That the results of applied woman suffrage may stand out the more
clearly, it will be expedient to show, first, the results achieved in
behalf of woman without its help. All are agreed that during the
sixty-five years that have elapsed since the suffragists, led by
Lucretia Mott, posted their "Declaration of Sentiments" at Seneca
Falls, N. Y., in 1848, woman has gained certain rights and privileges.
That Declaration contained a bitter indictment by woman of man who had
"oppressed her on all sides." He had made her, if married, "in the eye
of the law, civilly dead," having taken from her "all right in
property, even to the wages she earns." He had made her "morally an
irresponsible;" she could commit many crimes with impunity, "provided
they be done in the presence of her husband, he becoming to all
intents and purposes her master--the law giving him power to deprive
her of her liberty and to administer chastisement." He had so framed
the laws of divorce as to what should be the proper causes, and, in
case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children should be
given, "as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women--the law
in all cases going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man,
and giving all power into his hands."
The married woman having no rights, the single woman was "taxed to
support a Government which recognizes her only when her property can
be made profitable to it." Man had "monopolized nearly all the
profitable employments;" and from those woman was permitted to follow,
"she receives but a scanty remuneration." Man had closed to woman "all
the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most
honorable to himself: as a teacher of theology, in medicine, or law,
she is not known." Moreover, man had "denied to her the facilities
for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against
her." In the Church, too, she was subordinated, and apostolic
authority was invoked "for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with
some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the
Church." Men acted by a different code of morals from women, "by which
moral delinquencies which exclude women from society are not only
tolerated, but deemed of little account in men." By such means, the
indictment declared, man had discriminated against woman, endeavoring
in every way he could to "destroy her confidence in her own powers, to
lessen her self-respect, and to make her lead a dependent and abject
life." And because of these things the drawers of the indictment
demanded for women "immediate admission to all the rights and
privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States."
It was first of all as voters that the women should gain the rights
denied them. Deprivation of the vote was the fundamental evil. The
first item of their grievances named the ballot as their "inalienable
right." It was primarily because this had been wrested away, the
Declaration said, that man had been able to oppress woman on all
sides.
But it needs only the restatement of the original suffragist
grievances to show how completely woman has been emancipated since
they were formulated, and chiefly without the vote. Nowhere in the
United States is the married woman, in the eyes of the law, civilly
dead. Nowhere is she bereft of the right in property and wages. In
that year 1848 when the "Declaration of Sentiments" was drafted, New
York State, still withholding the franchise from woman, expressly
permitted married women to hold property for their sole and separate
use. By a law of 1861, married women in New York received power to
control property, including wages, and authority to will property was
given them in 1867. By 1887 the property rights of married women in
this State were more complete than those of their husbands, who could
not convey real estate without their wives' consent. Woman now has a
right of action for injuries to person or property, and she is liable
for her own wrongful acts; that is, she is no longer "morally an
irresponsible." Women are joint guardians with their husbands of their
minor children, and, in case of divorce, the custody of the children
is decreed reasonably to the innocent party without discrimination as
to sex. The laws of divorce and separation, too, though differing
widely in the several States, are impartial, applying equally to men
and women. New York's women taxpayers have the right to vote on
questions of local taxation in all towns and villages, and they are
eligible to nearly all political offices, and to various positions of
trust and responsibility. Moreover, all the professions are open to
them.
In these respects, the case of New York is fairly typical of all the
States in the Union, whether suffragist or non-suffragist. As for
men's monopolizing "nearly all the profitable employments," the
Federal census of 1900 showed that women were engaged in 295 out of
the 303 masculine occupations. The original complaint that they were
not admitted to men's pursuits on equal terms with men has changed to
a demand for laws which shall discriminate in favor of women in
industry because of their weaker physique. Only in Massachusetts,
Indiana, and Nebraska, however, three male-suffrage States, have laws
been passed prohibiting night work for women in factories and machine
shops. The eight-hour law for women in California was enacted before
they had the suffrage there, but it still exempts the great canning
industry of that State from its operation, and it does not prohibit
night work. The doubtful minimum wage act, and the maternity act for
the protection of women were first copied from anti-feminist Europe by
male-suffragist Massachusetts. Massachusetts, also, is generally
credited by child labor experts and by woman suffragists with having
the best child labor law in the Union, applied in her great textile
industries. It would seem, therefore, that the added complaint of the
latter-day suffragists of lack of discrimination in favor of working
women may be satisfied without resort by them to the ballot.
The facilities for acquiring a thorough education are now in no State
denied to woman. In the argument of Mrs. A. J. George to the woman
suffrage committee of the Federal Senate on April 19, 1913, this
anti-suffragist authority noted the fact that there are "to-day more
institutions which grant degrees to women in this country than there
are institutions which grant degrees to men." The foundation of
Vassar, of Wellesley, of Smith, of Mount Holyoke, was "in no way
connected with the suffrage movement," while the opening of the
Harvard examinations to women and the opening of the graduate
departments of Yale University to women were due to the activities of
men and women who were avowed anti-suffragists. In the universal
granting of this great privilege to woman, therefore, the ballot was
not used or needed.
The grievance that woman is subordinated in the Church was one that,
by its nature, could not be settled by the suffrage, since in this
country Church and State are irrevocably separate. As a matter of
fact, however, woman has steadily gained rights and privileges in most
denominations of the Protestant Church, including admission to the
ministry and public participation in their affairs. For example, Dr.
Anna Shaw, the President of the National Woman's Suffrage Association,
is a clergywoman. As in religion, so in morals. The legal prohibitions
of immorality are in most cases the same for both men and women; it is
only outside the domain of legislation and within the sphere of social
custom that divergencies appear, and here the discrimination is
exercised notoriously by woman against her erring sisters.
Up to this point results achieved and practicable without the suffrage
seem to argue strongly against a continuance of the propaganda to
obtain the elective franchise for the redress of aggrieved womankind.
Clothed with full rights in property and earnings, held morally
accountable for her acts, made joint guardian with her husband over
her children, welcomed to an equal competition with men in business,
industry, and the professions, after ample opportunities given for
acquiring a higher education and special training, to what further
extent can the exercise of the voting power by woman improve her
status? The grievances set forth in the "Declaration of Sentiments" of
1848 present the "whole case for woman as comprehensively as it ever
has been stated since," according to an official statement of the
National Woman Suffrage Association; the document's resolutions
comprised "practically every demand that ever afterwards was made for
women." The civil and legal rights besought therein have been so fully
recognized that the anti-suffragists, numbering many public-spirited
women who have battled zealously for these rights, now contend that
womanhood suffrage is not needed.
Their suffragist opponents will not be gainsaid. While the condition
of woman and her children has been mitigated, much remains to do, they
say, and the more quickly by the ballot. For example, while eighteen
States, comprising nearly one-half the population of the
Union--41,231,000, to be exact--enjoy the benefit of joint
guardianship laws, and in twenty-seven more States the surviving
mother is made sole guardian of her children with the same powers
exercised by the father in his lifetime, six States remain--Delaware,
Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and Maryland, with a combined
population of 9,104,000--in which the father has power to bequeath the
guardianship to a stranger and away from the mother. To be sure, in
this ninth of the population of the country the custom ignores the
common law; husbands uniformly leave the guardianship of children to
their wives, and the mother shares authority over them with the
father. But here is a field for corrective legal action. The question
is whether, if women had the vote, this would be the swiftest and most
direct means of bringing about the reform demanded. A suffragist
writer has said: "It took the mothers of Massachusetts fifty-five
years to get an equal guardianship law, but after the women obtained
the ballot in Colorado the very next Legislature enacted one." She
forgot that New York's joint guardianship law was passed a year before
the Colorado statute. Mrs. George W. Townsend of Buffalo, who as head
of the Woman's Educational and Industrial Union was active in urging
the passage of the joint guardianship laws in both States, says of the
one in New York:
Our Union was especially careful that the Suffrage Association
should not know of the Union's effort until after the law was
passed. I remember that a prominent suffragist called to see me
as soon as she heard of it, and said, "How did you accomplish
this great good, and not let us know?" And I answered, "Because
we did not let you know." I think I was justified in saying that,
because many men in both houses were so opposed to woman suffrage
that they would not have voted for our bills. The guardianship
bill was passed without a negative vote in either house.
The work was done in a systematic manner. Circulars giving full
information in regard to laws in other States, and as to what we
desired to accomplish, and reasons therefor, were sent to every
legislator. There was no lobbying, and, in fact, it was not
necessary for me to go to Albany at all.
It should be noted in this connection that in Wyoming, while it is not
among the "benighted" states that permit the father to will the
guardianship of his children away from the mother, the women have had
an equal voice in the State Government for more than half a century
without making fathers and mothers joint guardians of their children.
It is not clear, therefore, that joint guardianship laws have been
passed the more quickly by reason of woman suffrage.
But other tests should be applied. The new complaints of woman that
have arisen since the Declaration of 1848 deal largely with her
condition in the industries which men have thrown open to her. Has the
suffrage enabled her more quickly to ameliorate this condition? Around
this point the strife rages between the "pros" and the "antis." Miss
Minnie Bronson, who was employed from 1907 to 1909 by the Federal
Bureau of Labor to investigate the conditions of labor of women and
children, and who acted as the Special Agent of the Bureau to report
on the strike of shirtwaist makers in 1910 has prepared a statement
for the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of
Suffrage to Women embodying a comparison of the laws for the
protection of wage-earning women in the various States of the Union.
Miss Bronson's contentions have been deemed of sufficient importance
to merit a reply, with an introduction by Jane Addams, written by the
two best qualified woman suffragist authorities on women in the
industries, Miss Edith Abbott of Hull House, Chicago, and Professor
Sophonisba P. Breckinridge of the University of Chicago. The
allegations of Miss Bronson and the specific replies of her opponents
thereto are marshaled below:
_"Anti" Contentions_ _Suffragist Replies_
A suffragist addressing the women When we say that if women had a
shirtwaist strikers in New York vote there would be an end of
declared that if the women child labor, and that young girls
engaged in this industry had had would work shorter hours, this
the ballot such a strike as does not mean that we think the
theirs would be unnecessary. The children in the mills and
speaker would have been surprised factories and workshops are going
to learn that 40 per cent. of the to be allowed to vote. In England
strikers were men, 36 per cent. conditions improved for all
were women under 21 years, and 6 workingmen when some workmen got
per cent. were women workers of the vote; in this country when
voting age who had not been in some women get the vote
this country long enough to gain conditions for all workingwomen
a residence. will improve.
Laws governing the labor of women Any fair-minded person need only
are constantly improved, not recall the long series of
because women have the ballot or statutes enacted in all the
want it, but because women are leading industrial states,
entering more and more into the covering nearly three-fourths of
industrial life of the country. a century, as a result of
In forty-four states the laws for workmen's efforts to get through
safeguarding wage-earning women laws a larger measure of justice
are better and more comprehensive than they could obtain through
than the laws for the their attempts to bargain with
safeguarding of wage-earning men. individual employers. This
Moreover, a comparison of the legislation, although it may in a
labor laws of the various states few cases protect the
shows that there are more and workingwoman as well as the
better laws for the protection of workingman, represents the
women wage-earners in the results of long years of earnest
non-suffrage states than in struggle by workingmen with votes
states where women have the to improve their condition. Miss
ballot. Bronson ignores this, laying
stress on the fact that some
states have a few special
provisions to protect
wage-earning women from
exploitation likely to injure
health and endanger their
children's health.
In thirty-four states laws have No suffragist would deny that
been passed limiting the hours of protective legislation has been
labor in which a woman may be obtained in states where women do
employed. Three of the four woman not vote. It is well known that
suffrage states where women have most of this legislation was
voted long enough to affect obtained through the laborious
legislation have no such law, and efforts of suffragists.
the 54-hour law in Utah was not
enacted until 1911, fifteen years No argument that protective
after woman suffrage became legislation does not exist in
operative there. some of the states in which women
have the ballot is valid which
ignores the special needs of
these states. Colorado, Wyoming,
Idaho and Utah are all mining and
agricultural states and have very
few wage-earning women who are
employed in factories.
Massachusetts had 152,713 women
in "manufacturing and mechanical
pursuits" when the last United
States Census of Occupations was
taken; Idaho had only 681. A
similar contrast might be drawn
for any of the other states:
thus, Wyoming had 501 women in
industrial occupations while New
York in the same year had
136,788.
Thirty-nine states compel The one suffrage state, Idaho,
employers in stores, factories, that fails to provide seats for
shops, etc., to provide seats for saleswomen in all at a time when
female employés. Nine states have Massachusetts had 11,985,
no such laws, and one of the nine Illinois, 12,149, and New York,
states is a suffrage state. 30,858. In most of the
thirty-nine states where voteless
women have secured these laws,
they have never received the
means of enforcing them. The
protective laws protect no one.
In forty-two states, the No reply.
territory of Alaska, and the
District of Columbia, the earnings
of a married woman are
secured to her absolutely, and
cannot be required by law, as
can the earnings of a married
man, for the support of the
family, nor are they liable for
her husband's debts. Six
states do not so provide, and
one is a suffrage state.
Sixteen states regulate the Night work for women is not
employment of women at night, and prohibited in Idaho, Colorado,
specifically state the hours Wyoming, and Utah, for the same
between which women may not be reason that the workingmen of
employed. These laws were all Nebraska have not passed a law
enacted under male suffrage. In protecting seamen.
these sixteen states are all
those that prohibit night work
for girls who are minors, but who
are over 16 and therefore not
protected by child labor laws.
Twenty-four states, only one a The same legislature of
suffrage state, restrict the California that granted equal
number of hours of employment for suffrage passed the eight-hour
women, both by the day and week, law for women. Massachusetts has
thus causing one day of rest in passed a 54-hour a week law for
seven. The suffrage states of women as the culmination of forty
Washington and California, while years of effort by indirect
limiting women's work to influence to improve conditions
forty-eight hours a week, passed for women in industry. Utah in
both laws while under male 1911 passed a nine-hour law for
suffrage. women after less than two years
of effort by its advocates. The
first legislature of which they
asked it gave it to women with
votes. Of the non-suffrage states
not one has an eight-hour law for
women, and only five have
nine-hour laws.
Eliminating the manufacturing The Nebraska law provides for a
states of the east, which have ten-hour day and a sixty-hour
the most and best remedial laws week and does not prohibit Sunday
for women, the suffrage states of labor. Nebraska, in company with
Idaho and Wyoming do not limit a large number of other states,
the hours a woman may be has a law prohibiting Sunday
employed, while the neighboring labor, which applies to both men
male-suffrage states of Oklahoma, and women.
South Dakota, North Dakota, and
Nebraska regulate the hours by The fact that Colorado has no
law, and Nebraska prohibits the Sunday labor law argues as much
employment of women at night in against suffrage for men as for
all manufacturing mechanical, or women, since the men in the large
mercantile establishments, and in metal-working establishments are
hotels, and restaurants, and chiefly affected by absence of
limits the number of hours per Sunday laws. Anyway, such laws
week, thereby insuring one day of are rarely enforced.
rest.
An eight-hour law for women was The eight-hour day of the
enacted in Colorado in 1903, a Colorado law, made for the
very inadequate law, for it was majority of workingwomen of
restricted in its application to Colorado a forty-eight-hour
women who must stand at work, and week, in contrast with the
exempted the great majority of 60-hour week in the neighboring
women employed in that state in states of Oklahoma, South Dakota,
the "seated trades" of ready-made North Dakota, and Nebraska. It is
clothing, dress-making, millinery little short of ridiculous to
and like occupations, and in discuss these laws as if they
candy-making, box-making, and were all genuinely protective
cigar-making. The law was through proper enforcement. The
pronounced unconstitutional in last census of occupations showed
1907 by the Supreme Court of but 65 women and girls in
Colorado, although state courts Colorado employed in
and the Federal Supreme Court candy-making, 11 in box-making,
have upheld similar laws in and 30 in cigar-making, in
neighboring male-suffrage states. contrast to 1,184 saleswomen, 762
Not until 1912, nineteen years waitresses, 1,599 in hand and
after woman suffrage came into steam laundries,--all in the
Colorado, was a law finally standing trades.
secured limiting the hours of
women at work.
Laws not enacted under woman The Massachusetts law relating to
suffrage are those in broken-down machinery was passed
Massachusetts prohibiting to correct peculiar abuses in the
employers from deducting the textile industries. This law was
wages of women when time is lost not needed in suffrage states. In
because machinery has broken a few states the courts took the
down, and prohibiting the position that since women were
employment of women for a fixed not voters they could not become
period before and after practicing lawyers; corrective
childbirth; the law in Delaware statutes were passed. No such law
and Louisiana exempting the wages would be needed in a state where
of women from execution, and laws women do participate in the
in California, Illinois, and Government.
Washington, providing that no
person shall on account of sex be
disqualified from entering upon
or pursuing any lawful business,
vocation, or profession.
A suffragist says that in The doctrine of the inflexibility
Massachusetts the average pay of and almost sacred character of
a female teacher is only supply and demand is outworn. The
one-third that of a male teacher, supply of child labor has been
and in almost all the states it greatly reduced in many states,
is unequal, whereas Wyoming and and is entirely cut off in others
Utah give equal pay for equal by means of protective
work. Where teachers are doing legislation; in still other
the same grade of work no such states the demand for child labor
percentage as three to one has greatly decreased as the
obtains in Massachusetts. Female result of inconvenient protective
teachers do not in the majority child labor laws and the demand
of cases receive the same pay as for labor of men and women has
men for the work of the same correspondingly increased. To get
grade; but here the law of supply equal pay the women teachers in
and demand is paramount. The New York City had to put in six
women teachers of New York City years of hard and exhausting work
receive equal pay with men by "indirect influence" while in
teachers, granted by a the suffrage states the same
male-suffrage legislature. result has come about almost
automatically.
In this conflicting testimony it does not appear that the complaint of
Lucretia Mott and her sister suffragists in 1848 that woman had been
oppressed on all sides is valid to-day. Both Miss Bronson and her
suffragist opponents agree that woman in industry has been protected,
not oppressed. It is admitted that this is not a result of the
exercise of the ballot by woman. It is unfortunate, of course, that
the suffrage states are in the agricultural and mining stages of
civilization, and cannot show how formidable the women's vote might be
in correcting the oppressive man-made laws. It is a little deplorable,
too, that the women in the male-suffrage states should have spent so
much of their time proving that protective laws might be gotten by the
despised indirect methods. Dr. Abbott and Professor Breckinridge have
perceived this tactical error, and they note it in these words:
American women would probably have got the vote long ago if they
had followed the present English method of making suffrage a
paramount issue, first, last, and all the time. Instead of this,
Miss Jane Addams in Illinois, Mrs. Florence Kelley in New York,
and a host of other ardent suffragists have labored with the
greatest devotion and self-sacrifice to secure protective
legislation for women and children. How much effort they have put
into it, how much time and energy it has cost, only those who
have been closely associated with them know. It should not be
forgotten that, as the result of their experience, they say that
the ballot is the swiftest and surest way to bring about the
reforms which are asked by and for the women workers of the
country.
But how can that last sentence be verified? Was it not explicitly
admitted that the suffrage states, by reason of their mining and
agricultural status, have had little occasion to reform the laws for
women workers, and that the reforms have all been worked out in the
east? The male workers under male suffrage have done this for
themselves, and incidentally for the women workers among them. Of
course, there are fewer woman bread-winners, the proportion being five
men to one woman. But women share equally in the benefits of labor
legislation, besides being specially protected. The unions have even
succeeded in leveling up a little the scale of women's wages, thus
measurably meeting the complaint of 1848 that in her employments
woman "receives but a scanty remuneration." And despite the equal pay
laws for teachers in the suffrage states the average pay for women
teachers is much below that of men teachers. Dr. Helen M. Sumner, the
suffragist writer of the book _Equal Suffrage_ says: "Taking public
employment as a whole, women in Colorado receive considerably less
remuneration than men;" and "the wages of men and women in all fields
of industry are governed by economic conditions." Dr. Sumner's tables
show that the pay of women in Colorado has never been quite half as
much as the pay of men; while the average weekly wage of women in that
state is 97 cents higher than the average in the United States, the
average weekly pay of men is $3.62 higher than for the United States
as a whole. Dr. Sumner frankly acknowledges that the suffrage has
probably nothing to do with the wages of either men or women.
As for hours of work, the contention of the suffragists that the
54-hour a week law in Massachusetts was "the culmination of forty
years of effort by indirect influence to improve conditions for women
in industry," while Utah granted such a law after less than two years
of effort by its suffragist advocates, merits the comment that the
forty years, or one-eighth that time, were not consumed in agitating
for this specific bit of legislation. The struggle for the law
limiting hours of women's work in Massachusetts lasted a little longer
than in Utah, chiefly because Utah is an agricultural state where
manufacturers have less at stake in the passage of such a restrictive
measure. It is not probable that the legislators of Utah blenched and
yielded this point through fear of the women's vote, or that any but
humanitarian motives dictated the legislation in either state.
Considerations of humanity, indeed, and not politics, seem to animate
the legislative programs for the protection of women and children in
most states, whether male suffragist or equal suffragist.
Pennsylvania, for example, is one of the black states on the
suffragist maps, because it has never extended the franchise to woman,
even for the election of school committees. If the woman's vote is
requisite, we should see the protective laws of Pennsylvania far
behind those of Colorado. Colorado has had equal suffrage since 1893,
and of all the woman suffragist states, conditions there are most
nearly like those in the male suffragist East. For comparison, I draw
on two unchallenged documents, one prepared by Mary C. Bradford and
published by the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association--with some
additions by Elinor Byrns and Helen Ranlett, printed in _The New York
Evening Post_ of Nov. 10, 1913--summarizing the protective laws for
women and children passed in that state from 1893 to 1912; the other,
a statement of similar laws in force in Pennsylvania in 1912, put
forth by the Pennsylvania Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage:
_Colorado_ _Pennsylvania_
Establishing a state home for Dependent, delinquent, and
dependent children, three of the incorrigible children fully
five members of the board of provided for by State Juvenile
control to be women. A juvenile court and probation officer
court with houses of detention in system. Child placed in care of
each county with population over parents, probation officers,
100,000; probation officers in industrial school, or a
counties with population over charitable association as the
25,000. Court sees best. Houses of
detention in every city of first
and second class, managed by
board of five members, two of
them women.
Requiring three of the six Visitation periodically by State
members of the county visitors to Board of Charities and Board of
be women. Visitors of all agencies having
custody of delinquent or
dependent children.
Making mother joint guardian of If husband unfit, wife has same
children with the father. rights over child as father would
have had. If wife helps support
child, she has equal rights with
husband; judges decide fitness of
parents where question of it
arises.
Raising the age of protection for Age of consent or protestation,
girls to eighteen years. sixteen years.
Requiring one woman physician One female physician in each
on the board of insane asylums. state hospital or asylum with
female inmates; provision for
women members of board of
visitors of lunatic asylums;
female attendants, paid by
counties or poor districts, for
all insane female persons in
transit; police matron in
Philadelphia county prison.
Establishing parental and truant Provision for institutions and
schools; a state industrial home societies for delinquent and
for girls, three of the five dependent children, also for
members of board of control to be Houses of Refuge in Philadelphia
women. and Western Pennsylvania;
complete system of industrial
schools, besides industrial
education in public school
system; provision for maintenance
of children committed to
industrial schools. Women
eligible as one of two overseers
of the poor in each county.
Making Colorado humane society a Humane societies throughout the
state bureau for child and animal state for child and animal
protection. protection.
Compulsory education for Compulsory education for all
children, between 8 and 16, children of school age. Parents
except those who are ill, or are and guardians failing to comply
taught at home, and those over with school attendance law are
14 who have completed the punishable for a criminal
eighth grade, or whose parents offense.
need their help and support,
and those children who must
support themselves. [Are not some
of these exemptions loopholes in
the law? Ed.] Providing for
examination of eyes, ears, teeth,
and lungs of school children.
Making father and mother joint Father and mother hold by
heirs of deceased child. entireties, with right of
survivorship, real and personal
properties of intestate child.
Establishing state traveling A free library commission
library; library commission to created, and provisions made for
consist of five women from the free libraries throughout the
State Federation of Women's state in cities of first, second
Clubs. and third classes and in
boroughs, together with public
school libraries, a state public
library, and law libraries
throughout the state.
Employing children under 14 in No minor under 14, and no
mill, factory, or underground illiterate minor under 18, shall
works punishable by imprisonment be employed in a factory,
and fine. Children of 16 and workshop, store, mercantile
under forbidden to work more than establishment, and so on. Minors
six hours a day and not after 8 under 18 shall not be employed
P. M. in any mill, factory, about blast furnaces, tanneries,
store, or other occupation that electric wires, elevators,
may be deemed unhealthful. Model railroads, vessels, or
child labor law passed 1912, "one explosives. Minors over 14 who
of the very best in the world." can read and write can be
Illiterate workers under 16 must employed only in establishments
go to night school. From 14 to 16 having proper sanitation, and in
maximum is 54 hours a week, 9 which power machinery is not
hours a day. used, or if used is safeguarded.
No minor under 16 shall be
employed unless employer keeps
employment certificates and
complete lists of minors so
employed.
Meal hours of employed children
regulated, as well as meal hours
of all other employés.
Male minors under 16 and females
under 18 forbidden employment
between 9 P. M. and 6 A. M.
No woman shall work more than Seats provided for women employed
eight hours a day at work in any establishment.
requiring her to be on her feet;
that is, in manufacturing, Sixty-hour-week and
mechanical, or mercantile twelve-hour-day maximum for women
establishments, laundries, and for minors under 16.
hotels, and restaurants.
Provisions for suitable wash and
dressing rooms and lavatories for
men and women in all
establishments.
Employment of females prohibited Employment of women in and about
in coal mines or coke offices mines or coal manufactories
except as clerks. forbidden; women and male minors
under 16 forbidden employment in
mines; women and male minors
under 14 forbidden to be employed
on outside structures of mines,
except for clerical work.
Requiring joint signature of Chattel mortgages do not exist.
husband and wife to every chattel Earnings of a married woman,
mortgage, sale of household whether as wages for labor,
goods, or mortgage of a salary, property, business or
homestead. Homestead, whether otherwise, are her own, inure to
husband's or wife's, cannot be her separate benefit and are not
sold without the consent of both. subject to levy by her husband.
No assignment of wages by husband Wife must consent to conveyance
is valid without wife's consent. of real estate by husband in
order to bar her dower, and a
mortgage requires her consent.
Criminal offense to contribute to Criminal offense to contribute to
delinquency of a child; law delinquency of a child; penalty
raising the delinquency age for of not more than $500 or
girls. imprisonment not exceeding one
year, or both.
Making it a misdemeanor to Provisions for support of every
fail to support aged or infirm poor, blind, lame, and impotent
parents. person unable to work, by his or
her relatives, either children,
grandchildren, parents, or
grandparents; provisions for
support of the wife's relatives,
either children, grandchildren,
parents or grandparents, who are
poor, blind, lame, impotent, or
unable to maintain themselves.
Abolishing the system of binding Provisions for binding out minors
out girls committed to the maintained by charitable
industrial school. Separate institutions, asylums, or
industrial school for girls corporations, to suitable
created. persons, without prejudicing
rights of such institutions over
the child.
The husband must support his wife If husband neglects or deserts
and children under 16 (legitimate rights of trade by filing a
or illegitimate); non-support is petition and securing a
made an extraditable offense. certificate from the court. Her
Parents liable for support of property is then her own
children in State institutions. absolutely and exempt from all
claims of husband or his
creditors. Statute requires
husband to support wife, and
family; desertion a misdemeanor.
All policies of life insurance or
annuities on the life of any
person for benefit of wife or
children or dependent relative
are vested full and clear from
all claims of creditors of such
person.
Improved employers' liability law Employers' Liability act of 1907
passed in 1912. Assumption of allows recovery from employer for
risk abolished except where injuries of employé, doing away
remedying defect is employe's with the "fellow-servant" rule as
chief duty. a defense.
A married woman has same right as
unmarried person to acquire and
dispose of property real and
personal, with entire freedom of
contract; but she may not
mortgage or convey real property
unless husband joins, and may not
become indorser or surety for
another.
Dower and curtesy abolished; The widow of an intestate who
neither husband nor leaves issue has one-third of the
wife may will away more than realty for life and one-third of
half of his or her property the personalty absolutely. If
without the other's consent; without issue, the widow has
wife's will validated. $5,000 worth of real or personal
estate, besides the widow's
exemption of $300. If estate
exceeds $5,000, she has one-half
the remainder for life, and
one-half the remaining personalty
absolutely.
Four deputy factory inspectors Five of the thirty-nine deputy
are required, one of them a factory inspectors must be women.
woman.
Law providing for the care Institutions for care and
of the feeble minded. School treatment of feeble minded and
for the Mute and Blind is insane maintained throughout and
declared to be an educational by the state. Institutions for
institution. care and treatment of the deaf,
dumb, blind, consumptive,
epileptic, aged, indigent,
orphan, pauper, and so on,
maintained throughout and by the
state, counties or
municipalities.
While minor differences exist in this comparison, the picture as a
whole does not show that the legislation protective of women and
children in Colorado is greatly, if at all, in advance of that in the
male-suffrage state of Pennsylvania. The American Vigilance
Association calls Pennsylvania's laws on "white slavery" and
disorderly houses "good," and Colorado's only "fair." Colorado
created in 1913 a Minimum Wage Commission, thus coming abreast of
male-suffrage Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania lacks such a commission.
But a law establishing a minimum wage is open to the objection that it
throws out of employment all who are incapable of earning that wage.
It does not protect them in industry, it simply throws them upon the
streets, thence to find their way into jails and poorhouses. Designed
as a protective measure, it has yet to vindicate that purpose, and it
seems to be adopted irrespective of the votes of women. Aside from
this it seems clear that if there is any essential difference between
the protective legislation of Colorado and Pennsylvania, it must lie
in the degree with which the women's votes compel enforcement of the
laws.
But just how effective do the suffragists themselves feel the women's
vote to be in securing redress for their injuries? Do they trust it?
Their chief grievance is the deprivation of the suffrage. The American
Woman Suffrage Association says of this, nevertheless, that while
woman must have the ballot on every other question, she cannot be
trusted to wield it in deciding this most vital question of legal
privilege; that only an electorate of men is qualified to decide it.
The association is convinced that every improvement in woman's
position thus far has been secured "not by a general demand from the
majority of women, but by the arguments, entreaties and 'continual
coming' of a persistent few." In the association's _Brief History_ of
the suffrage movement it contends that the beneficial changes of the
last half century in the laws, written and unwritten, relating to
women have necessarily come by the influence of a few men and women.
"Not one of them would have been made to this day if it had been
necessary to wait until the majority of women asked for it," the
association says. But that is an argument against the extension of the
suffrage, which works only by majorities!
It is a valid argument, and it has historical facts in its support.
Massachusetts in 1895 granted woman the right to vote on the question
whether the municipal suffrage should be extended without distinction
of sex. The suffragists made a vigorous campaign in that state. Only 4
per cent. of the women cared to go to the polls and record an
affirmative vote. When human grievances have become intolerable, men
have been willing to shed blood for their redress. This grievance of
the suffragists cannot be very widespread or keenly felt, when they
fail to persuade the women even to signify their protest.
She that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much.
Mrs. George, speaking for the National Association Opposed to Woman
Suffrage, has presented to the woman suffrage committee of the Federal
Senate the record of seventeen years' voting for school committees by
the women of Massachusetts. During that time the registration showed
but 4.8 per cent. of all the women of the state who were qualified to
register and vote, and 2.1 per cent., less than one-half of them,
actually got to the polls. Mrs. George obtained from the town clerk of
Dedham, Mass., the official list of male and female voters in that
town from 1889 to 1912, which shows a steadily diminishing female vote
from 154 in 1889 to 1 in 1903; since 1903 not one of the fifty to
seventy women registered in Dedham has remembered to go to the polls
on Election Day.
If women cannot be expected to look after the interests of their
children's schooling, how can they be expected to be faithful in the
general field of politics? The Massachusetts State Association Opposed
to Woman Suffrage has compiled the total vote cast in the Presidential
election of 1912 in the six woman suffrage States of California,
Colorado, Wyoming, Washington, Idaho, and Utah--1,521,590 out of a
total possible vote of 3,200,152--showing that only 47-1/2 per cent.
of men and women in those states cared to go to the polls for the most
interesting of all elections; comparing this with the 1,587,984 male
votes cast out of a possible 2,295,119 votes--69 per cent. of the
total--in the six non-suffrage western states of Kansas, Nebraska,
Oregon, Nevada, South Dakota, and Missouri. Now if 69 per cent. of the
men voted in the woman suffrage states in 1912, then only 17.8 per
cent. of the women voters in those states actually cast their ballots.
At any rate, it is certain that the extension of suffrage to women
results in a notable decrease of the actual voting strength of the
electorate, as compared with the more healthy interest in voting shown
by the electorates of the non-suffrage states. In that same
Presidential election of 1912, Secretary of State Jordan of California
reports that 802,000 men and but 180,000 women registered to
vote--over 93 per cent. of the men, and a trifle over 27 per cent. of
the women who were qualified to register and vote. In the election in
Pasadena on March 20, 1913, deciding bond issues, some of them for
parks and playgrounds, only 4,672 men and women cast ballots out of a
voting population of 16,324; in Los Angeles four days later, the
Citizens' Committee's vigorous campaign advocating the carrying of
certain propositions and defeat of others ended in a vote of 31,000
men and women, while 130,000 qualified voters of both sexes stayed
away. Although 45,665 women registered out of 121,000 women qualified
to register and vote in San Francisco's local option election in 1913,
the votes of only 15,087, both men and women, were cast in favor of
the amendment. In all the elections of which there are records of men
and women voting, the women manifest less interest both in registering
and in voting than the men.
This fact has its vital bearing on the question of law enforcement. If
elected officials fail to enforce the law, the only corrective is the
ballot. Dr. Abbott and Professor Breckinridge, answering Miss
Bronson's statement that thirty-nine states compel employers in
stores, factories, and shops to provide seats for female employés, say
that in most of the states where voteless women have got such laws
they have never had the means of enforcing them. But if the extension
of the elective franchise to the women of these states should mean the
lowering of the total vote from 69 per cent. to but 47-1/2 per cent.
of the possible vote, what prospect is there that the laws will be
better enforced under woman suffrage? Judge Ben B. Lindsey of
Colorado, himself a suffragist by propinquity, testified in 1910 that
his battle with "the Beast" and "the System" in that state was begun
without the help of the women leaders who at national meetings had
been telling how much the women had done for the juvenile court in
Denver. They dared not help him, Judge Lindsey said, and women like
Mary C. Bradford and Mrs. Lafferty, a member of the Legislature, "took
the platform against me and supported the System." He added:
If anyone believes that woman's suffrage is a panacea for all the
evils of our political life, he does not know what those evils
are. The women are as free of the power of the Beast as the men
are, and no freer.... In a typical American community such as
ours, where the Beast rules, the women are as helpless as the
rest of us.... Their leaders in politics are politicians; when
they get their nominations from corporation machines they do the
work of the corporations; and there is almost no way under the
Beast to get a party nomination except from a corporation
machine. Women in politics are human beings; they are not
"ministering angels" of an ethereal ideality; and they are unable
to free us, because they are not free themselves.
Mrs. Nora Blatch DeForest has tried to show by tables that woman's
voting benefits women and children in the passage of laws fixing the
"age of consent" for girls; in fixing the age under which the consent
of parent or guardian is necessary for marriage; the age below which
employment of children in factories is prohibited; the maximum length
of a day's work for children, and the hours within which women may
work in factories. The tabulation includes the more recent suffrage
states of Arizona, California, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington, in
which most of the beneficial laws enumerated were passed under male
suffrage. In them and in Utah--excepting the four other suffrage
states where there are no limiting laws for women's work--the average
day's labor for women is 9.2 hours in the ten suffrage states as
against 9.9 hours in the nineteen partial suffrage states, and 10.1
hours in the nineteen non-suffrage states. The maximum day's work for
a child is 8.6 hours in the suffrage states, 9 hours in the partial
suffrage states, and 9.5 hours in the non-suffrage states, while the
ages for prohibited child labor are 14.3 years, 14.1 years, and 13.3
years, respectively. In the same order, the ages at which the consent
of parent or guardian is required for marriage of young women are 18.9
years, 19.3 years, and 19.1 years, respectively, and the ages at which
girls may consent to their own ruin are 17.5 years, 16.6 years, and 15
years in the three groups of states.
Now, if populations be considered in these three groups, instead of
political divisions merely, it will be found that only 5,193,116
people in the suffrage states of California, Colorado, Idaho, and
Kansas are under the law which fixes the ideal "age of consent" at 18;
that 6,229,263 people are under this beneficent law in the
non-suffrage states of Florida, Missouri, and Tennessee, and
17,161,100 people have passed this law in the partial suffrage states
of Delaware, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, New York, North Dakota,
and Wisconsin; it should be observed, too, that the women voters in
the partial suffrage states--less than 5 per cent. of those women
vote, by the way--have nothing to do with electing the men who passed
this and the other laws discussed by Mrs. DeForest. Like proportions
of population hold with respect to all the laws passed in the three
classes of states; taking the best law in each case, it may be shown
that more people have it under male suffrage than under equal
suffrage.
Thus far this article must seem disappointing to sincere suffragists
for it reads like an "anti" document. In the length and breadth of
this Union there are no distinctive results of woman suffrage where it
has been granted in part or in whole.
But there are abundant results of the feminist movement. In agitating
for the ballot Lucretia Mott and her fellow and sister suffragists
builded better than they knew. In _not_ following the English method
of making suffrage a paramount issue "first, last, and all the time,"
they and the latter-day suffragists have rapidly brought to pass the
feminist reforms, including the extension of the suffrage to women.
They have not played the shrew like the English militants, and they
are making greater headway than the militants. In this country the
redress of woman's grievances has come ante hoc and cum hoc--not post
hoc, and hardly ever propter hoc--with respect to woman's suffrage.
The cases of California and Washington, the male-elected legislatures
of which gave to women workers eight-hour laws at the same time they
granted them the suffrage, are fairly typical; "indirect influence"
accomplished both results.
Whether the vote in woman's hands may ultimately be better utilized;
whether she may use it to aid in freeing the men voters from their
thraldom to long ballots and the bosses, with the result of giving
both sexes the direct influence on their government that they both
lack--that is a question quite beyond the scope of this article.