University of Virginia Library

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

realized before." The advocates of equal pay for equal work think
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.