THE ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS
"We enjoy every species of indulgence we can wish for; and as we are
content, we pray that others who are not content may meet with no
relief."--Burke in House of Commons in 1772 on the Dissenters who
petitioned against Dissenters.
The first organised opposition by women to women's suffrage in England
dates from 1889, when a number of ladies, led by Mrs. Humphry Ward,
Miss Beatrice Potter (now Mrs. Sidney Webb), and Mrs. Creighton
appealed in _The Nineteenth Century_ against the proposed extension
of the Parliamentary suffrage to women. Looking back now over the
years that have passed since this protest was published, the first
thing that strikes the reader is that some of the most distinguished
ladies who then co-operated with Mrs. Humphry Ward have ceased to be
anti-suffragists, and have become suffragists. Mrs. Creighton and
Mrs. Webb have joined us; they are not only "movable," but they have
moved, and have given their reasons for changing their views. Turning
from the list of names to the line of argument adopted against women's
suffrage, we find, on the contrary, no change, no development. The
ladies who signed _The Nineteenth Century_ protest in 1889 were then
as now--and this is the essential characteristic of the anti-suffrage
movement--completely in favour of every improvement in the personal,
proprietary, and political status of women that had already been
gained, _but against any further extension of it_. _The Nineteenth
Century_ ladies were in 1889 quite in favour of women taking part in
all local government elections, for women's right to do this had been
won in 1870. The protesting ladies said in so many words "_we believe
the emancipating process has now reached the limits fixed by the
physical constitution of women_." Less wise than Canute, they appeared
to think they could order the tide of human progress to stop and that
their command would be obeyed. Then, as now, they protested that the
normal experience of women "does not, and never can, provide them with
such material to form a sound judgment on great political affairs as
men possess," or, as Mrs. Humphry Ward has more recently expressed it,
"the political ignorance of women is irreparable and is imposed by
nature"; then having proclaimed the inherent incapacity of women to
form a sound judgment on important political affairs, they proceed to
formulate a judgment on one of the most important issues of practical
politics. Several of the ladies who signed _The Nineteenth Century_
protest in 1889 were at that moment taking an active part in organising
the political work and influence of women for or against the main
political issue of the day, the granting of Home Rule to Ireland; and
yet they were saying at the same time that women had not the material
to form a sound judgment in politics. This is, of course, the inherent
absurdity of the whole position of anti-suffrage women. If women are
incapable of forming a sound judgment in grave political issues, why
invite them and urge them to express an opinion at all? Besides this
fundamental absurdity there is another, secondary to it, but none the
less real. Anti-suffragists, especially anti-suffrage men, maintain
that to take part in the strife and turmoil of practical politics
is in its essence degrading to women, and calculated to sully their
refinement and purity. If this, indeed, is so, why invite women into
the turmoil? Why advertise, as the anti-suffragists do, the holding of
classes to train young women to become anti-suffrage speakers, and thus
be able to proclaim on public platforms that "woman's place is home?"
This second absurdity appears to have occurred to the late editor of
_The Nineteenth Century_, Sir James Knowles, for a note is added to
the 1889 protest apologising, as it were, for the inconsistency of
asking women to degrade themselves by taking part in a public political
controversy:--
"It is submitted," says this note, "that for once and in order to
save the quiet of Home Life from total disappearance they should
do violence to their natural reticence and signify publicly and
unmistakably their condemnation of the scheme now threatened."
If this note was, as it appears, by the editor, how much he, too,
needed the lesson which Canute gave to his courtiers. The waves were
not to be turned back by a hundred and odd great ladies doing violence
to their natural reticence and signifying publicly that they were very
well satisfied with things as they were. "Just for once, in order to
save the quiet of home life from total disappearance," these milk white
lambs, bleating for man's protection, were to cast aside their timidity
and come before the public with a protest against a further extension
of human liberty. The anti-suffrage protest of 1889 had the effect
which similar protests have ever since had of adding to the numbers and
the activity of the suffragists.
Women anti-suffragists formed themselves into a society in July 1908
under the leadership of Mrs. Humphry Ward, and a men's society was
shortly afterwards formed under the chairmanship of the Earl of Cromer.
These two societies were amalgamated in December 1910. Lord Cromer is
the President, and exerts himself actively in opposition to women's
suffrage, and in obtaining funds for the League of which he is the
leader. In the previous spring of 1910 the Anti-Suffrage League had
adopted as part of its programme, besides the negative object of
opposing women's suffrage, the positive object of encouraging "the
principle of the representation of women on municipal and other bodies
concerned with the domestic and social affairs of the community." But
male anti-suffragists dwell chiefly on the negative part of their
programme. As a fairly regular reader of the _Anti-Suffrage Review_ I
may say that the advocacy of municipal suffrage and eligibility for
women bears about the same proportion to the anti-suffrage part of it
as Falstaff's bread did to his sack; it is always one halfpennyworth
of bread, and even that is sometimes absent, to an intolerable deal of
sack.
The English anti-suffragists' combination of opposing Parliamentary
suffrage and supporting municipal suffrage for women has no counterpart
in the United States. American anti-suffragists are as bitterly opposed
to municipal and school suffrage for women (where it does not exist)
as they are to political suffrage. In the State of New York, not
many years ago, the Albany Association for Opposing Woman's Suffrage
vehemently resisted the appointment of women on School Boards and said,
"It threatens the home, threatens the sacredness of the marriage tie,
threatens the Church, and undermines the constitution of our great
Republic." An American senator, not to be outdone, improved even upon
this, and spoke of school suffrage for women in Massachusetts in the
following terms: "If we make this experiment we shall destroy the
race which will be blasted by the vengeance of Almighty God." These
extravagances do not belong entirely to the dark ages of the nineteenth
century; only in the summer of 1911 the _New York Association opposed
to the extension of the suffrage to women_ successfully opposed a Bill
to confer the municipal suffrage on women in Connecticut. This Bill
had passed the Senate and was before the House of Representatives,
which was immediately besieged by petitions against the Bill urging
all the old arguments with which we are so familiar in this country
against the Parliamentary suffrage, such as that it was not fair to
women that they should have the municipal vote "thrust upon them"; that
Governments rest on force, and force is male; that women cannot fight,
and therefore should not vote; that to give the municipal vote to women
would destroy the home, and undermine the foundations of society.[23]
This opposition was successful, and the Bill was defeated in face of
overwhelming evidence derived from the numerous cases which were quoted
of women exercising the municipal vote, and sitting as members of local
governing bodies without producing any of the disastrous consequences
so confidently predicted. Where women have the municipal vote there
is no opposition to it in any quarter, because it is overwhelmingly
evident, as Mr. Gladstone once said, that "it has been productive of
much good and no harm whatever."
English suffragists can only heartily rejoice that English
anti-suffragists are so much more intelligent than those of the United
States. It shows that they are capable of learning from experience.
Women have had the municipal vote in Great Britain since 1870, and
they have voted for Poor Law Guardians and School Boards (where such
still exist) from the same date. They were rendered eligible for Town
and County Councils in 1907 by an Act passed by Sir Henry Campbell
Bannerman's Government. Suffragists are far from complaining that
anti-suffragists rejoice with them at these extensions of civic liberty
to women. Though the battle is over and the victory won, it is very
satisfactory to see the good results of women's suffrage, where it
exists, recognised and emphasised even by anti-suffragists. Mrs.
Humphry Ward has advocated the systematic organisation of the women's
vote in London local elections in order to have increased motive power
behind some of her excellent schemes for making more use of playgrounds
for the benefit of the London children. She has also spoken several
times in public in favour of the increased representation of women on
local government bodies; and has even gone very near to making a joke
on the subject, saying, in justification of her attitude, "That it was
not good to allow the devil to have all the best tunes," and not wise
for the anti-suffragists to allow the suffragists to claim a monopoly
of ideas and enthusiasm.[24]
Still it is rather significant that she comes to the suffrage camp
for the ideas and enthusiasms. Her male colleagues have not shown
themselves very ardent in the cause of equal rights for women in local
government. In 1898, when the London Borough Councils were established
in the place of the Vestries, an amendment was moved and carried in the
House of Commons rendering women eligible for the newly created bodies
as they had been on the old ones. When the Bill came to the House of
Lords, this portion of it was vehemently opposed by the late Lord James
of Hereford (afterwards one of the vice-presidents of the Anti-Suffrage
League), and his opposition was successful, notwithstanding a powerful
and eloquent speech by the late Lord Salisbury, then Prime Minister,
in support of the eligibility of women on the new Borough Councils.
Again, when in 1907 the Bill rendering women eligible for Town and
County Councils reached the House of Lords, it had no more sincere and
ardent opponent than Lord James. He saw its bearing upon the question
of women's suffrage, and the absurdity involved in a state of the law
which allows a woman to be a Town or County Councillor, or even a
Mayor, and in that capacity the returning officer at a Parliamentary
election, but does not permit her to give a simple vote in the election
of a member of Parliament.
"If," said Lord James, "their Lordships accepted this measure making
women eligible for the great positions that had been specified in
great communities like Liverpool and Manchester, _where was the man
who would be able to argue against the Parliamentary franchise for
women?_"
The Bill became an Act, notwithstanding Lord James's opposition, and
within twelve months he had become a vice-president of the League for
Opposing Women's Suffrage and for "Maintaining the Representation of
Women on Municipal and other Bodies concerned with the Domestic and
Social Affairs of the Community."
It has been said by Mrs. Humphry Ward, Miss Violet Markham, and other
anti-suffragists that it is not very creditable to women's public
spirit that four years after the passing of the Local Government
Qualification of Women Act of 1907, so few women[25] are serving on
Town and County Councils. The chief reason for their insignificant
numbers is that at present only those women may be elected who are
themselves qualified to elect. Outside London this disqualifies married
women, and in London it only qualifies those married women who are
on the register as municipal voters. It also disqualifies daughters
living, under normal conditions, in the houses of their parents. The
range of choice of women candidates is, therefore, very severely
restricted. Similar disqualifications in former years applied to the
post of Poor Law Guardian. When a simple residential qualification
was substituted for the electoral qualification the number of women
acting as Poor Law Guardians increased in a few years from about
160 to over 1300, of whom eight out of nine have the residential
qualification only, nearly half of them being married women. It helps
people to realise how the present law limits the range of choice of
women to serve on locally elected bodies to ask them to consider what
would be the effect on the number of men who could offer themselves
for election if marriage were a disqualification for them also. A
Bill for allowing women to be elected to Town and County Councils
on a residential qualification has been before Parliament for the
four sessions 1908-11. It is "non-contentious," but it has never even
got a second reading. Bills concerning women lack the motive power
behind them which is almost invariably necessary for the successful
passage of a Bill through all its stages. Mrs. Humphry Ward and Miss
Markham have some justification for their contention that the suffrage
movement has largely absorbed the energies of the more active-minded
women, and prevented them from offering themselves as candidates in
municipal elections. This is inevitable. Not every one possesses the
boundless energy of such women as Miss Margaret Ashton, Miss Eleanor
Rathbone, or Mrs. Lees, who combine active suffrage propaganda with
work of first-class importance as members of councils in large and
important towns. But when once the battle for suffrage is won, and the
qualification is made reasonable for women, it is almost certain that
the number of women elected on municipal bodies will largely increase.
In Norway, where women's suffrage has been in operation since 1908,
although the population is only a little over 2,000,000, the number
of women elected on Town and County Councils in 1911 was 210, and as
many as 379 have been elected in addition as "alternates." It appears,
therefore, that the secondary object of the Anti-Suffrage League, "the
representation of women on municipal bodies," would be best served by
extending the Parliamentary franchise to women.
The Anti-Suffrage League in England has made a great point of the
number of petitions and protests which they have obtained from women
municipal voters declaring their antagonism to women's suffrage in
Parliamentary elections. The suffragists, however, attach little or no
importance to the figures which have been published. When suffragists
conduct a canvass of the same people on the same subject the result is
entirely different.[26] Much criticism has been made upon the manner
in which the anti-suffragists have obtained the signatures to their
petitions and protests against women's suffrage, and we know that
in some cases signatures have been asked for "as a protest against
being governed by these lawless women." Now there are almost as many
fallacies in this sentence as there are words. Many ardent suffragists,
probably the majority of them, are opposed to the use of physical
violence as a means of obtaining political justice. Moreover, women are
not lawless. Women in this country, as all criminal statistics prove,
are about nine times more law-abiding than men.[27] If people object to
being governed by the more lawless sex, it is not women who should be
disfranchised. And besides these considerations there is another--the
voter, whether male or female, does not govern. He, when he gives his
vote, has to decide between two or more men representing different
sets of principles, to which he wishes to confide the various tasks of
government.
The _Anti-Suffrage Review_ of January 1911 contained an article called
"Arguments for use in Poor Districts," which throws a flood of light on
the methods by which these signatures of women against women's suffrage
have been obtained. The article represents an anti-suffrage lady going
round with a petition against women's suffrage. She approaches the
house of a working woman and appeals to her whether, after she has
looked after her children and her home, she has not done all that a
woman has time for, and "had better leave such things as the Government
of India and the Army and Navy, and all those outside things to the men
who understand them." A more extraordinarily dishonest argument, if
argument it can be called, can hardly be imagined. If it were sound,
it would exclude from all share in political power not only working
women, but also working men--all who live by the sweat of their brow,
and all hard working professional and business men. If the argument
were a sound one, the best Government would be a bureaucracy like that
of Russia, where the great tasks of government and the management of
the Army and Navy "are left to the men who understand them," and where
the peasant, the artisan, the professional man, and the merchant have
nothing to do with laws but to obey them, and nothing to do with taxes
but to pay them. But this system has never commended itself to the
political instincts of the British nation. Some of the anti-suffragists
at any rate could see this plainly enough when this "argument" was
applied to the continued exclusion of working men from the franchise.
Mr. Frederic Harrison has written words on this very subject which are
as applicable to women to-day as they were to men at the time when they
were first published:--
"Electors have not got to govern a country; they have only to find a
set of men who will see that the Government is fresh and active....
Government is one thing, but electors of any class cannot and ought
not to govern. Electing, or giving an indirect approval of Government,
is another thing, and demands wholly different qualities. These are
moral, not intellectual, practical, not special gifts--gifts of a
very plain and almost universal order. Such are, firstly, social
sympathies and sense of justice, then openness and plainness of
character; lastly, habits of action and a practical knowledge of
social misery."[28]
These are the lessons of their own leaders; but the anti-suffragists
pay no heed to them; it is little wonder then that they pay no heed to
the great suffrage leader who has taught us that women, like men, do
not need the franchise in order that they may govern, but in order that
they may not be misgoverned.
One other consideration may be deduced from this extraordinary
article--"Arguments for use in Poor Districts." If the anti-suffragists
will put into cold print such "arguments" that women ought not to vote
because they are occupied with the daily tasks of ordinary life and are
not prepared to govern India or manage the Army and Navy, what may not
the anti-suffragists say in private in the cottages which they visit in
order to overcome the reluctance of working women to put their names to
the anti-suffrage petitions?
The women who petition against women's enfranchisement are a type that
we have always with us. Burke held them up to disdain and contempt
in inimitable words in 1772, when Dissenters petitioned against
Dissenters. The Five Mile Act and the Test and Corporation Act were
then in force. The Test Act made the taking of the Sacrament according
to the rites of the Church of England a necessary qualification for
holding public office of any kind. The Five Mile Act forbade the
proscribed Nonconformists from preaching or holding meetings within
five miles of any corporate town. In 1772 these Acts were not often
put into operation, but as long as they were in the Statute Book the
Nonconformist leaders felt that they were doomed to live on sufferance;
their friends in Parliament prepared a Bill for their relief from these
outrageous disabilities. Opposition was, of course, at once awakened;
it proceeded mainly from the King and the "King's friends." Their
hands were strengthened by receiving a petition signed by dissenting
ministers, who entreated Parliament not to surrender a test "imposed
expressly for the maintenance of those essential doctrines upon which
the Reformation was founded." They were for the time successful, but
Burke's oratory has pointed the finger of scorn at them for all
time. "Two bodies of men," he said, "approach our House and prostrate
themselves at our Bar. 'We ask not honours,' say the one. 'We have no
aspiring wishes, no views upon the purple....' 'We, on the contrary,'
say the Dissenters who petition against Dissenters, 'enjoy every
species of indulgence we can wish for; and as we are content, we pray
that others who are not content may meet with no relief.'"[29]
We do not envy the Dissenters who petitioned against Dissenters in the
eighteenth century, and future generations will probably mete out no
very kindly judgment to the women who petitioned against women in 1889
and 1911: "As we are content, we pray that others who are not content
may meet with no relief."
One most effective reply has been made by the suffragists to the
allegation of their opponents that women do not desire their own
enfranchisement. Between the autumns of 1910 and 1911 more than 130
local councils petitioned Parliament in favour of passing without
delay the Women's Suffrage Bill, known as the Conciliation Bill.
These councils comprise those of the most important towns in the
kingdom, including Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Inverness, Dublin,
Cork, Limerick, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield,
Bradford, Oldham, Leeds, Wolverhampton, Newcastle, and Brighton. No
such series of petitions from locally elected bodies has probably
ever been presented to Parliament in favour of a Franchise Bill. The
anti-suffragists have endeavoured to belittle the significance of these
petitions. In an important official letter to Mr. Asquith, signed by
Lord Cromer, Lady Jersey, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Lord Curzon, and others,
it is stated:--
"The councils which have allowed these resolutions to go through are,
in no small degree, dependent for votes upon the very women whom
the Bill proposes to enfranchise, _and it is most natural that the
councillors should shrink from the risk of offending them_."[30]
This is a good specimen of anti-suffrage logic. Women householders are
strongly opposed to their own enfranchisement; but Town Councillors who
depend upon the votes of these women are forced to petition in favour
of their enfranchisement because these councillors "shrink from the
risk of offending them."
It is true that Lord Cromer, Lord Curzon, and the other signatories of
the letter go on to say that they are much better acquainted with the
feeling of the women municipal voters in the various towns than the
men are who have lived in them all their lives, and have repeatedly
stood in them as candidates in municipal elections. This illustrates
the degree of knowledge possessed by the most distinguished of the
anti-suffragists of the work-a-day world in which humbler mortals have
to live.
Mr. Gladstone said of the House of Lords when they opposed the Reform
Bill of 1884 that they "lived in a balloon," unconscious of what was
happening among the dim common populations living on the earth. The
same criticism is applicable to the anti-suffragists. They opened the
year 1911 in their _Review_ by saying that they looked "forward with
complete confidence to the work of saving women from the immeasurable
injury of having their sex brought into the conflict of political
life." This was immediately after the election of December 1910,
during which Mrs. Humphry Ward had taken an active personal share in
her son's electoral contest in West Hertfordshire; and during which a
large number of Unionist candidates and others had had the offer from
her publishers of her _Letters to my Friends and Neighbours_, written
anew for the second election of 1910, price 3d. each or 1000 copies
for £5. No suffragist blames Mrs. Humphry Ward for her active interest
in politics. Whether people like it or not, women are taking part in
active political work; but to talk of "the immeasurable injury of
bringing their sex into the conflict of political life," and at the
same time to profit by the political knowledge and enthusiasm of women
is a practical absurdity. All parties are alike in getting as much work
as possible during an election out of the women who sympathise with
them.
To encourage the political activity of women and at the same time
talk about "protecting women from the immeasurable injury of having
their sex brought into the conflict of political life," helps one
to understand why Frenchmen say that the English are a nation of
hypocrites.
Some eminent anti-suffragists attacked the Insurance Bill (1911) on the
ground that it is "cruelly unfair" to women; others, including some of
their most distinguished women, but no men, sent to the Prime Minister
in July a carefully worded and powerfully reasoned letter explaining
in detail the points in which they felt that the Bill did less than
justice to women. Space does not permit a detailed examination of the
points raised in this excellent letter, but one sentence in it must be
given, for it contains within itself the gist of the case for women's
suffrage:--
"We would strongly urge that instead of meeting these and similar
cases by amending the Bill in the way which was promised by the
Chancellor of the Exchequer on July 10th, _it would be preferable
to substitute the insurance which is needed for that which is not
needed_."
The unrepresented are always liable to be given what they do not
need rather than what they do need. This, in one sentence, forms the
strength of the case for women's suffrage. However benevolent men may
be in their intentions, they cannot know what women want and what suits
the necessities of women's lives as well as women know these things
themselves.