 | University of Virginia record October 1, 1914 |  |
State Contest in Debating.
(Under the direction of the Jefferson and Washington Literary Societies.)
REGULATIONS.
1914-1915.
I. This contest is open to all secondary schools of Virginia whether
public or private.
II. Each school shall furnish a debating team of two members.
III. The contests are open to boys and girls.
IV. The question for debate, including suggested arguments and
material, will be found in this bulletin immediately following these
regulations.
V. If any school desires to take part in this contest, the principal
shall notify the secretary of the same prior to the first of December.
Upon receipt of such notice the secretary will pair this school with
another school for the purpose of holding a preliminary debate. The
status and standards of the schools, their proximity, accessibility,
and convenience of location will be considered in making the pairs.
The secretary will be very glad if each principal will send a list of
the other schools with which he thinks such a contest desirable, and
as far as possible the secretary will try to arrange a contest for him
with one of the schools on this list.
VI. All preliminary debates between the schools must be held prior
to the fifteenth of February.
VII. Each debater shall be given fifteen minutes, no more than
five of which may be used for rebuttal. Debates can not be read in
toto, but reference may be made to notes.
VIII. The details of the preliminary debates are to be decided by
the principals of the two schools debating. It is suggested, however,
that one school shall have choice of sides, the other choice of
place, and lots shall be cast as to which of the two options a school
shall take.
IX. The school that wins the preliminary debate is entitled to send
its team to the University to compete in the final debates.
X. The final debates will be held at the University on the first and
second of April.
XI. The teams coming to the University for the final debates must
be prepared to take either side of the question.
XII. To the school that wins the final debates a silver cup will be
presented by the Board of Visitors of the University.
XIII. All debaters coming to the University will be met at Union
Station, Charlottesville, Virginia, between 7 a. m. and 1 p. m. on
Thursday, April, the first, and will be entertained as guests of the
Literary Societies while at the University. This entertainment will
be extended also to any principal or teacher who desires to accompany
his team.
XIV. It is suggested that those schools who expect to participate
in the debating contest as well as the public reading contest should
hold the contest in public reading with the same school with which
their debate is held, and that both contests take place on the same
occasion. However this is merely suggested.
XV. No pupil who represents his school in the public reading contest
XVI. All correspondence should be addressed to the Secretary of
the Virginia High School Literary and Athletic League, University,
Virginia.
Prof. Chas. G. Maphis,
Chairman.
THE QUESTION FOR DEBATE.
Resolved: That women should be given the right to vote on the
same basis as men.
The question as stated above will be debated in the preliminary
contests between the schools, and also in the final contests which
will be held at the University on the first and second of April.
SUGGESTED ARGUMENTS.
The arguments which are suggested below are not intended to be
exhaustive but merely to intimate certain broad issues involved in
the question.
FOR THE AFFIRMATIVE.
I. Women are physically able to vote.
II. To give women the ballot will effect much needed legislation
in regard to child labor, schools, etc.
III. The average man knows little of the business of government
and must rely on the testimony of experts, and so it would be with
women.
IV. Every good reform begins with only a few followers and gradually
grows thereafter. So it is with woman suffrage.
V. Fighting is not essential to voting as a large proportion of the
men who vote are physically unable to fight.
VI. There are far more girls who graduate from high schools than
boys, hence suffrage would increase the educated vote.
VII. Although women may exercise an indirect influence on their
husbands, fathers, and brothers to have them vote for needed reforms,
yet to allow the women themselves to vote would be a much
quicker and more effective method.
VIII. Women are no busier than men and therefore haye sufficient
time to exercise the privilege of the ballot.
IX. A certain amount of sentiment and emotion is essential to good
government.
X. Women are different from men and the introduction of their
ballot would add a new and better element to politics.
FOR THE NEGATIVE.
I. Women may exert an indirect influence on their husbands,
fathers, and brothers and thus be represented.
II. To the vote of every uneducated man you would add the vote
of an uneducated woman.
III. Men know more about the business of government.
IV. The majority of the women of today do not want suffrage.
V. Fighting is necessary to voting. Hence women should be able
to fight if they are to vote.
VI. Women are too emotional and sentimental to be entrusted
with the ballot.
VII. If the privilege of voting is given to women they will not
exercise it.
VIII. If women did exercise the right of voting, it would only increase
the expense of elections without changing the results.
IX. Suffrage is not a natural right, for all men are not permitted
to vote.
X. Woman's function in life does not lie in the sphere of politics.
MATERIAL ON THE AFFIRMATIVE.
WOMAN AND THE COMMONWEALTH: OR A QUESTION
OF EXPEDIENCY.
By George Pellew.
Extract from a pamphlet published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
Do a Woman's Physical Qualities Disqualify Her for Voting?
It is said that women ought not to vote because they are unable
to fight, to enforce laws, or to endure the fatigue and burden of voting
and of learning how to vote.
The first argument is answered by the fact that the tie between
voting and fighting ceased so soon as nations became civilized and
hired or raised armies to do their fighting for them; since that time,
indeed, it may be said that the only connection between bullets and
ballots has been the alliteration. As a general rule, in civilized
countries, the soldiers in the field are, practically, disqualified for
voting, and the local government of their country is, in time of war,
of necessity intrusted to those who are left at home as disabled or
as not needed for active service. In time of peace, on the other
hand, the soldier has, as a rule, no political privileges superior to
those of any other citizen, however much crippled or decrepit.
The argument is readily reduced to an absurdity, for it would, if
logically carried out, disfranchise the great mass of the most intellectual
and the best educated men in the community, since, according
to the statistics of the medical department during the civil war,
over ninety-five per cent of lawyers were found to be unfit for military
service.
A suggestion, often made, that if all the women were to vote one
way, and all the men another, the women, if they should pass a law,
would be unable to enforce it, and so would bring the law itself into
contempt, is an ingenious effort of imagination, but of no weight as
a practical argument. When it is remembered how great are the divergencies
of opinion among men, and that unanimity is no less rare
among women; how seldom a question involves only one consideration;
and how inextricably intermingled, although not identical always,
are the interest of men and women, it becomes obvious that
case, however, such an improbable, if not impossible thing, should
happen, the government and the law would yet survive. The American
people is a law-abiding people. When a law has once been enacted,
or an officer lawfully elected, those who opposed the bill enforce
the law, those who reviled the candidate obey the officer. Unless
a majority of the voters of today are at heart law-breakers, a
law will never be disregarded simply because it was passed to be
enacted by the votes of persons inferior in physical strength to their
opponents.
The third argument is no less fallacious. Women, it is said, suffer
from ill-health more frequently than men, they are also more nervous,
and more subject to general debility. Married women are often for
long periods disabled, and not infrequently break down, in consequence
of the natural consequences of maternity and special household
cares that in any condition of society are inevitable. Such being
the case, says Mr. Francis Parkman, woman suffrage would be a
cruelty.
It is, perhaps, unnecessary to suggest that the argument would
logically lead to establishing a health qualification for voters generally,
and that such a qualification would be ridiculous. Necessity
and self-preservation are laws sufficiently imperative to control conduct
without being counter-signed by the governor and the council.
A woman too sick to vote will not vote for the same reason that a
man too sick to vote does not vote. Some women may go to church
when they ought to stay at home, and may injure themselves or neglect
their children by so doing, but it is not desirable, therefore, that
the law should allow men only to go to church. From the point of
view of health, no rational distinction can be made between going to
church to pray and going to the ballot box to vote, except that the
churches are open every Sunday and the polls but once a year, and
that a woman can go to church two or three times on one day, but
is forbidden by law to vote more than once.
The objection is not only absurd, but has the additional misfortune
of being probably the reverse of the truth. The exercise of the suffrage
would presumably tend to improve, rather than to impair, the
health of the average women. There is nothing dangerous to health
in reading political articles in the daily papers, in discussing political
questions with relations or friends, or in walking the distance of a
few hundred yards and depositing a piece of paper in a box. Many
women now do all these things without any suffering in consequence.
On the contrary, the reasonable exercise of any faculty, and of all
the faculties, of mind and body, is positively beneficial to man or
woman. "Nervous energy run to waste" is the secret of so much of
the lassitude and sickness prevalent among American women. "For
my own part," says Sir Spencer Wells, one of the greatest living physicians,
"I think women capable of a great deal more than they have
been accustomed to in times past. If overwork sometimes leads to
disease, it is morally more wholesome to work into it than to lounge
into it, and if some medical practitioners have observed cases where
mental overstrain has led to disease, I cannot deny that I also have
at long intervals seen some such cases. But for every such example
I feel sure that I have seen at least twenty where evils equally to
be deplored are caused in young women by want of mental occupation,
by deficient exercise, too luxurious living, and too much amusement."
This is true of the unmarried and the young, but it is no less
true of the married and the middle-aged. Nervous diseases of every
thoughts and duties. A brisk conversation about politics is stimulating
and healthy in itself, but is especially valuable in distracting
the attention from the petty, harassing details of daily life. There
is no more certain cure for nervousness and its baleful attendants,
hypochondria and dyspepsia, than the excitement of interests broader
and more impersonal than the interests of the kitchen and the nursery,
than the brooking over one's own or one's husband's emotions,
ill temper, or wrong-doing. To enable women to be efficiently interested
in as many things as possible, is to give them a tonic better
than any medicine; to compel them to be interested in a few things
only, is to poison the whole atmosphere of their intellectual life.
Finally it must be observed that weakness, at least physical weakness,
so far from being a disqualification for voting, in a civilized
community is the greatest possible qualification for voting, since representative
governments have become established mainly for the protection
of the weak.
Do a Woman's Mental Qualities Disqualify Her for Voting?
That women's minds differ from men's minds is a theory it would
be difficult to establish. Whenever women have had the same opportunity
and inducement as men for study and investigation, in astronomy,
medicine, political economy, history, journalism, fiction,
ethics, they have shown no special inferiority to men. Queens and
princesses, when called to govern, have been no less successful than
the kings and princes of their family. Even in this Commonwealth
women on the school boards, in public societies, or in government offices,
as students of the condition of the poor, conductors of philanthropic
enterprises, or managers of a business or a fortune, after suitable
training for such work, have not generally been found deficient
in enterprise or sagacity.
It is not usually from the lips of the wisest men that sneers at
women's intelligence are apt to fall, but from the lips of boys unacquainted
with the world, or of men whose lack of wisdom has
been a fruitful source of amusement or profit to women or wiser men.
It is true that women are generally supposed to be impatient of argument,
to make a personal application of impersonal principles, and
to judge by a narrow standard of preference, prejudice, or morality;
but women, like men, adapt their conversation to their hearers, and,
while they are personal, or conventional with men, they are often
logical enough with other women, and the element of truth that remains
in the criticism may be accounted for by the influence of the
arbitrary restrictions which the opponents of woman suffrage would
perpetuate. If a man were proscribed by custom from the free exercise
of his faculties, if his duties were limited to managing a household,
engaging and discharging servants, ordering meals, and bearing
and tending children, he would infallibly become tightly bound
by narrow and conventional prejudices, and if he were able to gain
any practical ends, only by appeals to the emotions rather than to
the intelligence of women, and usually a single woman and that his
wife, he would be unable to argue long impersonally and soon lose
what freedom of thought and speech he once possessed. The intellectual
peculiarities of women may be caused by the narrowness of
the sphere within which their interests are habitually restricted; it is
then unscientific to suppose them to be inherent in the sex.
This conclusion is confirmed by the facts that similar peculiarities
are characteristic of races and classes living in servile or menial conditions,
that they are perceptible even in men anywhere of limited
characteristic of women who have had varied business or professional
experience, who have been educated without reference to marriage,
or who have been married to liberal-minded men. The typical New
England school-teacher is neither illogical nor absurdly sentimental,
and over eighty per cent of New England school teachers are women.
The average married woman, even, in questions that she has studied,
is not illogical; she is usually ingeniously economical, prudent in selecting
servants, far-seeing in advice to her husband. With such
qualities, women could not fail to exercise the suffrage in the main
with intelligence.
Again, mental operations of the same kind are involved in all actions
that require thought. Economy at home predisposes to public
economy: practical common sense is as necessary in politics as in
housekeeping, insight into character is as useful in choosing public
as domestic servants. In Massachusetts, indeed, the intellectual inferiority
of women to men cannot be seriously suggested or consistently
maintained. The welfare of this Commonwealth is truly admitted
to be based on the excellence of its public school system,
and women who are held to be sufficiently intelligent to vote for
members of school committees cannot be said to lack the intelligence
requisite to vote wisely for the mayor of a city or for the selectmen
of a town.
Instead of women being intellectually inferior to men, it would,
probably, be more nearly true in this Commonwealth that the
women are as a rule intellectually superior to the men of the same
class in society. Such, at least, is the reason commonly assigned for
the often noticed disinclination to marriage among the most carefully
educated women; and among our laboring, farming, manufacturing
and mercantile population it is the women rather than
the men who have the time and the inclination to attend lectures
and concerts, to read, study, and discuss questions not purely personal
and sordid, in a word, who strive the most zealously to maintain
and broaden their intellectual life. So much is admitted even
by many of the most vigorous opponents of woman suffrage. "The
ballot," says the President of Oberlin College, "cannot be denied to
woman on the ground that she has not the intelligence and discernment
to use it well. Many women unquestionably have such intelligence,
and there is scarcely room for doubt that women as a body
would vote as wisely as men."
If women are not disqualified for voting by the nature of their
intelligence, it is no objection to giving them the suffrage that
at the present time but few of them have studied political questions.
So long as women are unable to vote they cannot be expected
to inform themselves carefully about matters of politics, for
the same reason that a person who cannot be a shoemaker is not expected
to study the process of making shoes. It is a proof of common
sense, rather than an indication of folly, to confine one's efforts
to subjects in which one can do practical work. Few women
studied law before they were granted admission to the bar, now many
women have written law books; few women studied medicine before
they were allowed to practice it, now excellent essays on medical
subjects are written by women. If women have brains like those of
men, they will inform themselves about political questions as rapidly
and as correctly as men, so soon as those questions are presented to
them. Such questions, indeed, as usually arise in municipal elections
possess no special complexity, and after a few hours' talk, and by a
little attention, can be solved by any normally constituted person.
Finally, it may be said that the objection to women's intelligence
has been answered with far more completeness than was in any way
necessary. "What is wanted in politics is the suffrage of the great
mass of society, rather than that of exceptional genius, which can
always make its influence felt, that this great mass may be able, by
means of the suffrage, to make known its sufferings and its wants."
From this point of view, a voter need not be qualified by considerable
intelligence, but only by intelligence sufficient to understand her individual
wants and requirements and the probable effect of her vote,
if successful, upon herself and her neighbors. In the case of city
or town elections, very ordinary intelligence is sufficient for this purpose.
Whether taxes should be increased or lessened, whether the
sale of intoxicating liquors should be licensed or not, whether the
roads have been neglected, whether the poor-house is managed economically,
whether a new park is desirable, whether the conduct of
local officers has been efficient or the reverse, whether the candidates
are honest or dishonest, energetic or idle, able or incompetent,—
these are questions that need seriously confuse only persons unusually
unobservant or thickheaded, and that women in general far
exceed this minimum of intelligence can surely be denied by no one
who is qualified by the same standard.
OBJECTIONS ANSWERED.
By Alice Stone Blackwell.
Pamphlet published by National American Woman Suffrage Association.
Why Should Women Vote?
The reasons why women should vote are the same as the reasons
why men should vote—the same as the reasons for having a republic
rather than a monarchy. It is fair and right that the people who
must obey the laws should have a choice in choosing the law-makers,
and that those who must pay the taxes should have a voice as to
the amount of the tax, and the way in which the money shall be
spent.
Roughly stated, the fundamental principle of a republic is this:
In deciding what is to be done, we take everybody's opinion, and
then go according to the wish of the majority. As we cannot suit
everybody, we do what will suit the greatest number. That seems
to be, on the whole, the fairest way. A vote is simply a written expression
of opinion.
In thus taking a vote to get at the wish of the majority, certain
classes of persons are passed over, whose opinions for one reason
or another are thought not to be worth counting. In most of our
states, these classes are children, aliens, idiots, lunatics, criminals
and women. There are good and obvious reasons for making all
these exceptions but the last. Of course no account ought to be
taken of the opinions of children, insane persons, or criminals. Is
there any equally good reason why no account should be taken of
the opinions of women? Let us consider the reasons commonly
given, and see if they are sound.
Are Women Represented?
This so-called representation bears no proportion to numbers.
sisters, and half a dozen unmarried daughters. His vote
represents himself and all these women, and it counts one; while
the vote of his bachelor neighbor next door, without a female relative
in the world, counts for just as much. Since the object of
taking a vote is to get at the wish of the majority it is clear that
the only fair and accurate way is for each grown person to have
one vote, and cast it to represent himself or herself.
Men and Women Different.
American men are the best in the world, and if it were possible
for any men to represent women, through kindness and good will
to them, American men would do it. But man is by nature too different
from a woman to be able to represent her. The two creatures
are unlike. Whatever his good will, he cannot fully put himself
in a woman's place, and look at things exactly, from her point
of view. To say this is no more a reflection upon his mental or
moral ability than it would be a reflection upon his musical ability
to say that he cannot sing both soprano and bass. Unless men and
women should ever become just alike (which would be regrettable
and monotonous), women must either go unrepresented or represent
themselves.
Women Not Represented in the Laws.
Another proof that women's opinions are not now fully represented
is the lack in many states of humane and protective legislation, and
the poor enforcement of such legislation where it exists; the inadequate
appropriations for schools; the permission of child labor in
factories; and in general the imperfect legal safe-guarding of the
moral, educational and humanitarian interests that women have most
at heart. In many of our states, the property laws are more or less
unequal as between men and women. A hundred years ago, before
the equal rights movement began, they were almost incredibly unequal.
Yet our grandfathers loved their wives and daughters as
much as men do today.
Is "Influence" Enough?
Yes, but the indirect method is needlessly long and hard. If
women were forbidden to use the direct route by rail across the continent
and complained of the injustice, it would be no answer to tell
them that it is possible to get from New York to San Francisco by
going around Cape Horn.
Mother and Child.
The slowness with which some of the worst inequalities in the
laws are corrected shows the unsatisfactoriness of the indirect way.
In most states, a married mother has literally no legal rights over
her own children, so long as she and her husband live together.
Here is a case which actually happened, and which might happen
today, in 31 out of the 48 states of the Union:
A Chinaman had married a respectable Irishwoman. When their
first baby was three days old, the husband gave it to his brother
to be taken to China and brought up there. The mother, through
the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, appealed to
the courts. But the Judge promptly decided that the husband was
within his rights. He was the sole legal owner of the baby he had
the sole legal right to say what should be done with it. For more
trying to secure legislation making the father and mother joint guardians
of their children by law, as they are by nature; but thus far
the equal guardianship law has been obtained in only 16 states and
the District of Columbia. Massachusetts got it in 1902, after 55 years
of effort by Massachusetts women. In Colorado, after women were
given the right to vote, the very next Legislature passed an equal
guardianship law.
Massachusetts, the State Federation of Women's Clubs, the Woman's
Relief Corps, the State W. C. T. U., the Children's Friend Society
and 65 other associations united in asking for the bill. The
only society of women that has ever ranged itself definitely on the
wrong side of this question is the "Massachusetts Association Opposed
to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women." It circulated
for years, under its official imprint, a leaflet in defense of the
old law which gave the husband the sole control of the children.
In Massachusetts, in 1902, the laws of inheritance between husband
and wife were made equal; but it had taken more than half a century
of work to secure this self-evidently just measure. The experience
in many other states has been similar. The roundabout way is almost
always long and slow.
The Ignorant Vote.
Statistics published by the National Bureau of Education show that
the high schools of every state in the Union are graduating more
girls than boys—some of them twice or three times as many. Because
of the growing tendency to take boys out of school early in
order to put them into business, girls are getting more schooling
than boys. Equal suffrage would increase the proportion of voters
who have received more than a merely elementary education.
The Foreign Vote.
Less than one-third of the immigrants coming to this country are
women. According to the census of 1910, there are in the United
States nearly three times as many native-born women (38,674,693)
as all the foreign-born men and foreign-born women put together
(13,343,583).
The foreign vote is objectionable only so far as it is an ignorant
vote. Intelligent foreigners, both men and women, are often very
valuable citizens. On the other hand, the ignorant foreign immigrants
who come here are fully imbued, both men and women, with
all the Old World ideas as to the inferiority and subjection of women.
It is not until they have become pretty thoroughly Americanized that
they can tolerate the idea of women's voting. The husbands are
not willing that their wives should vote, and the wives ridicule the
suggestion. Experience shows that until they have become Americanized,
the foreign women will not vote. And, after they have become
Americanized, why should they not vote, as well as any one
else?
The Criminal Vote.
The vicious and criminal class is comparatively small among
women.
In the prisons of the United States as a whole, including those for
all kinds of offenses, women constitute only five and one-half per
cent of the prisoners, and the proportion is growing smaller.
Equal suffrage would increase the moral and law-abiding vote very
This is a matter not of conjecture but of statistics.
The Bad Women's Vote.
In America the bad women are so few, compared with the good
ones, that their votes could have little influence. Mrs. Helen Gilbert
Ecob, wife of a prominent clergyman who was for some years a
pastor in Denver, writes:
"The bad women represent, in any city of the United States, but
an infinitesimal proportion of its population, and the vote of that
class in Denver is confined practically to three precincts out of 120."
Mrs. Sarah Platt Decker, of Denver, ex-president of the General
Federation of Women's Clubs, and also for some years president of
the Colorado State Board of Charities and Correction, writes:
"Does not the vote of the disreputable class of women overbalance
the better element? No; the women of the half-world are not
willing to vote. They are constantly changing their residence and
their names. They do not wish to give any data concerning themselves,
their age, name or number and street; they prefer to remain
unidentified."
Ex-Gov. Warren, of Wyoming, sums it all up when he says, in
a letter to Horace G. Wadlin, of Massachusetts:
"Our women nearly all vote; and since, in Wyoming as elsewhere,
the majority of women are good and not bad, the result is good
and not evil."
Don't Understand Business.
Women have a vote in every other corporation in which they are
shareholders. George William Curtis said: "A woman may vote
as a stockholder upon a railroad from one end of the country to the
other; but, if he sells her stock and buys a house with the money,
she has no voice in the laying out of the road before her door, which
her house is taxed to keep and pay for."
Moreover, it is not true that a man's experience in his own business
teaches him how to carry on the business of a city. Some years
ago, a fashionable caterer was elected to the Massachusetts Legislature,
and was appointed a member of the committee on filling
up the South Boston flats. Another member said to him scornfully,
"What do you know about filling up flats, anyway?" The caterer answered
quietly, "That has been my business for twenty years." The
answer was good, as a joke; but, as a matter of fact, what had his
experience of planning dinners taught him about the way to turn
tide-mud into solid ground? What does the butcher learn from his
business about the best way to pave a street, or the baker about
the best way to build a sewer, or the candle-stick maker about the
best way to lay out a park, or to choose school teachers or policemen,
or to run a city hospital? Does a minister learn from his
profession how to keep the streets clean, or a lawyer how to conduct
a public school, or a doctor how to put out a fire? A man's business,
at best, gives him special knowledge only in regard to one or two
departments of city affairs. Women's business, as mothers and
housekeepers, also gives them special knowledge in regard to some
important departments of public work, those relating to children,
schools, playgrounds, the protection of the weak and young, morals,
the care of the poor, etc. For what lies outside the scope of their
own experience, men and women alike must rely upon experts. All
they need, as voters, is sense enough and conscience enough to elect
honest and capable persons to have charge of these things.
Division of Labor.
The growth of civilization increases the division of labor as between
individuals, but lessens it as between the sexes. One woman
no longer spins and weaves, and manufactures the clothing for the
men of her family, at the same time carrying on all the housework
and in addition making butter, cheese and candles, as our great-grandmothers
did. This work is now sub-divided among a number of specialists.
On the other hand, in the old times women were excluded
from almost all the occupations of men. Housework and sewing
were practically the only ways open to them to earn a living. Today,
oue of more than 300 trades and professions followed by men,
women are found in all but three or four.
But this objection about the sub-division of labor is really irrelevant,
voting is not labor, in the sense of a trade or profession. The
tendency of civilization has been to a greater and greater specilization
of labor, but not to a closer and closer restriction of the suffrage. On
the contrary, that has been steadily extended. The best results are
found not where public affairs are left in the hands of a small class
of "professional politicians," but where the largest proportion of
the people take a keen interest and an active part in their own government.
Would Lose Their Influence.
What gives a woman influence? Beauty, goodness, tact, talent,
pleasant manners, money, social position, etc. A woman who has any
of these means of influence now would still have them if she had
a vote, and she would have this other potent means of influence besides.
There is a story of a prisoner who had been shut up for
many years in a dungeon, getting sunlight only through a chink in
the wall. He grew much attached to that chink. At last his friends
came and offered to tear down the wall. His mind had become
weakened and he begged them not to do it. If they destroyed the
wall, he said, they would also destroy the chink through which he
got all his sunlight, and he would be left in total darkness. If he
had had his wits, he would have seen that he would have all
the sunlight he had before, and a great deal more besides. A woman
after enfranchisement would have all the personal influence she has
now, and political influence in addition. One thing is certain: Every
vicious interest in this country, to which women are hostile, would
rather continue to contend with women's "indirect influence" than
to try to cope with women's vote.
Jane Addams and other prominent Chicago women testify to the
marked increase of respect that came to the women of Illinois with
the granting of the ballot.
Dr. Margaret Long of Denver, daughter of the former Secretary
of the Navy, writes: "It seems to me impossible that anyone can live
in Colorado long enough to get into touch with the life here, and
not realize that women count for more in all the affairs of this state
than they do where they have not the power the suffrage gives.
More attention is paid to their wishes, and much greater weight given
to their opinions and judgments."
Mrs. Sarah Platt Decker, of Denver, writes: "Under equal suffrage
there is a much more chivalrous devotion and respect on the
part of men, who look upon their sisters not as playthings or as
property, but as equals and fellow-citizens."
Mrs. K. A. Sheppard, president of the New Zealand Council of
Women says: "Since women have become electors, their views have
by the opinions of women to a far greater degree than
formerly. A young New Zealander in his teens no longer regards his
mother as belonging to a sex that may be kept within a prescribed
sphere, but as a human being, clothed with the dignity of all those
rights and powers which he hopes to enjoy within a few years. That
the lads and young men of a democracy should have their whole conception
of the rights of humanity broadened and measured by truer
standards is in itself an incalculable benefit."
Mrs. A. Watson Lister, secretary of the Woman's National Council
of Australia, says: "One striking result of equal suffrage is that
members of Parliament now consult us as to their bills, when these
bear upon the interests of women. The author of the new divorce
bill asked all the women's organizations to come together and hear
him read it, and to make criticisms and suggestions. I do not remember
any such thing happening before, in all my years in Australia.
When a naturalization bill was pending, one clause of which
deprived Australian women of citizenship if they married aliens, a
few women went privately to the Prime Minister and protested, and
that clause was altered immediately. After we had worked for years
with members of Parliament for various reforms, without avail, because
we had not votes, you cannot imagine the difference it makes."
—(Woman's Journal, Feb. 13, 1904.)
Would Make Women Partisans.
Women continue to be non-partisan after they have the ballot, and
it gives them more power to secure the good things which the
women of all parties want.
Prof. Henry E. Kelly, formerly of the Iowa State University,
now practicing law in Denver, says in an open letter to
State Senator A. H. Gale, of Iowa that he went to Colorado opposed
to equal suffrage, but has been controverted by what he has seen of
it. Prof. Kelly adds:
"Experience clearly shows that women's interest cannot be aroused
in mere partisan strife. Their interests center around questions affecting
education, public cleanliness, public morality, civic beauty,
charities and correction, public health, public libraries—and such subjects
as more intimately affect home life, and conduce to the prosperity
of the family. Men lose sight of these important considerations in
the scramble of partisan warfare for office, but women will not see
them obscured by anything."
Ellis Meredith of Denver writes:
"There has never been a party measure espoused by women in the
Colorado Legislature. The women of all parties want the same
things, and have worked for them together, in perfect harmony. They
wanted a pure-food law, and secured one from the last Legislature,
in line with the national legislation. They wanted civil service reform,
and have obtained that, so far as the officers of the State institutions
are concerned. During the last Legislature, an attempt
was made to take the control of the State Bureau of Child and Animal
Protection away from the Colorado Humane Society, and to
create a political board. Every federated woman's club in the State
besieged its senators and representatives to vote against the bill, and
the vice chairmen of the state central committees of the two chief
political parties (both of them women) went together to different
members of the Legislature to enter their protest. Men understood
that in legislative matters, when they oppose the women, they are
of the State."—(Woman's Journal, Aug. 31, 1907.)
Opposition of Women.
"The organized opposition among women to suffrage is very small
compared with the organized movement of women in its favor. Out
of our 48 states only 17 have anti-suffrage organizations of any kind.
There are Suffrage Associations in 46.
In New York at the time of the last constitutional convvention,
the suffragists secured more than 300,000 signatures to their petitions;
the anti-suffragists, only 15,000. In Chicago, 104 organizations, with
an aggregate membership of more than 10,000 women, petitioned for
a woman suffrage clause in the city charter, while only one small organization
of women petitioned against it. In Maine, in Iowa, in
short, in every state where petitions for suffrage and remonstrances
against it have been sent to the Legislature, the petitioners have always
outnumbered the remonstrants, and have generally outnumbered
them 50 or 100 to one. On the only occasion when the government
took an official referendum among women on the subject
(in Massachusetts, 1895), the women's vote was in favor of suffrage
more than 25 to one. Less than one-sixth of one per cent of the
women in the State voted against it.
Julia Ward Howe said: "Most women are as yet indifferent on the
suffrage question; but, of those who take any lively interest in it either
way, the great majority are in favor. This has been demonstrated
wherever the matter has been brought to a test." (Woman's
Journal, Aug. 1, 1908.)
Every constitutional amendment that has ever been carried in New
York or Massachusetts would have been set down as defeated if all
the men too indifferent to vote upon it either way had been counted
as opposed. In New York, a successful amendment seldom gets
more than 25 per cent of the popular vote. The remaining 75 per
cent are "either indifferent or opposed," but, if less than 25 per cent
are actually opposed, the amendment is carried.
In Massachusetts the Anti-Suffrage Association has been collecting
signatures of women against suffrage since 1895, and in 18 years
it has not succeeded in getting the names of 4 per cent of the women
of the State. In the country, at large, despite urgent and widely published
appeals from the Antid, not one per cent of the women have
ever expresed any objection to suffrage. Why should the less than
one per cent who protest claim to carry any more weight than the 99
per cent who either want the ballot or do not object to it?
Already Overburdened.
Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer wrote: "How much time must she
spend on her political duties? If she belongs to the well-to-do class,
and hires others to do her work, she has time for whatever interests
her most—only let these interests be noble! If she does her own
housework, she can take ten minutes to stop on her way to market
and vote once or twice a year. She can find half an hour a day for
the newspapers and other means of information. She can talk with
family and friends about what she reads. She does this now; she
will then do it more intelligently, and will give and receive more from
what she says and hears. If she does this reading and talking, she
will be better informed than the majority of voters are now.
"The duties of motherhood and the making of a home are the most
sacred work of women, and the dearest to them, of every class. If
can do—and what, failed in, undermines society and government—
no one can question which a woman must choose. But it cannot be
shown that there are any large number of women in this country who
have not the necessary time to vote intelligently, and it can be argued
that study of the vital questions of our government would make them
better comrades to their husbands and friends, better guides to their
sons, and more interesting and valuable members of society. Women
of every class have more leisure than men, are less tied to hours of
routine; they have had more years of school training than men. All
this makes simple the combination of public and higher duties."
Women and Office-Holding.
When we say that women would be eligible to hold office, what do
we mean? Simply that if a majority in any place would rather have
a woman to hold a certain position than any one else, and if she is
willing to serve, they shall be allowed to elect her. Women are serving
as officials already; some of the women most prominent in opposing
equal suffrage have been holders of public office. The late president
of the "Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension
of Suffrage to Women" (Mrs. J. Elliott Cabot) was for years
a member of the school board of Brookline, and also Overseer of the
Poor. Yet that Association, in its published documents, objects to
equal suffrage on the ground that "suffrage involves the holding of
office, and office-holding is incompatible with the duties of most
women." Suffrage does not involve office-holding by the majority
of women, but only by a few; and there are always some women of
character and ability who could give the necessary time. Women
as a class have more leisure than men.
In the enfranchised states there has been no rush of women into
office, and the offices that women do hold are mainly educational and
charitable.
Ballots and Bullets.
If no men were allowed to vote except those who were able and
willing to do military and police duty, women might consistently be
debarred for that reason. But so long as the old, the infirm, the halt,
the lame and the blind are freely admitted to the ballot box, some
better reason must be found for excluding women than the fact that
they do not fight. All men over 45 are exempt from military service,
yet they vote. Col. T. W. Higginson says: "It appears by the record
of the United States Military Statistics that out of the men examined
for military duty during the civil war, of journalists 740 in every
1,000 were found unfit; of preachers, 974; of physicians, 680, of lawyers,
544.
"Grave divines are horrified at the thought of admitting women to
vote when they cannot fight, though not one in twenty of their own
number is fit for military duty, if he volunteered. Of the editors who
denounce woman suffrage, only about one in four could himself carry
a musket; while, of the lawyers who fill Congress, the majority
could not be defenders of their country, but could only be defended."
Again, it must be remembered that some woman risks her life whenever
a soldier is born into the world. Later she does picket duty
over his cradle, and for years she is his quartermaster, and gathers
his rations. And when that boy grows to a man, shall he say to his
mother, "If you want to vote, you must first go and kill somebody?
It is a coward's argument!" Mrs. Z. G. Wallace of Indiana, from
Hur," said: "If women do not fight, they give to the state all its
soldiers." This ought in all fairness to be taken as an offset for the
military service that women do not render. As Lady Henry Somerset
says, "She who bears soldiers does not need to bear arms."
Can Laws Be Enforced?
But thousands of male non-combatants are already admitted to the
ballot box, and there is no certainty at any election that the majority
of voters represent a majority of possible fighters. No trouble of
this kind has resulted from equal suffrage in practice. The laws are
as well enforced in the enfranchised states as in adjoining states
where women have no vote.
Where women have school suffrage their votes occasionally turn
the scale, but there is never any attempt to install the defeated candidates
by force. Where women have the full ballot, they have often
defeated bad candidates for higher offices, but no riotous uprising has
ever followed. This particular objection is a libel on American manhood.
Will It Increase Divorce?
Full suffrage was granted to the women of Wyoming in 1869. During
the twenty years from 1870 to 1890, divorce in the United States
at large increased about three times as fast as the population. In the
group of Western States, omitting Wyoming, it increased nearly four
times as fast as the population. In Wyoming it increased only about
half as fast as the population. "An ounce of experiment is worth a
ton of theory."
Rev. Francis Miner Moody, Secretary of the California Commission
working to secure a uniform divorce law throughout the United
States, published in the Woman Voter of February, 1913, an article
showing by actual statistics that every state which has had equal
suffrage for a considerable number of years has declined markedly in
its divorce rate as compared with the rest of the country. He points
out that in Colorado the drop was so great as to be "astonishing."
Just before Colorado granted equal suffrage, in 1891 and 1892, its
average number of divorces per year was 937. For the three years
immediately following the bestowal of equal suffrage—1894, 1895, and
1896—the average number of divorces per year was only 517.
A father sometimes turns his son out of doors for voting the wrong
ticket, but among American men this is rare. Where such a case
does arise, it is to be met by educating the domestic despot, not by
disfranchising all the members of the family but one. A couple who
are sensible and good-tempered will not quarrel if they are once in
a while unable to think alike about politics. A couple who are not
sensible and good-tempered are sure to quarrel anyway—if not about
politics, then about something else.
The Question of Chivalry.
Justice would be worth more to women than chivalry, if they could
not have both. A working girl put the case in a nutshell when she
said: "I would gladly stand for twenty minutes in the street car going
home, if by doing so I could get the same pay that a man would
have had for doing my day's work." But women do not have to
stand in the street cars half as often in Denver as in Boston or in
New York. Justice and chivalry are not in the least incompatible.
Women have more freedom and equality in America than in Europe,
yet American men are the most chivalrous in the world.
Known by Its Enemies.
Those who thrive upon the corruption of politics do not think so.
The ignorant, vicious and criminal vote is always cast solidly against
equal rights for women.
Too Emotional.
Mrs. E. T. Brown, at a meeting of the Georgia State Federation of
Women's Clubs, read a paper in which she said:
"You tell us that women are not fitted for dealing with the problems
of government, being too visionary and too much controlled by
sentiment.
"Now it is very true of women that they are largely controlled by
sentiment, and, as a matter of fact, men are largely controlled by
sentiment also, in spite of their protesting blushes. Was it logic
that swept like a wave over this country and sent our army to protect
the Cubans when their suffering grew too intense to be endured
even in the hearing? Is it shrewd business calculation that sends
thousands of dollars out of this country to feed a starving people
during the ever-recurring famines in unhappy India? Was it hard
common sense that sent thousands of American soldiers into what
looked like a death-trap of China in the almost baseless hope of rescuing
a few hundred American citizens? Do not men like Washington,
Lincoln, Jefferson and Lee live in the hearts of American men,
not alone for what they did, but still more for what they dreamed
of? The man who is not controlled by sentiment betrays his friends,
sells his vote, is a traitor to his country, or wrecks himself, body
and soul, with immoralities; for nothing but sentiment prevents any
of these things. The sense of honor is pure sentiment. The sentiment
of loyalty is the only thing that makes truth and honesty desirable,
or a vote a non-salable commodity.
"Government would be a poor affair without sentiment, and is not
likely to be damaged by a slightly increased supply."
What Is the Unit?
The childless widower, the unmarried boy of 21, and the confirmed
old bachelor of 90 have votes; the widow with minor children has
none. Under our laws the political unit is not the family, but the
male individual. The unequal number of grown persons in different
families would make it impossible to treat the family as the political
unit.
Women's Small School Vote.
The size of men's vote is just in proportion to the size of the election.
At presidential elections it is very large, at state elections
much smaller, at a municipal election smaller still, and at school
elections, wherever these are held separately, only a fraction of the
men turn out to vote. The smallness of the woman's school vote
is regrettable, but it is only a new proof of the truth of Mrs. Poyser's
immortal saying: "I am not denying that women are foolish;
God Almighty made them to match the men!"
In Kansas women were given school suffrage in 1861. Their vote
was small. In 1887 they were given full municipal suffrage. Their
vote at once became much larger, and has increased at successive
elections. In 1912, they were given the full ballot, and their vote
increased much more.
In Colorado women were given school suffrage in 1876. Their
vote was small. In 1893 they were given the full ballot, and on January
unanimous vote of both Houses, that "during this time (the preceding
five years) women have exercised the privilege as generally
as men."
In the states of Oregon and Washington, women had the school
ballot for many years, and their vote was small. Now that they
have gained full suffrage it has become large.
The women's school vote has completely disproved the fear that
the bad women would be the first to rush to the polls. In answer to
the prediction that the best women will not vote, Col. Higginson
says: "In Massachusetts, under school suffrage, the complaint has
been that only the best women vote."
Will Women Vote?
In Wyoming women have had full suffrage since 1869. The
Wyoming Secretary of State, in a letter to Miss Alice Stone Blackwell,
of Boston, says that 90 per cent of them vote. (Woman's
Journal, May 6, 1905.)
The Colorado Secretary of State, in a letter to Mrs. Charles Park,
of Boston, says that 80 per cent of Colorado women register, and
about 72 per cent vote. (Woman's Journal, Aug. 20, 1908.)
The Chief Justice of Idaho and all the Justices of the State Supreme
Court have signed a published statement that "the large vote
cast by the women establishes the fact that they take a lively interest."
(Woman's Journal, Aug. 20, 1908.)
In Australia, in the first elections after the women were enfranchised,
which took place in 1903, 359,315 women voted; in 1906,
431,033; and in 1910, 601,946.
When woman suffrage was granted in New Zealand in 1893, the
estimated number of women in the country was 139,915. Of these,
109,461 registered to vote; and the number of women voting has increased
at each triennial Parliamentary election since. In 1893, 90,290
women voted; in 1896, 108,783; in 1899, 119,550; in 1902, 138,565; in
1905, 175,046; in 1908, 190,114. (New Zealand Year Book.) Mrs. K.
A. Shepard, president of the New Zealand Council of Women, writes
that in the elections of 1911, 221,858 women voted.
The majority of the women had never asked for suffrage in any
of these places.
A Growing Cause.
In Colorado, when woman suffrage was submitted the first time,
it was defeated; the second time, it was carried by a majority of
6,387. In 1901, after the women had been voting for eight years, the
matter was virtually resubmitted to the people and passed by a
majority of 17,000.
In Kansas, the first time it was submitted it got only 9,100 votes;
the second time it got 95,302; the third time it got 175,376, and carried.
In the State of Washington, the first time, the majority against it
was 19,386; the second time it was only 9,882, and it was finally carried
in 1910 by a majority of 22,623.
In California, in 1895, the vote stood 110,355, for and 137,099 against
—an adverse majority of 26,744. In 1911, the amendment carried
by a majority of 3,587.
In 1912, three states of the Union gave suffrage to women, a larger
number than ever did so in one year before. In 1913, Illinois and
Alaska have followed suit, and in addition nine State Legislatures
the question to the voters—almost three times as many as ever did
so in a single year before.
The Test of Experiment.
Women in this country now have the full ballot in Wyoming,
Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Washington, California, Kansas, Oregon, Arizona
and in the territory of Alaska, while in Illinois they can vote
for all municipal officers and Presidential electors. Abroad, they
have full Parliamentary suffrage in New Zealand, Australia, Finland,
Iceland, and Norway; while in the Isle of Man and in Bosnia, women
property owners can vote for members of the local Parliament. They
have municipal suffrage throughout England, Scotland, Ireland,
Wales, nine of the provinces of Canada, Sweden and Denmark, and
even in Burma and some parts of India. In some of these countries
they have had it for generations.
In all these places put together, the opponents thus far have not
found a dozen respectable men who assert over their own names
and addresses that it has had any bad results.
This is the more remarkable in view of the fact that active antisuffrage
associations in New York and Massachusetts have been
for years diligently gathering all the adverse testimony they could
find.
On the other hand, scores of the most highly esteemed men and
women in the equal suffrage states testify that the results are good.
In Wyoming, women have had the full ballot for nearly half a century.
For the last 25 years, the advocates of equal suffrage have
had a standing challenge, inviting its opponents to find, in all Wyoming,
two respectable men who will assert over their own names and
addresses that it has had any bad results whatever. The opponents
have thus far failed to respond.
Doubling the Vote.
If letting women sing in church merely doubled the volume of
sound, it would still be a good thing, because it would double the
number of persons who had the lung exercise and the inspiration of
joining in a good hymn and it would make the chorus stronger. If
equal suffrage merely doubled the number of voters, it would still
do good, because to take an interest in public affairs would give
women mental stimulus and greater breadth of view; and it would
also bring to bear on public problems the minds of an increased number
of intelligent and patriotic citizens. But the great advantage of
women in music is that they add the soprano and alto to the tenor
and bass. If women were exactly like men, equal suffrage would
merely double the vote. But women are different from men; and
women's voices in the state, like women's voices in the choir, would
be the introduction of a new element. This is recognized even by
opponents, when they express the fear that equal suffrage would
lead to "sentimental legislation."
Men are superior to women along certain lines, and women superior
to men along certain others. The points of weakness in American
politics at present are precisely the points where women are
strong. There is no lack in our politics of business ability, executive
ability, executive talent, or "smartness" of any kind. There
is a dangerous lack of conscience and humanity. The business interests,
which appeal more especially to men, are well and shrewdly
looked after; the moral and humanitarian interests, which appeal
more especially to women, are apt to be neglected.
Not a Natural Right.
It is hard to define just what a "natural right" is. Dr. James
Freeman Clarke said: "If all women were forbidden to use the
sidewalk, and they complained of the injustice, it would be no answer
to tell them that it was not natural or inherent right, but one
given by society, and which society might therefore control as it saw
fit. A great many rights are given by society, of which, however, it
would be manifestly unjust to deprive either sex."
Too Many Voters.
This only means that we have too many voters of the wrong kind.
If to increase the number of voters were an evil in itself, every
woman who becomes the mother of half a dozen sons would have
done harm to her country. But if all six grew up to be good voters
she has conferred a benefit on her country. So she has if five of
them become good voters, and only one a bad voter. Woman suffrage
would bring in at least five good voters to one bad one.
It is often said that we have too many immigrants. We mean too
many immigrants of an undesirable kind. We all rejoice when we
hear of a large influx from Finland or some other country whose
people are considered especially desirable immigrants. We want
them to offset those of less virtuous and lawabiding races. The
Governor of one of the enfranchised states writes of woman suffrage:
"The effect of this increase in the vote is the same as if a
large and eminently respectable class of citizens had immigrated
here."
Would Unsex Women.
The difference between men and women are natural; they are not
the result of disfranchisement. The fact that all men have equal
rights before the law does not wipe out natural differences of character
and temperament between man and man. Why should it wipe
out the natural differences between men and women? The women
of England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, the Scandinavian
countries and our own equal suffrage states are not perceptible
in looks or manners from women elsewhere, although they have
been voting for years.
Women Do Not Want It.
Every improvement in the condition of women thus far has been
secured not by a general demand from the majority of women, but
by the arguments, entreaties and "continual coming" of a persistent
few. In each case the advocates of progress have had to contend
not merely with the conservatism of men, but with the indifference
of women, and often with active opposition from some of them.
When a man in Saco, Me., first employed a saleswoman, the men
boycotted his store, and the women remonstrated with him on the
sin of placing a young woman in a position of such "publicity."
When Lucy Stone began to try to secure for married women the right
to their own property, women asked with scorn, "Do you think I
would give myself where I would not give my property?" When
Elizabeth Blackwell began to study medicine, the women at her
boarding house refused to speak to her, and women passing her on
the street held their skirts aside. It is a matter of history with what
ridicule and opposition Mary Lyon's first efforts for the education
of women were received, not only by the mass of men, but by the
mass of women as well.
In eastern countries, where women are shut up in zenanas and
forbidden to walk the streets unveiled, the women themselves are
often the strongest upholders of these traditional restrictions, which
they have been taught to think add to their dignity. The Chinese
lady is proud of her small feet as any American anti-suffragist is of
her political disabilities. Pundita Ramabai tells us that the idea of
education for girls is so unpopular with the majority of Hindoo
women that when a progressive Hindoo proposes to educate his little
daughter, it is not uncommon for the women of his family to
threaten to drown themselves.
All this merely shows that human nature is conservative, and that
it is fully as conservative in women as in men. The persons who
take a strong interest in any reform are generally few, whether
among men or women, and they are habitually regarded with disfavor,
even by those whom the proposed reform is to benefit.
Many changes for the better have been made during the last half
century in the laws, written and unwritten, relating to women. Everybody
approves of these now, because they have become accomplished
facts. But not one of them would have been made to this day, if it
had been necessary to wait till the majority of women asked for it.
The change now under discussion is to be judged on its merits. In
the light of history, the indifference of most women and the opposition
of a few must be taken as a matter of course. It has no more
rational significance now than it has had in regard to each previous
step of women's progress.
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.
References.
In view of the fact that a debater should get as much material
as possible on the subject, it is suggested that additional literature
be obtained from the National American Woman's Suffrage Association,
505 Fifth Avenue, New York, and from the Association Opposed
to Woman Suffrage, 29 W. 39th St., New York. Possibly some
of the references below may be gotten from the Virginia State Library
at Richmond or Library of Congress at Washington. The H.
W. Wilson Co., White Plains, N. Y., will let one have magazine articles
on woman suffrage at a small cost.
Articles in Periodicals.
Co-citizens of California, Collier's 48:20—Oct. 28, '11.
New state for woman suffrage. Harper's Bazaar—4538. Jan. '11.
Spectacular woman suffrage in American. Independent 71:804-10—
Oct. 12, '11.
Woman suffrage in six states. Independent 71:967—70 Nov. 2, '11.
Woman's victory in Washington. Collier's 46:25—Jan. 7, '11.
Result of woman's suffrage. Outlook—98:757. Aug. 5, '11.
Victory in sight. Harper's Bazaar 45:345 July '11.
Why I am a suffragist. World Today 21:1171-8 Oct. '11.
Woman suffrage marching on. Current Lit. 51:596-600 Dec. '11.
Woman suffrage on trial. Outlook 99:50-1 Sept. 2, '11.
Women should mind their own business. Independent 70:1370-1.
June 22, '11.
World movement for woman suffrage. R. of R's. 44:725-9 Dec. '11.
Women's rights. Outlook 100:302-4. Feb. 10, '12.
Women's rights and the duties of both men and women. Outlook
100:262-6 Feb. 3, '12.
Progress of woman's suffrage. Outlook 102:375-6 Oct. 26, '12.
Woman-suffrage victory. Literary Digest 45:941-3 Nov. 23, '12.
Cassandra on votes for women. 19th Century 69:487-98 March '11.
Is woman suffrage important? North American Rev. 193:60-71
Jan. '11.
Objections to woman suffrage. Harp. W. 55:6. Dec. 2, '11.
Past, present and future. North Amer. Rev. 194:271-81 Aug. '11.
Recent strides of woman's suffrage. World's Work—22:14733-45
Aug. '11.
Teaching violence to women. Cent. 84:151-3 May '12.
Violence and votes. Independent 72:1416-9 June 27, '12.
Violence in the woman's suffrage movement: a disavowal of the
militant policy. Cent. 85:148-9 Nov. '12.
Votes for women. Harper's W. 56:6 Sept. 21, '12.
Why I want woman's suffrage. Collier's 48:18 March 16, '12.
Woman and the state. Forum 48:394-408 Oct. '12.
Woman and the suffrage. Harper's W. 56:6 Aug. 17, '12.
Woman the savior of the state. World's Work 23:418-21. Feb. '12.
Mission of Women. North Amer. 196:204-14. Aug. '12.
New prophetess of feminism. Forum 48:455-64. Oct. '12.
Questions of suffrage. Nation 94:132 Feb. 8, '12.
Right of the silent women. Outlook 101:105-6 May 18, '12.
Sermons in stones. Contemporary Rev. 101:493-501 Apr. '12.
Shall women vote? Outlook 101:754-5. Aug. 3, '12.
Success of woman suffrage. Ind. 73:334-5. Aug. 8, '12.
Equal suffrage dialogue. Harper's W. 56:11. Oct. 19, '12.
Famed biologist's warning of the peril in votes for women. Cur.
Lit. —53:59-62 July '12.
For the twenty-two million; why most women do not want to vote.
Outlook 101; 26-30 May 4, '12.
From door to door. Harper's W. 55:26 Dec. 30, '11.
Grace before lawlessness. Cent. 83:790-2 Mar. '12.
Poll of women on the suffrage. Outlook 104:268-70 June 7, '13.
President and the suffragists. Lit. Digest 47:1209-11. Dec. 20, '13.
Suffrage conquest of Illinois. Lit. Digest. 46:1409-10 June 28, '13.
Votes for three million women. R. of R.'s 46:700-4 Dec. '12.
Women on Washington juries. Ind. 75:50-2 July 3, '13.
Women's parliamentary franchise in practice. 19th Cent. 74:979-87.
Nov. 1913.
Year of equal suffrage. World's Work 27:14-5 Nov. '13.
Younger suffragists. Harper's W. 58:7-8 Sept. 27, '13.
California stateslady. Collier's 52:5-6 Nov. 1, '13.
How California women voters made good. Rev. of Reviews
47:608-10 May '13.
Unexpurgated case against woman suffrage. Contemporary Review
104:745-8 Nov. '13.
Why I voted for equal suffrage. Independent 75:634-5 Sept. 11, '13.
Open letter on woman suffrage. Outlook 103:893-4 Apr. 26th, '13.
Trust the ballot upon women. Ind. 75:31 July 3, '13.
Time to stop it. Ind. 73:1439-40 Dec. 19, '12.
Argument against woman suffrage. Ind. 75:301-2 Aug. 7, '13.
Art and the woman's movement. Forum 49:680-4 June '13.
Ask her. Outlook 103:839-40 Apr. 19, '13.
Ballot as an ethical education for women. Cur. Opinion 54:483-4
June '13.
Don't ask her. Outlook 104:54-5 May 10, '13.
Will women vote? Independent 78:320 May 25, '14.
Woman suffrage at work in America. 19th Cent. 75:415-33 Feb. '14.
Woman suffrage in U. S. 19th Cent. 74:1336-41 Dec. '13.
Woman's hand in Illinois. Lit. Digest 48:891-2 Apr. 18, '14.
Woman's vote in Utah. Harper's W. 58:18 May 2, '14.
Women vote in Illinois. Outlook 106:509-11. Mar. 7, '14.
Anti-suffrage argument. Collier's 49:27 Apr. 20, '12.
Catholic view of woman suffrage. Lit. Digest 44:1211-2 June 8, '12.
Suffrage as a national issue. Lit. Digest 48:745-6 Apr. 4, '14.
Ventilated opinions. Collier's 53:8 Mar. 21, '14.
Woman and morality. 19th Cent. 75:128-40 Jan. '14. Same article
Liv. Age 280:515-24 Feb. 28, '14.
Working of equal suffrage. North American 199:338-43 Mar. '14.
Annual invasion of congress by the woman suffragists. Cur. Opinion
56:9-11. Jan. '14.
How women vote. Harper's W. 58:20-3 Apr. 25, '14.
National constitution will enfranchise women. North American
199:709-21 May '14.
Two suffrage mistakes: proposed suffrage amendment to constitution
and opposition to payment of income tax. North American
199:366-82 Mar. '14.
What have women done with the vote? Cent. 87:663-71. Mar. '14.
Clubwomen for suffrage. (U. S.) Lit. Digest 49:4-5 July 4, '14.
Abdication. 19th Century 74:1328-35 Dec. '13. Same article Living
Age. 280:195-200 Jan. 24, '14.
Creative Evolution and the woman question? Educ. R. 47:22-7 Jan. '14.
Prof. Beyer and the woman question. Educ. Review 47:295-8
Mar. '14.
Progress and feminity. Harper's Weekly 58:27 Jan. 3, '14.
Solvency of woman. Edin. R. 219:14-34 Jan. '14.
![illustration](https://iiif.lib.virginia.edu/iiif/uva-lib:109686/full/!1600,1600/0/default.jpg")
Buena Vista High School Debating Team
Winners of Debating Cup
1913-1914
MISS MABEL JUSTICE
MISS VIRGINIA GRAHAM
| University of Virginia record October 1, 1914 | |