WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC.
The writers of the "History of Woman Suffrage" give the following account
of the founding of their Association. In July, 1848, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha O. Wright, and Ann McClintock issued an
unsigned call for a convention, which was asked to consider the social,
civil, and religious condition and rights of woman; and in preparation for
the meeting, they wrote a "Declaration of Sentiments," which was adopted
by the assembly. They say, in describing the writing of this declaration:--
"The reports of Peace, Temperance, and Anti-Slavery conventions were
examined, but all alike seemed too tame and pacific for the inauguration
of a rebellion such as the world had never before seen. We knew women had
wrongs, but how to state them was the difficulty, and this was increased
from the fact that we ourselves were fortunately organized and
conditioned.... After much delay, one of the circle took up the
Declaration of 1776, and read it aloud with spirit and emphasis, and it
was at once decided to adopt the historic document, with some slight
changes. Knowing that women must have more to complain of than men under
any circumstances possibly could, and seeing the Fathers had eighteen
grievances, a protracted search was made through statute books, church
usages, and the customs of society to find that exact number."
In such solemnly puerile fashion did they work out a travesty on one of
the most august utterances ever penned. A young man who was present
remarked: "Tour grievances must be grievous indeed when you are obliged to
go to books in order to find them out." He might have added, "And they
must be false indeed when you have to found most of your charges on dead-
letter statutes and outgrown usages and customs."
The Preamble of their Declaration reads: "When, in the course of human
events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to
assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which
they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of
nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a
course."
The declaration is as follows: "We hold these truths to be self-evident:
That all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights
governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of
the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to
it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its
foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as
to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should
not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while
evils are suffer able, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to
which they were accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to
reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such
government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has
been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such
is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to
which they are entitled. 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." Then follows a categorical
parody of the eighteen grievances, which will be duly considered in this
and later chapters.
After thirty years of Suffrage effort, the leaders say that this
instrument contained all that the most radical have ever claimed. The
Fathers of the Revolution say in their Preamble: "When, in the course of
human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the
political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume
among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the
laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the separation." The Mothers of the Woman's Rebellion say:
"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion
of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position
different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which
the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect for
the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that
impel them to such a course." The strained and ridiculous attitude
produced by ignoring the essential difference between a political movement
and a sex movement is visible in every line, and yet that instinct which
finds for a new cause its appropriate channel never carried more truly
than in this presentment of the ultimate purpose of woman suffrage. The
Fathers were met to dissolve the relations that bound their land
politically to a foreign power, and to form a separate and equal nation.
The Mothers were met to dissolve the relations that bound their sex
politically to man, and to form a separate and equal sex organization. The
Fathers proposed to free men, women, and children from the yoke of
England. The Mothers proposed to free women and girls from the yoke of
men. It is suggestive to consider the "slight changes," between the two
Declarations.
The Fathers of the Revolution begin their protest by saying: "We hold
these truths to be self-evident:--That all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The Mothers
of the Woman's Rebellion add nothing to the meaning, but detract greatly
from the force of its expression, when in their parody they say: "We hold
these truths to be self-evident: That all men and women are created equal,
and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These women
of all in America were the first to belittle themselves by seeming to
assume that in a revolutionary document that was promulgated to declare a
determination to wrest from tyranny the liberty that was an inalienable
right for all, they and their sex were excluded because the generic term
"man" was employed in relation to another inalienable right, which was
about to be set forth,--that of revolution against intolerable tyranny.
The Americans who framed that instrument would have been the last men in
the world to assert that women were not the equals of men. They were not
discussing abstract human or sex conditions. They met "to institute a new
government." The Mothers of the Woman's Rebellion had an inalienable right
to meet "to institute a new government," if they believed as sincerely as
did the Fathers of the Revolution that "a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinced a design to
reduce them under absolute despotism." Life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness were their natural and God-given rights. If they truly believed
that these were trampled upon by government, they might be justified in
revolting and attempting to form a new government. That they did not so
believe, seems to be proved by their statement that "they knew that woman
had wrongs, but how to state them was the difficulty, and this was
increased from the fact that they themselves were fortunately organized
and conditioned." The Declaration of Independence meant war against the
ever-growing encroachment of despotism. The gauntlet was thrown down at
the feet of a king by his subjects. The Declaration of Sentiments meant
war against the whole social order as then constituted. The gauntlet was
thrown down at the feet of man by those who declared him to be a
determined foe.
They had not the remotest notion of "instituting a new government," far
from it; they relied upon the old government to sustain them in making
their attempted "rebellion" a revolution. Without the backing of the
state's defence, they had no expectation or hope of enforcing any new
enactment they might desire. They were gladly consenting to be governed,
in order to prove that they withheld consent.
Should woman suffrage prevail, the foundation principles of democracy
would have to be overthrown and "a new government instituted" in which the
power should be delegated and not direct, if the nation thus formed was to
"assume among the powers of the earth a separate and equal station." The
leaders of the Suffrage movement well understood that they claimed no
inalienable right to institute a new government, and this is again shown
in another "slight change" made by them. The first count in the suffrage
indictment against all men, but especially against those of the American
Republic, reads as follows: "He has never permitted her to exercise her
inalienable right to the elective franchise." The Fathers made no claim or
suggestion that the suffrage was an inalienable right, or a right at all.
Not only is there nothing to intimate that voting was a natural right, but
from that day to this it has been the theory and the practice of our
Government to control the suffrage. The fact that "governments were
instituted among men" for the purpose of securing inalienable rights,
proves that in the opinion of the Declarers the method of instituting a
government was not in itself inalienable. Governments to secure certain
inalienable rights are instituted among men, wrote Jefferson, "deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed." This was not the
first government founded upon "consent of the governed." The English
government had been so founded, but our fathers now refused their consent.
That particular government could no longer exist for them with their
consent. In their judgment, it had become destructive of the proper ends
of all government, and so they proclaimed that the inalienable right to
liberty made it--to use the words of the Declaration--"the right, the
duty, of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to
institute a new government."
In the New York Constitutional Convention of 1867, Mr. George William
Curtis defended the proposition so to amend the Constitution as to extend
the suffrage to women. In the course of his eloquent remarks he said: "The
Chairman of the Committee asked Miss Anthony whether, if suffrage was a
natural right, it could be denied to children? Her answer seemed to me
perfectly satisfactory. She said simply, 'All that we ask is an equal and
not an arbitrary regulation. If _you_ have the right, _we_ have it.'" To
me it seems to discredit the logical powers both of Miss Anthony and of
Mr. Curtis that one should have made this reply and the other should have
rested content with it. That was a pertinent question, and it was not
answered at all. To say "if you have the right, we have it," is not to
tell whether one thinks children should have it. As a matter of fact, an
agitation of "the rights of minors" arose from the discussion of "natural
right," and also an agitation for "minority representation" that is
continued to this day. Mr. Curtis added: "The honorable Chairman would
hardly deny that to regulate the exercise of a right according to obvious
reason and experience is one thing, to deny it absolutely and forever is
another." To regulate a law is to abolish it, either relatively or
absolutely, for some, and to maintain it for others. When the State of New
York says that no alien who has not been naturalized shall vote, that no
boy under twenty-one shall vote, that no person resident in one town or
ward shall vote in another, that no criminal or pauper shall vote,--it
acts on the natural principle of self-defence, which contravenes the dogma
of a natural right of any one to the suffrage. On that principle it would
be impossible for the Congress to impeach a President; to forbid, as it
did, those who had been in rebellion from voting; or to deny the suffrage
to a child or to any human being. Government itself becomes impossible.
Judge Story, whom Suffrage writers claim as favorable to their cause on
other grounds, says that the right of voting has always been treated as a
granted and not a natural right, derived from and regulated by each
country according to its ideas of government. Both Federal and State
courts have decided again and again that there is no such thing as a
natural right to suffrage.
The "consent of the governed" certainly meant something very different to
our fathers, and to our statesmen, and to ourselves, from what it could
mean to any other government on earth. Although the phrase itself may have
been a euphemism which sprang from Jefferson's sympathy with the mighty
rumblings of feeling that preceded the French Revolution, still, it was
certainly meant that, so far as they could make it so, there should be
vastly more consenting by popular vote than had been dreamed of in the
mother country. But it did not mean that each and every individual in the
state must consent to each and every law that governed him; for not only
has no government ever been instituted which derived "just powers" in that
way, but none ever will be, for there never can be such unanimity. It did
not mean that every individual must consent to be governed somehow, by
some scheme of government; for its laws were carefully framed so as to
compel the external allegiance of those who never consent--the criminal
and the anarchist. It did not mean even that consent, in the sense of
agreement, was expected from a large body, or a small body, as the case
might happen, of those who held views opposed to the policies that were
controlling at any given time. It meant just what Jefferson meant in that
other dictum of his: "The will of the majority is the natural law of every
society, and the only sure guardian of the rights of man." Together they
interpret each other, and are worthy of our Declaration and our Bill of
Rights.
The inalienable right to liberty in all mankind forbids the right of
anarchy in any of mankind; and the question of woman suffrage, strange as
it may appear, actually narrows itself down, as it seems to me, to the
question whether we shall have democracy or anarchy. Democratic government
is at an end when those who issue decrees are not identical with those who
can enforce those decrees.
But, after all, the claim to suffrage as a natural right has been
practically abandoned by those who first made that claim. Their next
proposition was, that it was a universal right, springing from the
necessary conditions of organized society, and so should be granted to
woman as a member of that society. They say in their Declaration: "He
deprived her of the first right of a citizen--the elective franchise."
Chief Justice Waite of the United States Supreme Court decided that
citizenship carried with it no voting power or right. The same decision
has been handed down by many courts in disposing of test cases.
It seems to me quite as evident that what is now called universal manhood
suffrage does not rest upon any belief by the state that this is "the
first right of a citizen," because no one doubts that if the time came
when a majority deemed that the preservation of the state depended upon
disfranchising a number of voters, they would be disfranchised although
they remained citizens. The Suffrage leaders have, in theory at least,
also abandoned the claim to suffrage on the ground of their universal
right as citizens. A proof of this is seen in the fact that at various
times they have suggested the extension of suffrage under qualification.
Among the latest that I have noticed, is an address of Mrs. Stanton's to a
Suffrage Convention, held in 1894, in which she proposed the following:
"Resolved, that the women of New York petition the Legislature of the
State to extend the suffrage to women on an educational qualification."
She must therefore believe that the Legislature has the _legal_ right to
qualify it for men; and to withhold it from women is but an extension of
the right to qualify suffrage, because it only says: "We do not consider
woman citizens qualified to be voters." Writing a year ago, Mrs. Stanton
said: "It is the duty of the educated women of this Republic to protest
against the extension of the suffrage to another man until they themselves
are enfranchised!" Thus it would appear that Mrs. Stanton does not believe
in universal suffrage. A Suffrage speaker in New York not long ago said
naively: "We [the women, when enfranchised] will vote to withhold the
suffrage from the ignorant." She did not explain what would happen if the
ignorant voted not to have the suffrage withheld; nor did she appear to
realize that she was practically admitting that the present voters have
the right to withhold the suffrage from those whom _they_ consider
unfitted for it.
But it is not true that American women did not, and do not, "consent to be
governed." They have always consented loyally and joyfully. From the time
of the Boston Tea Party down to the Civil War, and in such times of peace
and prosperity as were indicated by the Columbian Exposition, when the
Government formally asked the assistance of its woman citizens, they
showed their consent by their deeds, and only the suffrage faction treated
the invitation to share in the Exposition after the immemorial fashion of
a discontented element. And the Suffragists themselves consent to be
governed every time they accept the protection of the law or invoke it
against a debtor; for they thereby acknowledge its proper application to
themselves if the case were reversed.
The second count in the list of political grievances runs: "He has
compelled her to submit to laws in the formation of which she had no
voice." This was not true, for the women who wrote that sentence were free
to use their voices in regard to every law they desired to affect, and
circumstances have proved that they were sure of being heard, and, if the
law were just, and for the general good, of assisting materially to
establish it. At the very time when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia
Mott were writing that indictment against the United States Government,
Dorothea Dix was presenting a memorial to the National Congress asking for
an appropriation of five hundred thousand acres of the public lands to
endow hospitals for the indigent insane. That bill failed to pass, but in
1850 another bill, which she presented, asking for ten millions of acres,
passed the House and failed in the Senate merely for want of time to
consider it. Four years later a bill making appropriations of the ten
millions of acres to the separate States passed both houses, and President
Pierce vetoed it, because he believed the general Government had no
constitutional power to make such appropriations. She then went to the
Legislatures of the States, with the result that is so well known. Rhode
Island, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana, and North
Carolina founded lunatic asylums, and the work was begun which is
culminating in the separation of the insane from the criminal, the women
from the men, in every town and county of the land. The right of petition
is not only as open to women as to men, but because of the non-partisan
character of their claims and suggestions they find quicker hearing. Miss
Louise Lee Schuyler has been more successful in securing the enactment of
laws for which she presented the need than any one politician in the State
of New York, before whose Legislature they have both pleaded,--he with a
vote which had to contend against other votes, she with a voice that spoke
the united mind of a body of philanthropic women. There was no unjust law
which the Suffrage Association could not have changed during these fifty
years, had it cared to try, and indeed its members make the boast that
many of the changes are their own. Change and improvement of laws was not
their aim. It was a vote upon changing or not changing laws that they
sought for. The difference is world-wide.
The third count in the indictment runs: "He has withheld from her rights
which are given to the most ignorant men--both natives and foreigners."
Dr. Jacobi represented the Suffrage cause before the Special Committee of
the Constitutional Convention of New York State in 1894. After drawing, in
fine and truthfully glowing words, a picture of woman's progress under the
institutions and laws of the United States, she said: "For the first time,
all political right, privilege and power reposes undisguisedly on the one
brutal fact of sex, unsupported, untempered, unalloyed by any attribute of
education, any justification of intelligence, any glamour of wealthy any
prestige of birth, any insignia of actual power.... To-day, the immigrants
pouring in through the open gates of our seaport towns, the Indian when
settled in severalty, the negro hardly emancipated from the degradation of
two hundred years of slavery,--may all share in the sovereignty of the
State. The white woman,--the woman in whose veins runs the blood of those
heroic colonists who founded our country, of those women who helped to
sustain the courage of their husbands in the Revolutionary War; the woman
who may have given the flower of her youth and health in the service of
our Civil War--that woman is excluded. To-day women constitute the only
class of sane people excluded from the franchise, the only class deprived
of political representation, except the tribal Indians and the Chinese."
To the same effect the editors of the "Suffrage History" say: "The
superiority of man does not enter into the demand for suffrage; for in
this country all men vote; and as the lower orders, of men are not
superior to the higher orders of women, they must hold and exercise the
right of self-government on some other ground than superiority to woman."
Here it would seem that Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony had been thinking,
but they never followed their own thought to its inevitable conclusion.
Universal manhood suffrage does relieve the men of this country from the
unjust aspersion the women of the Suffrage movement put upon them, that
they excluded women on account of inferiority.
No native American, who by the very fact of that nativity is bound to
support the Constitution of the United States, and no foreign-born citizen
who has taken the oath of allegiance to it, has a right by his vote to do
anything that will imperil or impede the carrying out of its principles
and its commands. "The establishment of justice, the insurement of
domestic tranquillity, provision for the common defence, security in the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," cannot be perfected
or maintained without the present exercise and the reserve power of
manhood strength. This Government laid aside all "attribute of education,
or glamour of wealth, or prestige of birth," and committed its life to the
keeping of its defenders. In this land, the vote is the "insignia of
actual power," but it is only the insignia; the power to defend themselves
and those who make country and home worth defending, lies with the
individual defenders. To attempt to put it into the hands of those who are
not physically fitted to maintain the obligations that may result from any
vote or any legislative act, is to render law a farce, and to betray the
trust imposed upon them by the constitution they have sworn to uphold.
Universal manhood suffrage is the crowning result in the long evolution of
government. Our statesmen of the Revolutionary period did not contemplate
it. But stability was the thing for which they sought--the thing for which
all statesmen of all times have been searching. If a government is not
stable, it is of little consequence that it is full of noble ideals; and
the most far-reaching thought has now grasped the idea that manhood
strength is the natural and only defence of the state. This is the
underlying theory of our Government, the one solid rock on which it rests.
"When any question of governmental policy comes up, we virtually decide
it, sooner or later, by a manhood vote; and as the decision has a majority
of the men of the country behind it, there is no power that can overthrow
it. If we attempt to establish policies or execute laws to which a
majority of the men are opposed, we throw away our one assurance of
stability, and are in constant danger of revolution. Even in the
comparatively brief history of our Republic, there are plentiful instances
to show that a majority of men will not submit to a minority, no matter
how many non-combatants are joined with that minority. To give women a
position of apparent power, without its reality, would be to make our
Government forever unstable.
"This is placing the Christian and civilized Government that stands as an
example of peaceful progress on a foundation of brute force," cries the
Suffragist. The founders of the Woman Suffrage movement apparently did not
take the least account of either the military or the judicial powers that
are provided for in every State constitution, as well as in the Nation's.
They demanded "immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which
belong to them as citizens of the United States," but said not a word
about the duties, disabilities, and money loss involved in the possession
of those rights and privileges. The Fathers of the Revolution closed their
Declaration of Independence from the tyranny of England by pledging "their
lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor" to attain it. The Mothers of
the Woman's Rebellion closed their Declaration of Independence from the
tyranny of man, and especially from the tyranny of the United States
Government, with a pledge to distribute tracts and hold conventions, while
they depended upon the courtesy of the tyrants to protect them in the
peaceful execution of their design. Is it any wonder that the descendants
of the old heroes who had fought their way to our liberties smiled when
the by-laws of the would-be revolt were handed to them?
When the attention of the women was called to the fact that force was
needed, and that women were exempt from military service and jury and
police duty, they answered that "In an age when the wrongs of society are
adjusted in the courts and at the ballot-box, material force yields to
reason and majorities." So successful has our Government been in carrying
out the benign purposes for which its heroes staked their lives, their
fortunes, and their sacred honor, that in ordinary times we see little of
the strength that stands quietly but firmly behind every law's enactment
and every poll's decision. The "strong arm" of the law would lose its
power to compel obedience if behind the decree of judge, jury, and
legislators there was not a sheriff or a body of militia ready to commit
the unconsenting criminal to prison, or to take care of an unruly
minority. At an election, the minority do not acquiesce in the decision of
the majority because the outcome of the vote has convinced them that the
majority were right, and they were wrong. They have not become suddenly
converted to the views of the majority. That decision, as recorded by the
ballot, shows that if the minority do not keep their opinion in abeyance,
there are men enough on the other side to compel them. Civilization has
advanced so far that, instead of blows there are arguments in court,
instead of bullets there are ballots at the polls; but the blows and the
bullets must always be ready, in case the arguments and the ballots are
unheeded. The physical strength that was given to man to use, like every
other gift, for the good of the race, he is so using when he holds it as a
_dernier ressort_ for law and order.
Dr. Jacobi says, in her address, "capacity to bear arms, in fulfilment of
military duty, is not, in the State of New York, reckoned among the
necessary qualifications of voters." The statement is also made by other
Suffragists that "numerous classes of men who enjoy political rights are
exempt from military duty,--all men over forty-five, all who suffer mental
or physical disability, such as the loss of an eye or a forefinger;
clergymen, physicians, Quakers, school-teachers, professors, and
presidents of colleges, judges, legislators, congressmen, state-prison
officials, and all county, State, and National officers; fathers,
brothers, or sons having certain relatives dependent upon them for
support, all of these summed up in every State would make millions who may
be exempted, and therefore there is no force in the plea that if women
vote they must fight." It is not true that any class of voters is exempt.
The State, regulating that matter as it regulates the age and residence of
voters, as long as it has more defenders than it needs for immediate use,
makes demand upon the youngest or strongest, but if it needs them all,
then all must serve. Again, all, whether young or old, perfect or
imperfect, must be reckoned with as elements in making up the count.
Lawless men do not exempt themselves from riot and rebellion because they
are lame or over forty-five. In the South, during the Rebellion, there
were few indeed who did not serve in some capacity. If there were blind
and aged men enough to make a real difference in majorities, Americans
would quickly see the propriety of doing as some republics that have to
stand with arms more "at attention" have done, and exclude them from the
vote.
But, suppose all those mentioned were really exempt, how would that apply
to women? If a like number were counted out, there would still be a goodly
array, from the maiden of twenty-one to the matron of forty-five, from
which to draw. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony write: "Women have led armies
in all ages, have held positions in the army and navy for years in
disguise, have fought, bled, and died on the battlefield in our late war."
The isolated occasions on which they have done so are not such as to
commend the practice, neither do the Suffragists propose seriously to
commend it. Dr. Jacobi, in her address before the Committee of the
Constitutional Convention, says: "We do not admit that exemption from
military duty is a concession of courtesy, for which women should be so
grateful as to refrain from asking for anything else. The military
functions performed by men, and so often perverted to most atrocious uses,
have never been more than the equivalent for the function of child-bearing
imposed by nature upon women. It is not a fanciful nor sentimental, it is
an exact and just equivalent. The man who exposes his life in battle, can
do no more than his mother did in the hour she bore him. And the functions
of maternity persist, and will persist, to the end of time,--while the
calls to arms are becoming so faint and rare that three times since the
Revolutionary War, an entire generation of men has grown up without having
heard them."
This question of military service is not a question of equivalent at all--
sentimental or otherwise; it is a question of the actual service, and as
to the service to the state given by women in bearing sons, the men work
not only to support those sons but to support also their mothers and
sisters, and that far beyond the child-bearing age of the mother.
As to the rareness of the calls, I read of seven wars since the
Revolution, and three insurrections, not counting the riots and strikes at
Chicago, Homestead, Brooklyn, and in the mountains in the West. Dr. Jacobi
said in an article in the "New York Sun," two years ago, "We do not vote
for war." That appears like a quibble, for we vote for what brings, or may
bring it; but neither is it exact in fact. Three times, at least, in our
history men have deposited their ballots in the box, knowing that the
result meant peace or war. These were at the second election of Madison in
1812, the election of Polk in 1844, and that most solemn of all the acts
of our country-men, the second election of President Lincoln. There have
been other elections in which war issues were linked with the decisions,
but in a less direct way.
The same writer says also, "The will of the majority rules, for the time
being, not, as has been crudely asserted, because it possesses the power,
by brute force, to compel the minority to obey its behests; but because,
after ages of strife, it has been found more convenient, more equitable,
more conducive to the welfare of the state, that the minority should
submit, until, through argument and persuasion, they shall have been able
to win over the majority. Now that this stage in the evolution of modern
society has been reached, it has become possible for women to demand their
share also in the expression of the public opinion that is to rule. They
could not claim this while it was necessary to defend opinions by arms;
but this is no longer either necessary or expected." How long is it since
this comfortable state of things was evolved? Has England consented to it?
In view of Venezuela and the Monroe Doctrine it would be necessary to have
her. Has Spain mentioned her resignation of a right to appeal to arms in
case she was not pleased with the conduct of our Government in regard to
Cuba? Does the Sultan know about it, so that in case we see a good fair
fighting chance to help the Armenians he will understand that the ages of
strife are over, and that persuasion has been found more equitable and
convenient than a resort to arms? And the Czar, and the erratic German
Emperor, are they in the evolutionary agreement? Force is just what men
are able to make it. It is not brutish unless it is brutishly used. There
is as much force in the world to-day as there ever has been, but it is
better applied. It is the object of a Christian civilization to persuade
more and more men to come to the defence of good against evil in forms of
government. Despotism and absolutism are corrupt uses of force.
Republicanism and a constitutional government are its nobler uses. But the
force is still behind them, or there would be no power to continue such
liberal forms. During the first Republic, Marathon and Thermopylae saved
the principle of Western democracy against Oriental despotism, Salamis and
Plataea saved Greek letters and Greek art to the continents that were yet
to be. Christianity changed the motive but not the method in evolution;
and, finally in the last great Republic, the American Revolution
proclaimed liberty of thought, the war of 1812 secured American
independence, while, beside the wandering Antietam and on the field of
Gettysburg "green regiments went to their graves like beds" that the Union
might live, and that human slavery might die. Manhood force, led by
intelligence and goodness, is the bulwark of that maternity that must
persist if heroes are to be. Dr. Jacobi's admission that women could not
claim the vote while it was necessary to defend opinions by arms, is a
vital one, for it contravenes her entire argument.
Another plea of the Suffrage leaders is that "men send substitutes, and so
could women." The answer in regard to exempt classes will apply here also,
because in case of need both substitute and substituter are obliged to
serve. During our Civil War the fact that a man had sent a substitute did
not prevent him from being called in the next draft. The state claims both
men as its defenders. But whom do the women propose to substitute? Other
women? No, they propose to substitute men! The Suffragists seriously
suggest that half the population, exempted by nature from military duty,
shall become organic members of a government whose reliance, embodied in
every constitution, is upon the ability and the willingness of its organic
members to do military duty in defence of those constitutions, and that
this exempted half may have it as their sole office, in case of war, to
vote when and where the lives, the fortunes, and the sacred honor of those
other organic members shall be laid down or imperilled. Suffragists seem
to forget, when they boast of Joan of Arc, that the army she led was
masculine.
The English socialist, Mrs. Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, in her addresses in this country two years ago, said: "Woman is
not protected through chivalry, but because the men know that to put women
to the front is national suicide. Woman's part in war is not to wail or
weep, but to furnish the army for the future." Then there is to be an army
for the future! Was there no "national suicide" when over three million
men were "put to the front" in the Rebellion, and more than five hundred
thousand, North and South, laid down their lives, so that through the
veins of this generation runs none of the gallant blood they spilled?
Shall the fathers, and possible fathers, be the only ones to die, if the
mothers and betrothed proclaim themselves no longer desirous of being
protected by such high sacrifice? If women cease to "weep and wail," will
men not cease to be willing to be "furnished by them to the army?"
"At any cost one good is cheap--
The soldiers die lest women weep;
And this reward is great and high--
The women weep that soldiers die."
Women and soldiers cannot transpose their work. The duty of each to the
Republic is equally "great and high;" but in order to be done it must be
kept distinct as now.
But all this is subordinate to the real, vital question. In the passages
just quoted, the writers make an error that is made so persistently by all
Suffragists whenever the argument of force is alluded to, that it seems
necessary to repeat the explanation. They assume that this argument,
briefly stated, is: The men do the fighting, therefore they ought to be
rewarded with the ballot. That is _not_ the argument; it is no matter of
reward. The argument, briefly stated, is this: Stability is one of the
highest virtues that any government can possess, and perhaps the most
necessary. It can have no stability if it issues decrees that it cannot
enforce. The only way to avoid such decrees is, to make sure that behind
every law and every policy adopted stands a power so great that no power
in the land can overthrow it. The only such power possible consists of a
majority of the men. Therefore, the only safe thing for the Government to
do is, to carry out the ascertained will of a majority of the men. This
does not always secure ideally good laws, but it does secure stability and
avoids revolution. The majority may blunder; but they are the only power
that can correct their own blunders.
But war does not call for the only form of public service. There are
others provided for in the National and State constitutions, which are
constant and exacting. They are jury, police and militia duty. When a boy
reaches twenty-one the law says to him, "You are my servant." If a fire
breaks out, the foreman can legally lay his hand on the boy's shoulder,
and say, "Help to put out this conflagration." When the law is broken, the
sheriff can say to him, "Help me make this arrest." When a turn of the
judicial wheel brings out his name, he must serve the state on a jury; if
a riot occurs, he can be called out to quell it; and if a war arises, he
can be drafted to fight against the country's enemies. There is not a
single act of defence to which the voter was subjected by law when the
Constitution was framed, to which he is not subject now, and subject
because he is a voter. The vote is not given to him as a reward for
standing ready to give this service to the state; it is a recognition by
the state that, as he must stand ready to defend it, he should assist in
establishing the laws which it may call upon him to enforce. As he has
assisted to frame them, he cannot refuse to defend them. Woman's only
relation to this defence is that of beneficiary, and therefore her
relation to the laws with which that defence is associated must be one of
advice and not of control. Fortunately for her, advice may prove sometimes
to be control of the most satisfactory kind, a kind that admits of mental
power and does not exact physical.
The statement is further made by Suffragists that "though woman needs
protection of one man against his whole sex, in pioneer life, in threading
her way through a lonely forest, on the highway, or in the streets of a
metropolis on a dark night, she sometimes needs, too, the protection of
all men against this one. But even if she could be sure, as she is not, of
the ever-present, all-protecting power of one strong arm, that would
be weak indeed compared with the subtle, all-pervading influence of just
and equal laws for all women. Hence woman's need of the ballot, that she
may hold in her own right hand the weapon of self-protection and defence."
The possession of the ballot has not been able to secure for men "the
subtle and all-pervading influence of just and equal laws," and despite
his holding the ballot in his own hand, man has had to hold also a more
apparent weapon if he visit a striker's camp or meddle with an anarchist
riot. Something more tangible than protective influence is needed to make
the public streets of this city safe for women in broad daylight. Again,
they say that "Wisdom would suggest division of labor in peace as well as
in war." Wisdom would have no chance to make such a suggestion, if women
attempted to do the same work as do men, in the same way. There is true
division of labor now, in peace as well as in war.
Suffragists mention as a final indignity the extension of the suffrage to
the negro. Their protest only serves to suggest another forcible
illustration of the fact that law and the enforcement of law may be
different things. The suffrage is not extended to the negro. The Congress
of the United States voted that it should be so extended; and while the
Government stood behind his vote with its military power, the negro voted.
But no one pretends that he has done so, to any practical extent, since
that time. Unarmed, the negro finds that he cannot enforce his own vote
against the will of white men armed to the teeth. The "all-pervading
influence of just and equal laws" cannot enforce it for him. Would the
women be any better off, if the men chose that they should not exercise
the vote? Who would enforce it?
This fact and argument show how little arbitration has to do with the
practical decision concerning suffrage. Suffrage writers and speakers harp
upon the thought that arbitration will take the place of force. That
method of settling disputes cannot come too quickly, but it has not come
yet. It has no real bearing on the organization of the state as resting
upon the civil and military service of its citizens. England consented to
arbitrate with the powerful United States, but refused to arbitrate with
defenceless Nicaragua in a far less important matter. Congress has
seriously considered exterminating the remnant of the beautiful herd of
seals that once played in our Northern Pacific waters, because British
subjects have continued, in violation of the Arbitration treaty, to kill
the animals with cruelty. Behind arbitration, as behind all law and order,
military power must always stand and must sometimes be used. One more
proof that the vote is not the real power, but only its insignia, lies in
the fact that legislation has not been able to put an end to strikes and
riots. Laws that forbid them are passed with all due form; but when they
come, as come they do, the reading of the riot act is suspended and the
regiments are ordered to Chicago, or Buffalo, or Brooklyn, or Homestead,
or Cripple Creek, or Cleveland, or the Indian country. The force of those
bodies was not "brutal," it was physical power obeying mental; and unless
mental power can command physical, there is no way in which mental power
can enforce its decrees in government. There are now facing us tremendous
moral issues, which presage tremendous struggles; and a very notable
example of the dangers that would attend woman suffrage is suggested by
them. If women had the power to create a numerical majority when there was
a majority of the law's natural and only defenders against them, they
might soon precipitate a crisis that would lead to bloodshed, which they
would be powerless either to prevent or to allay. Would the majority of
men submit to the minority of men associated with non-combatants? American
history furnishes no reason for supposing that they would. The Dorr War in
Rhode Island is a case in point, in local matters. I am neither an
alarmist nor a believer in war as a panacea; but if we discuss this
subject at all, we must discuss it with facts and not fancies in our
minds.
Dr. Jacobi again says, in her book: "It may be said, for it has been said,
that the objection to seeing a vote of seven hundred men overcome by a
coalition of three hundred men with eight hundred women, lies in the fact
that the defeated minority knows, if it had a free hand and was allowed to
use fisticuffs, it could pound into a jelly a majority composed so largely
of women. It would feel, therefore, sullen, restive, and justly indignant,
that it should be prohibited from using this power and obliged to submit
to a merely nominal force and supremacy."
The objection to seeing seven hundred men defeated by a coalition of three
hundred men with eight hundred women, lies in the fact that the defeated
minority knows that it has a free hand, and that nothing less than eight
hundred men could prevent it from using its physical power, were it so
inclined. Only a force and supremacy that was real, and not nominal, could
make it to submit. The rhetorical trick of belittling the matter by
speaking of it as "fisticuffs" will not pass in this discussion. When the
South Carolina negroes on election day looked into the rifle-barrels of
the Red-shirt clubs, it was no matter of fisticuffs. When every statesman
in our country was eagerly seeking a peaceful solution of the Hayes-Tilden
dispute, it was not fisticuffs that they feared. When the Dostie
convention was broken up and its leaders murdered in New Orleans, it was
not by means of fisticuffs. When the Chicago anarchists threw their bomb
into the ranks of the policemen in Haymarket Square, they were not playing
at fisticuffs. When the rail way strikers in Pittsburg stopped the trains,
"killed" the locomotives, and burned the freight, there was no fisticuffs
about it. And when a Southern minority refused to abide by the result of
the election of 1860, and the Northern majority shouldered muskets and
went down and compelled them to, not the most flippant writer would have
thought of calling it fisticuffs. All these are simply readily recalled
instances of the necessity for power in the enforcement of law.
She goes on to say: "But is it only in such a hypothetical case that a
minority would know it could, if allowed to resort to physical force,
shiver to fragments the majority? The burly brakemen in railroad strikes
would, probably, in a fair hand-to-hand encounter, be much bested over all
the stockholders of the road,--weakened, not only because they included
women in their midst, but also by sedentary habits and predominately
indoor occupations. Why do they not try this way of settling their
difficulties? Why do not the classes in England, who still remain entirely
disfranchised, and with whom rests so much physical strength, drop their
fists into the balance as Brennus did his sword, and cut short the futile,
womanish discussion? The answer is ready in every one's mouth. It is not
that it cannot be done, but that, on the whole, people are all agreed that
it is best it should not be done. It is not that physical force is
respected less, but that mental force is respected more."
I reply that both these things have been attempted over and over again,
and the agreement of all the wise and good people that it is best that it
should not be done cannot prevent it. Behind the burly brakemen who have
seized the train, and the stockholders to whom it lawfully belongs, there
lies a power greater than all the brakemen and stockholders together. We
call it the power of law. It is, in fact, the power of a sovereign people,
who, having made that law, are able to enforce it against the breakers of
it. It is necessary, in the discussion of this point, to have clearly in
mind the difference between sovereign power and delegated power. When a
member of a stock company attends the annual meeting and casts one vote
for every share that he holds, he is exercising delegated power. The
sovereign people, acting through their representatives in the legislature,
have delegated to the company the power to regulate its affairs in this
way, and guaranteed to each shareholder this privilege. Should a
combination of some of the shareholders attempt to prevent one from
exercising it, he would appeal to the court, and behind the court stands
the power of the people, many times larger than any stock company that
exists. On the other hand, when men go to the polls on election day, they
exercise, not delegated, but sovereign, power. There is no greater power,
above and beyond themselves, to regulate their actions. The enfranchised
classes in England do drop their fists into the balance, and, as a result,
we have seen the extensions of suffrage that marked the years 1832 and
1848, and the reason some classes are still unfranchised is, that the
monarchy that wills their unfranchisement has, as yet, more power at
command than those who would enfranchise them. Mental and moral force is
more respected with every rolling year, because those who respect it have
been able to obtain control of the physical power that can force its
decrees upon those who do not respect it.
The third count in the indictment is: "Having deprived her of the 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." As, in securing the exact number of grievances mentioned by the
Fathers, the Mothers were compelled to string out their distresses
somewhat, I will quote the next count in the indictment, and consider
these two together. "After depriving her of all rights as a married woman,
if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a
government which recognized her only when her property could be made
profitable to it."
The many-sided oppression, and the deprivation as a married woman, belong
in other chapters. The remaining portions of the two counts may be summed
up under the familiar cry: "No taxation without representation." What did
that just accusation mean when our fathers uttered it in regard to English
tyranny? Did they mean that their property was taxed, and they had no
redress? The phrase originated with Patrick Henry, who read to the
Virginia House of Burgesses the decision gleaned from a study of "Coke
upon Lyttleton," that "Englishmen living in America had all the rights of
Englishmen living in England, the chief of which was, that they could only
be taxed by their own representatives," and on that was founded the
resolution adopted by them that the colonies could not be lawfully taxed
in a body in which they were not represented; for the colonies, as well as
individuals, had no vote in Parliament. They meant that their property
could not be so taxed, and they meant far more. The more that they meant
was embodied by Jefferson in the first draft of the Declaration of
Independence, when he said: "Can any one reason be assigned why a hundred
and sixty thousand _electors_ in the island of Great Britain should give
law to four million in the States of America?" John Hancock meant that and
more when he said: "Burn Boston and make John Hancock a beggar, if the
public good requires it." He was offering his taxed property to defend the
liberties of the four millions against the hundred and sixty thousand
electors. The refusal of the majority to be ruled longer by the minority
was the main motive of determination not to submit. But at that time all
voting was connected with a tax on property, and so was the suffrage
established by these men. And under those property-tax laws women who held
property could vote. It was when taxation ceased to go with
representation, that the women ceased to vote. There is now no connection
between taxation of property and representation. When people were allowed
votes in proportion to the amount of property they held, and could vote in
different counties and States, there was a connection, and that law gave
the rich man more voting power than the poor man. But all aristocratic
qualification was done away with, and the government came to rely solely
on the strength of individual men for its defence, instead of upon men and
women with money enough to raise soldiery. There is a money tax levied on
the property of men and women alike; and in return for the payment of this
tax the property of both men and women is made secure against unlawful
injury. In order to make it secure, the state lays, upon men alone, a
service tax, and with that tax goes representation, or the vote. This
service tax does not fall upon woman, and it cannot be demanded of her; so
it is not true that "Man has taxed her to support a government which
recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it." He
has, in return for the money tax, so guarded her property through the
service tax on men that it is of profit to her, which without that guard
it could not be.
The tax on property is collected from that of minors and unnaturalized
citizens, resident or non-resident, and to all these classes, as well as
to non-voting women, is given the right of petition and legal redress of
whatever sort. The men do not have "equal rights" in regard to public
control of their taxable property, if equal rights means that each man
shall be able to say what shall be done to, or with, or about, the
property on which he pays taxes. The penniless voter can have as much to
say as to whether a railroad shall cross the lands of a millionaire as the
millionaire himself. At every town election the minority are unheeded, so
far as the vote goes, and women with property interests would be no better
off if they secured votes in the only way they can be secured--one voice,
one vote.
Lydia Maria Child said, in a letter reprinted in the Woman's edition of
"The Rochester Post-Express" in 1896: "I reduce the argument to very
simple elements. I pay taxes for property of my own earning and saving,
and I do not believe in taxation without representation. As for
representation by proxy, that savors too much of the plantation system,
however kind the master may be. I am a human being, and every human being
has a right to a voice in the laws which claim authority to tax him, to
imprison him, or to hang him."
Not only has every human being in the United States a right to a voice in
the laws that claim authority to tax him, imprison him, or hang him, but
he can exercise that right in all portions of the United States where the
laws that claim this authority are able to enlist sufficient physical
force to execute the authority claimed. Where they have not that power,
neither the voter nor the non-voter has any redress against violence
offered to property or limb or life. Gerrymanders and lynchings in many
parts of our land prove the truth of this. The mastery of men who abide by
and execute law is not a mastery over women for the sake of the spoils of
taxation or the disposal of life, but the mastery over lawlessness
everywhere in order that tax-payers of either sex, native or alien, voters
or non-voters, may be enabled to have that voice in the laws which, as
human beings, is their right. As to the "vote by proxy," if Mrs. Child
could not trust her husband, her son, her brother, or best friend to look
after her interests, she certainly could not trust the carrying out of her
wish, as expressed in her vote, to the men who cast in their ballots by
her side.
In return for the taxes paid, women get just what men get, namely, roads,
gas, water, schools, etc. The women who have refused to pay their taxes
because they did not vote, have been treated with a leniency that proves
the courtesy of the law-enforcers. They would have made short work with
men who were non-voters, who had tried the same tactics. When a man's vote
is challenged and refused, he does not dream of saying: "I shall not pay
my tax," and the assessor never inquires whether he votes or desires to
vote. The men in the District of Columbia do not find their unfranchised
condition assuaged by the smallness of their account with the assessor.
Neither do they realize or believe that they are governed without their
consent, or exempt from police or military duty. This is a striking proof
that the vote is not a reward for service. They are male American
citizens, over twenty-one years old, and they must contribute service
simply and solely for that reason. This is the price they pay for
established order.
For, after all, what is government, and what are taxation and
representation? When and how did society consent to be governed? When did
it agree to be taxed and to be represented? The awful story of history,
from the slaying of Abel to the slaughter of half a million men in the War
of Secession, is the answer. It never did agree, it has not yet agreed.
The struggle of civilization is the effort to make it agree. Implanted in
the bosom of man by his Maker is the belief in his individual freedom, of
worship as concerns that Maker, of protection as concerns man. Side by
side with that, was implanted the principle of surrender of a part of that
freedom for just cause. There came a time when men said: "Let us use
arguments instead of force in these decisions," and some form of vote was
instituted. With this they fought and voted by turns, as they set up or
knocked down emperors, kings, popes, and presidents. War has been changed
by progress because man has changed; but main strength to drive home the
truths gained on the moral battlefield is still the power behind the
throne of the National conscience, even in this enlightened land.
Though the Mothers of the Rebellion did not ask, and apparently did not
think of asking, to share the military duties incident to suffrage, we
must discuss it, if we are to consider the subject thoroughly. To be a
voting citizen, is to be a possible soldier citizen. There is no way of
fulfilling the moral part of the duty, and leaving unfulfilled the
physical, and it is cowardly to attempt it. So the question comes, could
American women be soldiers? They could, for a few in disguise were in
service during the War of Secession. Titled women of Europe are honorary
officers; but this playing soldier is a relic of Middle-Age chivalry.
Women can be seriously destructive; but no one will claim that organized
military duty is really practicable for them. And the suffrage proposition
does not look to anything of the kind. The Suffragists demand equal vote
in sending their fathers, brothers, sons, husbands, and lovers to the
military field of action, and propose to be absolutely exempt from equal
share in the duty that that vote now lays upon male voters. Before the law
there could be no distinction of duty on account of race, sex, or previous
condition of servitude. The "emancipated" woman would be emancipated into
that which the Declaration of Independence expressly called for, "the
right and privilege of the people to bear arms."
The constitution of Utah says that the State militia is to consist of
"able-bodied males," and I have not yet heard that the women who vote
there have insisted that the word "male" be struck out of that clause of
the Constitution. By no means, every woman expects to be exempt. After
women had succeeded in getting the framers of the constitution of every
State to strike out the word "male," from its voting qualification, they
would expect them to insert the word "male" in mentioning the service
qualification. O Equality, where is thine equal for granting privilege!
Such chivalry, it would seem, is an insult to the power and intelligence
of the women of Utah, who celebrated their "enfranchisement" by a
convention to favor the free coinage of silver, 16 to 1, and whose
behavior on that occasion was, to say the least, boyish. The tax upon time
and strength, and the money loss of citizen service, Suffrage leaders did
not once allude to. They did not, and do not, propose to pay even a double
money tax on account of expected exemption. Little as this would have
availed to meet the actual situation, it would have shown their good will,
and some comprehension of justice, while they talked of an absurd and
intangible "right."
But, it might be said, "Utah did insert such a clause into her
constitution, and so could other States. It is, after all, common sense
that rules, and men can legislate what they please." The law passed by
Utah, which provided that "male voters must be tax-payers, while female
voters need not be," was decided to be unconstitutional, and this one also
may well be. At the end of Utah's Constitution, as of every other, and of
every bill that is passed, occurs or is understood something like this
sentence from the United States Constitution: "The Congress shall have
power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." Is it the
"appropriate legislation" that gives to Congress, or to any other body,
the power to enforce the article decided upon by a majority? We know that
it is not. It is the men who can enforce it if it is disobeyed. Every day
we see that some laws are "dead letters," not because the legislation
appropriate to their enforcement was not perfect, but because they are not
enforced. When Mr. Roosevelt became Chairman of the Police Commission
there had been for some time a bill, duly legislated, for the enforcement
of the Sunday closing of liquor saloons in New York city. But the saloons
had not been closed. Mr. Roosevelt summoned the police, and proceeded to
enforce the law. If they had refused, the militia stood behind them. Do
you say, "Very well, if Miss Willard had been Chairman of the
Commissioners she could have done the same." There would have been this
great difference. Mr. Roosevelt himself was as much subject to serve at
the call of the law, as were the policemen. He was not a dictator merely,
he was part and parcel of the strength that he invoked. The reason for
obedience rested on the same ground in each case--service in which each
stood equal. It is a specious form of mistake to suppose that "men can
legislate just what they wish to." They can legislate only what the
majority decrees, and they can legislate effectively only what they have
power to enforce. Had the saloon-keepers refused to obey Miss Willard, not
she, but Mr. Roosevelt and other men would have had to enforce the law.
It is absurd in itself, and annoying to Suffrage advocates, to talk about
military duty for woman. Her very nature forbids it. So it is, and so it
does, and therefore it is equally absurd to talk about her attempting to
assume duties whose very nature forbids their being done by her. Were
voting only a matter of obtaining the _opinion_ of women on matters that
concern the country, or concern them (and all matters that concern the
country concern them), all precedent gathered from the treatment of
American women by American men goes to prove that no urging would have
been required to secure for them as large a measure of suffrage as was
consistent with their duties and their desires.
In 1879 an earnest discussion on Woman Suffrage was held in the
legislature of Massachusetts. Four propositions were pending. The first
was that a constitutional amendment should be submitted to the people,
which, if accepted, would decree to women full suffrage. Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, Lucy Stone and William Lloyd Garrison argued the case for the
women. Col. Higginson said that if ability to fight were made the test of
voting "a large proportion of men, especially of professional men, would
be disfranchised. The report of the Surgeon-General of the United States
showed that of the thousand clergymen who volunteered or were drafted
during the war, 945 were declared to be unfit for service. Of the lawyers
who volunteered or were drafted, 650 were rejected, and of the physicians,
745." He added, "You must go down to the mechanics and laborers before you
can find a class of men a majority of whom will fulfil this requirement.
Of the clergymen who preach that woman suffrage is wrong because women can
do no military duty, only one twentieth would themselves be accepted for
such service. There is but one class of men better fitted than mechanics
for military service, and that is the prize-fighting class, and therefore
the constituency which sent John Morrissey to Congress was the only
constituency that ever carried out this idea to the end." Col. Higginson,
who played a gallant part in the Civil War, should have remembered what
poor fighting material the country found in such men as formed the
constituency of John Morrissey. The regiment of Zouaves raised in New York
City by Billy Wilson, the pugilist, was found to be so mischievous, as
well as worthless, that it was shipped to the Dry Tortugas in order to rid
the army of a pest. On the other hand, many of the most gallant as well as
most orderly soldiers came from dry-goods stores and apothecary shops. The
pugilists and roughs are the very ones that are good for nothing as
soldiers; they belong to the class that makes soldiery necessary.
When Col. Higginson can use such logic, it is no wonder that women have
repeated the argument. The question was not whether, because certain men
who were naturally looked upon by the Government as its defenders, and as
such were called upon to fight, proved physically unable, but whether the
Government had a right, because of its very existence, to call upon those
men, and in case of need, to say to them "Put yourself into physical
condition for this service." If it had such a right, by what law under the
constitution of the United States could Lucy Stone ask to vote and not
expect to have her military fitness inquired into, and be asked to put
herself into physical condition for it?
Recalling the action of her grandfather, she, better than some other
women, might have realized the necessity of force for government. Her
defiant spirit might well have descended from that ancestor who led four
hundred men in Shays's Rebellion, when, in the State before whose tribunal
she was speaking, he assisted in preventing court sessions, and swelled
the ranks of the rioters who were decrying taxes and calling for fiat
money, in a land that was impoverished and was struggling for a sound
financial standing after a war that had been waged to guarantee the
blessings of freedom to her and to her children.
As a matter of fact, many of those men whom Col. Higginson referred to as
deemed unfit, did go into immediate training, and "muscular Christianity"
would now present to the Surgeon-General a different showing. It was one
of the surprising things, in a statistical way, to find that city-bred
boys stood the marching and exposure of the Civil War campaigns better
than their country brothers, and that the yard-stick turned into as
effective a sword as the pruning-hook. Garrison, who maintained for so
many years that men should not vote because the government was founded on
force, had the grace not to speak on this phase of the question, but he
said it was cruel that women should be disfranchised and classed with
paupers, idiots, and criminals. Senator Hayes asked him if there was no
"difference between a person who was disfranchised and one who never had
been enfranchised?" and added that "he could see no argument for woman
suffrage in the proposition that certain classes of men were not permitted
to vote." Neither can I.
The argument for woman suffrage which bases it upon a fancied grouping of
women with the vile and brainless element in the country, appears to me to
be at once the weakest and the meanest of all. When the United States
Government invited its woman citizens to share in making the Columbian
Exposition the most wondrous pageant of any age, they responded from every
town and hamlet by sending of their best. But the national Suffrage
Association, as its official exhibit, gave a picture of the expressive
face of Miss Willard surrounded by ideal heads of a pauper, an idiot, and
a criminal, with a legend recording their belief that it was with these
that American men placed American women. So false a picture must have
taught the thoughtful gazers the opposite lesson from the one intended. It
could have told them that the United States Government had at least
guarded one trust with sacred care. The pauper was excluded from the
ballot as not being worthy to share with freemen the honor of its defence.
The unfortunate was excluded by an inscrutable decree of Providence. The
criminal was excluded as being dangerous to society. The women were exempt
from the ballot because it was for their special safety that a free ballot
was to be exercised, from which the pauper and the criminal must be
excluded. They were the ones who have given to social life its meaning and
its moral, the ones who give to civic life its highest value.
The authors of the "History" so often referred to, in answer to the claim
that "government needs force behind it, and those who make the laws must
execute them, and a woman could not be a sheriff or policeman," say:
"Woman might not fill these offices as men do, but might far more
effectively guard the morals of society and the sanitary conditions of our
cities." A "moral guard" might be an excellent thing to ward off the
ghosts in a country burying-ground, but would hardly prove effective
against the riot of a Tammany mob on the night of an exciting election. It
is absurd to speak in such fashion of work that is needed every hour. The
crust of our civilization is very thin--how thin, the nation learned
during the campaign just passed. Like a tempest from a clear sky, or one
of their own cyclones, burst an influence from a portion of the West and
South, that would have overturned the Government. Men struck fanatically
and misguidedly at the integrity of the Supreme Court, at the power of the
United States to hold jurisdiction over its own public affairs where they
conflicted with State right, at the currency that gave the country ability
to be honest at home and abroad, at the prosperity and honor of every
citizen.
Fifteen years ago Suffrage leaders wrote in view of the wonderful advance
of woman: "The broader demand for political rights has not commanded the
thought its merits and dignity should have secured." If this was true, it
had not been for lack of having the demand pressed home upon Congress and
upon every State and Territorial legislature (save in most of the South),
in season and out of season, by every device known to politics, as well as
by a steady and impetuous flow of literature and petitions. How have these
bodies answered this long appeal? It would take too much time and space,
even were it of value, to follow the course of its ups and downs through
all these years, but I mention first the fact that no State in New England
has ever granted constitutional, or even municipal suffrage, although in
some of the old thirteen it could have been done by an act of the
legislature, a constitutional amendment not being needed. These are some
of the figures for the past few years:
In Vermont, in 1892, the House passed a municipal suffrage bill--yeas 149,
nays 83. In 1894 the House defeated a similar bill by a vote of 108 to
106, and refused reconsideration by a vote of 124 to 96. Thus a favorable
majority of 66 in 1892 was changed to an adverse majority of 28 in 1894.
In Massachusetts, in 1894, the House passed a municipal suffrage bill by a
vote of 119 to 107. In 1895 it defeated a similar bill, the vote standing,
yeas 97, nays 137, on the question of carrying the bill to a third
reading. In the same year an act was passed permitting all persons
qualified to vote for school committee to express their opinion at the
state election by voting "Yes" or "No," to the question: "Is it expedient
that municipal suffrage be granted to women?" Not one woman in four voted
in favor of the proposition, although if suffrage has any traditionary
power outside of New York State, that power should have been felt in
Massachusetts.
In Maine, in 1893, the Senate passed a municipal suffrage bill, which was
defeated in the House. In 1895 the House passed a municipal suffrage bill,
which was defeated in the Senate.
In New Hampshire, in 1895, the House refused a third reading to a
municipal suffrage bill, by a vote of 185 to 108.
In Connecticut, in 1895, the Senate rejected a House municipal suffrage
bill, while a presidential suffrage bill did not reach a vote. And in
Rhode Island a proposition for a suffrage Constitutional amendment was
referred to the next legislature.
All these States had granted school suffrage and could grant municipal
suffrage by act of the legislature. In 1893 municipal suffrage bills were
defeated in Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Full
suffrage bills were defeated in Arizona and New Mexico. A township
suffrage bill was defeated in Illinois, a license suffrage bill in
Connecticut, and a village suffrage bill in New York. In that year, also,
the Supreme Courts gave decisions adverse to suffrage laws. In 1893 a bill
was defeated in the United States Senate which proposed to give women the
municipal vote in the Cherokee Outlet. The vote stood 40 to 9.
In Washington Territory the Legislature passed a law conferring suffrage
on woman in 1883; but this was declared invalid by the courts in 1887,
because its nature was not sufficiently defined in its title. It was re-
enacted in 1888, and again declared invalid by the United States
Territorial Court, on the ground that the Act of Congress which organized
the Territorial legislature did not empower it to extend the suffrage to
women. In 1889 the people, in forming their State constitution, decided
against suffrage.
In 1894, in the election of November 6, Kansas defeated a constitutional
amendment granting full suffrage, by a majority of 34,827.
In Iowa, in the same year, the Senate defeated a proposition to submit a
suffrage constitutional amendment to the people. In 1895, bills for full
suffrage and for municipal suffrage again failed to pass, and the question
was submitted to the people in 1896, and resulted in defeat.
In 1895, also, a township suffrage bill was twice defeated in Illinois.
In Indiana a proposition to strike the word "male" out of the
Constitution, was not even reported from the committee to which it was
referred.
In the same year, in Kansas, a bill passed the Senate which proposed to
confer upon nine specified women the full suffrage in response to their
petition. The Senate also passed a bill conferring upon women the vote for
presidential electors; but neither ever reached a vote in the House. In
Michigan, the same year, a proposition to submit a constitutional
amendment was defeated, and a similar resolution in Missouri was also
defeated. Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin, and
South Carolina also defeated propositions to submit the question to the
people in 1895.
Since January, 1897, Nova Scotia, two Territories, and ten States have
dealt with the suffrage proposal, and all but one of these have rendered
adverse decisions. In Nova Scotia an old bill was reconsidered, and a
larger majority was obtained against it. The territories are Arizona and
Oklahoma. The states in which it was defeated are Iowa, Nevada, Nebraska,
Kansas, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, and California. The last two had
given it heavy defeats but a few months previously. Indiana's Supreme
Court handed down an adverse decision. The favorable state was Washington,
where the Legislature voted to submit an amendment to the people next
year.
Certainly, the question cannot be said not to have received the attention
that any vital subject might have claimed, and the answers show that, as
comprehension of the meaning of democracy has grown, and as liberty of
thought and action for men and women has increased, the proposition to
cast an unequal burden, not upon a disfranchised class, but upon an
unfranchised sex which in every class has its own correlative and equal
duties, rights, and privileges, is losing ground.
But, it is answered, look at the suffrage triumphs in Utah State and
Idaho. Let us look at them more closely. It is my opinion that a few more
such triumphs would end in its utter overthrow. Utah introduced suffrage
by a simple legislative act. Woman suffrage was abolished in Utah
Territory by Federal statute, because it was found to be sustaining the
Mormon Church and the institution of polygamy. The Suffragists profess to
hold in abhorrence churchly and polygamous rule. Here was an opportunity
for them to say to the Government: "This is not what we meant by suffrage,
nor what we desire suffrage to be used for. We approve this real
disfranchisement." Did they do anything of the kind? Far from it. In 1876
they passed the following: "Resolved, That, the right of suffrage being
vested in the women of Utah by their constitutional and lawful
enfranchisement, and by six years of use, we denounce the proposition
about to be again presented to Congress for the disfranchisement of the
women of that Territory, as an outrage on the freedom of thousands of
legal voters and a gross innovation of vested rights; we demand the
abolition of the system of numbering the ballots, in order that the women
may be thoroughly free to vote as they choose, without supervision or
dictation; and that the chair appoint a committee of three persons, with
power to add to their number, to memorialize Congress, and otherwise watch
over the rights of women of Utah in this regard during the next
twelvemonth."
In 1878 the report of Utah's governor contained the following: "All voters
must be over twenty-one years of age, and must have resided in the
Territory six months, and in the precinct one month. If males, they must
be native born or naturalized citizens of the United States, and tax-
payers in the Territory. A female voter need not be a tax-payer, and if
the wife, widow or daughter of a native or naturalized citizen, need not
herself be native or naturalized!" In 1892 the Utah Commission made to the
Secretary of the Interior a report which gave it as their opinion that the
sanction of the Church had been withdrawn only temporarily in regard to
polygamous practices, and would be restored after a political purpose had
been served. That same year a party was formed calling itself the "Liberal
Party," and it carried Salt Lake City in the first election in which
National party lines were drawn. This was one plank of its platform:
"Anxious as every Liberal is to see every difference adjusted, as anxious
as they are to exercise the utmost privileges accorded to the most favored
Americans, they remember what first caused clashing here was the presence
and control of an unyielding Theocracy and an _imperium in imperio_, and
they cannot fail to note that at the last conference of this theocratic
organization the old assumptions were all renewed." They therefore
deprecated immediate Statehood. The bill granting it passed Congress in
1894. The Republican, Democratic and Populist parties in Utah all favored
Statehood, and at the election following the Constitutional Convention
these parties all inserted planks favoring free coinage of silver 16 to 1,
demanding the return by government of "real estate belonging to the Mormon
Church," and favoring the retention of woman suffrage.
The women of Utah were greatly in evidence during the late presidential
election. Several of them were candidates for office; but it is a
significant fact that, even in Utah, and even on the Republico-Demo-
Populist ticket, the women's vote ran far behind that for the men. "The
Salt Lake Herald" for November 13, 1896, records the fact that "Woman
suffrage gave Utah to Bryan," and in another place it says: "The women on
both tickets polled a small number of votes." Martha Cannon, who was
elected State Senator, obtained 8,167 votes. The men on the same ticket,
elected to the same office, polled, respectively, 9,875, 9,355, 9,244,
9,036 votes. Mrs. Cannon was on the free silver ticket against her
husband, who was nominated for the same office on the Republican ticket.
Of the other candidates for the senatorships on that ticket, four were men
and one a woman. The men's vote stood: 6,405, 6,197, 6,129, 5,961. The
woman's was 4,692. The only woman put up for State Representative ran
2,000 votes behind her ticket. One man only, "the ex-dog-catcher" of the
county, fell below her. The woman's vote was 4,879, the dog-catcher's
4,325.
I copy from the "Salt Lake Herald" a few sentences taken from an interview
with Mrs. Cannon, State Senator elect. When asked if she was a strong
believer in woman suffrage, she answered: "Of course I am. It will help
women, and it will purify politics. Women are better than men. Slaves are
always better than their masters." "Do you refer to polygamy?" was asked.
"Indeed I do not," she answered. "I believe in polygamy. My father and
mother were Mormons, and I am a Mormon.... A plural wife isn't half as
much of a slave as a single wife. If her husband has four wives, she has
three weeks of freedom every single month.... Of course it is all at an
end now, but I think the women of Utah think, with me, that we were better
off in polygamy.... Sixty per cent. of the voters of this State are women.
We control the State.... What am I going to do with my children while I am
making the laws for the State? The same thing I have done with them when I
have been practicing medicine. They have been left to themselves a good
deal.... Some day there will be a law compelling people to have no more
than a certain amount of children, and the mothers of the land can live as
they ought to live." This is the character and opinion presented by the
highest State official that woman suffrage has as yet given to the United
States. Comment upon it seems unnecessary, so far as it would be needed to
express the disgust of the majority of American women at such sentiments
and such a situation. But has any Suffrage speaker or meeting denounced
them, or deprecated the result of the election? I have heard of none. The
National Suffrage Convention, which was held in Iowa, in January, 1897,
had the newly-elected Populist women as guests of honor, and held a
jubilation over the two new Suffrage States--Utah and Idaho. Idaho has
elected a Populist woman or two. The vote in that State in favor of the
gold standard and that against woman suffrage tally within forty-two
votes.
The instinctive alliance of the Woman Suffrage movement with the uncertain
and dangerous elements in our political life is well exemplified by the
campaign in California in connection with the late presidential election.
Mrs. Barclay Hazard, who was almost the sole woman to express publicly the
opposition which the majority of women felt, to the Suffrage idea, has
given me the following clear account of the conditions and result. She
says: "If the advocates of Woman Suffrage give a really frank and truthful
answer to the question, 'What caused the defeat of the movement in the
late campaign in California?' they must reply, 'Public sentiment was
against it.' In all fairness, there is no other reason. Let us consider
the conditions under which the campaign was carried on. In the first
place, the Suffragists were most fortunate in choosing a time when the
whole country, as well as the State of California, was torn by a question
of such vital importance to continued life and well-being that all other
matters were in danger of going by default.
"Second: They were extremely well organized and had command of a campaign
fund of no mean magnitude, which enabled them to keep in the field such
able and experienced agitators as Miss Susan B. Anthony and the Rev. Anna
Shaw, to say nothing of numerous lesser lights.
"Third: There was absolutely no organized opposition to the movement. The
women who disapproved were as a rule entirely unaccustomed to public
speaking and were averse to coming forward in any way. They remonstrated
in private but would not express their views openly.
"Fourth: Last but by no means least, our Suffrage friends may be said to
have had the press of the State with them. The 'Los Angeles Times' (the
most influential paper in the southern part of the State) cannot be said
to have aided the movement, neither did it actively antagonize it beyond
admitting to its columns occasionally letters from the 'Antis.' Yet for
this small opposition I heard an ardent advocate propose that the
Suffragists should boycott the paper!
"Now, was ever a cause fought for under conditions more conducive to
success? 'Every thing,' to use a current slang phrase, 'seemed to be going
their way.' They fully expected to win, and those of us most opposed to
their ideas in private sadly conceded their probable victory. The result
when it came was all the more a surprise and blow to the Suffragists and a
welcome reassurance to the friends of stability and conservatism. The
figures show us that while the stronghold of Populism, the South, went for
the measure, Alameda County turned the scale. One must know California to
realize what that means. Alameda County contains the city of Oakland,
which is admittedly the most respectable and moral city in California; it
also contains the town of Berkeley, which is the home of the University of
California with its large faculty of clever men, most of them from the
East. Yes, it was here in the stronghold of morals and intellect that the
Woman Suffrage movement in California met its fate."
A question constantly and properly asked is: "How does woman suffrage work
where it is exercised?" So far as I can obtain information, where it has
worked at all, it has been detrimental to women and to the State.
Of Wyoming there is much testimony to the fact that during the Territorial
period (1868-'89) women did little voting, and played no appreciable part
in political life. Populism and Free Coinage had begun to play a prominent
part in the whole section when Wyoming was admitted to Statehood in 1890.
At the election that followed its admission there was a fusion that
resulted in the election of a Populist Governor, and such was the riotous
state of feeling that the Governor was obliged to enter the State House
through a broken window. A year later this same Governor, in his annual
message, proclaimed woman suffrage to be a notable success. As a proof, he
pointed to the fact that there were no criminals in the State, and that
the jails were empty. A little research into official documents showed
that there might be other reasons, because the criminals and those guilty
of small offences were at that time lodged in other States, and a year
later, when the authorities took possession of Laramie Prison, given by
the Government, and brought home their evil-doers, they outnumbered, in
proportion to population, those of New Mexico, which certainly should be a
fair place for comparison.
For a time, women served on juries, and there is testimony to the fact
that in many respects they served well. But the practice of calling them
was soon suspended, and never has been renewed. The only public office of
consequence held by them was bestowed by the Republicans but a year or two
ago, when Miss Reel was made State Superintendent of Schools. In our late
crucial election, Wyoming and its woman suffrage gave their voices for
Populism and Free Coinage. The scale hung in the balance. Why, if woman is
a greater political power for good than man, did she not turn it for the
principles which the State had held were best? The true test of the
working of woman suffrage lies in a study of the legislation connected
with it, and this will be presented under its appropriate heading.
The scenes of shameful defiance of law and order in the midst of which
Colorado admitted woman to the ballot are of more recent occurrence and
are fresh in memory. Populism never has played in Colorado the part that
it has in Kansas, but "anything for free coinage" has been the motto, and
in abiding by it the State brought in, and afterward turned out, Gov.
Waite, of disgraceful memory. Again, last year, there was Republican-
Democratic-Populist fusion to beat the gold standard, and much Populist
rule was again the result. One good authority writes me that women "have
introduced an element of order and respectability upon election day that
was never observed before." He says he thinks that, "as a whole, the
people are very much satisfied with woman suffrage and believe that it has
resulted beneficially in so far as it has made politics a little better
than they were." Another says that "the influence of woman in politics did
not prevent the last Republican caucus of Arapahoe Co. from being the most
disgraceful in the history of the State. The Convention, though presided
over by a woman, was completely in the power of the 'gang,' and sent to
Pueblo the most unworthy delegate ever sent." This gentleman also says he
has "heard numbers of intelligent women state that they were sorry the
ballot had ever been given to them." Orderliness at the ordinary elections
is expected here, without calling upon women to act as "moral police" at
the polls. So quiet are they that it has been found practicable to place
coffee-stands in charge of women near some of the booths, when women have
requested it in the hope of preventing drunkenness. A friend said to me
some time ago: "You know that I have been a Suffragist. I am most
thoroughly converted. I have been three months in Colorado. It is enough
to cure any one."
A Denver correspondent of the "Chicago Record," says: "The women of
Colorado took no active part in the recent campaign, but they did not
forget to vote.... The experiment of having women in the State Assembly
did not prove satisfactory, at the last session, and it was quite
generally conceded that there would be no more women sent to that body;
but the Populists won in this county, and on their ticket were three woman
candidates, so the coming session will again have three women as members."
Of course the effect of suffrage in new States is not a criterion of its
effect elsewhere. And whether the effect could be shown to be good or bad,
the main argument would not be touched. The interesting thing to trace is
the affiliations of the movement.
In addition to those that have been mentioned we recall the fact that in
our recent political campaign, four parties that nominated candidates for
President and Vice-President of the United States, had in their
conventions women as delegates and members of committees. They were the
Populist, the Free-Silver, the Prohibition, and the Socialist-Labor
parties. The woman-suffragists of the Prohibition party left the rock-
ribbed champion that had put a Suffrage plank in every platform for years,
in order to go with Free Silver and Populism of the most extravagant type.
These parties also had Suffrage planks. Altgeld and Debs, Coxey and
Tillman were only men, but Mary Ellen Lease furnished to the campaign that
strain of exalted fanaticism that at once points out woman's glory and
woman's danger.
The Suffrage indictment we have been considering is summed up as follows:
"Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one half of the people of
this country, their social and religious degradation--in view of the
unjust laws above mentioned, and because women 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."
Dr. Jacobi in "Common Sense" says: "To this very day the survivors of that
group of pioneer women have an abstract way of stating their claim which,
to modern ears, sounds somewhat archaic."
She is not archaic when she says: "During the long ages of class rule,
which are just beginning to cease, only one form of sovereignty has been
assigned to all men--that, namely, over all women. Upon these feeble and
inferior companions all men were permitted to avenge the indignities they
suffered from so many men to whom they were forced to submit."
Mary A. Livermore is not archaic when in the "North American Review" for
February, 1896, she says: "Her physical weakness, and not alone her mental
inferiority, has made her the subject of man. Toiling patiently for him,
cheerfully sharing with him all his perils and hardships, the
unappreciated mother of his children, she has been bought and sold, petted
and tortured, according to the whims of her brutal owner, the victim
everywhere of pillage, lust, war, and servitude. And this statement
includes all races and peoples of the earth from the date of their
historic existence."
I deny the truthfulness of the archaic accusation, and denounce as an
absurdity the bombastic demand. I resent, as an unwarranted insult to
woman and to man, the still more bitter modern representations of woman's
condition and woman's rights in this world, and especially in this
Republic. They are simply false.
Archaic or modern, the dictums of the Suffrage pioneers have been repeated
at their every convention. Overlaid with sentiment as much of the Suffrage
idea has become, contradictory as it is in argument and in statement of
fact, blended as are its sophisms with the real progress of the time,
sincere and well-meaning as are many of its advocates, sex antagonism is
the corner-stone of its foundation. The Woman's Rebellion is a more
complex affair than the American Revolution. The latter was the natural
result of the earnest and united protest, by a large majority of men and
women of the American Colonies, against the tyranny of a monarchical
government. The former was a protest by a small band of women and men
against what they claimed to be universal tyranny. They attacked law and
custom all along the line, and the weapon forever kept in order for the
service was the demand for woman's possession of the ballot. Where she
does not possess it, and has not asked it, her influence is mightiest. The
relation of woman to the Republic is a study worthy the most exalted
patriotism. In it is involved the broader question of her relation to man
and to the destiny of the race. When told of her son's heroism in crossing
the Delaware, Mary Washington said, "George will not forget the lessons I
have taught him." Through the mother's devoted faith and the son's
obedient power, the foundations were laid of a government whose sole
reliance must still be on woman's inspiration and man's willing strength.
These are evidently God's instruments for our Nation's upbuilding.