woman suffrage movement. All that we can ask, as advocates of this
reform, is, that the inclusion or the exclusion should be the same for
both sexes. We cannot put off the equality of woman till that time, a
few centuries hence, when the Social Science Association shall
have-succeeded in agreeing on the true basis of “scientific
legislation.” It is as if we urged that wives should share their
husbands’ dinners, and were told that the physicians had not decided
whether beefsteak were wholesome. The answer is, “Beefsteak or tripe,
yeast or saleratus, which you please. But, meanwhile, what is good
enough for the wife is good enough for the husband.”
LXXXI.
FOR SELF-PROTECTION.
I remember to have read, many years ago, the life of Sir Samuel Romilly,
the English philanthropist. He was the author of more beneficent legal
reforms than any man of his day, and there was in this book a long list
of the changes he still meant to bring about. It struck me very much,
that, among these proposed reforms, not one of any importance referred
to the laws about women.
It shows—what all experience has shown—that no class or race or sex can
safely trust its protection in any hands but its own. The laws of
England in regard to woman were then so bad that Lord Brougham
afterwards said they needed total reconstruction, if they were to be
touched at all. And yet it is only since woman suffrage began to be
talked about, that the work of law-reform has really taken firm hold. In
many cases in America the beneficent measures are directly to be traced
to some appeal from feminine advocates. Even in Canada, as stated the
other day by Dr. Cameron, formerly of Toronto, the bill protecting the
property of married women was passed under the immediate pressure of
Lucy Stone’s eloquence. And, even where this direct agency could not be
traced, the general fact that the atmosphere was full of the agitation
had much to do with all the reforms that took place. Legislatures,
unwilling to give woman the ballot, were shamed into giving her
something. The chairman of the judiciary committee in Rhode Island told
me, that, until he heard women address the committee, he had not
reflected upon their legal disabilities, or thought how unjust these
were. While the matter was left to the other sex only, even men like Sir
Samuel Romilly forgot the wrongs of woman. When she began to advocate
her own cause men also waked up.
But now that they are awake, they ask, is not this sufficient? Not at
all. If an agent who has cheated you surrenders reluctantly one-half
your stolen goods, you do not stop there and say, “It is enough. Your
intention is honorable. Please continue my agent with increased pay.” On
the contrary, you say, “Your admission of wrong is a plea of guilty.
Give me the rest of what is mine.” There is no defence like
self-defence, no protection like self-protection.
All theories of chivalry and generosity and vicarious representation
fall before the fact that woman has been grossly wronged by man. That
being the case, the only modest and honest thing for man to do is to
say, “Henceforward have a voice in making your own laws.” Till this is
done, she has no sure safeguard, since otherwise the same men who made
the old barbarous laws may at any time restore them.
It is common to say that woman suffrage will make no great difference;
for that women will think very much as men do, and it will simply double
the vote without varying the result. About many matters this may be
true. To be sure, it is probable that on questions of conscience, like
slavery and temperance, the woman’s vote would by no means coincide with
man’s. But grant that it would. The fact remains,—and all history shows
it,—that on all that concerns her own protection a woman needs her own
vote. Would a woman vote to give her husband the power of bequeathing
her children to the control and guardianship of somebody else? Would a
woman vote to sustain the law by which a Massachusetts chief justice
bade the police take those crying children from their mother’s side in
the Boston court-room a few years ago, and hand them over to a
comparative stranger, because that mother had married again? You might
as well ask whether the colored vote would sustain the Dred Scott
decision. Tariffs or banks may come or go the same, whether the voters
be white or black, male or female. But, when the wrongs of an oppressed
class or sex are to be righted, the ballot is the only guaranty. After
they have gained a potential voice for themselves, the Sir Samuel
Romillys will remember them.
LXXXII.
WOMANLY STATESMANSHIP.
The newspapers periodically express a desire to know whether women have
given evidence, on the whole, of superior statesmanship to men. There
are constant requests that they will define their position as to the
tariff and the fisheries and the civil-service question. If they do not
speak, it is naturally assumed that they will forever after hold their
peace. Let us see how that matter stands.
It is said that the greatest mechanical skill in America is to be found
among professional burglars who come here from England. Suppose one of
these men were in prison, and we were to stand outside and taunt him
through the window: “Here is a locomotive engine: why do you not mend or
manage it? Here is a steam printing-press: if you know any thing, set it
up for me! You a mechanic, when you have not proved that you understand
any of these things? Nonsense!”
But Jack Sheppard, if he condescended to answer us at all, would coolly
say, “Wait a while, till I have finished my present job. Being in
prison, my first business is to get out of prison. Wait till I have
picked this lock, and mined this wall; wait till I have made a saw out
of a watch-spring, and a ladder out of a pair of blankets. Let me do my
first task, and get out of limbo, and then see if your little
printing-presses and locomotives are too puzzling for my fingers.”
Politically speaking, woman is in prison, and her first act of skill
must be in getting through the wall. For her there is no tariff
question, no question of the fisheries. She will come to that by and by,
if you please; but for the present her statesmanship must be employed
nearer home. The “civil-service reform” in which she is most concerned
is a reform which shall bring her in contact with the civil service. Her
political creed, for the present, is limited to that of Sterne’s
starling in the cage,—“I can’t get out.” If she is supposed to have any
common-sense at all, she will best show it by beginning at the point
where she is, instead of at the point where somebody else is. She would
indeed be as foolish as these editors think her if she now spent her
brains upon the tariff question, which she cannot reach, instead of upon
her own enfranchisement which she is fast reaching.
The woman suffrage movement in America, in all its stages and
subdivisions, has been the work of woman. No doubt men have helped in
it: much of the talking has been done by them, and they have furnished
many of the printed documents. But the energy, the methods, the
unwearied purpose, of the movement, have come from women: they have led
in all councils; they have established the newspapers, got up the
conventions, addressed the legislatures, and raised the money. Thirty
years have shown, with whatever temporary variations, one vast wave of
progress toward success, both in this country and in Europe. Now,
success is statesmanship.
I remember well the shouts of laughter that used to greet the
anti-slavery orators when they claimed that the real statesmen of the
country were not the Calhouns and Websters, who spent their strength in
trying to sustain slavery, and failed, but the Garrisons, who devoted
their lives to its overthrow, and were succeeding. Yet who now doubts
this? Tried by the same standard, the statesmanship of to-day does not
lie in the men who can find no larger questions before them than those
which concern the fisheries, but in the women whose far-reaching efforts
will one day make every existing voting-list so much waste paper.
Of course, when the voting-lists with the women’s names are ready to be
printed, it will be interesting to speculate as to how these new
monarchs of our destiny will use their power. For myself, a long course
of observation in the anti-slavery and woman suffrage movements has
satisfied me that women are not idiots, and that, on the whole, when
they give their minds to a question, whether moral or practical, they
understand it quite as readily as men. In the anti-slavery movement it
is certain that a woman, Elizabeth Heyrick, gave the first impulse to
its direct and simple solution in England; and that another woman, Mrs.
Stowe, did more than any man, except perhaps Garrison and John Brown, to
secure its right solution here. There was never a moment, I am
confident, when any great political question growing out of the
anti-slavery struggle might not have been put to vote more safely among
the women of New England than among the clergy, or the lawyers, or the
college-professors. If they have done so well in the last great issue,
it is fair to assume, that, after they have a sufficient inducement to
study out future issues, they at least will not be very much behind the
men.
But we cannot keep it too clearly in view, that the whole question,
whether women would vote better or worse than men on general questions,
is a minor matter. It was equally a minor matter in case of the negroes.
We gave the negroes the ballot, simply because they needed it for their
own protection; and we shall by and by give it to women for the same
reason. Tried by that test, we shall find that their statesmanship will
be genuine. When they come into power, drunken husbands will no longer
control their wives’ earnings, and a chief justice will no longer order
a child to be removed from its mother, amid its tears and outcries,
merely because that mother has married again. And if, as we are
constantly assured, woman’s first duty is to her home and her children,
she may count it a good beginning in statesmanship to secure to herself
the means of protecting both. That once settled, it will be time enough
to “interview” her in respect to the proper rate of duty on pig-iron.
LXXXIII.
TOO MUCH PREDICTION.
“Seek not to proticipate,” says Mrs. Gamp, the venerable nurse in
“Martin Chuzzlewit”—“but take ’em as they come, and as they go.” I am
persuaded that our woman-suffrage arguments would be improved by this
sage counsel, and that at present we indulge in too many bold
anticipations.
Is there not altogether too much tendency to predict what women will do
when they vote? Could that good time come to-morrow, we should be
startled to find to how many different opinions and “causes” the new
voters were already pledged. One speaker wishes that women should be
emancipated, because of the fidelity with which they are sure to support
certain desirable measures, as peace, order, freedom, temperance,
righteousness, and judgment to come. Then the next speaker has his or
her schedule of political virtues, and is equally confident that women,
if once enfranchised, will guarantee clear majorities for them all. The
trouble is, that we thus mortgage this new party of the future, past
relief, beyond possibility of payment, and incur the ridicule of the
unsanctified by committing our cause to a great many contradictory
pledges.
I know an able and high-minded woman of foreign birth, who courageously,
but as I think mistakenly, calls herself an atheist, and who has for
years advocated woman-suffrage as the only antidote to the rule of the
clergy. On the other hand, an able speaker in the late Boston convention
advocated the same thing as the best way of defeating atheism, and
securing the positive assertion of religion by the community. Both
cannot be correct: neither is entitled to speak for woman. That being
the case, would it not be better to keep clear of this dangerous ground
of prediction, and keep to the argument based on rights and needs? If
our theory of government be worth any thing, woman has the same right to
the ballot that man has: she certainly needs it as much for
self-defence. How she will use it, when she gets it, is her own affair.
It may be that she will use it more wisely than her brothers; but I am
satisfied to believe that she will use it as well. Let us not attribute
infallible wisdom and virtue, even to women; for, as dear Mrs. Poyser
says in Adam Bede, “God Almighty made some of ’em foolish, to match the
men.”
It is common to assume, for instance, that all women by nature favor
peace; and that, even if they do not always seem to promote it in their
social walk and conversation, they certainly will in their political.
When we consider how all the pleasing excitements, achievements, and
glories of war, such as they are, accrue to men only, and how large a
part of the miseries are brought home to women, it might seem that their
vote on this matter, at least, would be a sure thing. Thus far the
theory: the fact being that we have but just emerged from a civil war
which convulsed the nation, and cost half a million lives; and which
was, from the very beginning, fomented, stimulated, and applauded, at
least on one side, by the united voice of the women. It will be
generally admitted by those who know, that, but for the women of the
seceding States, the war of the Rebellion would have been waged more
feebly, been sooner ended, and far more easily forgotten. Nay, I was
told a few days since by an able Southern lawyer, who was long the mayor
of one of the largest Southern cities, that in his opinion the practice
of duelling—which is an epitome of war—owes its continued existence at
the South to a sustaining public sentiment among the women.
Again, where the sympathy of women is wholly on the side of right, it is
by no means safe to assume that their mode of enforcing that sentiment
will be equally judicious. Take, for instance, the temperance cause. It
is usual to assume that women are a unit on that question. When we look
at the two extremes of society,—the fine lady pressing wine upon her New
Year’s visitors, and the Irishwoman laying in a family supply of whiskey
to last over Sunday,—the assumption seems hasty. But grant it. Is it
equally sure, that when woman takes hold of that most difficult of all
legislation, the license and prohibitory laws, she will handle them more
wisely than men have done? Will her more ardent zeal solve the problem
on which so much zeal has already been lavished in vain? In large
cities, for instance, where there is already more law than can be
enforced, will her additional ballots afford the means to enforce it? It
may be so; but it seems wiser not to predict nor to anticipate, but to
wait and hope.
It is no reproach on woman to say that she is not infallible on
particular questions. There is much reason to suppose that in politics,
as in every other sphere, the joint action of the sexes will be better
and wiser than that of either singly. It seems obvious that the
experiment of republican government will be more fairly tried when
one-half the race is no longer disfranchised. It is quite certain, at
any rate, that no class can trust its rights to the mercy and chivalry
of any other, but that, the weaker it is, the more it needs all
political aids and securities for self-protection. Thus far, we are on
safe ground; and here, as it seems to me, the claim for suffrage may
securely rest. To go farther in our assertions, seems to me unsafe,
although many of our wisest and most eloquent may differ from me; and,
the nearer we approach success, the more important it is to look to our
weapons. It is a plausible and tempting argument, to claim suffrage for
woman on the ground that she is an angel; but I think it will prove
wiser, in the end, to claim it for her as being human.
LXXXIV.
FIRST-CLASS CARRIAGES.
In a hotly contested municipal election, the other day, an active
political manager was telling me his tactics. “We have to send carriages
for some of the voters,” he said. “First-class carriages! If we
undertake to wait on ’em, we must do it in good shape, and not leave the
best carriages to be hired by the other party.”
I am not much given to predicting just what will happen when women vote;
but I confidently assert that they will be taken to the polls, if they
wish, in first-class carriages. If the best horses are to be harnessed,
and the best cushions selected, and every panel of the coach rubbed till
you can see your face in it, merely to accommodate some elderly man who
lives two blocks away, and could walk to the polls very easily, then how
much more will these luxuries be placed at the service of every woman,
young or old, whose presence at the polls is made doubtful by mud, or
snow, or the prospect of a shower!
But the carriage is only the beginning of the polite attentions that
will soon appear. When we see the transformation undergone by every
ferry-boat and every railway-station, so soon as it comes to be
frequented by women, who can doubt that voting-places will experience
the same change? They will soon have—at least in the “ladies’
department,”—elegance instead of discomfort, beauty for ashes, plenty of
rocking-chairs, and no need of spittoons.[19] Very possibly they may
have all the modern conveniences and inconveniences,—furnace-registers,
tea-kettles, Washington-pies, and a young lady to give checks for
bundles. Who knows what elaborate comforts, what queenly luxuries, may
be offered to women at voting-places, when the time has finally arrived
to sue for their votes?
Footnote 19:
Since this was written, the legislature of Massachusetts has passed,
with little opposition, a law prohibiting smoking at voting-places,—an
explicit fulfilment of this prophecy.
The common impression has always been quite different from this. People
look at the coarseness and dirt now visible at so many voting-places,
and say, “Would you expose women to all that?” But these places are not
dirtier than a railway smoking-car; and there is no more coarseness than
in any ferry-boat which is, for whatever reason, used by men only. You
do not look into those places, and say with indignation, “Never, if I
can help it, shall my wife or my beloved great-grandmother travel by
steamboat or by rail!” You know that with these exemplary relatives will
enter order and quiet, carpets and curtains, brooms and dusters. Why
should it be otherwise with wardrooms and town-halls?
There is not an atom more of intrinsic difficulty in providing a
decorous ladies’ room for a voting-place, than for a post-office or a
railway-station; and it is as simple a thing to vote a ticket as to buy
one. This being thus easily practicable, all men will desire to provide
it. And the example of the first-class carriages shows that the parties
will vie with each other in these pleasing arrangements. They will be
driven to it, whether they wish it or not. The party which has most
consistently and resolutely kept woman away from the ballot-box will be
the very party compelled, for the sake of self-preservation, to make her
“rights” agreeable to her when once she gets them. A few stupid or noisy
men may indeed try to make the polls unattractive to her, the very first
time; but the result of this little experiment will be so disastrous
that the offenders will be sternly suppressed by their own
party-leaders, before another election-day comes. It will soon become
clear, that, of all possible ways of losing votes, the surest lies in
treating women rudely.
Lucy Stone tells a story of a good man in Kansas, who, having done all
he could to prevent women from being allowed to vote on school
questions, was finally comforted, when that measure passed, by the
thought that he should at least secure his wife’s vote for a pet
schoolhouse of his own. Election-day came, and the newly enfranchised
matron showed the most culpable indifference to her privileges. She made
breakfast as usual, went about her housework, and did on that perilous
day precisely the things that her anxious husband had always predicted
that women never would do under such circumstances. His hints and advice
found no response; and nothing short of the best pair of horses and the
best wagon finally sufficed to take the farmer’s wife to the polls. I am
not the least afraid that women will find voting a rude or disagreeable
arrangement. There is more danger of their being treated too well, and
being too much attacked and allured by these cheap cajoleries. But women
are pretty shrewd, and can probably be trusted to go to the polls, even
in first-class carriages.
LXXXV.
EDUCATION _via_ SUFFRAGE.
I know a rich bachelor of large property, who fatigues his friends by
perpetual denunciations of every thing American, and especially of
universal suffrage. He rarely votes; and I was much amazed, when the
popular vote was to be taken on building an expensive schoolhouse, to
see him go to the polls, and vote in the affirmative. On being asked his
reason, he explained, that, while we labored under the calamity of
universal (male) suffrage, he thought it best to mitigate its evils by
educating the voters. In short, he wished, as Mr. Lowe said in England
when the last Reform Bill passed, “to prevail upon our future masters to
learn their alphabets.”
These motives may not be generous; but the schoolhouses, when they are
built, are just as useful. Even girls get the benefit of them, though
the long delay in many places before girls got their share came in part
from the want of this obvious stimulus. It is universal male suffrage
that guarantees schoolhouse and school. The most selfish man understands
that argument: “We must educate the masses, if it is only to keep them
from our throats.”
But there is a wider way in which suffrage guarantees education. At
every election-time, political information is poured upon the whole
voting community, till it is deluged. Presses run night and day to print
newspaper extras; clerks sit up all night to frank congressional
speeches; the most eloquent men in the community expound the most
difficult matters to the ignorant. Of course each party affords only its
own point of view; but every man has a neighbor who is put under
treatment by some other party, and who is constantly attacking all who
will listen to his provoking and pestilent counter-statements. All the
common-school education of the United States does not equal the
education of election-day; and, as in some States elections are held
very often, this popular university seems to be kept in session almost
the whole year round. The consequence is a remarkable average popular
knowledge of political affairs,—a training which American women now
miss, but which will come to them with the ballot.
And in still another way, there will be an education coming to woman
from the right of suffrage. It will come from her own sex, proceeding
from highest to lowest. We often hear it said, that, after
enfranchisement, the more educated women will not vote, while the
ignorant will. But Mrs. Howe admirably pointed out, at a Philadelphia
convention, that, the moment women have the ballot, it will become the
pressing duty of the more educated women, even in self-protection, to
train the rest. The very fact of the danger will be a stimulus to duty,
with women, as it already is with men.
It has always seemed to me rather childish, in a man of superior
education, or talent, or wealth, to complain that when election-day
comes he has no more votes than the man who plants his potatoes or puts
in his coal. The truth is, that under the most thorough system of
universal suffrage the man of wealth or talent or natural leadership has
still a disproportionate influence, still casts a hundred votes where
the poor or ignorant or feeble man throws but one. Even the outrages of
New York elections turned out to be caused by the fact that the leading
rogues had used their brains and energy, while the men of character had
not. When it came to the point, it was found that a few caricatures by
Nast and a few columns of figures in the Times were more than a match
for all the repeaters of the ring. It is always so. Andrew Johnson, with
all the patronage of the nation, had not the influence of “Nasby” with
his one newspaper. The whole Chinese question was perceptibly and
instantly modified when Harte wrote “The Heathen Chinee.”