the records of practically every woman's association not organized for
purely literary purposes."
We all know that this is true. Mrs. Beard also says:
"The woman's influence lies not in physical force, but in the occasional
subservience of the mind of man to the actual presence of a moral
force."
The influence of this moral force is so strong and has come to be so
well recognized that certain types of politicians and commercial
interests rebel against it. They wish to destroy it, and as the best
means to that end they advocate--woman suffrage! That is not at all in
line with what one is told at suffrage meetings. We are told that women
need the ballot in order that they may improve the conditions in the
home, that they may help the working girl, and put through good
legislation. But the rank and file of suffragists are being deceived in
these matters, for suffrage works, and will work directly the other
way. The New York World has committed a great indiscretion and has let
this cat out of the bag. The World recently came out for suffrage and
gave its reasons. One of them is that a few women, representing perhaps
ten per cent of the sex, have under present conditions too much
influence. These women, the World says, "have maintained at times a
reign of terror over legislative bodies, in consequence of which half
the country is now bedeviled by some form or other of harem government,
and legislators are forever making ridiculous concessions to women
agitators." These "women agitators" are, of course, the club women,
social workers, and others interested in social welfare. In order to
make it unnecessary for legislators to make "ridiculous concessions" to
this type of woman, the World advocates--what? Giving the vote to all
women! It has certainly hit upon the most effective expedient, and it is
because the vote will do exactly what the World claims for it, that
anti-suffragists are so opposed to it. The World says that most of the
reasons urged in favor of suffrage are fantastic and unreal, that women
are not purer and more noble than men, and that they are not so wise as
men in general affairs. It admits that they will not purify
politics--indeed, that they will confuse and disorganize government,
without reforming it; but nevertheless it believes in woman suffrage
because it will destroy the power of the ten per cent of women whose
influence is now so strong!
The question for intelligent women to decide is whether or not they
_want_ this influence destroyed. If they wish to give up the moral
influence which a body of women, educated, public-spirited,
non-partisan, can wield--an influence so strong that legislators feel
obliged to make what the World calls "ridiculous concessions" to it--if
in its stead they wish to depend on political influence gained through
the ballot, which can be applied only to one party, which can be
entirely offset by the votes of women who are ignorant, boss-controlled,
and whose votes are purchasable--if they prefer that, they will get
their wish if woman suffrage wins. That is exactly how it is working out
in the suffrage states. In Wyoming the politicians were clever enough to
foresee this. Woman suffrage was granted by one of the most corrupt
legislatures Wyoming ever had. These men knew that at that time good
women were few in that sparsely settled State, and they knew they could
"manage the others."
Nevada is offering us a most perfect example of the good woman's loss of
influence by entering politics. The easy divorce laws of that state, in
force until three years ago, were a national scandal. This was realized
by certain women of the state, who in consequence brought their moral
influence to bear upon the legislature for the repeal of these laws.
Their efforts were successful and the laws were repealed. Woman suffrage
was granted in Nevada last fall, and one of the very first acts of the
legislature was to re-enact the easy divorce laws! These women again
protested, but with no success. They were now voters, and the
legislature knew perfectly well that plenty of women's votes could be
secured to offset those of the protesting women. The moral influence of
this minority of Nevada women who cared for social betterment was gone
since the vote had been given to all women.
In her admirable anti-suffrage address before the Maine legislature at
the recent hearing on suffrage, Mrs. J. F. A. Merrill said:
"What do men do when they want to bring about a reform?
"They do as the men of Portland did a short time ago, when a number of
citizens became convinced that the moral conditions in Portland were not
what they should be. And what did they do? Did they vote about it? Did
they form party organizations? No; they resorted as nearly as they
could, to what is known as 'women's methods,' and formed a non-partisan
citizen's committee, just as detached as possible from politics. And why
did they resort to women's methods? Simply because they had all had the
vote since coming of age, and they all knew how useless it is as a means
of accomplishing reform work.
"Gentlemen, in every community there are a handful of women who can be
relied upon to carry on church and philanthropic and reform work; but we
all know that the vast majority are indifferent, and that they neither
help nor hinder. And then there is a third class, of women--the
wrongminded. They do not hinder reform work now, because they cannot.
"But, gentlemen, when you give the ballot to all women your handful of
earnest women in each community, who are willing to give their time and
thought to reform work, will have only their handful of ballots to cast
for reform measures; your great mass of indifferent women will be
indifferent still, and will omit to cast their ballots, and your very
considerable number of wrongminded women will have had a weapon put into
their hands which they will not omit to use against your reform
measures, because it is of importance to them to see to it that their
way of life is not interfered with.
"So for the sake of reform which women have done in the past, and ought
to be able to do in the future, we beg of you not to tie their hands and
hamper them by giving suffrage to women!"
That is the matter in a nutshell--and proofs of the correctness of this
statement are constantly multiplying. In an attempt to prove that woman
suffrage will not lead women to neglect their homes, a writer signing
herself "Annie Laurie" says in the San Francisco Examiner:
"I've been in Denver when a good man was being maligned and almost
robbed by political enemies, and he needed the vote of every good woman
in town to keep the good work he had done from being stultified. And do
you think you could get a single woman out to vote for that man if she
wanted to go to a 'tea' or to stay at home and knit socks for the new
baby? You could not."
This is just what anti-suffragists maintain--that the great body of
home-making women will not vote.
The Woman Citizen, a suffrage publication of California, in its July
issue, bears testimony on this question as follows:
"There are today many women in California and other States of the union
who, being enfranchised, are too indifferent to vote. We are loath to
believe that these women--thousands of them in the United States--are
aware of the wrong they are doing. We do not think they know they are
shirking a fundamental duty of citizenship. Too many ballots are cast in
the cause of dishonesty and corruption. Honest and law-abiding citizens
must exert their united strength at the polls to uphold honesty and good
government. There are too many women today who are priviliged to vote,
yet refrain from doing so either because they do not believe a woman
should go to the polls, or because for some inexcusable reason they have
neglected to register. They regard their franchise as an invitation to a
bridge party, something they can accept or reject as their fancy
dictates."
There is no lack of testimony that the wrongminded women do vote. On
November 4, the day after election, the San Francisco Examiner said:
"McDonough Brothers had several automobiles busy all day long hauling
Barbary coast dance hall girls and the inmates of houses on Commercial
street to the different booths, and always the women were supplied with
marked sample ballots."
They were outvoting the women reformers!
What is the result? What is happening to moral conditions in San
Francisco since women vote? The American Social Hygiene Association
pointed out last spring that there had been an _increase_ in the number
of questionable dance halls, and the "Survey" of April 10 stated that
danger signals were being flashed all over the country to young people
bound for the exposition, as there was much unemployment, and the city's
moral condition gave cause for anxiety.
A later report, by Bascom Johnson, counsel of the Social Hygiene
Association, who was sent to San Francisco for further investigation,
appears in full in the September issue of "Social Hygiene." It is far
more serious than previous reports. Within the exposition are several
concessions, maintained despite protests specifically against them,
which are deplorably vicious. In the city itself conditions are
appalling, the policemen being there apparently to prevent anything from
interfering with the orderly and profitable traffic in vice.
Summing up his report, Mr. Johnston says, "_in spite of announcements of
officials to the contrary_, San Francisco remains one of the few large
cities of this country where prostitution is frankly and openly
tolerated. The natural and inevitable result has been that San Francisco
has become the Mecca of the underworld, and that for every such addition
to her population the problem is rendered that much more difficult."
These are the conditions in a city where women vote! Mr. Johnson says
that the Y. W. C. A., the W. C. T. U. and other organizations of the
kind have tried to improve these conditions, but have failed, as they
received "_little or no support from the city officials_." This fact is
directly in opposition to the suffrage theory that women must have the
vote in order that city and state officials shall pay heed to their
wishes. If California were still under male suffrage--if the thousands
of dissolute women in San Francisco who will vote as the party in power
dictates did not have the vote--the moral influence of the ladies of the
Y. W. C. A. and the W. C. T. U. would be much more likely to be a factor
in the situation. If these ladies vote at all, their vote is divided
between the Democrats, Republicans, Progressives, and Socialists, and is
therefore of much less importance than the big vote which can be
controlled. Dr. Helen Sumner, sent by the suffragists to study
conditions in Denver several years ago, states that "the vote of these
women to whom the police protection is essential is regarded as one of
the perquisites of the party in power."
With these facts in mind it is very clear that the statement constantly
made by suffragists that after women are enfranchised they need not vote
if they do not want to, is shallow and unprincipled, and the woman who
makes it proves herself an unsafe person to be enfranchised. The
stay-at-home vote is a great and serious menace.
Voting differs from the higher education and other so-called "woman's
rights." They are privileges only. Whether a girl goes to college or
does not go to college is a personal matter, and her decision works no
danger to other girls or to the community. The college is there, and she
can go or not, as her taste and circumstances decide. But voting is a
totally different matter. Enfranchisement confers a privilege and an
obligation, the obligation being inseparable from the privilege. Since
the shirking of this obligation means a serious menace to the community,
the unwillingness of a large majority of women to accept the obligation
is a factor of the utmost importance in the situation.
The San Francisco Chronicle says: "Results show that in this state women
refuse to accept the obligation which at their request, or upon their
apparent acquiescence, has been imposed upon them, or to discharge the
resulting duties. The question, then, for the people of other states to
decide is the light of experience of the western States is whether it is
in the public interest to impose on women imperative duties which the
great majority of them refuse to discharge after they have been imposed
upon them."
Another danger connected with woman suffrage is this--the character of
the women chosen for the positions of responsibility will change.
The Woman's Journal of March 20, 1915, speaking of Mayor Harrison, of
Chicago, says: "If he had occasion to appoint a welfare worker for women
and children, he did not appoint a woman who had experience for the work
and could do it well, but picked out a woman who would be a cog in his
political machine." Naturally! It is when women are outside politics
that they are appointed on their merits. When they have the vote those
are naturally chosen who are cogs in the political machine.
The suffragists never tire of quoting Julia Lathrop. As she holds an
important position as head of the Federal Children's Bureau, they
consider her views on suffrage, since her views coincide with theirs, as
most valuable and important. What _is_ important is the fact that if
Miss Lathrop were allied with a political party she would not be holding
the position which is supposed to give her views such weight. It was
only because she was a woman and a non-partisan that she retained her
position at the change of administration, when the Republicans went out
and the Democrats came in. Every _man_ at the head of a similar bureau
lost his job!
Miss Jane Addams, in a suffrage speech in Boston, claimed that by means
of the ballot women in Chicago have accomplished several important
reforms. These were:
1. Covered markets had been secured where food might be kept clean.
2. A court for boys of 17 and under 25 had been established.
3. Public wash-houses have been established.
4. The garbage dumps have been abolished.
The record of accomplishments of Chicago women voters as presented by
Miss Addams is not impressive, for the reforms she cites have been
accomplished in other cities without votes for women.
What the women accomplished in Chicago _before_ they got the vote makes
a much more impressive showing. It is to them, says the Chicago Tribune,
that Chicago owes the kindergarten in the public school, the juvenile
court and detention home, the small park and playground movement, the
vacation school, the school extension, the establishment of a forestry
department of the city government, the city welfare exhibit, the
development of the Saturday half-holiday, the establishment of public
comfort stations, the work of the Legal Aid Society, and the reformation
of the Illinois Industrial School. This is a long and brilliant list of
women's achievements, not to be matched by the voting women of any
state. Chicago women were working together when these things were
accomplished--now they are fighting each other in rival political
parties.
Henry M. Hyde, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, which has long
supported the woman suffrage movement, wrote over his own signature his
impressions of last spring's election in Chicago, and the part women
played in it. He says:
"The first mayoralty campaign in which women voters participated failed
to develop the refining and elevating influence which the sex was
expected to exert. When one sees a woman of dignified presence and
cultivated appearance greeted with torrents of hisses and insults from
the frenzied lips of both men and women; when one sees her finally
driven from the platform with no chance of speaking a word, one is
tempted to retire to some quiet spot for a moment and meditate on what
it all means.
"When one watches a venerable lady trying to quell the tumult by waving
a flag and almost dancing to the same rhythm, while 1,200 shrieking men
and women order her to 'sit down and chase herself,' one remembers his
own grandmother, and makes a feeble effort to blush. One is almost
tempted to pick that discarded and discredited old relic once known as
masculine chivalry out of the scrap heap, and see how many people would
recognize it."
These references are to a woman's political mass meeting, which was
described in a Chicago despatch to the Boston Herald as follows:
"A demonstration approaching a riot marked the women's political meeting
here today, and was ended only when the managers of the theatre where
the meeting was held dropped the steel curtain and a spectator sent in a
riot call for the police."
Does this sort of thing tend to increase woman's influence in uplifting
and benefiting her community?
A suffrage writer said recently that the son who grows up to find his
mother a voter will have a broadened respect for womanhood. With these
scenes in Chicago in mind, do you think he will? Suppose she has just
voted for Bath-House John, the notorious candidate who got a majority of
the women's votes in his ward, or in favor of saloons, as thousands of
women have done--will he have added respect for her? This same writer
says: "It might be a new and stimulating experience for a man to have to
explain to his wife just why he was voting on the side of a corrupt
boss, in favor of the liquor traffic, or against the suppression of
child labor." But if she had just done those things herself--and in
Chicago the women voted just as the men did--why should the experience
be a stimulating one?
Jane Addams, while on her foreign mission of "Peace--with suffrage" said
in London, on May 12, 1915:
"I am a strong supporter of woman suffrage, and, although I hope to see
the women of England enfranchised, I see around me endless opportunities
for social work which could be usefully performed while the vote is
being won."
The interesting point about this is that English women have for many
years had the vote on all matters pertaining to housing, care of the
poor, sanitation, education, liquor regulations, police, care of the
insane, care of children, etc. Probably Miss Addams does not know this.
They have failed completely to do with the vote what even Miss Addams,
confirmed and prejudiced suffragist that she is, admits that they could
do perfectly well without the vote. This is certainly a striking
admission on her part.
Why have they failed so lamentably? Mrs. Pethick Lawrence tells us. She
says:
"I never saw so many women working for social betterment as I have seen
in the American cities I have visited. _In England women have turned
their attention to politics and have accomplished nothing like so much
in civic reform._"
Anti-suffragists ask women not to turn their attention to politics and
neglect civic reform; not to make this appalling mistake, which will set
back the social progress of our cities for many years; not to make
powerless, through woman suffrage, as the New York World wants to do,
the women who are now working for social betterment.
The suffragists apparently do not care what evils follow, provided they
get their way.
The Rev. Anna Shaw, president of the National Suffrage Association,
says:
"I believe in woman suffrage whether all women vote or no women vote;
whether all women vote right or all women vote wrong; whether all women
will love their husbands after they vote or forsake them; whether they
will neglect their children or never have any children."
In introducing this astounding statement, Dr. Shaw declared: "I believe
I speak for the thousands of women belonging to the national
association."
Perhaps she does. At least no one of them has been heard to deny it; but
fortunately she does not speak for the 24,000,000 women of voting age in
the United States who are not members of the National Suffrage
association. Many of these do care for public welfare, for social
well-being, and for human happiness, all of which would be destroyed if
all women voted wrong, if they deserted their husbands, and neglected
their children. Anti-suffragists protest against having political power
put into the hands of women with no higher ideals than those of Dr. Shaw
and her followers. They neither wish to be ruled by such women nor do
they wish to have to wage an eternal fight not to be ruled by them, and
one thing or the other will be necessary if the ballot is forced upon
women. In California the men are begging the home-making type of women
to come out and fight the political women, whom they already recognize
as a danger and a nuisance.
Men who believe in fair play will refuse to force political life upon
all the women of their states because a small fraction think they want
it. Those who care for the political welfare of their states will
decline to adopt this innovation, which assuredly cannot stand the tests
of rational criticism and of experience. If they value in the slightest
degree the assistance which educated, public-spirited women are able to
give in securing enlightened legislation, they will certainly not favor
votes for women; for what woman suffrage does is to take the power out
of the hands of these women, who without the vote exert a strong moral
influence toward good legislation, and put the power gained through an
increase in the electorate into the hands of the bosses who can control
the largest woman's vote.
"Practical politicians" are learning this lesson rapidly. The New York
Commercial calls attention to the fact that in our cities the female
vote is more easily manipulated than the male. This fact does not
escape the bosses, and they are rapidly coming into line for woman
suffrage. While woman suffrage was largely an untried theory suffragists
could maintain with some plausibility that woman's vote would be cast
for moral and humane legislation, and would purify politics; but with
the actual conditions in Chicago, San Francisco, Reno, Denver, and
Seattle what they are, this theory no longer holds water, and it is
becoming increasingly evident that the way to do away with the moral
influence of women in public life is to give the vote to all women.
XIII
THE ANTI-SUFFRAGE IDEAL
MRS. HERBERT LYMAN
_Ruth Whitney Lyman, wife of Herbert Lyman; studied two years at
Bryn Mawr; a member of the Woman's Municipal League of Boston and
of the Board of Directors of the North End Diet Kitchen._
_J. A. H._
Women today find their sex disquieted by deep unrest. Our sex is seeking
to adjust itself to new conditions. Suffrage, feminism, militancy, have
been the symptoms of the first phase of modern woman's attempt to adjust
herself to twentieth century conditions. That phase was the outgrowth of
hasty judgment, and is rapidly giving place to the second phase, wherein
the sober second thought of the normal woman is repudiating the false
values preached by those women who impulsively leaped to the conclusion
that man's sphere was more potent than woman's and therefore more
desirable.
The struggle over woman suffrage presents the spectacle of two camps of
women arrayed against each other with opposing ideals. Let no one be so
simple as to suppose that the issue is one between men and women. It is
not a "woman's rights" question; it is a _which_ woman's rights
question. Two types of women are at war, for although both desire the
same end--namely, a better world to live in--they differ fundamentally
as to the method of attaining it.
The fundamental difference is this--that the suffragist (like the
socialist) persists in regarding the individual as the unit of society,
while the anti-suffragist insists that it is the family. Individualism
is the all-important thing to the suffragist; to the anti-suffragist it
is soundness of family relationships. Suffragism is founded upon a
sex-conscious individualism and sex antagonism, which leads it to say
that woman can only be represented by herself, and that women now are a
great unrepresented class. As a matter of fact, women are not a class,
but a sex, pretty evenly distributed throughout all the various classes
of society.