WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND SEX.
The ninth count of the Suffrage Declaration says: "He has created a false
sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and
women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude woman from society, are
not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in men." And the list of
grievances is summed up as follows: "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."
The writers do not say whether the code of morals referred to is a code of
law or an unwritten code of public sentiment. If they mean the former,
their statement is not true; for whatever laws affect moral delinquencies
visit their penalties equally upon men and women. If they mean public
sentiment alone, the answer is, that both men and women are responsible
for its creation. It is folly to deny that there is, in the nature of
things, more excuse for men than for women. A mother realizes that her son
has a natural temptation of which her daughter knows nothing. But this
fact, while it accounts in part for the different standard, by no means
exonerates man. One of the strangest anomalies of human experience exists
in connection with this matter. Man reposes his deepest faith in the
existence of goodness at its vital point, in the virtue of woman; and yet
when he tramples upon that virtue he screens himself behind the excuse
that her nature is as vulnerable as his own, while his temptation is
greater. The main reason, as it seems to me, why women often appear more
cruel to their fallen sisters than do men, lies in the fact that pure
women abhor this vice as they abhor no other. Besides bestowing upon woman
a loftier moral sense, her Creator has hedged about her virtue with a
feeling of physical repulsion that is distinct from the moral question
involved. The social life of the world is to a large extent in woman's
hands. When she says to men "You cannot bring your impurity into my home,"
"You must be the ones to guard our sons and daughters," the reform will be
begun in earnest. Woman's faith, and her abstract way of looking at moral
questions, prevent her from fastening her thought, as men naturally do, on
any special culprit, in her severe but vague sense of wrong in this
matter. The Suffragists have taken fewer steps in the direction of
removing the social plague-spot than in the direction of bringing about a
system of easier divorce--a thing that strikes a blow directly against,
instead of for, the virtue of their sex. Social opinion is causing a
change in some of the laws concerning social vice. Nearly every State
legislature has raised the age of consent. So far as Suffrage associations
have assisted in this, it proves their ability and their good will; but
much more is due to our educated physicians and philanthropists.
It seems at first thought as if there were no direct connection between
voting and social questions of sex; but I am following the lead of my
Suffrage texts. Others who attempt the discussion are led to the same
themes. Dr. Jacobi, in her book, says: "The problem is, to show why, in a
representative system based on the double principle that all the
intelligence in the state shall be enlisted for its welfare, and all the
weakness in the state represented for its own defence, women, being often
intelligent, and often weak, and always persons in the community, should
not also be represented." In replying to the anti-suffrage arguments of
Prof. Goldwin Smith, she says: "Do sex relations depend upon acts of
Parliament or constitutional amendments? Can women marry a ballot, or
embrace the franchise, otherwise than by a questionable figure of speech?
Must adultery and infanticide necessarily be favored by the decisions of
female jurors? Is divorce legislation, as arranged by the exclusive wisdom
of men, now so satisfactory that women--who must perforce be involved in
every case--should always modestly refrain from attempting amendment? This
entire class of considerations, however irrelevant to the issue, may be
grouped together and considered together, because, to a large class of
minds--the rudest, quite as much as those of Mr. Smith's cultivation--they
are the considerations that do come to the front whenever equal rights are
suggested." She adds that the reason they come to the front is, "that men,
accustomed to think of men as possessing sex attributes and other things
besides, are accustomed to think of women as having sex and nothing else."
Is there a ruder mind anywhere than one that could not only think but
write a sentiment so revolting and so false? And yet the statement admits
that, whatever the reason, the sex issue does underlie the whole Suffrage
question.
In their "History," the leaders not only set forth all the specific
charges in their Declaration of Sentiments, but of this "rebellion such as
the world has never seen" they say: "Men saw that with political equality
for woman, she could no longer be kept in social subjection. The fear of a
social revolution thus complicated the discussion."
In the Introduction to the Suffrage Woman's Bible, the commentators say:
"How can woman's position be changed from that of a subordinate to an
equal, without opposition?--without the broadest discussion of all the
questions involved in her present degradation? For so far-reaching and
momentous a reform as her complete independence, an entire revolution in
all existing institutions is inevitable."
Dr. Jacobi says: "To-day, when all men rule, and diffused self-government
has abolished the old divisions between the governing classes and the
governed, only one class remains over whom all men can exercise
sovereignty--namely, the women. Hence a shuddering dread runs through
society at the proposal to also abolish this last refuge of facile
domination."
Here, then, all these Suffragists present a problem far more momentous
than appears when it is proposed "to show why, in a representative system
based on the double principle that all the intelligence in the state shall
be enlisted for its welfare, and all the weakness in the state represented
for its defence, women, being often intelligent, and often weak, and
always persons, should not also be represented." It is the sex battle that
has been waged from the beginning. In the Suffrage Woman's Bible Mrs.
Stanton says: "The correction of this [the misinterpretation of the Bible
as concerns woman] will restore her, and deprive her enemy, man, of a
reason for his oppression and a weapon of attack." Disguise it as they
may, to themselves and to others, the Suffrage idea is compelled to claim
that man is woman's enemy, that the ballot is the engine of his power, and
that therefore she must vote. The reason that "these considerations come
to the front whenever equal rights is mentioned" is because the women of
that movement brought them there, and keep them there, and because no one
can seriously consider the matter without seeing that they belong there.
In discussing them, Dr. Jacobi says: "What is imagined, claimed, and very
seriously demanded, is, that women be recognized as human beings, with a
range of faculties and activities co-extensive with that of men, whatever
may be the difference in the powers within that range."
In another place she admits that "women are really recognized as
individuals, the same as men," and the fact that they are so recognized is
made the basis of an argument for their voting. Suppose men demanded that
they be given a "range of faculties and activities co-extensive with that
of women, whatever may be the difference in the powers within that range,"
if they demanded it "seriously" they would probably become laughing-
stocks.
She says: "The sex relations of women as lovers, as wives, as mothers, as
daughters, remain untouched, certainly unimpaired, by the demand to extend
beyond these. What is impaired is not the sex relation, nor sex condition,
but the social disabilities, the personal and social subordination, the
condition of political non-existence, which have been foisted upon that
sex condition."
The repeated demand to "extend beyond" the sex relations of either sex
_is_ a demand to touch those relations, and whether it is a demand to
impair them depends upon the question whether it is true that disabilities
and subordination have been foisted upon the sex conditions. In olden
times they were. Men were subject to social disabilities, personal and
social subordination, and political non-existence. It followed that women
were also in the same subjection. As men threw off the yoke, the sex
relations began to assume their natural position. Man was the protector,
woman the protected. In the natural relations, the protector is at the
service of the protected, and that is the state of things to-day. In order
to be preserved in bodily, mental, and spiritual freedom, woman must yield
with grace to the hand that serves her. In order to protect, man must see
to it that this freedom he has won is kept sacred and inviolable. He
cannot be at once a tyrant and a guard. This freedom removes from woman
all disabilities save those of sex. The question then is, can all the
intelligence and all the weakness of women be represented for their own
welfare and their own defence, by the same methods as those by which men
attain that end, and yet leave these fundamental sex relations untouched
and unimpaired?
The Suffrage leaders did not expect or intend to leave them untouched, or
unimpaired, if complete change was impairment. In the "History" they say:
"It is often asked if political equality--would not arouse antagonism
between the sexes? If it could be proved that men and women had been
harmonious in all ages and countries, and that women were happy and
satisfied in their slavery, we might hesitate in proposing any change
whatever; but the apathy, the helpless, hopeless resignation of a subject
class, cannot be called happiness. A woman growing up under American ideas
of liberty in government and religion cannot brook any disability based on
sex alone, without a deep feeling of antagonism with the power that
creates it."
Dr. Jacobi says: "Manhood Suffrage in America may seem to result,
historically, from the general average equality of social conditions among
the inhabitants of the Thirteen States. But it may also be deduced as a
philosophical necessity from the Idea of Individualism, which became the
core of the Federal Union. This idea, at first suggested only for men,
has, little by little, spread to women also."
Individualism, in the sense of personal moral responsibility, became the
core, first of the Hebrew Theocracy, and last of the American National
life. But that republicanism which has come to rest on sex distinction is
the combined result of Individualism and Authority. Suffrage discussion
for years has turned upon the idea of Individualism _versus_ Authority.
In a government like ours, where all the intelligence and all the weakness
_are_ represented for their own welfare and defence, authority must to a
certain extent hold a stern hand over individualism, because freedom for
all means license for not a single one, be it man or woman. Mrs. Fanny
Ames says: "Any argument [against Suffrage] worth anything at all, comes
down to this--an argument against American democracy--and must rest
there." Many arguments have been adduced against Woman Suffrage that were
also arguments against democracy; because there are always people, and
wise people too, who fear the test of the ultimate experiment. To this
fear the Suffragists catered when, in contradiction to their own dictum of
universal suffrage, they asked Congress for a sixteenth amendment that
should require an educational qualification for all, both men and women.
But, guided by the statesmanship that seeks to form a true and enduring
democracy, this Republic has come to the sex basis.
Dr. Jacobi says: "The complex contradictions in the present distributions
of sovereign power are further intensified by the vulgarization of the
general ideal. It is one thing to say, 'Some men shall rule,' quite
another to declare, 'All men shall rule,' and that in virtue of the most
primitive and rudimentary attribute they possess,--that, namely, of sex.
If the original contempt for masses of men has ever diminished, and the
conception of mankind been ennobled, it is because, upon the primitive
animal foundation, human imagination has built a fair structure of mental
and moral attribute and possibility, and habitually deals with that. This
indeed is no new thing to do; for it was to this moral man that Pericles
addressed his funeral oration, and of whom Lincoln thought in his speech
at Gettysburg. Of this moral man, women--the sex hitherto so despised--are
now recognized to constitute an integral part. It is useless, therefore,
to attempt to throw them out by an appeal to the primitive conditions of a
physical force to which no one appeals for any other purpose."
The immortal orator at Gettysburg was commander-in-chief of an army and
navy whose physical power was then in the very act of saving the nation
and redeeming it from the sin of slavery. The soldier-statesman of Greece,
in his funeral oration, was addressing an army. The fair structure of
mental and moral attribute and possibility has not been built by human
imagination. The conception of the moral man that has ennobled mankind is
older than any man who has embodied it. It is as old as mankind itself,
upon whose primitive animal foundation God implanted side by side the
conception of the moral man, woman--and of the governing man, man.
That no inequality should be possible when this idea should really rest
upon the most primitive, rudimentary and yet continuing and controlling
attribute, instead of upon complex contradictions in regard to the
distribution of sovereign human power, God, speaking through the ideal
which the moral man had grasped, said: "Therefore shall a man leave his
father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they twain
shall be one flesh."
Man is not the hereditary sovereign in a republic. He is an actual,
present, continuing sovereign, and he is that only so long as he obeys the
law of his being and constitutes himself, by reason of his manhood
strength, the defence of the republic's laws for all. In woman suffrage
democracy has met a most dangerous foe. It has been asked "If it would be
best for man to make over half his sovereignty to woman?" I cannot imagine
how he could do this, whatever might be his wish. Sovereignty in a
republic is only divisible among those who are equals as to sovereign
power; and any effort to divide with those who lack the essential
attribute must result in despotism or anarchy. Men are as subject to the
restrictions and requirements of sex as are women, and when they try an
experiment contrary to those conditions, the end must be destruction of
government itself.
Prof. Goldwin Smith says: "One of the features of a revolutionary era is
the prevalence of a feeble facility of abdication. The holders of power,
however natural and legitimate it may be, are too ready to resign it on
the first demand.... The nerves of authority are shaken by the failure of
conviction."
This is true, and it is what makes the present situation portentous. From
the very tenderheartedness of the men of our time comes the danger to the
women of this nation. So far from desiring to hold the slightest
restriction over the women of the Republic, they may rush into an attempt
at abdication of a sovereignty that did not originate in their will but in
their environment, in order to prove the sincerity of their desire that
woman should not even appear to be compelled to obey.
This movement is a feature of the revolutionary era that seems suddenly to
have extended to the men with whose theories it belongs. Not at once, nor
everywhere equally, but finally and completely would this change come.
Man, as well as woman, must "consent to be governed" by the laws of being.
If man really could "share his sovereignty," there might be some show of
reason in the Suffrage claim that he should do so. But unless he can
abdicate the very essentials of his sex condition, he cannot abdicate his
sovereignty. His laws are dead letters whenever more men than those who
passed them and approve them choose that they shall be dead. He would have
no material outside the men in this country, with which to execute the
wishes of the woman voters whom it is proposed to introduce to make laws
which they know they cannot themselves enforce.
And this leads us right round again to consider the "disabilities foisted
upon sex conditions." The first thing demanded of a voter is that, in the
ordinary state of things, he should be able to vote. A body of citizens is
asking that a sex be admitted to franchise when it is known to all that a
large part of that sex would at every election find it physically
impossible, or improper, to go to the polls. Suffragists say: "No women
need vote who do not wish to; but they have no right to hinder us." Is
this the Individualism of Democracy? It is the Individualism of Anarchy.
It is not the rule of the majority. It is class rule with a vengeance; and
as for "consenting to be governed," there never was a man or a government
that so coolly assumed to govern without their consent such a body, as do
the Suffragists. The disabilities "foisted upon sex" would be felt first
of all by the wives and mothers who are most interested in the laws.
The next duty of citizenship is jury service. The leaders said: "We
demand, in criminal cases, that most sacred of all rights, trial by jury
of our own peers." In regard to jury duty Suffragists are not agreed;
which fact alone shows that that service would be felt to be an impairment
of sex conditions. So impossible has jury duty been found, even in small
communities, that in Wyoming the jury service of women ceased with the
first judge who admitted them to serve at all; and in Colorado but one or
two women have ever served. The judges there do not allow them to be
called. It was found to be expensive, and not promotive of the ends of
justice. Whether this is held to be man's cruel withholding of woman's
rights or not, it shows that either the sex condition or the co-
extensiveness of woman's work with man's must be impaired. Dr. Jacobi says
in regard to jury service: "The numerous cases for exemption now admitted
for men would be certainly paralleled for women, but they would not always
be identical. Men are now more often excused for business; women would be
excused on the plea of ill-health. Of course the special plea of family
cares with young children would rule out thousands of women during a
number of years of their lives."
Who would establish the "special plea" for so large a proportion of the
voting population? No law of justice on which a solid government can rest
could do it; and that it would be asked, and needed, shows that sex
conditions would interfere with voting conditions. A criminal case often
lasts weeks, even months, during which time the jury are kept together and
alone, locked up at night, and walked out by day. This second duty cannot
be, and is not, performed; not because many women would not make good
jurors, not because they should not try delicate cases, and might not
serve well at certain times, and in special ways, but because jury duty,
like military service, cannot take account of sex conditions when they are
the rule and not the exception.
Office-holding is the next necessary concomitant of the ballot. Of course
it can be said at once: "Why, multitudes of men never hold office, why
should women?" It may be answered that multitudes of men do hold office,
that no American would think of extending the ballot without expecting
that, as an accompaniment, the duty, or the privilege, of office-holding
should follow.
Not only is it true that if more than half the population were added to
the voting list multitudes among them would attempt to rush into office,
but it was mainly for office that a majority of those who have been
pressing the demand cared for the vote. The authors of the "History" say:
"As to offices, it is not be supposed that the class of men now elected
will resign to women their chances, and, if they should to any extent, the
necessary number of women to fill the offices would make no apparent
change in our social circles. If, for example, the Senate of the United
States should be entirely composed of women, but two in each State would
be withdrawn from the pursuit of domestic happiness."
How could "the class of men now elected" help resigning, if women enough
chose to put up a woman and give her a majority of votes,--provided, as
Suffragists say, that the vote secures the office and retains it by a mere
mandate? But it is not one office, or set of offices, which we have to
consider. It is the entrance upon political life, permanently, of a large
body of women. What that means to the social life that "would not miss
them," we well know. There could be no domestic ties; no hindering child.
The time would be short before this unnatural position would breed a race
of Aspasias--without the intellect that ruled "the ruler of the land, when
Athens was the land of fame."
The "History" says: "An honest fear is sometimes expressed 'that women
would degrade politics, and politics would degrade women,'" and the
writers answer: "As the influence of woman has been uniformly elevating in
new civilizations, in missionary work in heathen lands, in schools,
colleges, literature, and general society, it is fair to suppose that
politics would prove no exception." We do not need to depend upon forecast
or inference. The influence of women upon politics, and the influence of
politics upon women, have already been degrading. This is true of
political intrigue in the old world, and of the "Female Lobby" in
Washington. It is astonishing to what an extent it is true in our new
country, with our fresh and sweet traditions.
In 1851, Mrs. Stanton, writing to a convention at Akron, Ohio, said: "The
great work before us is the education of those just coming on the stage of
action. Begin with the girls of to-day, and in twenty years we can
revolutionize this nation. Teach the girl to go alone by night and day, if
need be, on the lonely highway, or through the busy streets of the crowded
metropolis. Better for her to suffer occasional insults, or die outright,
than live the life of a coward, or never move without a protector....
Teach her that it is no part of life to cater to the prejudices of those
around her. Make her independent of public sentiment, by showing her how
worthless and rotten a thing it is.... Think you, women thus educated
would long remain the weak, dependent beings we now find them? They would
soon settle for themselves this whole question of Woman's Rights."
Fifty years of such teaching has had its effect. The fine bloom has too
often been brushed from our girls' delicacy of thought. They can strut
through the street in the daytime wearing a shirt-front, a cravat, a
choker, a vest, and a man's hat, and carrying a cane. A few can flaunt
themselves in bloomers and knickerbockers, and ride astride a bicycle.
They ape men in everything except courtesy to women. But the result is not
what was expected. These customs have introduced the chaperone, and have
put an end to simple freedom between boys and girls. The Puritan maiden in
her modesty could let John Alden speak for himself, because the John who
could summon courage to speak of love to such a girl would not dare to
breathe impurity. When the young woman requires a social spy, the young
man is apt to forget that her innocent dignity is her own best guardian.
With the passing of the "lady," American women may fail to remember that a
gentlewoman need pretend to no aristocracy but that of the _noblesse
oblige_ of her own femininity. In the paragraph quoted above, women are
spoken of as those who are "uniformly elevating" and as "weak and
dependent" to a contemptuous degree. They cannot be both at once, and it
seems to me that in fact they are neither. Woman is not an angel nor a
demon, not a conqueror nor a slave. But the seed from which any of these
conflicting natures may develop lies in more fertile soil, within her
impassioned and impressible soil, than in man's. The Suffrage movement
will leave her much better or worse than it found her. The phrase "the new
woman," with the instinctive explanation that she "is as refined, or as
good a wife, mother, sister, daughter, housekeeper," as the old, is
ominous.
Suffrage writers seem to hold two views in regard to sex. One is, that it
is so pervasive that it cannot be affected by any line of conduct. The
other is, that, so far as mind is concerned, it is purely a fanciful
barrier, and the less there appears of external distinction the better
will this be realized. The Suffrage "History" says: "Sex pervades all
matter. Whatever it is, it requires no special watchfulness on our part to
see that it is maintained." At the same time the dictum "There is no sex
in mind," has been a Suffrage war-cry. It seems to me that both views are
unscientific and dangerous to social morals. Sex integrity is pervasive of
the whole nature only when men and women are true to the ideal of the
essential distinctions in each. The true environment of woman is
womanliness; not to fit her nature to the utmost that womanliness can mean
to the world, is to fail of womanly attainment. But making herself a
distorted woman cannot make her even an imperfect man. The mere act of
going to the polls is not unwomanly; it might be as proper as going to the
post-office; but attempting to encroach upon duty that is laid upon man in
her behalf is neither womanly nor manly.
In demanding equality, Suffragists assume that there is not and has not
been equality. In asserting that "there is no sex in mind," they really
have had to maintain that there is one sex in mind, and that the
masculine, to which woman must conform. If man wanted clinching arguments
to prove his superiority, could he find another to match this one which
suffrage has furnished him? The quaint wit of the Yankee put it neatly
when he gave the toast, "Woman--once our superior, now our equal!" Man has
said: "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." He has also said,
with Martin: "Whatever may be the customs and laws of a country, the women
of it decide the morals." The civilization of no nation has risen higher
than the carrying out of the religious ideals of its best womanhood. If
man has the outward framing of church and state, woman has the framing of
the character of man. There is no schism in the body of human duties as
the Lord established them. The issues have become more distinctly and
openly moral issues; and in so far as woman can make it consist with that
inner life of the home and the child, which alone can make the family and
fix the state on any sure foundation, she is welcomed by man to meet the
common foe. Such new avenues to wealth and distinction as she can enter
with womanly dignity and grace will open to her as fast as man can make
them places where she can walk with security and comfort to herself and
advantage to them both. And they will open no faster.
The woman Suffragist has had to wage as bitter a warfare against physical
science as against religion. Eliza Burt Gamble, in her volume which
discusses "The Evolution of Woman," takes up the cudgels against both the
Bible and man's scientific classification of woman, or rather his failure
to classify her properly at all. She says: "When we bear in mind the past
experience of the human race, it is not perhaps surprising that, during an
era of physical force and the predominance of the animal instincts in man,
the doctrine of male superiority should have become firmly grounded. But
with the dawn of scientific investigation it might have been hoped that
the prejudices resulting from a lower condition of human society would
disappear. When, however, we turn to the most advanced scientific writers
of the present century, we find that the prejudices which throughout
thousands of years have been gathering strength are by no means
eradicated. Mr. Darwin, whenever he had occasion to touch on the mental
capacities of women, or, more particularly, the relative capacities of the
sexes, manifested the same spirit which characterizes an earlier age."
Herbert Spencer, in his essay on "Justice," says that he once favored
woman suffrage "from the point of view of a general principle of
individual rights." Later he finds that this cannot be maintained, because
he "discovers mental and emotional differences between the sexes which
disqualify women from the burden of government and the exercise of its
functions." He also considers it absurd for women to claim the vote and
military exemption in the name of equality.
Science has told us of the active, as well as the passive, part that the
mother plays in the growth of the embryo, and at the same time has told us
that the sex of that embryo is determined by the nourishing power of the
mother. The commonplace statistics of the census come in with their
verifying word, and we find that in rude times and hard conditions more
boys are born. Gentle conditions and abundance are favorable to the birth
of girls. Here is the same story we have learned so often. Man the
protector, woman the protected. Woman the inspiring force, man the
organizing and physical power.
So the Bible, Science, and Republican government, according to Suffragist
and Anti-suffragist, have planted themselves squarely on the sex issue. It
is solid standing-ground, and neither apparent irrelevancy nor real
antagonism will dislodge the argument.
Dr. Jacobi, in her address before the Constitutional Convention, said:
"Still, all women do not demand the suffrage. We are sometimes told that
the thousands of women who do want the suffrage must wait until those who
are now indifferent, or even hostile, can be converted from their
position. Gentlemen, we declare that theory is preposterous. It is true
that the exercise of an independent sovereignty necessitates the
demonstration of a very considerable amount of independence. A rebel state
that cannot break its own blockade may not call upon a foreign power to
move from its neutrality to do so. But the demand for equal suffrage is in
nowise analogous to a claim for independent sovereignty. It is rather
analogous to the claim to the protection of existing laws, which any group
of people, or even a single person, may make."
Under a democratic government a claim for equal suffrage is a claim to
share the independent sovereignty that protects, and therefore it cannot
be analogous to a claim for protection, individual or otherwise, under
that sovereignty. Does Dr. Jacobi mean that in asking for suffrage she
does not ask to be as much an independent sovereign as any masculine voter
of them all? The comparison of woman's claims to suffrage to the
protection afforded by existing laws, suggests a narrowing of the demand
to fit the requirements of an apparently hopeless struggle for a majority
vote of women.
The Government is spoken of by Suffragists as if it were something
exterior to and apart from the individual voters--a code of laws that had
been set going and would run of itself, the laws being changed by more or
fewer votes, but the power to execute being automatic and continuous. As
this is the opposite of the actual situation, these rebels will have to
"break their own blockade" like any others.
The "pacific blocade" that is enforced by the Quaker guns of this movement
has its peaceful war-cries. One of the most exultant is an allusion to the
expression "We the people" in the preamble of our national Constitution,
with the question whether "people" does not include women. A reading of
the entire preamble shows that, of the six achievements there specified as
the purpose of the Constitution, every one is a thing that only men can
do--with the possible exception of the fifth, which proposes rather
vaguely to "promote the general welfare."
As to the thousands of women who want the vote, there are some figures as
to the majority that "are indifferent or even hostile." I see by the
pamphlet published by the New York State Suffrage Association, that they
have but 1,600 paying members, which is not one in a thousand of the women
in the State over twenty years of age. As Mrs. Winslow Crannell has made a
careful computation from figures published in the "Woman's Journal,"
edited by Henry B. Blackwell and his daughter Alice Stone Blackwell, I
quote her results: In Maine there are but 12 Suffragists to every 100,000
of the people; in New Hampshire, but 5 to every 100,000; in Massachusetts,
but 51 to every 100,000; in Connecticut, but 23 to every 100,000.
Pennsylvania has but 14 in 100,000; Kentucky has 32 to 100,000; Michigan,
but 6 to 100,000; Illinois has 13 to 100,000; Ohio has 11 to 100,000; Iowa
has 6 to 100,000; Virginia, but 1 to 100,000; New Jersey, 8 to 100,000;
Arkansas, 3 to 100,000; South Carolina, 3 to 100,000. California has 33 in
every 100,000, and Maryland has 6 in 100,000. If the suffrage is claimed
for tax-paying women, it can be shown that there are, in New York State,
for instance, at least 1,500,000 women who do not pay taxes. But, as a
matter of fact, the tax-paying women of this State were among the first
signers of Anti-suffrage petitions.