laws in suffrage states. She said I did not know the happenings in the
legislature this year. I have made a careful study of the laws proposed
and the action taken upon them in the eleven suffrage states and the
four big "campaign states" in the legislative year of 1915. I find that
while in Massachusetts we enacted _five_ new laws relating to our women
and children assuring them of still greater protection and better public
health regulations, Arizona turned down five laws for women which
already exist here in our own state. I was unable to find any suffrage
state which could compare in any favorable way with the progress
Massachusetts has made. Wyoming turned down a bill regulating the
employment of children and a bill limiting the hours a woman may work.
As long as I have mentioned Arizona, let me continue the comparison one
step further and point out that on the 16th of February, 1915, Mrs.
Berry, an Arizona suffragist, introduced a bill regulating and granting
teachers' pensions. The bill was indefinitely postponed. In the same
year Massachusetts women teachers introduced a bill asking to have their
former pensions granted again to them. At the same time the men teachers
introduced a similar bill; and it is an interesting fact that the men
were turned down, while the women's bill was signed by the Governor. For
our suffrage friends who say that women must have the ballot to be
listened to, this is rather a stumbling block. I happened to be up at
the State House the day the bill went through, and heard one of the
women who was interested say: "It's a mighty lucky thing we women did
_not_ have the vote." This is the latest example of what Massachusetts
men are interested in doing for Massachusetts women. Let us voice our
just pride that Massachusetts touches the high water mark of protective
legislation and stands as an example to all other states.
VII
WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND WAR
MRS. CHARLES P. STRONG
_Mary B. Strong, widow of Dr. Charles P. Strong of the Harvard
Medical School; studied for three years at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology; former President of the Saturday
Morning Club; Vice-President of the Cambridge Indian Association;
Corresponding Secretary of the Massachusetts Women's Anti-Suffrage
Association._
_J. A. H._
When the great European war broke out in 1914, the suffragists tried to
use the situation to further their propaganda. They remind me of the mad
philosopher who suggested it would be well to profit by an eruption of
Vesuvius in order to boil an egg.
The incongruity of suffragists attempting to pose as a peace party is
obvious to anyone with a memory and a sense of humor. Before the war
broke out, American suffrage leaders were applauding, feasting, and
subsidizing the British virago who instigated the setting on fire of 146
public buildings, churches, and houses, the explosion of 43 bombs, the
destruction of property valued at nearly two million dollars (not
including priceless works of arts), and many cases of personal assault.
In 1912 they justified the destruction of the Rokeby Venus; in 1914 they
professed horror at the bombardment of the Cathedral of Rheims. Is this
insincerity or hypocrisy, or mere aberration of mind?
The best time to work for peace is before war breaks out. The suffrage
organization was not conspicuous in seizing the many opportunities for
furthering the cause of peace before it was too late. In 1911 Mrs.
Frederick Nathan, a prominent suffragist, was asked to contribute to the
American Society for the Judicial Settlement of Disputes. She sent the
following characteristic refusal:
"Mrs. Frederick Nathan prefers to give her money to the Woman Suffrage
Association.... She has no faith in Courts of Law and Equity which deny
justice to women."
Was this boycotting of the peace movement condemned by the suffragists?
Not at all; Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, President of the Massachusetts
Suffrage Association, was glad to print the refusal in the official
organ of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Miss Blackwell, in
holding up this example to its members, scornfully declared that several
of the peace society were "prominent opponents of equal rights for
women." In those days, the suffragists were not hitching their wagon to
the quiet star of peace; it has been their constant practice to attach
themselves, for publicity's sake, to whatever movement is conspicuous on
the front pages of the newspapers--eugenics, or sex drama, or red-light
abatement, or what not--and to abandon that ephemeral interest whenever
it has ceased to serve the purpose of advertisement.
And so, when the war broke out, the boycotters of peace societies, and
colleagues of militants, made a rapid shift of costumes, and tried to
play roles in the Woman's Peace Party. So hurried was their change of
mental attitude that their thoughts on the subject were splendid
instances of snap judgment.
In truth, the breaking out of the war was most embarassing to them. Like
a bull in a china shop, the rush of brutal fact destroyed many of their
pretty theories. The stereotyped suffrage answer, when anti-suffragists
pointed out that physical force was the fundamental basis of government,
had been that this was no longer true. For example, Dr. Mary Putnam
Jacobs, speaking of women's demand for the ballot, said, about 1895:
"Women could not claim the ballot while it was necessary to defend
opinions by arms, but this is no longer necessary or expected." And Mrs.
Susan Fitzgerald in 1912 declared: "The age of the fighting man is
passing. The world is coming to be ruled by intellect." When will the
suffragists learn Lowell's maxim: "Don't never prophesy--onless ye
know!" It is, however, a characteristic of professional false prophets
not to lose their imperturbality and effrontery, but to trust that their
followers will forget their mistaken guesses and listen open-mouthed to
a new dispensation.
The essential dogma of the Woman's Peace Party (none but suffragists
admitted!) was that the adoption of woman suffrage was a necessary and
effectual step toward abolishing war. "If women had had the vote in all
countries now at war," said Mrs. Catt, "the conflict would have been
prevented." History shows women at least as much inclined to war as
men--a fact illustrated in the French Revolution, in our Civil War, in
the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and in other instances too numerous
to mention. The suffragists, ignorant of that fact, or ignoring it,
advanced in support of their proposition a series of specious arguments
designed to catch popular opinion. Of these arguments two were at the
outset of the movement especially harped upon: (1) the alleged
"international solidarity of women," and (2) the supposed likelihood of
woman's opposition to militarism.
What was meant by the "solidarity of women" is explained in Mrs. Pethick
Lawrence's words: "The interests of women, being fundamentally the same,
are so universal that no national distinctions can cut deeply into them,
as may possibly sometimes happen with the national distinctions between
men." Following that notion, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw issued an appeal to
the women's organizations in the belligerent countries, urging them to
put a stop to the war. The replies received showed that the expected
"international solidarity of women" was imaginary. The Association of
Austrian Women's Clubs, for example, replied that nobody understanding
the causes of the war, would have addressed such a request to them.
"Being women of those countries," ran this reply, "where our husbands,
brothers, and sons are fighting for the existence or non-existence of
our state, for our homes, for their wives and children, we cannot say:
'Do not fight'!" Similarly, the women's societies of France refused to
accept any invitations to peace palavers. In short, the real
"solidarity" was discovered to exist, not between women of different
nations, but between the women and the men of each nation.
The falsity of the other argument--that woman suffrage would tend
against militarism--was crushingly refuted when Dr. Ernest Bernbaum drew
attention to the recent history of militaristic policies in England and
Australia. In male suffrage England, Lord Roberts, despite his personal
popularity and strong arguments, was unable to get sufficient support
for his program of universal military service. In woman suffrage
Australia and New Zealand, on the other hand, the same line of arguments
was completely successful by 1911. There, boys from their twelfth year
are required to be enrolled for instruction in drill and the rudiments
of military science. The penalties for failure are severe, and public
opinion supports their enforcement; in New Zealand a boy was sent to
jail for refusing service, on ground of conscientious scruples; another
was fined and went into exile. The electorate was determined that New
Zealand and Australia should be nations in arms; indeed they were more
drastic than Germany, where many exemptions from military service on
various grounds are allowed. It is instructive to recall that when in
March, 1914, Winston Churchill, Lord of the Admiralty, advised Australia
that, in view of the Japanese alliance, it did not need to spend as much
money on warships, the Australian statesmen frankly intimating their
distrust in alliances, declared they would proceed with their expensive
naval program, which was supported by both political parties. I do not
say that what is termed "militarism" is a bad policy; I do say that when
the suffragists state that woman suffrage tends against militarism they
state what is diametrically opposed to the real truth of history. In
this case, as usual, they draw their principles not from observation of
what is happening but from what they wish and fancy would happen.
The theories of the Suffrage Woman's Peace Party being false, it is not
surprising that their actions prove bewilderingly futile. They brought
together a group of "hand-picked" delegates, quite unrepresentative of
the real sentiment of the nations they were nominally representing, and
forgathered in a so-called Woman's Peace Conference at the Hague. Miss
Jane Addams supplied the American press with rose-colored accounts of
its proceedings. Her reports were justly condemned by the New York Times
as bad journalism, because they did not "tell the whole of the truth."
They were calculated to give the impression that the Conference was
harmonious, and that its deliberations led to really practicable
conclusions. Not to conceal the truth, it must be said, that these
pacific ladies, who surely ought in their own circle to have exhibited
that "international solidarity" which the sex as a whole had failed to
manifest, soon developed sharp antipathies. One of the few British
delegates who went to the conference (need it be said she was not Mrs.
Pankhurst?) disturbed its complacency by reminding those present that
they really did not represent the sentiments of the warring nations.
When it came to discussing the actual situation and specific terms of
peace, there arose strong differences of opinion--along national lines.
The chief resolution offered,--that peace should be made without
delay,--could not be passed until an amendment, adding the words "with
justice," was accepted,--words which each belligerent would interpret in
a different manner. Needless to say, the amendment rendered the
high-sounding resolution a useless mass of ambiguous words.
Equally futile were the subsequent travels of the delegates of the
Woman's Peace Party. At a time when the energy and money of every woman
should have been whole-heartedly devoted to practical deeds of charity,
these misguided women wasted their means and strength in fool's journeys
to the capitals of all the great nations. They made proposals for
immediate peace negotiations, which were listened to with more patience
and politeness than their amateurish character deserved, but which were
of course without exception pigeon-holed.
Having moved the nations to mirth by one modern version of "Innocents
Abroad," the suffragists appear to have thought it a good advertisement
to send forth a second. This time they attempted to screen themselves
behind the figure of Mr. Henry Ford, wearing a celluloid button, "Out of
the Trenches by Christmas!" But when a man acts with apparently
inexplicable foolishness, it is generally safe to say, "_Cherchez la
femme!_" In this case, the truth presently came out: the unfortunate Mr.
Ford was merely the "angel" of the new travelling troupe. It was Mme.
Schimmer, professional suffragist-pacificist, who had persuaded him to
launch his argosy. As Mr. Ford himself confessed on his ignominious
return, he was "simply backing up and financing the plans of the Woman's
Peace Congress." The second expedition, like the first, developed an
astounding fighting spirit among the peace delegates, and accomplished
nothing. (It is worth noting that woman-suffrage Denmark prohibited the
party from holding any public meetings.)
There is a lamentable as well as ridiculous aspect of the suffragists'
activity in connection with the peace movement. Their intrusion into the
pacificist camp has brought discredit not only upon themselves, but upon
every pacificist. If the word "pacificist" today suggests to most men an
ecstatic, irresponsible dreamer, it is they who are to blame. The sane
pacificist, whose patient labors are directed toward unsensational and
unspectacular, slow but sure, organization of friendly relations to be
gradually made closer and closer, realizes that his task is a
complicated one, not to be solved by emotionalism, but by calm
reasoning and patient adjustment. He realizes that many different
functions must be brought into co-operation before the likelihood of war
can be reduced. His noble work is in danger of being thought ridiculous
because of the meddling of suffrage fanatics.
The present war, instead of justifying the suffragist theory, has
refuted it. It has vindicated the position of the anti-suffragists.
What is the chief lesson of the great war? It has shown that
international law and treaties are so weak as to be useless, unless
there is physical force to ensure their not being violated. What
anti-suffragists have always maintained in national government has
proved true in international relations. Any law that is made by those
unable to support it through force of arms will sooner or later become a
"scrap of paper." Consequently the most sanely progressive step in the
peace movement is the formation by men like Mr. Taft, and Mr. A.
Lawrence Lowell, (both anti-suffragists, by the way) of a league to
enforce peace, which aims to give international law the sanction not
only of world-wide opinion, but of the irresistible power of the united
armed forces of the great nations. That is the work of men toward world
peace.
What is the work of women? In this field as in all others, it is not to
try to compel, but to educate and civilize, to create in the children
committed to her care an intelligent love for fair play, justice, and
self-control. The suffragist is an enemy to the diffusion of the peace
spirit, because she would force women into political warfare, where
contention is bred. She closes her eyes to woman's greatest opportunity
for diminishing the spirit of belligerency--that of keeping one of the
sexes out of the bitter strife of partisan politics. The
anti-suffragist, asking that the mothers of men may be left free to
develop the milder attributes of character, has the true vision of the
road that leads to lasting peace.
VIII
WOMAN SUFFRAGE VS. WOMANLINESS
MRS. THOMAS ALLEN
_Alice Ranney Allen, wife of Thomas Allen; member of the
Woman's Municipal League, in which she was the organizer of the
Department of Streets and Alleys; member of the Woman's Education
Association; reader of the Committee on Selection of Fiction for
Libraries; Chairman of Boston Committee on the work of District
Nursing in the mountains of North Carolina; a well-known speaker
against woman suffrage._
_J. A. H._
To me the chief reason why political duties should not be imposed on
women is the effect that this preliminary dip into politics, this
struggle for votes-for-women, is having on the women themselves. It is
surely not making them any more lovely, or pleasant in their lives. They
grow bitter, aggressive, and antagonistic, liking the excitement of
campaigning and finding their natural, proper duties "flat, stale, and
unprofitable."
Speaking from platforms and being constantly in the public eye, does not
improve women. We anti-suffragists have taken part in a political
campaign to keep ourselves out of politics for the rest of our lives,
and to keep our daughters out of politics, but we know that in a proper
division of duty we have better work to do along civic, sanitary, and
philanthropic lines, and in our homes, than to be, as our Western
sisters are, out campaigning for candidates, and engaged in struggles
for political supremacy.
Anyone may gauge the bitterness of the recent campaign if he remembers
the abuse heaped on the anti-suffragists by the President of the
National Suffrage Association; and we must judge every movement by its
leaders. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, at a hearing before the Senate Committee
at Washington, said:
"We are not afraid of the body of women who are going up and down the
land opposing suffrage. They are just enough in number so that by
holding out their skirts they can make a screen for the men operating
dens of vice and iniquity and prostitution to hide behind."
In an interview printed in the New York Sun, Dr. Shaw referred to the
anti-suffrage leaders as "vultures looking for carrion."
As important a person as Dean Thomas, of Bryn Mawr College, in an appeal
for funds for the National American Woman Suffrage Association in
February, 1913, said:
"The ballot for women is the greatest of all the modern reforms. We urge
those who are today contributing to other causes to _withdraw_ or
_curtail_ their contributions until the ballot for woman is secured."
This seems to us anti-suffragists extremely narrow, as we know that
woman suffrage is not a reform, but an experiment in legislation only.
In a public resolution passed by the New England Women's Suffrage
Association at its forty-seventh annual meeting, the anti-suffragists
were referred to as using "pole-cat" tactics--why, we do not know. These
are only a few of the many evidences of the bitterness of feeling in
this political campaign.
The whole ideal of womanhood seems to be changing. The wife of an editor
of our most important New England magazine said to me:
"What use is it for you to oppose the suffrage movement, when it is only
the first step in this larger movement for the emancipation of women
that is sweeping over the world?" And I said: "Then we will do our best
to stop the first step," for I remembered the doctrines of the suffrage
leaders preached from their platforms. Mrs. Ida Husted Harper has said:
"There is not a single forward step of woman that has not been blocked
by the words 'wifehood' and 'motherhood'."
Dean Thomas, in an address to women at Mount Holyoke College, is quoted
in Mr. Martin's book, _The Unrest of Women_, as saying: "Women may have
spent half a lifetime in fitting themselves for a scholar's work, and
then may be asked to choose between it and marriage. No one can estimate
the number of women who remain unmarried in revolt before such a
horrible alternative."
Dr. Stanton Coit is reported as saying from a suffrage platform:
"Wifehood has all the characteristics of slavery--work without wage; no
specified hours; no right to change employers."
We find constantly the evil influence that this first step of suffrage
is having on the young women of our day; and, to me, the gist of the
whole matter seems summed up in a paragraph from a pamphlet written by
Mr. Joseph Pyle:
"With Christianity there came into the world a new example and a new
thought. To woman's whole nature appealed that life of self-sacrifice,
of love, and of willing service that has created a new Heaven and a new
earth. From the foot of the Cross there arose and went out into the
world a womanhood that did not demand, or claim, or threaten, or
arrogate; a womanhood renouncing, yielding, loving, and, therefore,
conquering. For twenty centuries that has been the law of woman's life.
It is sneered at and rejected today by the clamorous, but it has made of
woman what we now find her. You see it in your mothers, your daughters,
your wives. Do you wish to have that ideal changed? Woman has become to
man not only a companion, but an inspiration. Out of the crucible of the
centuries has come what we not only love but adore; before which, in
certain hours, we bow with a reverence that links us unconsciously with
the Divine. It is Christian civilization that is in the balance."
IX
ARE SUFFRAGISTS SINCERE REFORMERS?
MRS. AUGUSTINE H. PARKER
_Caroline M. Parker, wife of Augustin H. Parker; was educated
in the Boston schools; is a member of the Dover Grange;
Vice-President of the Unitarian Alliance of Dover; for five
years President of the Vincent Club._
_J. A. H._
If the energy and vast sums of money squandered to promote suffrage in
this country had been expended to bring about the reforms which the
suffragists claim will be at once brought about by their votes, the
reforms would all have been accomplished long ago. But do the suffragist
leaders care a jot about the reforms? We hear of a Seattle woman who,
now that she can vote in her own city, leaves home and husband to come
East and agitate for suffrage. Little does she care that her husband
sues for divorce on the ground of desertion. It is the excitement of
agitation that she craves--the duties and responsibilities of the ballot
are of no interest whatsoever to her.
A mayor in a city near Boston appointed a suffragist on the city
planning board. Did she eagerly grasp the chance to plan the city so
that it should be a joy and a blessing to its inhabitants for all time?
Not at all. She said that the mayor did not consult her, that she had
not even known there was a city planning board, and that she would not
think of serving on it in any case.
Through the Civic Federation, the Municipal Leagues, and the Women's
Clubs, an enormous amount of work for the good of all has been
undertaken; but the suffrage members of these associations far from
welcoming all public spirited workers, attempt to make the belief in
woman suffrage the test of a worker's value, and introduce party
politics and petty strife into these great, non-partisan bodies of
women, thereby impairing their services to the Commonwealth to such an
extent that the eyes of many women have been opened to what the state of
affairs would be if all women were in politics. It is not too much to
say that many women, hitherto indifferent on the suffrage question, have
been aroused by such interested and partisan methods into joining the
anti-suffrage cause.
There is more work waiting to be done than there are workers to do it.
Ministers are constantly asking from the pulpit for workers. There are
more offices open to women now than there are women to fill them, but
they are the offices that mean hard work and no notoriety, and these are
not what most of the feminist-suffrage leaders are looking for. These
feminists tell you constantly how badly the men manage the country; the
idea being how much better the women would govern it. But would they?
The anti-suffragists think that, on the whole, the men are doing well,
and that a government ought to be in the hands of those who have the
power to enforce the laws they make. To have responsibility without
power is to be in a very uncomfortable and ignominious position. To the
observer it seems that the professional suffrage agitator is _not_ out
for service or the good of her town, state, and country, but for her own
good. This is so obvious that her self-assertion is not convincing. It
is through service and not by self-assertion that true women contribute
their best work to their country.
Because they are unconvinced by the feminist's protestations, few women
care to be represented by other women. Approximately half the stock of
the Pennsylvania Railroad is owned by women. They could elect several
women directors if they wished to do so, but the board is composed
entirely of men. Women do not as a rule, employ other women to take care
of their business affairs.
We anti-suffragists ask to be left free from the useless turmoil of
partisan politics so that we may employ what time and strength we have
in the service of those who need them most. We do not care to waste them
in the petty personal struggles of the political arena--we can well
afford to let the men fight the battles and crowd the polling booths
because we in our own places and to the full extent of our power, have
an equally valuable contribution to make to the welfare of the nation.