sexes. Men and women must be regarded as partners, not competitors; and
the family, to be preserved as a unit, must be represented by having one
political head. The man of the family must be that representative,
because government is primarily the guarantee of protection to life and
property and rests upon the political strength of the majority, which
should be able in times of need to force minorities to obey their will.
That is the only basis on which a democracy can endure. Suffragism says
that in order to attack existing evils women must organize for
participation in law making. It stakes its faith on more government (a
second resemblance to socialism), upon control by law. The
anti-suffragist sees the evils of society as fundamentally resulting
from the evil in individuals, and calls on women to check it at its
source. They emphasize the power of individual homes to turn out men and
women, who, trained to self-control, will not necessitate control by
law. Knowing well that the great training school for private morality is
family life, the anti-suffragist seeks to preserve conditions making for
sound family life, the sum total of private morality being public
morality, the conscience of the people.
Moreover, the twentieth century has given us its watchword, which is,
differentiation or division of labor. Anti-suffragists by accepting it,
and applying to their sex the new demands of specialization, put
themselves abreast of the times; but suffragists lag behind, still
harping on the exploded theories of equality and identity. The
strikingly progressive message the new century presents us is this: Give
equal opportunity to men and women for expression along their
_different_ lines. Government, law making, law enforcement, with all the
allied problems of tariff, taxation, police, railroads, interstate and
international relationships, etc., must still be the business of men.
The business of women must be to work out a national ideal of domestic
life and juvenile training. They must standardize the family life with
their new understanding of the importance of the product of every
separate family to the state.
The suffragist, who is so often the unmarried or childless woman, here
objects that women could also vote. But it is practically impossible for
women as a sex to undertake the regular and frequent political duties.
If the highest efficiency in private life is to be striven toward, women
must regard themselves as a sort of emergency corps, prepared to meet
the unexpected; for illness, accidents, temptation, sorrow--all the
disturbances of domestic life--do not come at stated intervals. Anyone
can readily see that for women private duty would constantly conflict
with public duty. To become an efficient political unit, a woman would
have to set aside much time and strength upon organizing and bringing
out the woman's vote. There would be the splitting up of women into
rival political groups on class, race, or religious lines, the
dissipation of energies and strain of contention for women who in
America already reach with sad frequency the breaking point of nerves
and body.
In contrast to such obligatory activity for all women, consider the
field of voluntary non-partisan activity now open to the single woman,
the woman of leisure, and to every woman at such times as her family
duties permit. Indeed the germ of the true woman's movement lies in the
activities of such organizations as education societies, playground
associations, municipal leagues, and so forth, which are only in their
first stages of usefulness. Here is ample scope and outlet for talents
and energy.
Our sex, if kept out of politics, has the opportunity in these days when
we prate so much about peace, to set about disarming distrust and
discord within our own borders. Shall we not dream of a united American
womanhood? We twentieth century women may take a noble stride toward it,
if we will, by working for those causes that disregard the divisions of
race, religion, and politics. Is it surprising that the anti-suffragist
sees a vast, unexhausted field for woman's influence outside the
political? No wonder that to the suffragist's craving for a new sphere
and new rights she opposes the plea of old duties unfulfilled and
existing opportunities neglected.
To contrast the opposing ideals of the two groups of women, let me quote
from what a great Frenchman said in the time of the French Revolution:
"You have written upon the monuments of your city the words
Liberty--Fraternity--Equality. Above Liberty write Duty; above
Fraternity write Humility; above Equality write Service; above the
immemorial creed of your Rights inscribe the divine creed of your
Duties." I truly believe that the women who, perceiving present duties
imperfectly performed, refuse to take up the cry for more rights, are
following the more Christ-like ideal. I do not think that twentieth
century American women have outgrown His peerless example, which urges
them to be faithful first over a few things as He commanded. God made us
women; and if we are told that women suffer more than men in peace and
war, let us answer, "Very likely--Christ Himself found His cross
heavy--let us bear the cross and crown of womanhood in His name."
XIV
THE TRUE FUNCTION OF THE NORMAL WOMAN
MRS. HORACE A. DAVIS
_Anna Hallowell Davis, wife of Horace Davis; was educated in
Boston private schools and is a graduate of Radcliffe College;
was a member of Local School Board No. 46, New York City, for eight
years; is a member of Brookline Civic Society, the North Bennett
Street Industrial School Association, and of the Massachusetts
Peace Association._
_J. A. H._
The whole question of suffrage and anti-suffrage is significant chiefly
as it affects the married woman with children and a home; for if there
is any elemental fact on which to plant our feet, it is that the normal
woman is a wife and mother and home-maker. But is not the contention of
the suffragists fundamentally based upon the circumstances of the woman
who is not leading this normal life,--who is unmarried, who has no
children, or who is not making a home and bringing up her children
herself? It is in planning for these exceptional women, as I think they
do, that the suffragist leaders tend to ignore the truly representative
women--the majority. Do we not suspect, indeed, that they are turning
to new ideals, because they have never tried the old? As Chesterton
says: "The ideal house, the happy family, is now chiefly assailed by
those who have never known it, or by those who have failed to fulfil it.
Numberless modern women have rebelled against domesticity in theory,
because they have never known it in practice."
"But," the suffragists ask, "granting that your woman of 'normal' life
is in the majority, and doesn't want the vote, _oughtn't_ she to want
it? Casting a ballot takes next to no time, and that is all she needs to
do. Most men do no more than that."
But men ought to do more. That is just the point. That is just why
corrupt government has been fastened on our cities. The Tammany leaders
do more. They give all their time to politics; but the "reform" vote
cannot, except occasionally, be got to the polls in sufficient numbers;
and too few of the best men will run for office. If women are simply
going to aggravate these conditions, if the "normal," representative
woman isn't going to vote and hold office, and the non-representative,
exceptional woman is, where is the advantage to the state of adding
women to the electorate? Probably, however, rather than have this
happen, the representative woman would feel that she must enter the
lists. In competition with "abnormal" or unscrupulous women, she would
be forced to vote and to hold office. More than just going to the polls,
she would have to think, read, and talk politics, as men do, or ought to
do. The whole question here is: Is it better for her to do this, or to
do the things which men don't do? _For one person can't do it all well._
A good mother of three or four children already has more than she can do
well. If she takes up this whole new department of life and thought, I
am convinced she will have to let something else go, and already under
the influence of the feminist movement, that "something else" seems to
be her home. So, this is what the anti-suffragists feel most
keenly--that once the franchise is imposed as a duty, they would have to
do the things which men already are doing (and doing as well as the
women could do them); that they would no longer be free to do what they
think is the higher work for them, as women. Therefore, when a
suffragist tells me she has a "right" to vote, I say that, in the name
of the best interests of the community, I have the right _not_ to vote.
Another thing which the anti-suffragists feel is not recognized
sufficiently by their opponents, is the essential and valuable
difference between men and women in their manner of approach to any
given human problem. "Law" to the antis seems a man's word. Man thinks
of people in masses. He makes laws for the whole. He generalizes better
than women. On the other hand, where woman is stronger than he is in her
feeling for the individual person, and her use of love rather than of
law, neither the masculine nor the feminine gift is better, the one than
the other, but the two work together as necessary parts of one whole. As
Ida Tarbell puts it: "Human society may be likened to two great
circles, one revolving within the other. In the inner circle rules the
woman. Here she breeds and trains the material for the outer circle,
which exists only by and for her. That accident may throw her into this
outer circle is, of course, true, but it is not her natural habitat. Nor
is she fitted by Nature to live and circulate freely there. What it all
amounts to is that the labor of the world is naturally divided between
the two different beings that people the world. It is unfair to the
woman that she be asked to do the work of the outer circle. The man can
do that satisfactorily if she does her part, that is, if she prepares
him the material. Certainly, he can never come into the inner circle and
do her work."
So, in claiming for women the right to take a part in the man's half of
life, the suffragists, I think, lose sight of what the woman's half is.
In urging that they must have a hand in law-making and government and
public life generally, they do not see that woman's peculiar work is
pretty independent of laws and of government, is rather in private life.
For it is just where the law cannot reach that woman is supreme. It is
just in the finer, more personal and intimate relationships of life,
which government cannot include, that woman finds her work waiting for
her, which she alone can do--what Octavia Hill calls "the out-of-sight,
silent work."
That woman is today neglecting this, her own part of the world's work, I
think is everywhere apparent. Surely we do not need more laws; what we
do need is more of the spirit which shall make people want to obey the
laws which we have. What else does it mean when we say we cannot enforce
the laws? The suffragists are clamoring for more laws, for more of the
man-element in society; the anti-suffragists feel that it is the inner
life and character, the mother's work, which everywhere needs
strengthening. Settlement workers, doctors, ministers, and police
commissioners, are beginning to feel this, too. They are telling us that
in their work they find that no laws and no institutions can take the
place of home teaching and influence with young people. The outer
restraint and penalty are little effective unless they are met by the
inner desire to do right.
On points like these I believe the accent should be laid today. The
pendulum is swinging too far away from the things which our mothers and
grandmothers made their chief concern. What is called "the rise of
woman," her new feeling of influence and power, are blessings only as
they help her to do better and of freer choice the things which are in
tune with Nature and with the need of the world.
XV
THE IMPERATIVE DEMAND UPON WOMEN IN THE HOME
MRS. CHARLES BURTON GULICK
_Anne Hathaway Gulick, wife of Professor Charles B. Gulick of
Harvard University; graduated at the Framingham State Normal
School; taught four years in Boston and Cambridge, and is
Secretary of the Public Interests' League of Massachusetts._
_J. A. H._
In his address to the Associated Press on April 21, 1915, President
Wilson said: "You deal in the raw material of opinion, and if my
convictions have any validity, _opinion_ ultimately governs the world."
This is exactly what the anti-suffragists believe and teach. They know
that the vote merely registers public opinion, it does not make it.
Therefore, they oppose laying the useless burden of the ballot on the
shoulders of woman, who already has every opportunity in her own special
province to mold public opinion by educating the inmates of her home to
live right and to think right. From such homes, where high principles
are inculcated, comes the public spirited, right minded man, whose vote
registers the fact that the mother in that home has done her duty
faithfully and well. A woman who has thus fulfilled her obligation to
the world knows that there is not time left to take up political duties.
Either the home or the politics must suffer. In the end, in the great
majority of cases, nature would assert herself, and the political duties
would be neglected.
A minister, who is a suffragist, is quoted recently as saying: "Our
young men, we believe, would be safer if their mothers and wives had the
ballot, for they are the ones most injured by many evils." In what way
will our young men be safer because their mothers and their wives have
the ballot? Instead of devoting themselves wholly to teaching their sons
and daughters the value of self-restraint, of respect for the rights and
comfort of others, and the importance of high ideals of citizenship, if
these same mothers and wives are dividing their attention between the
home and political strife and strain, can they reasonably be expected to
fulfill their greatest duty successfully? No woman should be obliged to
divide her energies, and so have less time to give to the study of her
children. No two children are alike, and each child requires special
consideration and care for its best development. Can any one tell at
what moment a child may need unusual attention and thought to guide it
aright? Supposing the mother had the ballot, would the political
campaign wait because her child was going through a particularly trying
period, when a step one way or the other might make or mar its
character? Or would the child wait to take the step because it was
important for the mother to throw all the weight of her sound sense and
good influence into the political campaign, and she must, therefore,
just at this critical time set aside her home duties? No, most certainly
not. The mother must have _no_ other duties which could come before her
home duties at any time.
Some one said recently: "A man must have a place to go from and to come
to." In order to make him continue to want to go from and come to his
home, there must be something there to make him look forward to the
home-coming with pleasure as the reward of his labor. If this home is
kept by a woman who cannot be at home often when most needed, who labors
under the excitement of the political campaign, how long is he going to
look forward to his home-coming? Of course, the answer to this is that
most women would not spend any more time over politics than they do now.
But if that is so, of what use will they be as voters, and why add a
perfectly useless body of voters, when this addition to the electorate
will mean an increase in the expenses of the government and consequently
higher cost of living, already too high for the average family?
We do not believe with Mr. Creel that "the old fashioned idea of home is
bunk," nor do we agree with Mr. Roger Sherman Hoar, who is reported as
saying that "woman suffrage, by doubling the electorate, will double the
opportunities of each man for political interest." He goes on to say
that when a man's wife becomes a voter he will talk politics with her
and will give more weight to her political opinion, thereby learning the
home point of view on home matters. Is it probable that a man who has
not spent enough time with his wife to know what the home point of view
is before she has a vote, would be induced to spend more time there
because she had? It is much more likely that he would spend less time
there, since without political duties she was unable to make his home
attractive, and with political duties she would have even less time to
give to the making of a good home. Further on we read: "With increased
interest in matters political"--this increase to be brought about by
giving women the vote--"the men will scrutinize their public servants
more carefully." What becomes here of the contention of the suffragists
that the _ballot_ is the only thing that wakens interest in good
government, if the men who already have the ballot are not interested in
good government, but need to have the women enfranchised before they can
have a real interest in matters political?
No, woman must specialize in the home. I am not speaking of those who
"by choice or accident have missed the highest privilege of womanhood,"
as Mr. Pyle ably puts it, but of the great majority of women. To my mind
the advantages of a properly conducted home life far outweigh the
advantages of any institution, no matter how good. That I am not alone
in this opinion is witnessed by the fact that the trustees of the best
orphan asylums are making every effort to diminish the number of
children in their institutions and to place the children in homes. They
have learned that even a poorly conducted home is better than a well
conducted asylum, and that they have no right to deprive children of the
benefits of family life. Yet the feminists, closely allied with the
suffragists, advocate putting children of tender age into institutions,
where, according to them, they will be better cared for than at home.
"If they are well, the institution nurse is as good; if they are ill,
she is much better than the mother" says one suffrage leader. Those of
us who have known better can only pity people who hold such beliefs. To
them mother love can have no meaning. Yet those of us who have felt this
mother love, know what a guiding star it has been, and must always
continue to be, brightening steadily as the years go by, and beckoning
us more persistently than ever to higher ideals when it is only a
memory. Who would dare deprive our children of this precious heritage?
Only the unknowing.
After all, the women who rebel against the idea that home is the place
for woman are largely those who misunderstand the duties of home, who
think only of the drudgery, and forget to think of the happiness that
comes with watching our families develop under our care. Although the
mother must do all the work in the average family, it is not from these
homes where in most cases the women are happily busy with their home
duties that most of the agitation about abandonning the home comes, but
from among those people who have too much leisure on their hands, and
who, unfortunately, do not find sufficiently exciting the duties of
training good citizens. Whatever our work in life, whatever our
occupation, we cannot rid ourselves of drudgery. Is there not more
deadening, unvarying monotony for the business woman, the shop girl, the
factory hand, than for the woman in the home who is her own mistress and
can in some degree regulate and vary her work to suit her own pleasure?
It is only because such work is new and untried by them that many women
think it preferable to home duties; but the fact that so many girls in
industry marry young to get away from this uncongenial work proves that
when tried it is not found either so exciting or so interesting as these
advocates of woman in industry and out of the home imagine.
Do not mistake me: No woman should spend all of her time at home. Public
needs and social duties must be attended to. From the latter she brings
refreshment and new ideas to the home, and by giving a proper share of
her energies to the former she can do her part toward helping the
community in which she lives to be constantly improving itself, and so
to become an ideal place in which to develop worthy citizens. With these
interests she can be a real influence for good, and without them she
must fall short of ideal motherhood. We must not forget that a woman can
select her own time for her social duties, and they can be set aside at
any time that more important matters need her attention in the home,
but that she could not select her own time for political duties.
Let us remember, then, as Miss Lucy Price says, that after all, women in
big business are not the successes, men can do that work as well and
better than they. It is the women in the home, outnumbering all others
fifteen to one (and fourteen of these do not keep a servant), who are
really the great and typical women of the world.
XVI
SUFFRAGE AND THE SEX PROBLEM
MRS. WILLIAM LOWELL PUTNAM
_Mrs. William Lowell Putnam; a director of the American
Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality;
Chairman, Department of Public Health of Women's Municipal League
of Boston, which has the following committees: Household Nursing,
Prenatal and Obstetrical Care, Sanitation and Safety of Public
Buildings and Conveyances, Hygiene of Occupations, Abatement of
Noise, Social Hygiene and Quackery; a member of the National Child
Welfare Exhibit Committee, and of the Massachusetts Committee
on Unemployment of the American Section of the International
Association; Chairman, Executive Committee of Massachusetts Milk
Consumers' Association; Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Boston
of the Special Aid Society for American Preparedness._
_J. A. H._
More talk and less thought is expended on the subject of sex today than
on almost anything else.
It is a hopeful sign for the future that society in general is awakening
to the far-reaching importance of the relations between the sexes,
and--feeling that these relations at present leave much to be
desired--is offering many suggestions for the solution of this vexed
problem, even though the suggestions themselves are not always
calculated to obtain the desired results. The fact that throughout much
of the civilized world, women outnumber men, combined with the attitude
of certain women whose lives have been passed without personal
experience of sexual relations has led to the suggestion that the sex
problem may be simplified in the future by the development of a neuter
sex which these people think they see approaching. But this seems hardly
a likely solution, for asexuality must of necessity be self-destructive,
and need not, therefore, occupy us long, though just now the type does
seem rather self-concious. A less fanciful, though not more satisfying,
solution is that of the feminist, who, in hunting for a cure, demands
for men and women alike no restraint on sexual relations beyond the
immediate desires of the two people most intimately concerned, while her
milder sister, the suffragette, believes that women by voting can bring
about in both sexes the control of human passion.
That the sexual relation interests the world is not so new a condition
as we sometimes think; indeed, half unconsciously, sex has always been
of paramount interest from the cradle to the grave, from the time when
the child alone first nurses tenderly its doll, or in groups plays
house, and at being father and mother and children. It is only the
realization and open discussion of the interest which is new. Sex is the
most vital thing in the world, for on it all but the lowest forms of
life depend; hence the instinct of reproduction is equalled in its force
by no other except, perhaps, that of self-preservation. We must think
about it. Only let us think straight.