 212,876 | 175,046 |
| 1908 | 294,073 | 238,538 | 242,930 | 190,114 |
+-------+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+
This table shows that men and women who are on the electoral roll vote
in almost the same proportion. The number of votes actually polled
compared with the number on the register is, of course, to some extent
affected by the number of constituencies in which there is no contest,
or in which the result is regarded as a foregone conclusion; but this
consideration affects both sexes alike. It is impossible for reasons of
space to enter in detail in this little book upon the history in each
of the Australian States of the adoption of women's suffrage. But it
is well known that every one of the States forming the Commonwealth of
Australia has now enfranchised its women, and that one of the first
acts of the Commonwealth Parliament in 1902 was to grant the suffrage
to women. The complete list of dates of women's enfranchisement in New
Zealand and Australia will be found in _The Brief Review of the Women's
Suffrage Movement_, which concludes this little book.
When the Premiers and other political leaders from the overseas
Dominions of Great Britain were in London for the Coronation and
Imperial Conference of 1911, the representatives of Australia and New
Zealand frequently expressed both in public and in private their entire
satisfaction with the results of women's suffrage. Mr. Fisher, the
Premier of the Commonwealth, constantly spoke in this sense: "There
is no Australian politician who would nowadays dare to get up at a
meeting and declare himself an enemy.... It has had most beneficial
results.... He had not the slightest doubt that women's votes had had
a good effect on social legislation.... The Federal Parliament took
a strong stand upon the remuneration of women, and the minimum wage
which was laid down applied equally to women and men for the same work"
(_Manchester Guardian_, June 3, 1911). On another occasion Mr. Fisher
said that so far from women's suffrage causing any disunion between
men and women, "the interest which men took in women's affairs when
women had got the vote was wonderful" (_Manchester Guardian_, June 10,
1911). Sir William Lyne, Premier of New South Wales, said: "When the
women were enfranchised in Australia they proceeded at each election to
purify their Parliament, and they had gone on doing so, and now he was
proud to say their Parliament was one of the model Parliaments of the
world" (_Manchester Guardian_, August 1, 1911). The Hon. John Murray
of Victoria and the Hon. A. A. Kirkpatrick spoke in the same sense.
Indeed the evidence favourable to the working of women's suffrage is
overwhelming, and is given not only by men who have always supported
it, but by those who formerly opposed it, and have had the courage to
acknowledge that as the result of experience they have changed their
views. Among these may be mentioned Sir Edmund Barton, the first
Premier of the Commonwealth, and the late Sir Thomas Bent, the Premier
of Victoria, under whose administration women were enfranchised in
that State. Why appeal to other witnesses when both Houses of the
Commonwealth Parliament in November 1910 unanimously adopted the
following resolution:--
"(i.) That this {House / Senate} is of opinion that the extension of
the Suffrage to the women of Australia for States and Commonwealth
Parliaments, on the same terms as men, 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 the 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 concern, they have proved themselves as far-seeing and
discriminating 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."
With all this wealth of testimony rebutting from practical experience
almost every objection urged against women's suffrage, it is impossible
to exaggerate the value to the movement here of the example of
Australia and New Zealand. There are few families in the United Kingdom
that have not ties of kindred or of friendship with Australasia. The
men and women there are of our own race and traditions, starting from
the same stock, owning the same allegiance, acknowledging the same
laws, speaking the same language, nourished mentally, morally, and
spiritually from the same sources. We visit them and they visit us;
and when their women return to what they fondly term "home," although
they may have been born and brought up under the Southern Cross, they
naturally ask why they should be put into a lower political status in
Great Britain than in the land of their birth? What have they done to
lose one of the most elementary guarantees of liberty and citizenship?
As the ties of a sane and healthy Imperialism draw us closer together
the difference in the political status of women in Great Britain and
her daughter States will become increasingly indefensible and cannot be
long maintained.