 | University of Virginia record October 1, 1914 |  |
MATERIAL ON THE NEGATIVE.
WHY I OPPOSE WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
Extract from a Pamphlet by George R. Lockwood.
My Objections to Woman Suffrage.
I classify my objections under these four heads:
1. Where there is substantially universal manhood suffrage, as
there is in this country, all persons including women and children,
are practically represented by the voters.
2. Substantially universal womanhood suffrage, (and that is what
is demanded) would add nothing to the voting wisdom of the present
electorate of this country.
3. The legal discriminations against women in this country, and
especially in Missouri, are but few in number and unimportant in
character, and the enfranchisement of women is not necessary for
the correction of these discriminations.
4. Because giving women the right to vote will have an injurious
effect on the relation of sexes, and be to the detriment of the best
interests of women.
Argument.
First Objection.
The first of the foregoing objections to giving the ballot to women
is based on the ground that they are substantially, and so far as justice
manhood suffrage which exists in Missouri and other states.
It should be understood that ours is not a pure Democracy, but a
government by representation, and that one may be represented in
every substantial and important sense, though he may take no part
or have no effect, in the government, or in the choice of the representatives
who conduct the affairs of state. For instance, I am
a Democrat, but live in a Republican ward and in a Republican Representative,
Senatorial and Congressional district. My vote for a
member of the Municipal Assembly, or for a State Representative,
or Senator, or for a Congressman, is futile, and I have no more influence
in the selection of those officials than if I were disfranchised.
And yet none of my rights are jeopardized by this condition. I
would not move across the street to get into a Democratic ward or
district. Unless I am seeking office I have all the rights of any Republican
in my ward, or in the Representative, Senatorial or Congressional
district in which I reside. And many Republicans live
safely, and prosper, in hopelessly Democratic communities, where
they are practically disfranchised. Why are the rights of the minority
so secure? Because not one of them can be wronged under
the law without inflicting a like injury on a member of the majority
in like situation. Where such manhood suffrage as we enjoy prevails,
every interest and class has an effective voice at the polls,
though the votes of certain individuals are futile and might as well,
for all practical purposes, remain uncast. Do children, or foreigners
before being naturalized, suffer because denied the right to vote?
Why then should women suffer because of their disfranchisement?
They are the mothers, sisters or wives of voters; or if here and
there one of them is without near kin amongst the enfranchised, her
community of interest with the women with near kin amongst the
voters protects her. Of course, I could, in support of by present
contention, also point to the concrete fact that the women of this
state, though without votes, do not suffer from any material legal
discrimination against them. But I speak of that phase of the question
when I discuss the third of the above objections to giving votes
to women. This much, however, I will now say: I am quite certain
that every one who has followed me is so far convinced of the truth
of my present contention that neither he or she would be surprised
to learn that there is practically no discrimination against women in
the laws of Missouri, and that such discrimination as there may be
is found in provisions of the law, which though proper enough, it
may be, at one time in the history of civilization, have become derelicts
in the march of progress. As I have just said, in effect, if not
in so many words, the voters of Missouri cannot legislate against
any woman or class of women in the State, however lonely and unprotected,
without legislating against their own mothers, sisters and
wives; and in this fact lies the sufficient protection of all women
against governmental injustice. Most people think that the elective
franchise is a right; but such is not the case. No man has any more
natural right to vote than he has to exercise any other political function.
Qualifications for voting are just as necessary as qualifications
for holding office; otherwise the boy, to say nothing of the girl, who
has reached the age of discretion, which at common law was not more
then fourteen, would have a natural right to vote. But there are
and always have been in this country, qualifications to the right to
vote, though they are few and more or less trivial; while in all the
countries of Europe the right of suffrage is far more limited. When
the American Colonies arraigned England in the Declaration of Independence,
did not mean to declare against the injustice of taxing a person who
was not entitled to vote, for not one of them but had a restricted
manhood suffrage, and taxed many who had no vote. What the
Colonies did mean to complain of was that they in their public capacities
as members of the British Empire were taxed, but not represented.
And if England had granted to them a right to seats in
Parliament, those seats would have been filled through a restricted
suffrage, just as the English seats in Parliament were filled at that
time, through the votes of a minority of English men, because of a
great restriction in the franchise. It is a mistake to look on the
elective franchise as a right. It should be considered as a privilege,
subject to expediency, and in the nature of an office, which should
be forfeited for many causes not now deemed worthy of more than
passing condemnation.
Second Objection.
The second of my objections to giving votes to women is that
substantially universal womanhood suffrage would add nothing to
the voting wisdom of the present electorate of this country. A Mrs.
Brown once met a Mrs. Jones and inquired: "How is Lawyer
Smith?" "Oh," replied Mrs. Jones, "he is lying at death's door."
"How like a lawyer," said Mrs. Brown. When I heard Miss Pankhurst
tell of the utterly silly rioting and misconduct of so many
London Suffragettes, I said to myself: "How like women," some
women, and too many, I fear, to justify entrusting them generally
with the ballot. If young men had acted after the manner of these
London women, would it not be said with one voice they were unfit
for the privilege they were demanding? I may remark in passing
that there seemed such a reciprocating connection between the Pankhurst
London riots and the Pankhurst American lecture tours, that
I concluded to contribute my mite to the peace of the English capital
by not attending the third, and, let us hope, last Pankhurst lecture
in this city. Another, "how like a woman" thought occurred to
me when I read of that young heiress in an eastern state who married
a man considerably her senior, a widower, with children, and
her social and otherwise inferior, whom she left in a few years because,
it was said, of his treatment of her, taking her two or three
children with her, and then returned in a year or so to her husband
after he had become paralyzed. All honor to the love, devotion and
unmanlike conduct of this young woman, but nevertheless do you
not feel that while she would carry to the polls any amount of sentiment
that is worshipful in itself, she would not add to the aggregate
practical wisdom of the voters? We cannot get away from the
fact that woman is hysterical, and for that reason unsuited for some
things, one of which I conceive to be the wise exercise of the privilege
of voting.
How often have we been shocked and distressed at the utterly
unaccountable exhibitions of sympathy which women frequently give
by sending flowers and delicacies to criminals, and even to brutal,
and often black and utterly lothsome, murderers.
Exhibitions of this kind have occurred so often through such long
periods, beginning historically as far back at least as the days of
Claude Duvall, the chivalrous highwayman of England, in the seventeenth
century, and over such a wide area, that we cannot but feel
that it evidences an unbalanced and weak emotionalism that is characteristic
of the sex. The latest exhibition of the kind referred to
concerns that doctor in Illinois, a confessed bigamist and wife murderer,
while in jail awaiting trial. No doubt men who are not murderers,
that is, men generally, profit by the emotionalism which displays itself
to our distress in the manner referred to; but we can better
afford to be distressed by these exhibitions than to so change women
as to make these exhibitions impossible.
George Eliot, herself so full of sympathy, says in Middlemarch:
"To have in general but little feeling seems to be the only security
against feeling too much on any particular occasion." For my part,
therefore, I prefer that women should have on some particular occasions
too much feeling, for fear that in general they otherwise
would have but little—too little, it may be, for the happiness of life,
and consequently the well being of the race.
If there is any place in the world where you would expect to find
well balanced women, it is in the smaller Massachusetts towns,
where they have had for some time, I believe, the right to vote at
school elections, and possibly on some other questions; and yet, at
an election of five school trustees in one of those towns not long
since, it is said that twenty-four women voted for nineteen different
persons. How whimsical these women must have been in their
voting? I should judge that neither platform nor policy of any kind
governed them; for each of these considerations implies something in
the nature of a union, or common purpose, while the votes of these
women seems to indicate that nothing was further from their intention
than a common purpose.
Third Objection.
My third objection to giving women the ballot is that the legal
discriminations against women in this country, generally, and especially
in Missouri, are but few in number and unimportant in character;
and the enfranchisement of women is unnecessary for their
correction. The only discrimination against women that I recall in
the laws of Missouri are a few which relate to the administration of
estates, or to wills, and none of which are of much practical importance.
If the women of this state or city, or any respectable number of
them, would like these distinctions, slight and immaterial as they
are, to be abolished—and I see no reason why they should not be—
I am quite sure a number of members of our General Assembly will
take pleasure in introducing a bill to that effect. One of our State
Senators lives within a few hundred feet of the president of the St.
Louis Woman's Equal Suffrage League, and I believe that he will
be delighted to lend his aid in amending these sections so as to remove
all cause of complaint against them by the suffragists.
I have been told that the St. Louis Equal Suffrage League has not
gotten out a pamphlet reciting the wrongs of women in Missouri
because there were not enough wrongs to make a respectable catalogue.
But nevertheless at the Suffrage meetings you hear much
complaint about under-paid women, equal pay for equal work, minimum
wage boards, and other panaceas for poverty that we are to
secure through the votes of women. I attended a meeting of the
kind I refer to—it was called a "Symposium"—with a young woman
who was much impressed with the plea for "Equal pay for equal
work." "All right," I said to her, "go and tell your cook that you
will raise her wages from $20 to $40, because you know you could
not get a man to do her work for less than $40 a month." "Oh!"
she replied, "this gives the matter a personal interest that I had not
of a boost of pay in this connection, and not of a reduction, and
they are generally people who pay but little, if anything, in wages.
But suppose a minimum wage board should effect this equality by
averaging the pay of the men and women, and direct that $30 only
should be paid a man cook, and no less to a woman cook. What could
the man have to say to this, and what would a woman have to say if
willing to work for $20 when told she would not be permitted to do
so, though unable to obtain work at $30 a month? This minimum
wage board proposition violates what is now regarded as a sacred
constitutional right, namely, the right of private contract. Of course,
you can regulate by law the wages of public servants, such as state,
county or city officers, or employees, and school teachers; and in
Missouri I believe there is equal pay for equal work in public employment.
In the St. Louis public schools, at least, that rule prevails.
The principal of an 18-room school gets the same pay, whether a
man or a woman; and the same is true of the other positions. A
salary is fixed for the position, and paid whether filled by a man or
a woman. At this "Symposium" one of the speakers exclaimed:
"I will not stand for the chivalry of the sweatshop. A pedestal is
all right for a statue, but a poor place to put a person on." This
was nothing more than clever oratorical clap-trap, and received its
due applause from those in the audience who did not understand that
the speaker, who is one of the best read publicists in the city, immediately
repudiated the only meaning his declaration had, by adding:
"I do not, however, advocate the elimination of sentiment between
the sexes, for that would give us a foretaste of hell." The
sweatshop and chivalry have nothing to do with each other. The
sweatshop is the result of the laws of demand and supply, and
competition which it is the present fashion to so much laud. If the
St. Louis Manufacturer of Women's shirt waists should pay 35 cents
for a waist that only cost his Chicago and New York competitors 25
cents, the St. Louis factory would soon close its doors; and the last
condition of the women employed in the St. Louis factory would
be worse than their first. Neither chivalry nor minimum wage boards
can eliminate the sweatshop, until both have almost a world-wide
sway; and the sooner the advocates of women suffrage realize this,
and stop claiming what they can do for wages by their votes the
better it will be for their cause. If the women by their votes can
regulate wages, and do all the things they started out to claim, or
some people claimed for them, they should not only be enfranchised,
but the men should be disfranchised for monumental stupidity in
not doing these things before, and stopping the bloody murders
that are so often resorted to for the purpose of maintaining or increasing
wages. The law of supply and demand and competition is,
for practical purposes, almost as inexorable as the law of gravity on
which the gallows depends for its efficacy, and which at the same
time may dash to death an innocent baby from an open window.
Fourth Objection.
A few years since I was unexpectedly called on to make a few
remarks to some two hundred women, teachers in our public schools.
I began by quoting the lines:
Boasts two soul sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her."
I added: "You observe that Browning calls man the meanest of
God's creatures." Immediately one of my auditors, in a stage whisper
that was heard all over the room, snapped out: "That's true;
that's just what he is." Now I admit that a man without a soul side
to show a woman when he loves her is a powerfully mean creature;
and to preserve this soul side I would deny women the right to vote,
for the soul side which a man shows a woman when he loves her
makes him more Godlike than any other faculty he possesses; and
the greater his resemblance to his maker the better for women. To
give women votes will mar this soul side, and tend to destroy sentiment
between the sexes; and you will remember that even the
equal suffrage advocate who would not "stand for the chivalry of the
sweatshop," declared that to eliminate sentiment between the sexes
would give us a "foretaste of hell." I would save my countrymen
and countrywomen from this foretaste in the hope, amongst other
things, that thereby they may escape the full draught.
Am I urging an ideal? I am and I should; for conditions are the
outgrowth of ideals, and the higher the one the better the other.
This is a materialistic age. The world and his wife are shop keepers,
and the many inevitable tendencies of the times are against the
higher ideals! and there is therefore so much the more need to
guard those ideals in every possible way. I have always advocated
enlarging woman's bread and butter sphere, for often a woman's
needs may require her to engage in work not most suitable for
women; and by engaging in such work she should not suffer in the
esteem of any, for most women so employed can, and do, retain in
great, if not always in perfect, degree those qualities which pleasantly
distinguish them from men. Unfortunately, however, these
occupations, for one reason or another, too often cause men to
display to women the soul side with which the men face the world;
and to inject women into politics will intensify this disposition and
multiply the opportunities for its exhibition. A father and his sons
are more apt to agree as to matters political than a father and his
daughters; the occasions for differences as to politics are perennial,
and the whole atmosphere during a political campaign is so full of
charges and countercharges of all kinds of bad faith, selfishness, and
wrong purposes, to say nothing of the wisdom or unwisdom of the
policies at issue, that every one taking part in the campaign, or especially
interested in it, is likely to be affected by its spirit; and
many political battles will resolve themselves into contests between
the sexes. The influences of a political contest will more intensely
affect the women than the men of a community because of the
greater emotionalism of women. We should not forget that women,
even those of normal health and strength, are often subject to hysteria,
a condition that men are seldom subject to, except when on
the verge of madness. A man of wealth who had spent years in
travel and visited all parts of Europe and other portions of the world
once said to me that the women of our country should thank God
daily that they are Americans. Undoubtedly the American women
are the most fortunate women in the world; then why destroy, or
endanger even, a condition for which daily thanks should be given?
WHY WOMEN DO NOT WISH THE SUFFRAGE.
By Rev. Lyman Abbott, D. D.
Extract from article in Atlantic Monthly for October, 1903.
Historically, the family is the first organization; biologically it is
the origin of all other organizations. Abraham arms and organizes
his servants, pursues the robber bands, conquers and disperses them,
and recovers the captive: the family is the first army. Moreover,
it is out of the family that society grows. As the cell duplicates
itself, and by reduplication the living organism grows, so the family
duplicates itself, and by the reduplication of the family the social
organism grows. The children of the family come to manhood, and
marry the children of other families. Blood unites them; the necessities
of warfare, offensive and defensive, unite them; and so the
tribe comes into existence. For the united action of this tribe some
rule, some authority is necessary; thus tribal, state, national government
comes into existence. These families find it for their mutual
advantage to engage in separate industries, and exchange the
product of their labor: thus barter and trade and the whole industrial
organization come into existence. These families thus united
by marriage into one tribe, cemented by war in one army, bound
together by the necessity of united action in one government, cooperating
in one varied industry, find in themselves a common faith
and common aspirations, in a word, a common religion, and so
the church comes into existence.
Such, very briefly stated, is the development of society as we read
it in the complicated history of the past. The first and most patent
fact in the family is the difference in the sexes. Out of this
difference the family is created; in this difference the family finds
its sweet and sacred bond. This difference is not merely physical
and incidental. It is also psychical and essential. It inheres in the
temperament; it is inbred in the very fibre of the soul; it differentiates
the functions; it determines the relation between man and
woman; it fixes their mutual service and their mutual obligations.
Man is not woman in a different case. Woman is not man inhabiting
temporarily a different kind of body. Man is not a roughand-tumble
woman. Woman is not a feeble and pliable man.
This difference in the sexes is the first and fundamental fact in
the family; it is therefore the first and fundamental fact in society,
which is but a large family, growing out of and produced by the
duplication and interrelationship of innumerable families. For it
must ever be remembered that as the nature of the cell determines
the nature of the organism which grows out of the cell, so the nature
of the family determines the nature of society which grows
out of the family. And the fundamental fact, without which there
could be no family, is the temperamental, inherent, and therefore
functional difference between the sexes.
Speaking broadly, it may be said that the work of battle in all
its forms, and all the work that is cognate thereto, belongs to man.
Physically and psychically his is the sterner and the stronger sex.
His muscles are more steel-like; his heart and his flesh are alike
harder; he can give knocks without compunction and receive them
without shrinking. In the family, therefore, his it is to go forth and
fight the battle with Nature; to compel the reluctant ground to
or handle the hoe, or dig in the mine, or fell the forest. The war
with Nature is not for her to wage. It is true that savage tribes
impose this unfeminine task upon her; true that modern nations
which have not yet fully emerged from barbarism continue to do
so; true, also, that in the cruel industrial competition of modern
times there is, in some communities, a relapse into this barbarism.
But whether it is the Indian squaw digging in the corn patch, or
the German Frau holding the plough, or the American wife working
the loom in her husband's place,—wherever man puts the toil
that is battle and the battle that is toil upon the woman, the law
of Nature, that is, the law of God, written in her constitution and
in the constitution of the family, is set at naught. This is not to
say that her toil is less than man's but it is different. It may be
easier to be the man with the hoe than the woman with the needle;
it may be easier to handle the plough than to broil over the cook
stove; but these tasks are not the same. The careless toil of the
field requires exhaustless energy; the continuous toil of the household
requires exhaustless patience. Being a man, the exhaustless patience
seems to me at once more difficult and more admirable than the
exhaustless energy. But they are not the same.
For like reason it is not woman's function to fight against human
foes who threaten the home. She is not called to be a soldier. She
is not to be welcomed with the volunteers nor coerced into the military
service by the draft. It is in vain to recite the story of Joan
of Arc; it is in vain to narrate the efforts of the Amazons. The
instinct of humanity revolts against the employment of woman as
a soldier on the battlefield. No civilized man would wish to lay
this duty upon her; no civilized woman would wish to assume it.
This is not to say that her courage is not as great as his. Greater
is it in some sense,—but it is different. For the Spartan mother to
arm her son and send him forth with the injunction to come home
bringing his shield or body borne upon it, and then wait during the
long and weary days to know which way he is to come,—this requires,
surely, a heroism not less than his: but it is not the same heroism;
higher in some sense it is—but it is not the same. In his courage
are pride and combativeness and animal passion, sometimes wellnigh
devilish passion; a strange joy in giving and receiving wounds,
a music that grows inspiring in the singing of the bullets, an almost
brutal indifference to the wounded and the dying all about
him, which she could never get and remain woman. True to her
woman's nature is Lady Macbeth's prayer,—
"Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here."
For until she had been unsexed, until she had ceased to be woman,
she could not play the part which her destiny and her ambition assigned
to her.
For like reason society exempts woman from police functions.
She is not called to be sheriff or constable or night watchman. She
bears no truncheon and wears no revolver. She answers not to
the summons when peace officers call for the posse comitatus. She
is not received into the National Guard when bloody riot fills the
city with peril and alarms. Why not? Is she not the equal of man?
Is she not as loyal? as law abiding? as patriotic? as brave? Surely.
All of these is she. But it is not her function to protect the state
when foreign foes attack it; it is the function of the state to protect
of the community against riot; it is man's function to protect
her. Here at least the functional difference between the sexes is
too plain to be denied, doubted, or ignored. Here at least no man
or woman from the claim of equality of character jumps to the illogical
conclusion that there is an identity of function.
This much then seems clear to me, and I hope it is clear to the
reader also:—
First, that the family is the basis of society, from which it grows.
Second, that the basis of the family, and therefore of society, is
the difference between the sexes,—a difference which is inherent,
temperamental, functional.
Third, that the military function, in all its forms and phases, belongs
to man; that he has no right to thrust it upon woman or to
ask her to share it with him; that it is his duty, and his exclusively,
to do that battling with the elements which wrests livelihood from
a reluctant or resisting Nature, and which is therefore the pre-requisite
to all productive industry; and that battling with the enemies
of society which compels them to respect its rights, and which is
therefore the primary conditions of government.
For the object of government is the protection of person, property,
and reputation from the foes which assail them. Government
may do other things: it may carry the mails, run the express, own
and operate the railroads; but its fundamental function is to furnish
protection from open violence or secret fraud. If it adequately
protects person, property, and reputation, it is a just government,
though it do nothing else; if it fails to protect these primary rights,
if the person is left to defend himself, his property, his reputation
by his own strong arm, there is no government. The question,
"Shall woman vote?" is really, in the last analysis, the question,
"Ought woman to assume the responsibility for protecting person
and property which has in the past been assumed by man as his
duty alone?" It is because women see, what some so-called reformers
have not seen, that the first and fundamental function of
government is the protection of person and property, and because
women do not think that they ought to assume this duty any more
than they ought to assume that police and militia service which is
involved in every act of legislature, that they do not wish to have
the ballot thrust upon them.
Let us not here make any mistake. Nothing is law which has
not authority behind it; and there is no real authority where there
is not power to compel obedience. It is this power to compel which
distinguishes law from advice. Behind every law stands the sheriff,
and behind the sheriff the militia, and behind the militia the whole
military power of the Federal government. No legislature ever ought
to enact a statute unless it is ready to pledge all the power of government—local,
state, and Federal—to its enforcement, if the statute
is disregarded. A ballot is not a mere expression of opinion;
it is an act of the will; and behind this act of the will must be
power to compel obedience. Women do not wish authority to compel
the obedience of their husbands, sons, and brothers to their will.
And yet this is just what suffrage always may and sometimes must
involve. The question, Shall woman vote, if translated into actual
and practical form, reads thus: Shall woman decide what are the
rights of the citizen to be protected and what are the duties of the
citizen to be enforced, and then are her son and her brother and
her husband to go forth, armed, if need be, to enforce her decision?
act as a private, but only as a commander-in-chief? Is this right?
Is it right that one sex shall alone enforce authority, but the other
sex determine when and how it shall be exercised? Is this expedient?
Will it promote peace, order, prosperity? Is it practicable?
Will it in fact be done? Suppose that in New York City the women
should vote for prohibition and the men should vote against it; is
it to be expected that the men would arm themselves to enforce
against their fellow men a law which they themselves condemned
as neither wise nor just? To ask these questions is to answer them.
The functions of government cannot be thus divided. In a democratic
community the duty of enforcing the law must devolve on
those who determine what the law shall be that is to be enforced.
It cannot be decreed by one class and enforced by another. It is
inconceivable that it should be decreed by one sex and enforced by
the other.
EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. J. THOMAS HEFLIN,
In the House of Representatives.
Extract.
Mr. Heflin. Mr. Speaker, upon the request of Mrs. George B.
Puller, of Washington, I wish to print in the Record the following
article on woman suffrage, by Miss Mary B. Smith:
Woman Suffrage.
(By Miss Mary B. Smith.)
I desire to present some facts as to the pernicious effects of woman
suffrage in States where it now exists. There have been many theories
upon this subject presented by the suffragists. It is my purpose
to present facts and figures showing that woman suffrage, where
it has been tried, not only does not better conditions but tends to
have actually the reverse effect from a practical standpoint. Senator
Thomas, of Colorado, has said that he concedes that woman
suffrage has not, and maintains that it will not, change conditions.
I agree with the distinguished Senator up to a certain point, but I
believe that I can show positively that woman suffrage will, in
many instances, change conditions for the worse.
The Los Angeles Times of June 5, 1913, gives the total vote as
84,055; nearly 100,000 under registration. The Times further says
that, in spite of the excellent organization of Mrs. John S. Myers
and her corps of assistants, the women did not turn out in any
large numbers, and of those who did a considerable percentage appeared
to favor the election of Rose. As there were 222,877 men and
women over 21 years of age in Los Angeles (census of 1910), only
38.2 per cent of the men and women of voting age voted. The Los
Angeles Express, June 4, 1913, had an editorial on the disgrace of
electing Rose. At an election in Chicago, April 7, 1914, with the
strenuous efforts of the suffragists to get out the female vote, only
158,686 women voted. Chicago had in 1910, 626,629 women over
21 years of age (letter from Director of Census February 28, 1914).
About 25 per cent of the women of Chicago over 21 years of age
voted. More than double that number of men did vote at the same
election. Complaint has been made that it is not just to tax women
women, so if women had the ballot the women who pay taxes would
not be as fairly and justly treated as they now are, for then nine-tenths
of the women who vote the tax would pay no taxes, while
now nine-tenths of the taxes paid are paid by the men who vote the
taxation. No injustice is possible when the taxes are laid by the
voters who pay nine-tenths of the amount.
So many of our people are being misled on the liquor question
subject. In no State in which women have voted on the question
has State-wide prohibition even been adopted. Nine States where
men alone vote have State-wide prohibition. November 5, 1912,
Colorado voted on State-wide prohibition; 75,877 votes were cast for
the measure and 116,774 against. (See p. 159, Abstract of Votes,
compiled from official returns by James B. Pearce, secretary of state,
Denver, Colo.) If 58 per cent of the women over 21 years of age
in Colorado had voted for prohibition, the measure would have become
a law by 6,012 majority without a single male vote being cast
for prohibition, there being 213,425 women over 21 years of age in
Colorado. (P. 118, Abstract of Census, 1910.)
Wyoming legalized gambling for about 40 years after women had
the ballot, and had neither State-wide prohibition nor local-option
laws.
About six years prior to the adoption of woman suffrage in California
Los Angeles voted on local option, and the measure was defeated
nearly 2 to 1. About a month after women had the ballot
in Los Angeles the question was again voted on and the saloons
won by nearly 3 to 1.
At an election in California April 13, 1914, out of 13 cities and
towns voting on the liquor question, 9 voted "wet" and 4 small towns
"dry." Hanford, population 4,829, and Merced, population 3,102,
both of which had been dry, returned to the wet column. See Los
Angeles Times, April 14, 1914. Only 1 small county—Lake County—
in California is dry, and 10 counties out of 62 in Colorado are dry.
In Colorado Springs, Colo., where the sale of liquor was prohibited
for many years, women voted on the question about two years ago,
and liquor selling was legalized. Colorado Springs had 819 more
women than men over 21 years of age in 1910. (Letter of Director
of Census, Feb. 28, 1914.)
On pages 202 and 203, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Internal
Revenue, you will find that in the 6 States that had woman
suffrage January 1, 1912—California, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho,
Utah, and Washington—there were 26,295 liquor dealers paying license
to the Government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1913.
From page 24, Abstract of United States Census, 1910, you will find
the 6 suffrage States above mentioned had a population of 5,163,473,
1 liquor dealer for every 196 people of the 6 States. For the remaining
42 States and District of Columbia there were 226,247 liquor
dealers paying license for the same period. The 42 States and District
of Columbia had a population of 86,808,793, or 1 liquor dealer
for every 383 people, or about one-half the number of dealers per
capita than the woman suffrage States require, and then we are told
by the suffragists that they are not favorable to the liquor interests.
Kansas, Oregon, and Arizona only adopted woman suffrage
November 5, 1912. Kansas has been a prohibition State for more
than 25 years.
At local-option elections in Illinois April 7, 1914, about eleven
hundred saloons out of 3,000, where elections were held, were abolished,
dry counties out of the 100 counties in Illinois.
Kentucky, where men alone vote, has 99 dry counties out of 120
in the State, and Missouri has 65 no-license counties out of 114 in
that State.
Iowa has 77 dry counties out of 99 counties in the State; and in
Minnesota, at election April 7, 1914, two-thirds of the counties where
local-option elections were held voted dry; and towns that had licensed
saloons for 60 years voted dry by men's votes.
Eight out of twelve counties in Michigan that voted on the liquor
question April 6, 1914, voted dry, including Lansing, the capital of the
State, by men's votes; while Springfield, the capital of Illinois, where
there are 205 more women than men over 21 years of age, voted to
retain the saloons.
California, where women have voted for more than two and one-half
years, legalizes prize fighting and is one of the few States that
has no pure-milk law.
The suffragists tell us on all occasions that if women had the ballot
much better laws for the education and welfare of the child and
youth of our country will be enacted. Let me cite a few instances
to disprove such a theory:
At Berkeley, Cal., April 12, 1913, for the issuance of bonds for playgrounds,
only about 1,500 of the 8,000 women of the city voted. The
mayor, who has been a zealous worker for woman suffrage reprimands
the women for their negligence of this particular issue, which
of all others should interest them. In a newspaper article he asks
"Where were the mothers?" Berkeley has 1,301 more women than
men over 21 years of age. (Letter, Feb. 28, 1914, Director of United
States Census.)
At Pasadena, Cal., where there are 2,688 more women than men
of voting age, the playgrounds that were the pride of Pasadena, and
were established before women had the ballot, were discontinued last
July on account of the failure of voters to vote money for the purchase
of the grounds. (See Los Angeles Times. July 27, 1913.) No
other playgrounds have been purchased or been provided for the
children.
At an election November 12, 1913, Pasadena, Cal., failed to vote
bonds to repair leaky roofs and make sanitary repairs on schoolhouses,
to complete new schoolhouses under construction, and to
make it possible to provide schools for the entire school year. The
superintendent of schools said the school year would have to be
cut a month or two, and some schools will have to close when rains
begin. (See Los Angeles Times. Nov. 13, 1913.)
It happened to rain November 12 in Pasadena, and some thought
the bonds might have carried had the vote been taken on a fair day
when the ladies could more conveniently get to the polls; so it was
decided to have another election to vote for bonds in a less amount
than was voted on November 12. So on January 16, 1914—a fair
day—another election was held and the bonds again defeated. So
the voters of Pasadena have decided at two elections that the repair
of leaky roofs and sanitary improvements, and so forth, of
schoolhouses, as well playgrounds for the children, are to be indefinitely
postponed. A letter dated January 12, 1914. from the
Director of the United States Census, states there were, in 1910,
9,262 males and 11,950 females over 21 years of age. The total vote
for and against the bonds was 4,832. Only 22.7 per cent of the voters
to the polls at election of January 16.
We are told that the men of the country can not be trusted to
make laws for the women and children; yet an average of four-fifths
of the earnings of the men, over and above the necessities of the
family, is spent on the women and children.
The suffragists continually tell us that if women had the ballot
wars and internal strife would be a thing of the past, yet Colorado,
which has had woman suffrage for a generation, is in the throes of
civil war and has been for many months. The State has become
so weakened in its fabric that it can not keep order and protect life
and property within its borders, but has been compelled through the
State authorities to call upon the President of the United States to
send Government troops to administer affairs and bring order out
of chaos. This is another proof of the failure of woman suffrage in
the model suffrage State of Colorado, and refutes beyond any possibility
of controversy the suffragists' claims.
If women could ever vote as generally as men, there would be
little or no change in our laws, for even if a wife once in a while
voted in opposition to her husband and canceled his vote—in which
event the family would have no voice in the laws at all—the final
result of the whole vote would rarely be changed, and we would
have the absurd spectacle of having two people doing what one
alone could accomplish as well and save all the effort expended in
the study of politics by women and the enormous expense of doubling
the election cost.
EXTRACT FROM ADDRESS OF THE RT. REV. WM. CROSWELL
DOANE, D. D.
There must be individuality; the distinct character which differentiates
man from man, or machine from machine. For each is "after
its kind." And there is no waste of power so great, as when one
loses sight of this and sets the day laborer to adjust the niceties of
the chronometer, or puts the poet behind the plough. This is the
critical question of all. The power of a "Reaper" to tie up sheaves
with their own straw, with a delicacy of machinery alive almost to
its finger ends, would not be proven, if it were set to break stones
on the road. Nor would the capacity of the trip hammer be tested,
if it were used to drive the needle of the sewing machine.
What is it for; "What wilt thou have me do?" Purpose as the
test of power; object, intention, place and kind of work; this is
what I mean by individuality. "What she could;" "what she had;"
"what I can." I am sure that there never was a more important time
in all the world, to emphasize, and drive home into the minds and
consciences of women, this most important lesson. We are living
in a period of reaction, and reaction always means a tendency to
violent extremes. The slowly working leaven of Christianity for
eighteen hundred years, has been lifting women up from the low
level into which they fell in Eve, to the higher lines of life and
service to which they rose in Mary. One by one, openings and
opportunities for congenial and convenient service have been opened
up to her. One by one, the bars of the cage have been let down,
and the barriers of foolish custom have been taken away, which
And one by one, the false restraints and unwise discriminations
have been done away; until today, by the common consent,
by the Christianized instinct, by the chivalrous endeavor, of men,
womanhood—and nowhere more than in America—stands fairly out
upon that position of correlation and coequality with men, which
really was the purpose of Almighty God in the double creation;
which in no sense contradicts the divine intention of the primacy of
the first created, and the subordination of the second; but which utterly
destroys, and does away with, the false theory of superiority
and sovereignty on the one side, as meaning inferiority and subjection
on the other. And now the world is full of agitations, which
would destroy, if they could be carried out, that exquisite balance
which the revealed purpose of God, and the implanted and inherent
differences between men and women, indicate as the wise and true
relation between the two. Coequality, side-by-sideness, divided sovereignty,
the mutual superiority and subordination of influence and
control, the interdependence of the "man who is by the woman" and
"the woman who is of the man;" these are not only truths and
theories, but facts and realities; which can not be forgotten or disregarded
without serious injury and loss. Nobody who reads the
record of the Revelation rightly, or studies history or examines the
experience of his own life, can fail to feel that whatever distinctions
and differences there may be between the kind of mind, of capacity,
of character between the two sexes, there are no differences whatever
in the degree. But it is the falsest kind of logic which argues,
that, because the two sexes are equal in the sight of God, therefore,
they are interchangeable. All that the man can do, the woman can
not do. And, therefore, the talk today of "woman's rights," apart
from the falseness of the application of the word—for the rights of
either man or woman are fewer and far less important than their
duties—has this inherent fallacy; that it presupposes that because
their rights are equal, therefore they are the same. Surely, if one
takes the other and the better word, it is plain to the blindest, that
the duties of men and women are not the same; that the trend of
their tastes and capabilities is different; and that if the women are
to do the men's duties, their own duties must be left undone, or
done by those who are unfitted for and incapable of their discharge.
Nothing is wilder or stranger, than the misconception and disproportionateness
of all this theory. It is contradicted by the whole
material world in which we live; and in which, its own functions
are given and its own duties assigned to every separate plant and
tree and animal. Nor could a wilder confusion be produced than if,
by some blind force, these unthinking and unreasoning things should
set themselves to tasks, which have not been assigned them; and
for which they are not intended by their creation. And why, the
highest order of created things, to whom Almighty God has given
not only the consciousness of their peculiar different capacities, but
the plain and evident ability of recognizing the fact and reasoning
just why these lines of differences are drawn, should prove itself
duller and more stupid than the inanimate creation, is difficult to see.
Earnestly I beg that this lesson of the personal pronoun "I"—which
never in any language changes sex because of the equal individuality
of both sexes must be acknowledged as the fundamental principle
of character—may plant itself deeply in your conscience. You
may turn into the feminine gender that great sentence, "I can do
all that may become a woman; who dares do more is none." You
by the limitations or the enlargements of your capacity, by
the opportunities and occasions of your providential place in life.
And that will be the clue, which you may safely follow, as indicating
the lines along which every faculty of your nature is to be set,
with utmost intensity and directness of aim, to do "your duty in
the state of life into which it shall please God to call you."
I am urging the recognition of such limitations as God has set,
first in your sex, which are written in laws so plain and facts so
irresistible that only the blindest can fail to read and see them. The
utter misconception of equality of position, as though it meant sameness
of duty, between men and women, is among the facile follies
some instances by high motives, women who used to be quiet and
content to stand in their lot, are joining in the wretched unrest of
the effort, which, until recently, was in the hands of wild and unwomanly
fanatics, to unsex themselves and unsettle the peace of
the household, and prosperity of the world. I have a general dislike
and distrust of the term woman in the abstract. And in the
manner of its use it is most confusing. There are women and women,
as there are men and men. And the fond imagination that the evils
of unqualified suffrage given to men, which are the most dangerous
element in our American political world today, can be cured by
extending the evil to unqualified women, is the strangest delusion
that ever possessed the human mind. If it should be permitted,
which God forefend, the abstract woman may rejoice, but it will
be in the spirit of the maniac, who has laid waste the homes and
marred the happiness and murdered the hopes of women. Privilege,
courtesy, chivalry, respect, deference, consideration, will have melted
away. And there will come instead unseemly contests, selfishness,
the bitterness of partisanship, the dregs of stride and corruption,
incrimination and the demoralization of the deepest and highest and
dearest relations of society, while in its political effect it will only
multiply corrupt and irresponsible ballots, not to equal, but to outweigh
the intelligent suffrage of reputable women. Nothing will
be altered in results. Nothing will be gained in the issues. And the
irreclaimable mischief will have left its blight and scar on our social
life. Two-handed humanity (that is the figure of the man and
the woman in the body politic) has a right hand and a left hand,
each equal to the other, each needful to the other. But the hand
that is nearest the heart, the woman, is not used, and is not meant
to be used, to grasp the sword, the pen, the reins; not to seize the
rough difficulties and wring out of them the stern successes, of the
strife. They are both hands. They are equally hands. Each is
imperfect without the other, but their functions are apart and different.
Learn the divine, the human, the instinctive, the evident limitations
of your sex. And when you have filled out with "all you
can" the sphere of your allotted service, you will have not time, nor
strength, nor desire to reach out for other work to do.
EXTRACT FROM ADDRESS OF MRS. W. WINSLOW
CRANNELL.
What Are the Reasons Given For Asking You to Help the Cause
of Woman Suffrage?
First: That women who pay taxes should have a ballot. In answer
we assert that the women who pay taxes do not want the ballot.
there is no discrimination against women in taxation. That taxation
is the price the citizens pay for the protection of their property,
their life, their liberty. That many men are taxed who have no
vote,—the wealthy minor, and the man who living in one town owns
property in another. That the woman who pays taxes will receive
no benefit from the ballot which will not be an hundred times
counteracted by the ballot of the women who do not pay taxes. That
what is needed for the benefit of the tax-paying women is not an
increased but a restricted ballot. That while there are in New York
State 144,000 women who pay taxes, there are at least 1,500,000 women
who do not pay taxes; and the granting of suffrage to these women
would more than duplicate the evils from which the tax-payer now
suffers.
Second: That when women have the ballot they will be employed
constantly and at higher wages. The answer is shown in the fact
that men vote and are yet unemployed. That no employer is going
to pay an increased wage because the employee has the franchise.
That while there are, as in the factories everywhere, long lists of
girls waiting to be employed at nominal figures, no employer is
going to raise the pay of his employees because they ask an hour
off to vote on election day.
Third: That the cause of temperance will be helped when women
vote. I admire the women who are working for temperance, and
wish them God speed, but feel perfectly sure that they are mistaken
if they expect to be helped by the granting of suffrage to all women
North, South, East and West. Statistics tell us that while the population
of the United States has increased but 20 per cent in the last
two decades, the dram drinking and drug taking women have increased
500 per cent. The Christian Advocate is my authority for
the statement that before the high license law in Philadelphia, Penn.,
out of 8,034 saloon licenses 3,696 were granted to women. In Boston,
Mass., last Spring, out of 1,100 liquor licenses 491 were applied for by
women. The same condition of things prevails nearly all over our
country. Would these women work for prohibition?
Let us look carefully at what is asked for: "Equal pay for equal
work." That sounds equitable and consequently reasonable. But if
the question of wages were to become a matter of legislation, would
you be willing to say to the already overburdened and unemployed
workman that you believe that his wages should be cut down to
those received by women? For it is a fact beyond dispute that the
wages paid is always a question of demand and supply; and women
have entered nearly every field of labor once a man's sole province;
and, by being willing and able to work for lower wages than men,
who have families to support, have crowded them out. Now if equal
wages for equal work means anything at all, it means that no man
shall be paid more for his work than the women are begging to
receive. For instance, if that law could be passed and enforced, the
merchant could say to his male employee that he could fill his shop
with girls at half the price he was paying him, and while he preferred
keeping the man at the higher rate, he must either discharge him
or lower his wages to that which women were asking to receive.
But the whole thing is a farce. You do not ask, in fact, I doubt if
any of you care, how much the workman is paid who makes your
clothes. I know that women do not; otherwise they would not
haggle over prices, and gloat over bargains. This is hard common
you are here to deal with truths and not with fallacies.
The facts for the suffragists to prove are that suffrage is necessary
for the protection of women, and that it would be beneficial to the
State. They have not and cannot prove either. Today in New York
State, and in many of the other States, a woman is protected better
by the laws that men have made, than by any she could make herself.
A husband cannot sell his real estate unless the wife joins in
the deed. He cannot deprive her by will of right of dower. The
wife can by deed or will dispose of her entire estate, real or personal,
whether the husband consents or not. A father cannot now
apprentice his child or make a valid appointment of a testamentary
guardian without the consent of the mother, if she be living. The
wife can carry on business on her own account, and is entitled to
all the profits and earnings in that business, and may contract as if
she were unmarried. Every profession is open to women, and every
occupation also. Then what do they want, what will they gain by
having the ballot? If men are not capable of managing the affairs
of the State and the Nation according to the highest and best ideas
of the race, that is of both men and women, will you permit me to
respectfully inquire what proper and adequate share of this world's
work you can perform? What is your natural place in the order
of society? Are you mere hewers of wood and drawers of water?
You cannot bear citizens; you cannot care for them in infancy and
rear them to manhood. If you cannot govern them with wisdom
and justice when they are given into your hands, what is your reason
for being? It strikes me that these women who want to retain
all the privileges of their sex, and secure besides all those that they
think a man has; who want to be men and yet remain women; have
much hardihood in coming to you and saying: "You do not know
how to make laws; how to govern the people; you are corrupt and
misrule the nation. Give us the suffrage that we may supplant you."
And they say this not for themselves alone, but for all the women
in this great nation, North, South, East and West, without regard
to education or morality! They are to purify politics!
MUNICIPAL SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN—WHY?
Frank Foxcroft.
I put the question in this form, because it is clear that, when so
revolutionary a change is proposed as that of doubling the electorate
in municipal affairs by giving the ballot to women, the burden of
proof rests with those who advocate the change. They must be
prepared to show that great advantages would accrue, either to
women or to the cummunity at large, from the change proposed. I
am inclined to think that either would be sufficient. If they can
show that women derive great benefit from the use of the municipal
ballot, the community would be willing to take some risk to bring
about that result. If they can show that the community at large
would gain greatly, the great mass of women, who now shrink from
the responsibilities of the suffrage, would overcome their reluctance.
But I submit that one or the other of these propositions must be
clearly proved, before any legislature can be justified in enacting a
law giving municipal suffrage to women.
Touching the first proposition, what evidence is forthcoming?
There is declamation in plenty; vague generalizations about the rights
of women; a tedious reiteration of the misapplied principle that "taxation
without representation is tyranny;" even, now and then, a
faint echo of the generally abandoned claim that the suffrage is a
natural right. But when it is asked precisely what are some of the
wrongs under which women suffer in town and city government as
at present conducted, at precisely what points the by-laws or the
ordinances of cities bear unjustly upon women as women, and in
precisely what ways women are to gain from being permitted to
vote at town and city elections, there is silence all along the line.
No one yet, to my knowledge, has ever formulated a definite, concrete,
reasonable statement of this kind. Until such a statement is
made, and adequately supported by argument, the question why
municipal suffrage should be extended to women—so far as the interests
of women themselves are concerned—remains unanswered.
But how about the interests of the community? In what particulars
would cities and towns be benefited by the bestowal of the ballot
on women? The question cannot be answered by contrasting the
best and most intelligent women with the worst or least intelligent
men. The ballot, if it is given to women, will be used by all sorts
of women, just as it is now by all sorts of men; and if, as must be
confessed with shame it is usually more difficult to bring out and
concentrate the votes of the best sort of men than those of the
baser sort, somewhat the same difficulty may be anticipated with
regard to women. The practical question is: Will the average
woman vote more steadily, more intelligently, with a clearer knowledge
of men and affairs, and with a wiser adaptation of means to
ends than the average man? It will not serve to say that she will
vote almost as steadily, intelligently, and wisely as the average man;
or that, in course of time, after she has freed herself from the handicap
of inexperience, and has so readjusted her other duties as to
give herself ample time for this, she will vote as steadily, intelligently,
and wisely. If the community is to gain from her use of
the ballot, the average women must vote more steadily, intelligently,
and wisely than the average man. Otherwise, at the best, the general
average will be only what it was before.
Here again what is needed is a definite and a concrete statement.
In precisely what particulars—with reference to precisely what problems
of municipal government—are women likely to act more wisely
than men? Here, for example, is a list of the standing committees
of the Boston Board of Aldermen:
Armories and military affairs, county accounts, electric wires.
Faneuil Hall and county buildings, lamps, licenses, markets, railroads.
Public improvements, with subcommittees upon paving, sewers,
bridges, ferries, sanitary regulations, street cleaning, and street watering.
The list might be extended to include the special committee and
joint standing committees, but, as given, it fairly represents the practical
matters which engage the attention of city governments. Will
any advocate of municipal suffrage for women run his finger down
the list and place it on those items regarding which the votes of
women aldermen would be likely to be more intelligently and wisely
given than those of men! If this cannot be done, then the question
as to the second proposition goes unanswered, just as the question
relating to the first proposition did.
| University of Virginia record October 1, 1914 | |