University of Virginia Library

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?