nations' welfare at heart, nor are they hampered by the interference of
the less good as they must be when the vote of the best might be
nullified by the vote of the worst.
We beg the men not to be deceived by the noise and clatter of a few paid
professional agitators, supported by misguided enthusiasts whose hearts
are larger than their heads; and we ask the men to help us to uphold the
womanhood of woman with all its responsibilities, its ideals, and its
spiritual endowment.
X
SUFFRAGE AND THE SCHOOL TEACHER
ELIZABETH JACKSON
_Elizabeth Jackson graduated from the Bridgewater High School
in 1908, from the Bridgewater State Normal School in 1910, from
Radcliffe College A. B. (Summa cum laude) 1913, A. M. 1914; is a
candidate for the degree of Ph. D.; treasurer of Radcliffe Chapter
of Phi Beta Kappa 1914-16; President of the Radcliffe Graduates'
Club, 1915-16._
_J. A. H._
An essential weakness in the suffrage argument is the failure to
distinguish between government and culture, the functions and the
instruments of each. Government is an organization for compelling one
portion of the community to do the will of another portion. In a
democracy, the minority is forced to obey the majority. The fundamental
idea is compulsion, a thing not lovely in theory and frequently unlovely
in practice. The golden haze that surrounds the dream of ideal democracy
is dissipated by contact with any given city ward. The machinery of
government is a matter of stress and strain; of selfishness, cruelty,
and hate, at the worst; at best, of conflicting interest, mutual
incomprehension, and maddening friction. When we refer to good
government, we may mean either of two things. We may perhaps describe a
community where the majority is notably successful in imposing its will
on the minority so that laws are strictly enforced and scrupulously
obeyed. In my experience, this is not the sense in which the suffragist
uses the phrase. Woman suffrage is not advertised as a means of
producing a more tractable minority. On the contrary, as Mr. Taft has
pointed out, the suffrage movement is a conspicuous instance of one
great menace of the age, the unwillingness of minorities to abide by the
best judgment of the state as a whole. Again, the campaign orator does
not assure the Maine audience that under equal suffrage statewide
prohibition, instituted by male voters, will become a fact instead of a
joke; no speaker in our home town has informed us that woman's vote will
wipe out the saloons that defy the "no" of the March meeting. Rather, as
I understand it, the "good government" which the suffragist promises to
inaugurate consists of improved legislation along certain specific
lines. That is to say, she promises not that the laws will be better
enforced, but that they will be different. A community's predilection
for good laws or bad, however, depends not on government but on
civilization. Public opinion is moulded by innumerable forces, of which
the home, the church, the newspaper, and the public school are merely
illustrations. In most if not all of these, women already play a
conspicuous part; through them they wield an incalculable power. The
confusion, unconscious or otherwise, of these forces of culture and the
forces of government, is one of the prime fallacies of the suffrage
position.
To make the true state of the case more clear, take a single
institution, the public school, with its various bearings on the
question of woman suffrage. Pass over the school committee vote which
only about two per cent of Massachusetts women regularly use, and
consider merely the power which the very nature of our school system
puts in women's hands. All the children in our primary grades, and all
but an infinitesimal fraction of those in the grammar grades, are taught
by women. The preponderance of woman teachers is nearly as great in the
high schools where, except in a few cities, men are employed for
administration and discipline and only secondarily for instruction. That
is to say, women and not men are shaping the minds of future voters
during the formative and decisive years. From women rather than men, our
children learn the elements of good citizenship,--respect for public
property, obedience to law, and the power of independent thought.
The degree to which the lesson is learned, depends upon two things;
namely, the quality of the teacher and the extent of her influence.
Accordingly, two questions arise. Would woman suffrage give us better
teachers? Would it increase the power which they already hold? One may
get some light on the first point by studying the placing of normal
school graduats. The connection between the schools and politics is
already lamentably close. Many districts, with administrations
predominantly of one party or religious sect choose first teachers of
that sect, good or bad, and sisters and daughters of voters of that
party; then enough women to complete the necessary number. Suppose that
the teacher, instead of being the daughter of the voter, holds the vote
herself. The evil would become universal. There is no indication that a
woman's salary and position under such circumstances be more directly
conditioned upon her abilities as a teacher. The chances are that woman
suffrage would tend to make the school more truly the servant of the
party in power than of the general good. Moreover, a vote can be used as
a commodity of exchange; and the woman-voter who amid the fluctuations
of city politics would protect her position by a shrewd use of her
ballot would hardly be the best school mistress of American youth.
The effect of suffrage upon the teacher's influence in the schoolroom
would not be beneficial. Her treatment of some subjects, like grammar,
nature study, and raffia work, would of course remain unchanged. It has,
however, been said by suffragists that her discussion of civic problems
would be more intelligent. Would her judgments be cooler because she is
in the thick of the fight, and her statements more convincing because
she is in direct conflict with the fathers and mothers of half her
class? It is of the utmost importance that the child shall look upon the
teacher as impartial. He may consider her in some respects his natural
enemy, but he must none the less regard her as one of the immutable
things of the universe. For this reason public commotions over school
affairs, however well intentioned, injure the institutions they design
to benefit. Anything which tends to increase the possibility of
opposition between the teacher and the child's family, and makes the
child's attitude partisan is a menace. Suffrage in this field as in so
many others, offers no compensation for the increased friction and
unrest.
XI
SUFFRAGE AND THE SOCIAL WORKER
DOROTHY GODFREY WAYMAN.
_Dorothy Godfrey Wayman, wife of C. S. Wayman; was educated at
Bryn Mawr and at the School for Social Workers in Boston; has
done organized charity and settlement work in Fitchburg and Boston;
was for one year state organizer of the Massachusetts Womans'
Anti-Suffrage Association; is a member of Massachusetts Civic
League._
_J. A. H._
Among people who have what has been called "the sheep type of
mentality," it is frequently asserted that since Miss Jane Addams, Miss
Julia Lathrop, Dr. Katherine Davis, and other "servants of humanity" are
suffragists, it follows that all women should become suffragists. Such
people do not, however, carry this line of thought to its logical
conclusion; for even they do not consider themselves bound to become
Progressives because that is Miss Addams's political party, nor to
become members of her church.
This _argumentum ad hominem_ has great weight in the suffrage
propaganda, and it is high time that it should be considered less
superficially. Having been a social worker myself in a large city, I
have been much interested in the history and career of such workers, and
find therein one of the most positive anti-suffrage arguments.
It is a striking fact that the very women whom suffragists use as
personal exhibits accomplished the social work that won them fame, under
male suffrage. Conversely, in the long list of women's names honored for
their social service, not one of national reputation earned that
reputation in a woman suffrage state.
The National Institute of Social Science awards a gold medal for
distinction in social service. Men like William H. Taft and Charles W.
Eliot have been thus decorated. Miss Jane Addams, Miss Lillian D. Wald
of the Henry Street Nurses' Settlement in New York, Miss Mabel Boardman
of the National Red Cross, and Miss Anne Morgan of New York are the
women who have been presented with this medal in past years.
On February 25, 1915, the National Institute of Social Sciences
conferred this medal for distinction in social service upon Miss Louisa
Schuyler of New York City. In a long life of useful citizenship, though
unblessed by the ballot, Miss Schuyler has contrived to inaugurate
several undertakings and lived to see them grow, till from radical
innovations, they have become the groundwork of much of our modern
charity. Miss Schuyler discovered the shocking conditions prevailing in
almshouses fifty years ago, and organized a series of volunteer visiting
committees which eventually became the N. Y. State Charities' Aid
Association, with headquarters in New York City. Miss Schuyler was the
organizing genius of the Bellevue Visiting Committee, which from
visiting the poorhouses of Westchester County, progressed to the
establishment of the first training school for nurses in this country.
Trained nurses have come to be such a necessity today, that I imagine
few suffragists realize that they are indebted to one woman's initiative
for the ministrations of skilled hands that so often may mean the
difference between life and death. Today there are 1100 training schools
for nurses, whose existence can be traced to the ideas of a woman living
and working in a male suffrage state. Another feat, more political in
its aspects, accomplished by Miss Schuyler was the inauguration of the
system now in force of State care for the insane, and of the removal of
insane persons and children from the physically and morally degrading
atmosphere of the almshouse where they were formerly cared for. In 1908,
Miss Schuyler grappled with another of our great modern problems and
organized the first committee in this country, composed of physicians
and laymen, for the prevention of blindness. What a long way behind the
world would be today if Miss Schuyler had done as Dr. Anna Howard Shaw,
and devoted her great organizing genius to suffrage propaganda!
Miss Jane Addams' achievements in Chicago at Hull House, are too widely
known to require any enumeration, but I would emphasize the fact that
her work was done while Illinois was still a male suffrage state. In
_Twenty Years at Hull House_, which was published in 1910, three years
before women attained partial enfranchisement in Illinois, Miss Addams
gives her estimate of the field of a settlement in social work for a
community: "It seems impossible to set any bounds to the moral
capabilities which might unfold under ideal civic and educational
conditions. But, in order to obtain these conditions, the Settlement
recognizes the need of cooperation, both with the radical and the
conservative, and from the very nature of the case, the Settlement
cannot limit its friends to any one political party or economic school."
Since these words were written, Miss Addams has allied herself
definitely with a political party, at great loss of personal prestige,
but that does not alter the truth of her written opinion. The end of
every public spirited woman is identical with that of the Settlement,
"to obtain ideal civic and educational conditions" for her community;
and "the very nature of the case," as Miss Addams says, demands that
they be not obliged to limit their friends to any one political party,
but remain free from political affiliations in order that their
disinterestedness may not be cavilled at.
Miss Lillian D. Wald's work as a district nurse at the Henry Street
tenement she chose to occupy on graduating from her training course as a
nurse showed the way to the efficient Visiting Nurses' Associations that
are being organized today all over the country, and also to the public
recognition of the value of instruction in health which is finding
expression in the staffs of nurses maintained in many cities by the
Board of Health and School Departments whose services are free to the
people. This humanitarian work manifestly had no connection with the
ballot.
Miss Kate Barnard, the "Girl Commissioner of Charities" in Oklahoma, is
a striking figure of our day. The neighboring state of Kansas is a woman
suffrage state, yet Miss Barnard seems to prefer residence in the male
suffrage state of Oklahoma and has done great things there. When
Oklahoma was admitted to statehood, it was Miss Barnard who wrote the
child labor, prison reform, and other humanitarian measures into the
State constitution; and she was made State Commissioner of Charities,
which position she holds today. Miss Barnard, too, recognizes the power
for evil of partisan politics. She is at present waging a bitter fight
for the property rights of the Indian wards of her state, and writing in
the _Survey_, says: "I want the people of the U.S. to stand by me until
the hand of _partisan politics_ is wrested from the control of Indian
affairs in Oklahoma and in the nation."
In 1912, when the Children's Bureau was established at Washington, we
might have expected that one of the women constituents of the
petticoated West would be placed at its head. Instead, President Taft
appointed Miss Julia C. Lathrop, a resident of Hull House in Chicago,
and a former member of the Illinois State Board of Charities, where she
was credited with the enlargement of the Illinois State charitable
institutions and their thorough reorganization, though, of course,
obliged to work without the ballot. Time has proved the wisdom of Mr.
Taft's appointment and also borne witness to the peculiar advantage
enjoyed by women in politics, provided they are not shackled with the
ballot.
One of the thought-inspiring books of 1914 was also a splendid argument
for the anti-suffragists. It was _Beauty for Ashes_, Mrs. Albion
Fellowes Bacon's account of the securing of the Indiana Model Housing
Act, which was accomplished through the initiative and leadership of
this one woman, mother, and home-maker, with no political prestige, with
no previous reputation built by long publicity, without the all-powerful
ballot.
Mrs. Bacon was supported by the Federated Woman's Clubs of her State,
and enlisted the aid of earnest men and women citizens throughout the
State. Her bill was bitterly contested by the worst class of landlords,
but after three sessions of the Legislature, at which Mrs. Bacon was
obliged to appear in person and explain her bill, it was passed. She
says of that day: "The women, the homes of Indiana, were honored that
day by the men of the Legislature, and we had won a law for the 101
cities of our State. No wonder the women applauded as some of the men
who gave their reasons, added 'and because the women wanted it'." Her
conclusion is: "Most strongly have I desired to show how much can be
done by women's organizations by simply demanding right legislation, and
to show their equally important part of helping to enforce legislation
after they get it."
Speaking of her own work, she says: "Having no hand in the management of
political affairs, I may leave to the various political parties the care
of reaping the thorns in each other's fields. It has been my pleasand
task to gather only the grapes.... I have encountered more figs than
thistles, and fewer thistles than what seems to be a sort of cacti,
that, I firmly believe, might be Burbankized for human good. Would that
they might be, and that we might include in the conservation of vital
resources those great powers for good that are now so wasted by constant
warring for political supremacy."
That last sentence forms a scathing indictment of the shortsightedness
of suffrage policy. It is pitiful to think of the energy and ability
which today is diverted from channels of human helpfulness to this
sensational struggle for a mistaken cause. It is not to be thought of
that we can permit woman's energy to be permanently dissipated in
political warfare or handicapped by party vicissitudes.
These examples of achievements by women of our own day, in our own
country, should convince the clear thinker that woman's contribution to
community organization and progress is best accomplished as a
non-partisan. The stories of Miss Schuyler and Mrs. Bacon prove that
whenever a woman has a righteous cause or a sane ideal, she will be
successful in its realization without the ballot. The three women cited
above whose work most depended on legislation for its accomplishment,
Miss Addams, Miss Barnard and Mrs. Bacon, have all in their penned words
lauded the power of non-partisanship.
And, borrowing from Miss Barnard, the anti-suffragist may say to the
woman who seeks to enfranchise her sister, thus destroying the power of
that great, womanly contribution towards the solving of the vexed
questions of the day made by the disinterested, because disfranchised
citizenness: "Stand by me till the hand of partisan politics is wrested
from the control of society's charities, till prisons, almshouses,
children's homes, public hospitals, are administered for the public good
rather than private profit; till decent housing, progressive education,
adequate recreation, pure food, living wages have been made a matter of
public, rather than political, concern." Let us not dissipate our
energies in internecine warfare, nor yet seek to perpetuate the
drawbacks of our partisan system of government by enfranchising the
women who now stand outside politics.
XII
WOMAN SUFFRAGE A MENACE TO SOCIAL REFORM
MARGARET C. ROBINSON
_Margaret Casson Robinson, wife of Professor Benjamin L. Robinson
of Harvard University; President of the Public Interests League
of Massachusetts; President of the Jaffrey Village Improvement
Society; Vice-President of the Cambridge Hospital League;
Vice-President of the Friends of Poland; member of the Executive
Board of the Cambridge Anti-Tuberculosis Association; Editor of
the "Anti-Suffrage Notes," and a frequent contributor to the
press._
_J. A. H._
The truth of our anti-suffrage doctrine that woman suffrage will destroy
the present non-partisan power of women and give us nothing worth having
in its place is constantly confirmed by the current happenings in
suffrage states. We have now, in the eastern and middle states, a body
of non-political women workers of incomparable value, and one is amazed
at the wrong-headedness which would deprive society of their influence.
Under present conditions the intelligent woman interested in public
affairs brings the full force of her influence to bear upon legislation;
her influence is a moral influence--it is direct and can be used with
men of all political parties. The possession of this unprejudiced,
unrestricted power is something which anti-suffragists value so highly
that the threat of the suffragists to destroy it is a very serious
grievance.
It is surprising that social workers and club women in larger numbers
are not awake to this danger; but, as has well been said, deciding
wisely on this question is not a matter of intelligence but of
information; and it is easier to accept suffrage theories and the
_mis_information which suffrage orators generously supply as to how
suffrage _will_ work than to study the happenings in suffrage states and
learn for oneself how it _does_ work.
Social workers and club women know their present strength and how many
good laws they have helped to put on the statute books. What they
seemingly do not realize is how quickly this power will be gone when
they divide into political parties. Many of them are apparently too
ignorant of politics to understand that _as voters_ it is only those men
for whom they will vote that they can influence.
A despatch from Topeka, Kansas, describing the recent campaign in that
state says that three years ago the Kansas Federation of Women's Clubs
lined up solidly for suffrage, and won it--and that they have not been
lined up solidly for anything since! Instead of throwing their influence
as a unit for good legislation, as women's clubs are wont to do in male
suffrage states, these women are divided into Republicans, Democrats,
Progressives, and Socialists, and the friction among them is greater
than ever before.
At the time Jane Addams joined the Progressive party it was very
striking that such ardent suffragists as Ida Husted Harper and Edward
Devine, editor of "The Survey," should have protested publicly in the
strongest terms against her action. They realized perfectly that
political partisanship narrows a woman's sphere of influence, and that
Miss Addams as a member of the Progressive party could exercise much
less influence upon Democrats and Republicans. She had before been able
to reach men of all parties, but now her field had suddenly become
immensely restricted in its scope. And while Mrs. Harper and Mr. Devine
were perfectly willing, even eager, that other women should enter
politics and ally themselves with political parties, Miss Addams was too
valuable to the causes they had at heart, namely, suffrage and social
service, for them to view with equanimity such a narrowing of her field
of influence.
In an article on the "Legislative Influence of Unenfranchised Women," by
Mary R. Beard, which appeared in the "Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science," for November, 1914, Mrs. Beard, although
an ardent suffragist, admits that women without the vote have been a
strong influence toward good legislation. She says:
"National as well as state legislation has been affected by women, if
the testimony of men like Harvey W. Wiley is accepted. In his campaign
for pure food laws, he stated repeatedly that his strongest support
came from women's organizations. That support was not passive and moral,
merely expressed to him privately, but these women inundated congress
with letters, telegrams, petitions, pleading for the passage of the laws
in question. These communications were presented to congress by their
recipients who often urged as their reason for supporting pure food laws
the appeals of women whose interests in food should not be ignored.
"The Consumers' League of New York helped the national food committee to
defeat a mischievous amendment to the Gould bill, which requires that
all package goods should be labelled as to the amount of their contents.
"Mrs. Albion Fellowes Bacon, of Indiana, practically single-handed,
secured the first tenement house laws of value for Evansville and
Indianapolis. She did this before the National Housing Association, of
which she is now a director, was formed. The recent improvements in the
Indiana housing legislation are due apparently to her continued
leadership and to the public opinion which she has helped to create. In
her case it was personal initiative and moral persuasion.
"Another example of personal influence on legislation exerted by women
is that of Frances Perkins, of New York, in her fight for the fifty-hour
bill for the women workers of her state. Unlike Mrs. Bacon, Miss Perkins
represented a society--the Consumers' League--which asked for this
measure, and she was supported in her demand by the Women's Trade Union
League and other organizations. The measure would have been defeated, as
is widely known and acknowledged in New York, had it not been for the
personal sagacity and watchfulness of Miss Perkins.
"The social service committee of the 'American Club Woman' states that
in the first year of its existence it has done important and effective
work. It was largely responsible for the passage of an ordinance by city
councils regulating dance halls.