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Title: Woman and the Republic

Author: Helen Kendrick Johnson

Release date: January 1, 2005 [eBook #7300]
                Most recently updated: December 30, 2020

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Olaf Voss, Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


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Produced by Olaf Voss, Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo,
Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team




WOMAN AND THE REPUBLIC

A SURVEY OF THE WOMAN-SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES AND A
DISCUSSION OF THE CLAIMS AND ARGUMENTS OF ITS FOREMOST ADVOCATES BY

HELEN KENDRICK JOHNSON




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER I.    INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER II.   IS WOMAN SUFFRAGE DEMOCRATIC?
CHAPTER III.  WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
CHAPTER IV.   WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND PHILANTHROPY
CHAPTER V.    WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE LAWS
CHAPTER VI.   WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE TRADES
CHAPTER VII.  WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE PROFESSIONS
CHAPTER VIII. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND EDUCATION
CHAPTER IX.   WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE CHURCH
CHAPTER X.    WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND SEX
CHAPTER XI.   WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE HOME
CHAPTER XII.  CONCLUSION




CHAPTER I.


INTRODUCTORY.


The introduction to the "History of Woman Suffrage," published in 1881-85,
edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn
Gage, contains the following statement: "It is often asserted that, as
woman has always been man's slave, subject, inferior, dependent, under all
forms of government and religion, slavery must be her normal condition;
but that her condition is abnormal is proved by the marvellous change in
her character, from a toy in the Turkish harem, or a drudge in the German
fields, to a leader of thought in the literary circles of France, England,
and America."

I have made this quotation partly on account of its direct application to
the subject to be discussed, and partly to illustrate the contradictions
that seem to inhere in the arguments on which the claim to Woman Suffrage
is founded. If woman has become a leader of thought in the literary
circles of the most cultivated lands, she has not always been man's slave,
subject, inferior, dependent, under all forms of government and religion;
and, furthermore, it is not true that there has been such a marvellous
change in her character as is implied in this statement. Where man is a
bigot and a barbarian, there, alas! woman is still a harem toy; where man
is little more than a human clod, woman is to-day a drudge in the field;
where man has hewn the way to governmental and religious freedom, there
woman has become a leader of thought. The unity of race progress is
strikingly suggested by this fact. The method through which that unity is
maintained should unfold itself as we study the story of the sex
advancement of our time.

Progress is a magic word, and the Suffrage party has been fortunate in its
attempt to invoke the sorcery of the thought that it enfolds, and to blend
it with the claim of woman to share in the public duty of voting.
Possession of the elective franchise is a symbol of power in man's hand;
why should it not bear the same relation to woman's upward impulse and
action? Modern adherents ask, "Is not the next new force at hand in our
social evolution to come from the entrance of woman upon the political
arena?" The roots of these questions, and consequently of their answers,
lie as deep as the roots of being, and they cannot be laid bare by
superficial digging. But the laying bare of roots is not the only way, or
even the best way, to judge of the strength and beauty of a growth. We
look at the leaves, the flowers, and the fruit. "Movement" and "Progress"
are not synonymous terms. In evolution there is degeneration as well as
regeneration. Only the work that has been in accord with the highest
ideals of woman's nature is fitted to the environment of its advance, and
thus to survival and development. In order to learn whether Woman Suffrage
is in the line of advance, we must know whether the movement to obtain it
has thus far blended itself with those that have proved to be for woman's
progress and for the progress of government.

I am sure I need not emphasize the fact that, in studying some of the
principles that underlie the Suffrage movement, I am not impugning the
motives of the leaders. Nor need I dwell upon the fact that it is from the
good comradeship of men and women that has come to prevail under our free
conditions, that some women have hastily espoused a cause with which they
never have affiliated, because they supposed it to be fighting against
odds for the freedom of their sex.

The past fifty years have wrought more change in the conditions of life
than could many a Cathayan cycle. The growth of religious liberty,
enlargement of foreign and home missions, the Temperance movement, the
giant war waged for principle, are among the causes of this change. The
settlement of the great West, the opening of professions and trades to
woman consequent upon the loss of more than a half million of the nation's
most stalwart men, the mechanical inventions that have changed home and
trade conditions, the sudden advance of science, the expansion of mind and
of work that are fostered by the play of a free government,--all these
have tended to place man and woman, but especially woman, where something
like a new heaven and a new earth are in the distant vision.

To this change the Suffragists call attention, and say, "This is, in great
part, our work." In this little book I shall recount a few of the facts
that, in my opinion, go to prove that the Suffrage movement has had but
little part or lot in this matter. And because of these facts I believe
the principles on which the claim to suffrage is founded are those that
turn individuals and nations backward and not forward.

The first proof I shall mention is the latest one in time--it is the fact
of an Anti-Suffrage movement. In the political field alone are we being
formed into separate camps whose watchwords become more unlike as they
become more clearly understood. The fact that for the first time in our
history representatives of two great organizations of women are appealing
to courts and legislatures, each begging them to refuse the prayer of the
other, shows, as conclusively as a long argument could do, that this
matter of suffrage is something essentially distinct from the great series
of movements in which women thus far have advanced side by side. It is an
instinctive announcement of a belief that the demand for suffrage is not
progress; that it does array sex against sex; that woman, like man, can
advance only as the race advances; and that here lies the dividing line.

How absolute is that dividing line between woman's progress and woman
suffrage, we may realize when we consider what the result would be if we
could know to-morrow, beyond a peradventure, that woman never would vote
in the United States. Not one of her charities, great or small, would be
crippled. Not a woman's college would close its doors. Not a profession
would withhold its diploma from her; not a trade its recompense. Not a
single just law would be repealed, or a bad one framed, as a consequence.
Not a good book would be forfeited. Not a family would be less secure of
domestic happiness. Not a single hope would die which points to a time
when our cities will all be like those of the prophet's vision, "first
pure and then peaceable."

Among the forces that are universally considered progressive are: the
democratic idea in government, extinction of slavery, increase of
educational and industrial opportunities for woman, improvement in the
statute laws, and spread of religious freedom. The Woman-Suffrage movement
professed to champion these causes. That movement is now nearly fifty
years old, and has made a record by which its relation to them can be
judged. What is the verdict?




CHAPTER II.


IS WOMAN SUFFRAGE DEMOCRATIC?


As the claim of woman to share the voting power is related to the
fundamental principles of government, the progress of government must be
studied in relation to that claim in order to learn its bearing upon them.
It is possible to suggest in one brief chapter only the barest outline of
such a far-reaching scrutiny, and wiser heads than mine must search to
conclusion; but some beginnings looking toward an answer to the inquiry I
have raised have occurred to me as not having entered into the newly-
opened controversy on woman suffrage.

I say, the newly-opened controversy, for, through these fifty years, the
Suffragists have done nearly all the talking. So persistently have they
laid claim to being in the line of progress for woman, that many of their
newly aroused opponents fancied that the anti-suffrage view might be the
ultra conservative one, and that democratic principles, strictly and
broadly applied, might at last lead to woman suffrage, though premature if
pushed to a conclusion now.

The first step in finding out how far that position is true is, to
ascertain what the Suffragists say about this noblest of democracies, our
own Government. In referring to the "The History of Woman Suffrage" for
the opinions of the leaders, I am not only using a book that on its
publication was considered a strong and full presentment of their
arguments, but one which they are today advertising and selling as "a
perfect arsenal of the work done by and for women during the last half
century." In it the editors say: "Woman's political equality with man is
the legitimate outgrowth of the fundamental principles of our government."
Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, writing in the New York Sun in April, 1894, says:
"Never, until the establishment of universal [male] suffrage, did it
happen that all the women in a community, no matter how well born, how
intelligent, how well educated, how virtuous, how wealthy, were counted
the political inferiors of all the men, no matter how base born, how
stupid, how ignorant, how brutal, how poverty-stricken. This anomaly is
the real innovation. Men have personally ruled the women of their
families; the law has annihilated the separate existence of women; but
women have never been subjected to the political sovereignty of all men
simply in virtue of their sex. Never, that is, since the days of the
ancient republics." Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick, who, as Secretary of the
New-England Suffrage Association, was put forward to meet all comers,
writing in July, 1895, said: "Shall we, as a people, be true to our
principles and enfranchise woman? or, shall we drift along in the meanest
form of oligarchy known among men--an oligarchy which exalts every sort of
a male into a ruler simply because he is a male, and debases every woman
into a subject simply because she is a woman?" Mrs. Fanny B. Ames,
speaking in Boston in 1896, said: "I believe woman suffrage to be the
final result of the evolution of a true democracy." Not only has every
woman speaker or writer in favor of suffrage presented this idea in some
form, but the men also who have taken that side have done likewise. One
among those who advocated the cause before the Committee in the
Constitutional Convention of New York, said: "Woman Suffrage is the
inevitable result of the logic of the situation of modern society. The
despot who first yielded an inch of power gave up the field. We are
standing in the light of the best interests of the State of New York when
we stand in the way of this forward movement."

All these writers charge the American Republic with being false to
democratic principles in excluding women from the franchise, while but one
of them alludes to the fact that in the ancient republics the same
"anomaly" was seen.

As I read political history, the facts go to show that the fundamental
principles of our Government are more opposed to the exercise of suffrage
by women than are those of monarchies. To me it seems that both despotism
and anarchy are more friendly to woman's political aspirations than is any
form of constitutional government, and that manhood suffrage, and not
womanhood suffrage, is the final result of the evolution of democracy.

The Suffragists repeatedly call attention to the fact that in the early
ages in Egypt, in Greece, and in Rome, women were of much greater
political consequence than later during the republics; but the moral they
have drawn has been that of the superiority of the ancient times. Mrs.
Dietrick says: "The ideal woman of Greece was Athena, patroness of all
household arts and industries, but equally patroness of all political
interests. The greatest city of Greece was believed to have been founded
by her, and Greek history recorded that, though the men citizens voted
solidly to have the city named for Neptune, yet the women citizens voted
solidly for Athena, beat them by one vote, and carried that political
matter. If physical force had been a governing power in Greece, and men
its manifestation, how could such a story have been published by Greek men
down to the second century before our era?"

Mrs. Dietrick's remarkably realistic version of the old myth does not tell
the tale as Greek men published it. Varro, who was educated at Athens,
goes on to say: "Thereupon, Neptune became enraged, and immediately the
sea flowed over all the land of Athens. To appease the god, the burgesses
were compelled to impose a threefold punishment upon their wives--they
were to lose their votes; the children were to receive no more the
mother's name; and they themselves were no longer to be called Athenians,
after the goddess." It seems to me this fable teaches that physical force
was indeed the governing power in Athens at that day, and that men were
its manifestation.

The legend is generally taken to indicate the time when the Greek gens
progressed to the family. In the ruder time, the legitimacy of the
chieftain might be traced, because the mother, though not always the
father, could be known with certainty. When the father became the
acknowledged head of the household, a distinct advance was made toward
that heroic age in which the vague but towering figures of men and women
move across the stage. Goddesses, queens, princesses, are powerful in love
and war. Sibyls unfold the meaning of the book of fate. Vestals feed the
fires upon the highest and lowest altars. Later, throughout most of the
states of Greece, something like the following order of political life is
seen: from kings to oligarchs, from oligarchs to tyrants or despots, from
them to some form of restricted constitutional liberty. In Sparta, all
change of government was controlled by the machinery of war, and the
soldiers were made forever free. Athens, separated from the rest of
Greece, was less agitated by outward conflict. In government she passed
from king to archon; from hereditary archon to archons chosen for ten
years, but always from one family, then to those elected for one year,
nine being chosen. At the time of the Areopagus there were four classes of
citizens. The first three paid taxes, had a right to share in the
government, and formed the defence of the state. If women were of
political importance in earlier times, and if a republic is more favorable
to the exercise by them of the elective franchise, we should expect to
find women reaching their highest power under the Areopagus. Exactly the
contrary appears to be true. Native and honorable Greek women retired to
domestic life as the liberty of their people grew. Grote, in his "History
of Greece," referring to the legendary period, says: "We find the wife
occupying a station of great dignity and influence, though it was the
practice of the husband to purchase her by valuable presents to her
parents. She even seems to live less secluded, and to enjoy a wider sphere
of action, than was allotted to her in historic Greece."

Lecky, in his "European Morals," says: "It is one of the most remarkable
and, to some writers, one of the most perplexing facts in the moral
history of Greece, that in the former and ruder period women had
undoubtedly the highest place, and their type exhibited the highest
perfection." What the "highest perfection" is, for her type, or for man's
type, is not here under discussion; but it is not out of place to say in
passing that if the final conquest of the spiritual over the material
forces of humanity is really the aim of civilization, these "facts in the
moral history of Greece" become less "perplexing."

The heroines of Homer's tales were all of noble birth--they were
goddesses, princesses, hereditary gentlewomen. In early historic times,
also, it was only royal or gentle blood that secured for woman political
power. Athena was, in gentle Athens, patroness of household arts; but in
Sparta, as Minerva, the same divinity was goddess, not of political
interests, as Mrs. Dietrick puts it, but of war. She sprang full-armed
from the head of Jove--rather a masculine origin, it must be owned. In
Sparta women became soldiers as the democratic idea advanced. Princess
Archidamia, marching at the head of her female troop to rebuke the
senators for the decree that the women and children be removed from the
city before the anticipated attack could come, is an example. In Etolia,
in Argos, and in other states, the same was true. Maria and Telesilla led
the women in battle and disciplined them in peace. But the world does not
turn to Sparta for its ideal of a pre-Christian republic, and the
Suffragists of our day do not propose to emulate the Spartan Amazon and
hew their way to political power with the sword.

In Athens, which does present the model, matters were far otherwise. In
the year 700 B. C., the Spartans called upon Athens for a commander to
lead them to the second Messenian war, and the Athenians sent them
Tyrtaeus, their martial poet. The Spartans were displeased at his youth
and gentle bearing; but when the battle was joined, his chanting of his
own war-songs so animated the troops that they won against heavy odds. The
following is a fragment translated from one of his lyrics:

  "But be it ours to guard the hallowed spot,
     To shield the tender offspring and the wife;
   Here steadily await our destined lot,
     And, for their sakes, resign the gift of life."

Aeschylus, poet and soldier, writing a hundred and fifty years later, in
his "Seven Against Thebes," puts into the mouth of the chieftain Eteocles
this address to the women:

  "It is not to be borne, ye wayward race;
   Is this your best, is this the aid you lend
   The state, the fortitude with which you steel
   The souls of the besieged, thus falling down
   Before the images to wail, and shriek
   With lamentations loud? Wisdom abhors you.
   Nor in misfortune, nor in dear success,
   Be woman my associate. If her power
   Bears sway, her insolence exceeds all bounds;
   But if she fears, woe to that house and city.
   And now by holding counsel with weak fear,
   You magnify the foe, and turn our men
   To flight. Thus are we ruined by ourselves.
   This ever will arise from suffering women
   To intermix with men. But mark me well,
   Whoe'er henceforth dares disobey my orders--
   Be it man or woman, old or young--
   Vengeance shall burst upon him, the decree
   Stands irreversible, and he shall die.
   War is no female province, but the scene
   For men. Hence, home! nor spread your mischiefs here.
   Hear you, or not? Or speak I to the deaf?"

Pericles, in his famous funeral oration over those who fell in the
Peloponnesian war, thus addresses the Athenian women: "To the wives who
will henceforth live in widowhood, I will speak, in one short sentence
only, of womanly virtue. She is the best woman who is most truly a woman,
and her reputation is the highest whose name is never in the mouths of men
for good or for evil."

Seclusion was the best thing that the most intellectual pre-Christian
republic could give to its honorable women. The freedom with which the
hetairse, who were foreigners or daughters of slaves, mingled with
statesmen and philosophers, brought them open political influence, but not
a hint of voting power or of office-holding.

For the sake of brevity, I will confine my reference to Roman custom to a
single pregnant sentence from Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Empire."
He says: "In every age and country the wiser, or at least the stronger of
the two sexes, has usurped the powers of the state, and confined the other
to the cares and pleasures of domestic life. In hereditary monarchies,
however, and especially in those of modern Europe, the gallant spirit of
chivalry, and the law of succession, have accustomed us to allow a
singular exception, and a woman is often acknowledged the absolute
sovereign of a great kingdom, in which she would be deemed incapable of
exercising the smallest employment, civil or military. But, as the Roman
Emperors were still considered as the generals and magistrates of the
Republic, their wives and mothers, although dignified by the name of
Augusta, were never associated to their personal honors; and a female
reign would have appeared an inexplicable prodigy in the eyes of those
primitive Romans, who married without love, or loved without delicacy or
respect."

The warlike states named republics in the Middle Ages had no woman Doge,
or Duke, although women rose to the semblance of political power with
empires and kingdoms, in Italy and Spain as well as in Germany and France,
Austria and Russia.

Let us turn to modern Europe, in which thrones have been occupied now and
again by queens. The progress of woman here, especially in Anglo-Saxon
countries, has been steady, true and inspiring. In the earliest recorded
councils of the race from which we sprang, we see freemen in full armor
casting equal votes. During the ages of feudalism, women who were land-
owners had the same rights as other nobles. They could raise soldiery,
coin money, and administer justice in both civil and criminal proceedings.
In proportion as the aristocratic power lost its hold, women were exempted
from these services and gained in moral influence. The Germanic races were
renowned for their respect for woman, and their love for home. As
constitutional liberty grew, and each Englishman's house became his castle
for defence against arbitrary power, the protection was not for himself
but for his family. A figure-head ruler in feminine attire sits on
England's throne to-day--the England that still unites its church and
state, and in which feudal customs still prevail to some extent. Widows
and spinsters who are property-owners can vote for all offices except the
one charged under the Constitution with the framing and execution of the
laws of the land. Aristocracy decrees that in the House of Lords the
Bishops shall have a voice; but in the House of Commons no clergyman can
hold a seat, and for members of Parliament no woman votes. Would any
Suffragist hold that a clergyman was the inferior of men who do sit in the
House of Commons? They are excluded for the same reason that woman has not
the parliamentary vote--they are looked upon as non-combatants.

The Greek and Roman republics appear to have followed an instinct that was
unerring in the condition of society when they removed women from the
seats of power as the commonwealth gathered strength. Gibbon, in the
sentences quoted, attributes the fact that queens as well as kings have
occupied the thrones of modern Europe to the chivalry of men toward those
who would yet be incapable of exercising actual power except for the
backing of a standing army, or an hereditary nobility sworn to their
support, both of which are composed solely of men. If this be true, it
should be visible in the workings of the constitutional restrictions upon
monarchies that have developed in the past fifty years, during which the
principle of democratic government has advanced with enormous strides over
a great portion of the globe.

In the Austro-Hungarian monarchy there is restricted woman suffrage. The
kingdom of Italy has restricted municipal woman suffrage. The little
republic that separates those countries, the land of Tell and the Vaudois,
has direct manhood suffrage only.

Sweden and Norway are apparently parting company. Sweden chooses to keep
its king and its aristocracy, and it has restricted woman suffrage; but
Norway, which is working toward free institutions, and last year voted to
remove the insignia of union from the Norwegian flag, has no woman
suffrage. [Footnote: In the city of Berne, Switzerland, in 1852, a proxy
vote was given to independent women who paid a commercial tax, but they
made no effort to use it until 1885, when contending political factions
compelled them to do so in a measure. Norway's women have a local school
vote. Both these cases of exception serve to prove the rule that I am
trying to set forth.]

Autocratic Russia and its Asiatic colonies have more woman suffrage than
England. Finland, a constitutional monarchy, was ceded to the Emperor of
Russia in 1809. Women there have all except the parliamentary suffrage.
The Governor-General of the Senate is nominated by the Emperor, and is
chief of the military force. The National Assembly is convoked by the
Emperor whenever he sees fit. The duties of that Assembly are to consider
laws proposed by the Emperor and elaborated by the Committee of Affairs
and four members nominated by the Emperor, who sit in St. Petersburg. The
Emperor has the veto power over any act of theirs. That National Assembly
consists of representatives of the nobility, the clergy, the burghers, and
the peasantry, the consent of all of whom must be obtained to any measure
that makes a change in the constitution or imposes taxes. But the royal
veto can set aside any decision.

Iceland, a dependency of Denmark, has municipal woman suffrage, and women
are eligible to municipal office. It has its own legislature, which
governs jointly with the King, the executive power being in the hands of
the King alone.

In the great extensions of suffrage in England in 1848, an amendment for
the extension of suffrage to women was introduced in Parliament by Mr.
Disraeli. Lord Northcote, Lord John Manners, and other conservatives,
upheld it; but the liberal leaders opposed it, Gladstone and John Bright
among them. John Blight's family were strenuous for the movement, and he
had fancied himself its friend until the issue came; then the old champion
of freedom, proved true to the instinct that guards it in the nation. In
the constantly increasing liberty of the lower classes of England, an
essential principle which excludes women from the parliamentary vote has
been maintained. Lady Spencer Churchill and other Suffrage leaders look to
Viscount Templeton and Lord Salisbury for support to-day.

A woman-suffrage bill of many years' standing and absurd provisions, has
just passed to a second reading in the House of Commons. Although it was
treated as a joke by all parties, it served to emphasize the fact that Sir
Vernon Harcourt and the Liberals are opposed to any advance in this
direction.

In the late extension of suffrage in Canada, the movement for woman
suffrage had conservative support, while every liberal leader opposed it.
No South American Republic has woman suffrage. With the deposition of
Liliuokalani, woman's directs political power in the Hawaiian Islands
died. In France only the Anarchists "admit women" to public council, and
that party in Germany has here and there inscribed woman suffrage upon its
banners.

Not only England, Scotland and Wales, but Canada, definitely excepts the
vote for members of parliament in giving suffrage to woman, and only
widows and spinsters are admitted to the minor forms of franchise. As to
the other British colonies, what is the situation? Much stress has been
laid on what has been termed the progress of the Suffrage movement in
Australasia. There is but one Australian colony in which the legislative
assembly is elected; in the others it is appointed for life, or for short
terms. Where it is thus appointed, women vote on various matters. In
Victoria, which contains the capital city, Melbourne, and which is the
most progressive and democratic colony in Australia, the Legislative
Assembly is elected, and that body is chosen by unrestricted male suffrage
only, while, as with the House of Commons in the mother country, clergymen
are not allowed to sit in it. In West Australia, the newest colony, the
voting is done by men alone. In Cape Colony women have restricted
municipal suffrage; but the Assembly is elected by the vote of men who own
a certain amount of property.

In the Orange Free State every adult white male is a full burgher, having
a vote for the President, who is chosen for five years. The Transvaal
Republic has no woman suffrage amid its hand-to-hand struggles.

To comprehend the condition of European governmental affairs, one must
follow the condition of things produced by the struggle of socialistic and
anarchistic elements. Between the King on the one hand, and these forces
on the other, the true Liberal parties are slowly progressing toward free
institutions; both aristocratic and anarchistic movements being more
favorable than liberalism to woman-suffrage aspirations.

The countries where woman has full suffrage (save in the United States)
are all dependencies of royalty. They are: The Isle of Man, Pitcairn's
Island, New Zealand, and South Australia. The most important of these, New
Zealand, was once a promising colony, but it has been declining for a
quarter of a century. The men outnumber the women by forty thousand. The
act conferring the parliamentary franchise on both European and Maori
women received the royal sanction in 1892. At the session of Parliament
that passed the act a tax was put upon incomes and one upon land, so that
a desperate civilization seemed to be trying all the experiments at once.
Certainly, woman suffrage in New Zealand was not adopted because the
Government was so stable, so strong, so democratic, that these conditions
must thus find fit expression. [Footnote: The Australasian colonies are
taking steps toward the formation of a Federal Union. While this book is
in press news comes that the Federal Convention, by a vote of 23 to 12,
has refused to allow women to vote for members of the House of
Representatives.]

South Australia not only gives women full suffrage, but makes them
eligible to a seat in Parliament. The colony is a vast, mountainous,
largely unsettled region, with a high proportion of native and Chinese,
and, in 1894, had but 73,000 voters, including the women. The Socialistic
Labor movement, which has played a large part in Australasian politics,
here succeeded in dominating the government. There was an attempt to
establish communistic villages with public money, a proposal to divide the
public money _pro rata,_ and one to build up a system of state life-
insurance; and taxes were to be levied on salaries, and on all incomes
above a certain point. It was found that the sixty thousand women who were
authorized to vote throughout Australia assisted the socialistic schemes
that are hindering progress and that tend to anarchy and not to
republicanism. There is a royal Governor, and suffrage is based on
household and property qualifications. It is an aristocratic and social
combination, not a triumph of democratic ideas or principles. Dr. Jacobi,
in her "Common Sense applied to Woman Suffrage," says: "The refusal to
extend parliamentary suffrage to women who are possessed of municipal
suffrage, does not mean, as Americans are apt to suppose, that women are
counted able to judge about the small concerns of a town, but not about
imperial issues. It means that women are still not counted able to
exercise independent judgment at all, and, therefore, are to remain
counted out when this is called for; but that the property to which they
happen to belong, and which requires representation, must not be deprived
of this on account of an entangling female alliance. This is the very
antipodes of the democratic doctrine, perhaps also somewhat excessive,
that a man requires representation so much that he must not be deprived of
it on account of the accident of not being able to read or write!"

With Dr. Jacobi's interpretation, I will deal later. What I wish now to do
is, to call attention to her admission of the fact that woman suffrage in
England and in her colonies is not democratic, and to connect it with the
other fact that no republic, from that of Greece to our own, has
introduced it, although manhood suffrage has been universal in Switzerland
for many years, and in France since 1848.

So it would seem that under a monarchical system, with a standing army and
a hereditary nobility to support the throne, the royal mandate could be
issued by a woman. Any Queen, as well as the one that Alice met in
Wonderland, could say, "Off with his head!" But when freedom grew, and the
democratic idea began to prevail, and each individual man became a king,
and each home a castle, the law given by God and not by man came into
exercise, and upon each man was laid the duty of defending liberty and
those who were physically unfitted to defend themselves.

Let us turn now to our own country. Technically, at least, women possessed
the suffrage in our first settlements. In New England, in the early days,
when church-membership as the basis of the franchise excluded three-
fourths of the male inhabitants from its exercise, women could vote. Under
the old Provincial charters, from 1691 to 1780, they could vote for all
elective offices. From 1780 to 1785, under the Articles of Confederation,
they could vote for all elective offices except the Governor, the Council,
and the Legislature. The comment made upon this by the Suffrage writers
is, that "the fact that woman exercised the right of suffrage amid so many
restrictions, is very significant of the belief in her right to the
ballot-box." My comment is, that the same lesson we have learned in Europe
is repeated here with wonderful emphasis. Under the transported
aristocracy of churchly power in the state, they shared the undemocratic
rule. When freedom broadened a little, and, under a system that still
acknowledged allegiance to the British Crown, all property-holders or
other "duly qualified" colonists could vote, they still had the voice that
England grants to-day, the voice of an estate. When liberty took another
step and a league was formed of "firm friendship" in which each Colony was
to be independent and yet banded for offensive and defensive aid, the
women were retired from the special vote on the result of which lay the
actual execution of the law. But this country was not yet a republic, or
even a nation. Washington himself said that the state of things under the
Articles of Confederation was hardly removed from anarchy. In 1789 a
constitution was adopted, which made the American people a nation. Its
preamble read: "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a
more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity,
provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure
the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Under this
Constitution the last vestiges of churchly political rule, and of
property-qualification for voting, have gradually disappeared. New Jersey
was the last State to repeal her property-qualification laws. In 1709 she
made "male freeholders" who held a certain amount of property the only
voters. In 1790 her Constitution, through an error in wording, admitted
"all inhabitants" with certain property to vote. This was in force until
1807, when an act was passed conferring the suffrage upon "free white male
citizens twenty-one years of age worth fifty pounds proclamation money,
clear estate," etc. From 1790 to 1807 a good many women, generally from
the Society of Friends, took part in elections. After 1807 they attempted
to do so, as owners of property. Finally, that qualification for the male
voter was done away with, and with it the woman-suffrage agitation
disappeared.

State after State, in carrying out the compact of the Federal Republic,
had inserted the word "male" into the Constitutions that embodied the
American conception of a more vital and enduring freedom.

But there are now four States of the Union where women have full suffrage,
a few where they have a measure of municipal suffrage, and many where they
have the school suffrage. What bearing do these facts have upon my claim
that woman suffrage is undemocratic?

The States where they have full suffrage are Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and
Idaho. How far was its introduction into these States the result of
advanced legislation in accord with true republicanism? Utah Territory was
the first spot in the country in which the measure gained a foothold, and
that was not believed by its introducers to be a part of the United
States. The Mormons who founded Salt Lake City supposed themselves to be
settling on Mexican territory, outside the jurisdiction of American law.
Woman suffrage was almost coincident with its beginnings, and it came as a
legitimate part of the union of state and church, of communism, of
polygamy. The dangers that especially threaten a republican form of
government are anarchy, communism, and religious bigotry; and two of these
found their fullest expression, in this country, in the Mormon creed and
practice. Fealty to Mormonism was disloyalty to the United States
Government. Thus, the introduction of woman suffrage within our borders
was not only undemocratic, it was anti-democratic.

Woman suffrage was secured in Wyoming by means that bring dishonor upon
democracy. Wyoming was organized as a Territory in 1868. Many of its
native settlers were from Utah. For its vast, mountainous extent of nearly
98,000 square miles, the census gave a population of only 9,118 persons.
Of these the native-born numbered 5,605, foreign-born, 3,513. The males
numbered 7,219; the females, 1,899. The "History of Woman Suffrage"
records the fact that the measure was secured in the first Territorial
legislature through the political trickery of an illiterate and
discredited man, who was in the chair. Mr. Bryce, in "The American
Commonwealth," alludes in a note to the same fact. Women voted in 1870. In
1871 a bill was passed repealing the suffrage act, but was vetoed by the
Governor, on the ground that, having been admitted, it must be given a
fair trial. An attempt to pass the repeal over his veto was lost by a
single vote. Certainly, the entrance of woman suffrage into Wyoming was
not a triumph of democratic progress and principle.

Colorado was admitted into the Union in 1876, and great efforts were made
by Suffragists to secure the "Centennial" State. This resulted in a
submission of the question to the people, who rejected it by a majority of
7,443 in a total vote of 20,665. From the first of the agitation for the
free coinage of silver, Colorado has been enthusiastically in favor of
that measure. In 1892 her devotion to it caused all parties to unite on
that issue and gave the vote of the State to General Weaver, Populist
candidate for President, and to David H. Waite, Populist candidate for
Governor. The question of woman suffrage was resubmitted to the people at
this election, and the constitutional amendment concerning it was carried
by a majority of only 5,000 in a total vote of 200,000. Neither that
movement nor its results present triumphant democracy.

In 1894 the Populist party of Idaho put a plank in its platform favoring
the submission of a woman-suffrage amendment to the people. In 1896 the
Free Silver Populist movement swept the State. A majority of the votes
cast on the Suffrage question were cast in its favor, but not a majority
of all the votes cast at the election. The supreme courts have generally
held that, in so important a matter, a complete majority vote was
required, but the Supreme Court of Idaho did not so hold, and woman
suffrage is now established in that State. This, also, is hardly a success
of sound democracy.

The subject of woman suffrage has lately been dealt with by two States
that represent republican progress at its best. They are New York and
Massachusetts. In the former State a Constitutional Convention in 1894
gave an impartial hearing to the subject, and decided not to submit to the
people an amendment striking the word "male" from the State Constitution.
Massachusetts at its State election in 1895 asked the people to vote upon
the question of extending municipal suffrage to women, and the answer was
given in a heavy adverse majority. Fewer than four in one hundred women
qualified to vote on the subject voted in its favor, and half a million
women declined to vote at all. A majority of over 100,000 votes was cast
against it by men. Utah and New York, Wyoming and Massachusetts, which
States do Americans hold up as nearest their model? In which have women
made most progress, and showed themselves most likely to understand their
rights, privileges and duties?

During the late Presidential election the issues passed the boundary that
separates party politics from patriotic faith. For months preceding that
struggle the Suffrage body had conducted the most efficient campaign in
its history. When the test came, California voted for sound money against
repudiation, for authority against anarchy, by a small majority, and threw
its ballots heavily against woman suffrage. With the enthusiastic help of
its woman voters, Colorado gave its electoral voice 16 to 1 against sound
money and sound Americanism. Which State can claim that its action rings
truest to the stroke of honest metal in finance and in defence of national
honor?

A few States have extended municipal suffrage to woman. It is generally
local and restricted Only in Kansas is there full municipal suffrage. Dr.
Jacobi, in her "Common Sense," says: "Municipal suffrage in Kansas demands
no property qualification, and its exercise therefore does not differ in
the least from that required in a Presidential election." This is a
mistake, for the difference is essential and illustrates the undemocratic
character of woman suffrage. Municipal suffrage in Kansas, like the
Territorial suffrage in Wyoming, was given by legislative act, and could
be done away with by another legislative act without appeal to the people,
or any change of the Constitution. It did not touch the vital question
whether women, in a democracy, could form a component part of the
government. Mrs. Stanton well understood that difference. Kansas had long
possessed local municipal suffrage when, in 1894, the question of granting
full suffrage, by constitutional amendment, was submitted to the people.
Mrs. Stanton then wrote: "My hope now rests with Kansas. If that fails
too, we must trust no longer to the Republican and Democratic parties, but
henceforth give our money, our eloquence, our enthusiasm to a People's
party that will recognize woman as an equal factor in a new civilization."
There was enough leaven of republicanism working then to cause the old
fighting-ground, the free-soil State, to reject the amendment by a popular
majority of 35,000. To the "People's Party" in Kansas woman suffrage may
look for the most striking illustration of its results. Where municipal
suffrage could be secured only by constitutional enactment, and was so
secured, it would differ merely in degree from presidential suffrage; but
it never has been so secured in any State except those that give full
constitutional suffrage. It is on a par with school suffrage, except that
legislative enactment extends the vote to town and city matters.

The history of the school suffrage affords another proof of the
incompatibility of republicanism and constitutional suffrage for woman.
Dr. Jacobi recognizes the difference between constitutional and school
suffrage when she says: "Women continually sign petitions for this
privilege, till startled by the discovery that it also means something
else. It means, however, in the State of New York, according to the
decision of the Supreme Court, that woman can only enjoy this privilege
thoroughly if empowered by constitutional amendment to vote for all
officers as well as for school commissioners." The States that have
refused to comply with the Suffragists' demand for the elective franchise,
the most progressive States, have been first to grant school suffrage,
under constitutional limits. The twenty-seven odd States that grant school
suffrage have had different methods of dealing with the question, because
their laws differ, but both the positive proof of its being granted, and
the negative proof of its being withheld, tell the same story in regard to
the fundamental principle involved. This is shown strikingly in the
situation in Kansas. Women have full municipal suffrage, and the Supreme
Court of that State decided that they could vote for school treasurer,
which was a charter office, but could not vote for County Superintendent
of Schools, because that office was provided for in the Constitution. The
school suffrage may or may not have a property qualification attached.
That makes no difference. The difference is the essential one between
delegated power and sovereign power. The States differ so widely in their
methods of dealing with municipal as well as school legislation, that only
a study of the laws of each State will reveal the situation. In Ohio, in
1895, for instance, the Legislature passed a bill enabling women to vote
on a municipal tax-levy, which the courts held was unconstitutional, while
they granted votes on license and other local questions.

In answer to the question whether, in Massachusetts, a woman could be a
member of a school committee, the Supreme Court returned the following
decision in 1874: "The Constitution contains nothing relating to school
committees; the office is created and regulated by statute; and the
Constitution confers upon the General Court full power and authority to
name and settle annually, or provide by fixed laws for naming and
settling, all civil officers within the Commonwealth the election and
constitution of whom are not in the Constitution otherwise provided for.
The question is therefore answered in the affirmative." The Supreme Court
of New York, in 1892, held that "School Commissioners are constitutional
officers within Article II. part 1 of the Constitution, and consequently
the law of 1892 giving women the right to vote for them is void." The case
was that of Matilda Joslyn Gage. The office of School Commissioner was
created after the adoption of the Constitution, and it was therefore urged
that the Constitution did not bear upon it; but the Supreme Court further
decided that the law gave the Legislature the right to appoint or to elect
the Commissioner; and as they had decided that the office should be
elective, the women could not vote for that office. They vote for
district-school officers under various local permissions or limitations.
In a case brought to decide the right of women to vote for County
Superintendent of Schools the Supreme Court of Illinois, in 1893, held
that, as the office was designated in the Constitution as elective, women
could not vote for it. The decision further said. "The votes for State
Superintendent of Instruction, and County Superintendent, are provided for
by law, and the Legislature cannot change the law. It may be that it is
competent for the Legislature to provide that women who are citizens of
the United States and over twenty-one may vote at elections held for
school directors and other school officers not mentioned in the
Constitution." Later, the Supreme Court held that women were entitled to
vote for school trustees, as "no officer of the school district is
mentioned in the State Constitution."

The Supreme Court of Ohio, in 1894, held that the provision of the act of
April 24, 1894, conferring upon women the right to vote at elections of
certain school officers, is valid, such right being within the legislative
power to provide for the establishment and maintenance of public schools,
and not within Article V. part 1, of the Constitution, which limits the
right to male citizens. Judge Shauck says: "The whole subject of the
public schools is delegated to the Assembly. As the common-school
organization is wholly a creation of the Legislature, it is in the power
of the Legislature to determine the qualifications of an elector and
office-holder in it." In upholding his ruling, he cited similar decisions
from the Supreme Courts of Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Massachusetts,
Michigan, and Iowa.

This rapid survey suggests, it seems to me, that, instead of being "a
legitimate outgrowth of the fundamental principles of our government,"
woman suffrage is really incompatible with true republican forms. Pre-
civilized conditions, aristocratic tendencies, the forces that would
destroy government--these appear to be its natural allies. We must study
more closely its connection with representative government the better to
comprehend this portentous truth.




CHAPTER III.


WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC.


The writers of the "History of Woman Suffrage" give the following account
of the founding of their Association. In July, 1848, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha O. Wright, and Ann McClintock issued an
unsigned call for a convention, which was asked to consider the social,
civil, and religious condition and rights of woman; and in preparation for
the meeting, they wrote a "Declaration of Sentiments," which was adopted
by the assembly. They say, in describing the writing of this declaration:--
"The reports of Peace, Temperance, and Anti-Slavery conventions were
examined, but all alike seemed too tame and pacific for the inauguration
of a rebellion such as the world had never before seen. We knew women had
wrongs, but how to state them was the difficulty, and this was increased
from the fact that we ourselves were fortunately organized and
conditioned.... After much delay, one of the circle took up the
Declaration of 1776, and read it aloud with spirit and emphasis, and it
was at once decided to adopt the historic document, with some slight
changes. Knowing that women must have more to complain of than men under
any circumstances possibly could, and seeing the Fathers had eighteen
grievances, a protracted search was made through statute books, church
usages, and the customs of society to find that exact number."

In such solemnly puerile fashion did they work out a travesty on one of
the most august utterances ever penned. A young man who was present
remarked: "Tour grievances must be grievous indeed when you are obliged to
go to books in order to find them out." He might have added, "And they
must be false indeed when you have to found most of your charges on dead-
letter statutes and outgrown usages and customs."

The Preamble of their Declaration reads: "When, in the course of human
events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to
assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which
they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of
nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a
course."

The declaration is as follows: "We hold these truths to be self-evident:
That all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights
governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of
the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to
it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its
foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as
to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should
not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while
evils are suffer able, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to
which they were accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to
reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such
government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has
been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such
is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to
which they are entitled. The history of mankind is a history of repeated
injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct
object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this,
let facts be submitted to a candid world." Then follows a categorical
parody of the eighteen grievances, which will be duly considered in this
and later chapters.

After thirty years of Suffrage effort, the leaders say that this
instrument contained all that the most radical have ever claimed. The
Fathers of the Revolution say in their Preamble: "When, in the course of
human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the
political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume
among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the
laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the separation." The Mothers of the Woman's Rebellion say:
"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion
of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position
different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which
the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect for
the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that
impel them to such a course." The strained and ridiculous attitude
produced by ignoring the essential difference between a political movement
and a sex movement is visible in every line, and yet that instinct which
finds for a new cause its appropriate channel never carried more truly
than in this presentment of the ultimate purpose of woman suffrage. The
Fathers were met to dissolve the relations that bound their land
politically to a foreign power, and to form a separate and equal nation.
The Mothers were met to dissolve the relations that bound their sex
politically to man, and to form a separate and equal sex organization. The
Fathers proposed to free men, women, and children from the yoke of
England. The Mothers proposed to free women and girls from the yoke of
men. It is suggestive to consider the "slight changes," between the two
Declarations.

The Fathers of the Revolution begin their protest by saying: "We hold
these truths to be self-evident:--That all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The Mothers
of the Woman's Rebellion add nothing to the meaning, but detract greatly
from the force of its expression, when in their parody they say: "We hold
these truths to be self-evident: That all men and women are created equal,
and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These women
of all in America were the first to belittle themselves by seeming to
assume that in a revolutionary document that was promulgated to declare a
determination to wrest from tyranny the liberty that was an inalienable
right for all, they and their sex were excluded because the generic term
"man" was employed in relation to another inalienable right, which was
about to be set forth,--that of revolution against intolerable tyranny.
The Americans who framed that instrument would have been the last men in
the world to assert that women were not the equals of men. They were not
discussing abstract human or sex conditions. They met "to institute a new
government." The Mothers of the Woman's Rebellion had an inalienable right
to meet "to institute a new government," if they believed as sincerely as
did the Fathers of the Revolution that "a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinced a design to
reduce them under absolute despotism." Life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness were their natural and God-given rights. If they truly believed
that these were trampled upon by government, they might be justified in
revolting and attempting to form a new government. That they did not so
believe, seems to be proved by their statement that "they knew that woman
had wrongs, but how to state them was the difficulty, and this was
increased from the fact that they themselves were fortunately organized
and conditioned." The Declaration of Independence meant war against the
ever-growing encroachment of despotism. The gauntlet was thrown down at
the feet of a king by his subjects. The Declaration of Sentiments meant
war against the whole social order as then constituted. The gauntlet was
thrown down at the feet of man by those who declared him to be a
determined foe.

They had not the remotest notion of "instituting a new government," far
from it; they relied upon the old government to sustain them in making
their attempted "rebellion" a revolution. Without the backing of the
state's defence, they had no expectation or hope of enforcing any new
enactment they might desire. They were gladly consenting to be governed,
in order to prove that they withheld consent.

Should woman suffrage prevail, the foundation principles of democracy
would have to be overthrown and "a new government instituted" in which the
power should be delegated and not direct, if the nation thus formed was to
"assume among the powers of the earth a separate and equal station." The
leaders of the Suffrage movement well understood that they claimed no
inalienable right to institute a new government, and this is again shown
in another "slight change" made by them. The first count in the suffrage
indictment against all men, but especially against those of the American
Republic, reads as follows: "He has never permitted her to exercise her
inalienable right to the elective franchise." The Fathers made no claim or
suggestion that the suffrage was an inalienable right, or a right at all.
Not only is there nothing to intimate that voting was a natural right, but
from that day to this it has been the theory and the practice of our
Government to control the suffrage. The fact that "governments were
instituted among men" for the purpose of securing inalienable rights,
proves that in the opinion of the Declarers the method of instituting a
government was not in itself inalienable. Governments to secure certain
inalienable rights are instituted among men, wrote Jefferson, "deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed." This was not the
first government founded upon "consent of the governed." The English
government had been so founded, but our fathers now refused their consent.
That particular government could no longer exist for them with their
consent. In their judgment, it had become destructive of the proper ends
of all government, and so they proclaimed that the inalienable right to
liberty made it--to use the words of the Declaration--"the right, the
duty, of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to
institute a new government."

In the New York Constitutional Convention of 1867, Mr. George William
Curtis defended the proposition so to amend the Constitution as to extend
the suffrage to women. In the course of his eloquent remarks he said: "The
Chairman of the Committee asked Miss Anthony whether, if suffrage was a
natural right, it could be denied to children? Her answer seemed to me
perfectly satisfactory. She said simply, 'All that we ask is an equal and
not an arbitrary regulation. If _you_ have the right, _we_ have it.'" To
me it seems to discredit the logical powers both of Miss Anthony and of
Mr. Curtis that one should have made this reply and the other should have
rested content with it. That was a pertinent question, and it was not
answered at all. To say "if you have the right, we have it," is not to
tell whether one thinks children should have it. As a matter of fact, an
agitation of "the rights of minors" arose from the discussion of "natural
right," and also an agitation for "minority representation" that is
continued to this day. Mr. Curtis added: "The honorable Chairman would
hardly deny that to regulate the exercise of a right according to obvious
reason and experience is one thing, to deny it absolutely and forever is
another." To regulate a law is to abolish it, either relatively or
absolutely, for some, and to maintain it for others. When the State of New
York says that no alien who has not been naturalized shall vote, that no
boy under twenty-one shall vote, that no person resident in one town or
ward shall vote in another, that no criminal or pauper shall vote,--it
acts on the natural principle of self-defence, which contravenes the dogma
of a natural right of any one to the suffrage. On that principle it would
be impossible for the Congress to impeach a President; to forbid, as it
did, those who had been in rebellion from voting; or to deny the suffrage
to a child or to any human being. Government itself becomes impossible.
Judge Story, whom Suffrage writers claim as favorable to their cause on
other grounds, says that the right of voting has always been treated as a
granted and not a natural right, derived from and regulated by each
country according to its ideas of government. Both Federal and State
courts have decided again and again that there is no such thing as a
natural right to suffrage.

The "consent of the governed" certainly meant something very different to
our fathers, and to our statesmen, and to ourselves, from what it could
mean to any other government on earth. Although the phrase itself may have
been a euphemism which sprang from Jefferson's sympathy with the mighty
rumblings of feeling that preceded the French Revolution, still, it was
certainly meant that, so far as they could make it so, there should be
vastly more consenting by popular vote than had been dreamed of in the
mother country. But it did not mean that each and every individual in the
state must consent to each and every law that governed him; for not only
has no government ever been instituted which derived "just powers" in that
way, but none ever will be, for there never can be such unanimity. It did
not mean that every individual must consent to be governed somehow, by
some scheme of government; for its laws were carefully framed so as to
compel the external allegiance of those who never consent--the criminal
and the anarchist. It did not mean even that consent, in the sense of
agreement, was expected from a large body, or a small body, as the case
might happen, of those who held views opposed to the policies that were
controlling at any given time. It meant just what Jefferson meant in that
other dictum of his: "The will of the majority is the natural law of every
society, and the only sure guardian of the rights of man." Together they
interpret each other, and are worthy of our Declaration and our Bill of
Rights.

The inalienable right to liberty in all mankind forbids the right of
anarchy in any of mankind; and the question of woman suffrage, strange as
it may appear, actually narrows itself down, as it seems to me, to the
question whether we shall have democracy or anarchy. Democratic government
is at an end when those who issue decrees are not identical with those who
can enforce those decrees.

But, after all, the claim to suffrage as a natural right has been
practically abandoned by those who first made that claim. Their next
proposition was, that it was a universal right, springing from the
necessary conditions of organized society, and so should be granted to
woman as a member of that society. They say in their Declaration: "He
deprived her of the first right of a citizen--the elective franchise."
Chief Justice Waite of the United States Supreme Court decided that
citizenship carried with it no voting power or right. The same decision
has been handed down by many courts in disposing of test cases.

It seems to me quite as evident that what is now called universal manhood
suffrage does not rest upon any belief by the state that this is "the
first right of a citizen," because no one doubts that if the time came
when a majority deemed that the preservation of the state depended upon
disfranchising a number of voters, they would be disfranchised although
they remained citizens. The Suffrage leaders have, in theory at least,
also abandoned the claim to suffrage on the ground of their universal
right as citizens. A proof of this is seen in the fact that at various
times they have suggested the extension of suffrage under qualification.
Among the latest that I have noticed, is an address of Mrs. Stanton's to a
Suffrage Convention, held in 1894, in which she proposed the following:
"Resolved, that the women of New York petition the Legislature of the
State to extend the suffrage to women on an educational qualification."
She must therefore believe that the Legislature has the _legal_ right to
qualify it for men; and to withhold it from women is but an extension of
the right to qualify suffrage, because it only says: "We do not consider
woman citizens qualified to be voters." Writing a year ago, Mrs. Stanton
said: "It is the duty of the educated women of this Republic to protest
against the extension of the suffrage to another man until they themselves
are enfranchised!" Thus it would appear that Mrs. Stanton does not believe
in universal suffrage. A Suffrage speaker in New York not long ago said
naively: "We [the women, when enfranchised] will vote to withhold the
suffrage from the ignorant." She did not explain what would happen if the
ignorant voted not to have the suffrage withheld; nor did she appear to
realize that she was practically admitting that the present voters have
the right to withhold the suffrage from those whom _they_ consider
unfitted for it.

But it is not true that American women did not, and do not, "consent to be
governed." They have always consented loyally and joyfully. From the time
of the Boston Tea Party down to the Civil War, and in such times of peace
and prosperity as were indicated by the Columbian Exposition, when the
Government formally asked the assistance of its woman citizens, they
showed their consent by their deeds, and only the suffrage faction treated
the invitation to share in the Exposition after the immemorial fashion of
a discontented element. And the Suffragists themselves consent to be
governed every time they accept the protection of the law or invoke it
against a debtor; for they thereby acknowledge its proper application to
themselves if the case were reversed.

The second count in the list of political grievances runs: "He has
compelled her to submit to laws in the formation of which she had no
voice." This was not true, for the women who wrote that sentence were free
to use their voices in regard to every law they desired to affect, and
circumstances have proved that they were sure of being heard, and, if the
law were just, and for the general good, of assisting materially to
establish it. At the very time when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia
Mott were writing that indictment against the United States Government,
Dorothea Dix was presenting a memorial to the National Congress asking for
an appropriation of five hundred thousand acres of the public lands to
endow hospitals for the indigent insane. That bill failed to pass, but in
1850 another bill, which she presented, asking for ten millions of acres,
passed the House and failed in the Senate merely for want of time to
consider it. Four years later a bill making appropriations of the ten
millions of acres to the separate States passed both houses, and President
Pierce vetoed it, because he believed the general Government had no
constitutional power to make such appropriations. She then went to the
Legislatures of the States, with the result that is so well known. Rhode
Island, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana, and North
Carolina founded lunatic asylums, and the work was begun which is
culminating in the separation of the insane from the criminal, the women
from the men, in every town and county of the land. The right of petition
is not only as open to women as to men, but because of the non-partisan
character of their claims and suggestions they find quicker hearing. Miss
Louise Lee Schuyler has been more successful in securing the enactment of
laws for which she presented the need than any one politician in the State
of New York, before whose Legislature they have both pleaded,--he with a
vote which had to contend against other votes, she with a voice that spoke
the united mind of a body of philanthropic women. There was no unjust law
which the Suffrage Association could not have changed during these fifty
years, had it cared to try, and indeed its members make the boast that
many of the changes are their own. Change and improvement of laws was not
their aim. It was a vote upon changing or not changing laws that they
sought for. The difference is world-wide.

The third count in the indictment runs: "He has withheld from her rights
which are given to the most ignorant men--both natives and foreigners."
Dr. Jacobi represented the Suffrage cause before the Special Committee of
the Constitutional Convention of New York State in 1894. After drawing, in
fine and truthfully glowing words, a picture of woman's progress under the
institutions and laws of the United States, she said: "For the first time,
all political right, privilege and power reposes undisguisedly on the one
brutal fact of sex, unsupported, untempered, unalloyed by any attribute of
education, any justification of intelligence, any glamour of wealthy any
prestige of birth, any insignia of actual power.... To-day, the immigrants
pouring in through the open gates of our seaport towns, the Indian when
settled in severalty, the negro hardly emancipated from the degradation of
two hundred years of slavery,--may all share in the sovereignty of the
State. The white woman,--the woman in whose veins runs the blood of those
heroic colonists who founded our country, of those women who helped to
sustain the courage of their husbands in the Revolutionary War; the woman
who may have given the flower of her youth and health in the service of
our Civil War--that woman is excluded. To-day women constitute the only
class of sane people excluded from the franchise, the only class deprived
of political representation, except the tribal Indians and the Chinese."
To the same effect the editors of the "Suffrage History" say: "The
superiority of man does not enter into the demand for suffrage; for in
this country all men vote; and as the lower orders, of men are not
superior to the higher orders of women, they must hold and exercise the
right of self-government on some other ground than superiority to woman."
Here it would seem that Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony had been thinking,
but they never followed their own thought to its inevitable conclusion.
Universal manhood suffrage does relieve the men of this country from the
unjust aspersion the women of the Suffrage movement put upon them, that
they excluded women on account of inferiority.

No native American, who by the very fact of that nativity is bound to
support the Constitution of the United States, and no foreign-born citizen
who has taken the oath of allegiance to it, has a right by his vote to do
anything that will imperil or impede the carrying out of its principles
and its commands. "The establishment of justice, the insurement of
domestic tranquillity, provision for the common defence, security in the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," cannot be perfected
or maintained without the present exercise and the reserve power of
manhood strength. This Government laid aside all "attribute of education,
or glamour of wealth, or prestige of birth," and committed its life to the
keeping of its defenders. In this land, the vote is the "insignia of
actual power," but it is only the insignia; the power to defend themselves
and those who make country and home worth defending, lies with the
individual defenders. To attempt to put it into the hands of those who are
not physically fitted to maintain the obligations that may result from any
vote or any legislative act, is to render law a farce, and to betray the
trust imposed upon them by the constitution they have sworn to uphold.
Universal manhood suffrage is the crowning result in the long evolution of
government. Our statesmen of the Revolutionary period did not contemplate
it. But stability was the thing for which they sought--the thing for which
all statesmen of all times have been searching. If a government is not
stable, it is of little consequence that it is full of noble ideals; and
the most far-reaching thought has now grasped the idea that manhood
strength is the natural and only defence of the state. This is the
underlying theory of our Government, the one solid rock on which it rests.
"When any question of governmental policy comes up, we virtually decide
it, sooner or later, by a manhood vote; and as the decision has a majority
of the men of the country behind it, there is no power that can overthrow
it. If we attempt to establish policies or execute laws to which a
majority of the men are opposed, we throw away our one assurance of
stability, and are in constant danger of revolution. Even in the
comparatively brief history of our Republic, there are plentiful instances
to show that a majority of men will not submit to a minority, no matter
how many non-combatants are joined with that minority. To give women a
position of apparent power, without its reality, would be to make our
Government forever unstable.

"This is placing the Christian and civilized Government that stands as an
example of peaceful progress on a foundation of brute force," cries the
Suffragist. The founders of the Woman Suffrage movement apparently did not
take the least account of either the military or the judicial powers that
are provided for in every State constitution, as well as in the Nation's.
They demanded "immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which
belong to them as citizens of the United States," but said not a word
about the duties, disabilities, and money loss involved in the possession
of those rights and privileges. The Fathers of the Revolution closed their
Declaration of Independence from the tyranny of England by pledging "their
lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor" to attain it. The Mothers of
the Woman's Rebellion closed their Declaration of Independence from the
tyranny of man, and especially from the tyranny of the United States
Government, with a pledge to distribute tracts and hold conventions, while
they depended upon the courtesy of the tyrants to protect them in the
peaceful execution of their design. Is it any wonder that the descendants
of the old heroes who had fought their way to our liberties smiled when
the by-laws of the would-be revolt were handed to them?

When the attention of the women was called to the fact that force was
needed, and that women were exempt from military service and jury and
police duty, they answered that "In an age when the wrongs of society are
adjusted in the courts and at the ballot-box, material force yields to
reason and majorities." So successful has our Government been in carrying
out the benign purposes for which its heroes staked their lives, their
fortunes, and their sacred honor, that in ordinary times we see little of
the strength that stands quietly but firmly behind every law's enactment
and every poll's decision. The "strong arm" of the law would lose its
power to compel obedience if behind the decree of judge, jury, and
legislators there was not a sheriff or a body of militia ready to commit
the unconsenting criminal to prison, or to take care of an unruly
minority. At an election, the minority do not acquiesce in the decision of
the majority because the outcome of the vote has convinced them that the
majority were right, and they were wrong. They have not become suddenly
converted to the views of the majority. That decision, as recorded by the
ballot, shows that if the minority do not keep their opinion in abeyance,
there are men enough on the other side to compel them. Civilization has
advanced so far that, instead of blows there are arguments in court,
instead of bullets there are ballots at the polls; but the blows and the
bullets must always be ready, in case the arguments and the ballots are
unheeded. The physical strength that was given to man to use, like every
other gift, for the good of the race, he is so using when he holds it as a
_dernier ressort_ for law and order.

Dr. Jacobi says, in her address, "capacity to bear arms, in fulfilment of
military duty, is not, in the State of New York, reckoned among the
necessary qualifications of voters." The statement is also made by other
Suffragists that "numerous classes of men who enjoy political rights are
exempt from military duty,--all men over forty-five, all who suffer mental
or physical disability, such as the loss of an eye or a forefinger;
clergymen, physicians, Quakers, school-teachers, professors, and
presidents of colleges, judges, legislators, congressmen, state-prison
officials, and all county, State, and National officers; fathers,
brothers, or sons having certain relatives dependent upon them for
support, all of these summed up in every State would make millions who may
be exempted, and therefore there is no force in the plea that if women
vote they must fight." It is not true that any class of voters is exempt.
The State, regulating that matter as it regulates the age and residence of
voters, as long as it has more defenders than it needs for immediate use,
makes demand upon the youngest or strongest, but if it needs them all,
then all must serve. Again, all, whether young or old, perfect or
imperfect, must be reckoned with as elements in making up the count.
Lawless men do not exempt themselves from riot and rebellion because they
are lame or over forty-five. In the South, during the Rebellion, there
were few indeed who did not serve in some capacity. If there were blind
and aged men enough to make a real difference in majorities, Americans
would quickly see the propriety of doing as some republics that have to
stand with arms more "at attention" have done, and exclude them from the
vote.

But, suppose all those mentioned were really exempt, how would that apply
to women? If a like number were counted out, there would still be a goodly
array, from the maiden of twenty-one to the matron of forty-five, from
which to draw. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony write: "Women have led armies
in all ages, have held positions in the army and navy for years in
disguise, have fought, bled, and died on the battlefield in our late war."
The isolated occasions on which they have done so are not such as to
commend the practice, neither do the Suffragists propose seriously to
commend it. Dr. Jacobi, in her address before the Committee of the
Constitutional Convention, says: "We do not admit that exemption from
military duty is a concession of courtesy, for which women should be so
grateful as to refrain from asking for anything else. The military
functions performed by men, and so often perverted to most atrocious uses,
have never been more than the equivalent for the function of child-bearing
imposed by nature upon women. It is not a fanciful nor sentimental, it is
an exact and just equivalent. The man who exposes his life in battle, can
do no more than his mother did in the hour she bore him. And the functions
of maternity persist, and will persist, to the end of time,--while the
calls to arms are becoming so faint and rare that three times since the
Revolutionary War, an entire generation of men has grown up without having
heard them."

This question of military service is not a question of equivalent at all--
sentimental or otherwise; it is a question of the actual service, and as
to the service to the state given by women in bearing sons, the men work
not only to support those sons but to support also their mothers and
sisters, and that far beyond the child-bearing age of the mother.

As to the rareness of the calls, I read of seven wars since the
Revolution, and three insurrections, not counting the riots and strikes at
Chicago, Homestead, Brooklyn, and in the mountains in the West. Dr. Jacobi
said in an article in the "New York Sun," two years ago, "We do not vote
for war." That appears like a quibble, for we vote for what brings, or may
bring it; but neither is it exact in fact. Three times, at least, in our
history men have deposited their ballots in the box, knowing that the
result meant peace or war. These were at the second election of Madison in
1812, the election of Polk in 1844, and that most solemn of all the acts
of our country-men, the second election of President Lincoln. There have
been other elections in which war issues were linked with the decisions,
but in a less direct way.

The same writer says also, "The will of the majority rules, for the time
being, not, as has been crudely asserted, because it possesses the power,
by brute force, to compel the minority to obey its behests; but because,
after ages of strife, it has been found more convenient, more equitable,
more conducive to the welfare of the state, that the minority should
submit, until, through argument and persuasion, they shall have been able
to win over the majority. Now that this stage in the evolution of modern
society has been reached, it has become possible for women to demand their
share also in the expression of the public opinion that is to rule. They
could not claim this while it was necessary to defend opinions by arms;
but this is no longer either necessary or expected." How long is it since
this comfortable state of things was evolved? Has England consented to it?
In view of Venezuela and the Monroe Doctrine it would be necessary to have
her. Has Spain mentioned her resignation of a right to appeal to arms in
case she was not pleased with the conduct of our Government in regard to
Cuba? Does the Sultan know about it, so that in case we see a good fair
fighting chance to help the Armenians he will understand that the ages of
strife are over, and that persuasion has been found more equitable and
convenient than a resort to arms? And the Czar, and the erratic German
Emperor, are they in the evolutionary agreement? Force is just what men
are able to make it. It is not brutish unless it is brutishly used. There
is as much force in the world to-day as there ever has been, but it is
better applied. It is the object of a Christian civilization to persuade
more and more men to come to the defence of good against evil in forms of
government. Despotism and absolutism are corrupt uses of force.
Republicanism and a constitutional government are its nobler uses. But the
force is still behind them, or there would be no power to continue such
liberal forms. During the first Republic, Marathon and Thermopylae saved
the principle of Western democracy against Oriental despotism, Salamis and
Plataea saved Greek letters and Greek art to the continents that were yet
to be. Christianity changed the motive but not the method in evolution;
and, finally in the last great Republic, the American Revolution
proclaimed liberty of thought, the war of 1812 secured American
independence, while, beside the wandering Antietam and on the field of
Gettysburg "green regiments went to their graves like beds" that the Union
might live, and that human slavery might die. Manhood force, led by
intelligence and goodness, is the bulwark of that maternity that must
persist if heroes are to be. Dr. Jacobi's admission that women could not
claim the vote while it was necessary to defend opinions by arms, is a
vital one, for it contravenes her entire argument.

Another plea of the Suffrage leaders is that "men send substitutes, and so
could women." The answer in regard to exempt classes will apply here also,
because in case of need both substitute and substituter are obliged to
serve. During our Civil War the fact that a man had sent a substitute did
not prevent him from being called in the next draft. The state claims both
men as its defenders. But whom do the women propose to substitute? Other
women? No, they propose to substitute men! The Suffragists seriously
suggest that half the population, exempted by nature from military duty,
shall become organic members of a government whose reliance, embodied in
every constitution, is upon the ability and the willingness of its organic
members to do military duty in defence of those constitutions, and that
this exempted half may have it as their sole office, in case of war, to
vote when and where the lives, the fortunes, and the sacred honor of those
other organic members shall be laid down or imperilled. Suffragists seem
to forget, when they boast of Joan of Arc, that the army she led was
masculine.

The English socialist, Mrs. Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, in her addresses in this country two years ago, said: "Woman is
not protected through chivalry, but because the men know that to put women
to the front is national suicide. Woman's part in war is not to wail or
weep, but to furnish the army for the future." Then there is to be an army
for the future! Was there no "national suicide" when over three million
men were "put to the front" in the Rebellion, and more than five hundred
thousand, North and South, laid down their lives, so that through the
veins of this generation runs none of the gallant blood they spilled?
Shall the fathers, and possible fathers, be the only ones to die, if the
mothers and betrothed proclaim themselves no longer desirous of being
protected by such high sacrifice? If women cease to "weep and wail," will
men not cease to be willing to be "furnished by them to the army?"

  "At any cost one good is cheap--
   The soldiers die lest women weep;
   And this reward is great and high--
   The women weep that soldiers die."

Women and soldiers cannot transpose their work. The duty of each to the
Republic is equally "great and high;" but in order to be done it must be
kept distinct as now.

But all this is subordinate to the real, vital question. In the passages
just quoted, the writers make an error that is made so persistently by all
Suffragists whenever the argument of force is alluded to, that it seems
necessary to repeat the explanation. They assume that this argument,
briefly stated, is: The men do the fighting, therefore they ought to be
rewarded with the ballot. That is _not_ the argument; it is no matter of
reward. The argument, briefly stated, is this: Stability is one of the
highest virtues that any government can possess, and perhaps the most
necessary. It can have no stability if it issues decrees that it cannot
enforce. The only way to avoid such decrees is, to make sure that behind
every law and every policy adopted stands a power so great that no power
in the land can overthrow it. The only such power possible consists of a
majority of the men. Therefore, the only safe thing for the Government to
do is, to carry out the ascertained will of a majority of the men. This
does not always secure ideally good laws, but it does secure stability and
avoids revolution. The majority may blunder; but they are the only power
that can correct their own blunders.

But war does not call for the only form of public service. There are
others provided for in the National and State constitutions, which are
constant and exacting. They are jury, police and militia duty. When a boy
reaches twenty-one the law says to him, "You are my servant." If a fire
breaks out, the foreman can legally lay his hand on the boy's shoulder,
and say, "Help to put out this conflagration." When the law is broken, the
sheriff can say to him, "Help me make this arrest." When a turn of the
judicial wheel brings out his name, he must serve the state on a jury; if
a riot occurs, he can be called out to quell it; and if a war arises, he
can be drafted to fight against the country's enemies. There is not a
single act of defence to which the voter was subjected by law when the
Constitution was framed, to which he is not subject now, and subject
because he is a voter. The vote is not given to him as a reward for
standing ready to give this service to the state; it is a recognition by
the state that, as he must stand ready to defend it, he should assist in
establishing the laws which it may call upon him to enforce. As he has
assisted to frame them, he cannot refuse to defend them. Woman's only
relation to this defence is that of beneficiary, and therefore her
relation to the laws with which that defence is associated must be one of
advice and not of control. Fortunately for her, advice may prove sometimes
to be control of the most satisfactory kind, a kind that admits of mental
power and does not exact physical.

The statement is further made by Suffragists that "though woman needs
protection of one man against his whole sex, in pioneer life, in threading
her way through a lonely forest, on the highway, or in the streets of a
metropolis on a dark night, she sometimes needs, too, the protection of
all men against this one. But even if she could be sure, as she is not, of
the ever-present, all-protecting power of one strong arm, that would
be weak indeed compared with the subtle, all-pervading influence of just
and equal laws for all women. Hence woman's need of the ballot, that she
may hold in her own right hand the weapon of self-protection and defence."
The possession of the ballot has not been able to secure for men "the
subtle and all-pervading influence of just and equal laws," and despite
his holding the ballot in his own hand, man has had to hold also a more
apparent weapon if he visit a striker's camp or meddle with an anarchist
riot. Something more tangible than protective influence is needed to make
the public streets of this city safe for women in broad daylight. Again,
they say that "Wisdom would suggest division of labor in peace as well as
in war." Wisdom would have no chance to make such a suggestion, if women
attempted to do the same work as do men, in the same way. There is true
division of labor now, in peace as well as in war.

Suffragists mention as a final indignity the extension of the suffrage to
the negro. Their protest only serves to suggest another forcible
illustration of the fact that law and the enforcement of law may be
different things. The suffrage is not extended to the negro. The Congress
of the United States voted that it should be so extended; and while the
Government stood behind his vote with its military power, the negro voted.
But no one pretends that he has done so, to any practical extent, since
that time. Unarmed, the negro finds that he cannot enforce his own vote
against the will of white men armed to the teeth. The "all-pervading
influence of just and equal laws" cannot enforce it for him. Would the
women be any better off, if the men chose that they should not exercise
the vote? Who would enforce it?

This fact and argument show how little arbitration has to do with the
practical decision concerning suffrage. Suffrage writers and speakers harp
upon the thought that arbitration will take the place of force. That
method of settling disputes cannot come too quickly, but it has not come
yet. It has no real bearing on the organization of the state as resting
upon the civil and military service of its citizens. England consented to
arbitrate with the powerful United States, but refused to arbitrate with
defenceless Nicaragua in a far less important matter. Congress has
seriously considered exterminating the remnant of the beautiful herd of
seals that once played in our Northern Pacific waters, because British
subjects have continued, in violation of the Arbitration treaty, to kill
the animals with cruelty. Behind arbitration, as behind all law and order,
military power must always stand and must sometimes be used. One more
proof that the vote is not the real power, but only its insignia, lies in
the fact that legislation has not been able to put an end to strikes and
riots. Laws that forbid them are passed with all due form; but when they
come, as come they do, the reading of the riot act is suspended and the
regiments are ordered to Chicago, or Buffalo, or Brooklyn, or Homestead,
or Cripple Creek, or Cleveland, or the Indian country. The force of those
bodies was not "brutal," it was physical power obeying mental; and unless
mental power can command physical, there is no way in which mental power
can enforce its decrees in government. There are now facing us tremendous
moral issues, which presage tremendous struggles; and a very notable
example of the dangers that would attend woman suffrage is suggested by
them. If women had the power to create a numerical majority when there was
a majority of the law's natural and only defenders against them, they
might soon precipitate a crisis that would lead to bloodshed, which they
would be powerless either to prevent or to allay. Would the majority of
men submit to the minority of men associated with non-combatants? American
history furnishes no reason for supposing that they would. The Dorr War in
Rhode Island is a case in point, in local matters. I am neither an
alarmist nor a believer in war as a panacea; but if we discuss this
subject at all, we must discuss it with facts and not fancies in our
minds.

Dr. Jacobi again says, in her book: "It may be said, for it has been said,
that the objection to seeing a vote of seven hundred men overcome by a
coalition of three hundred men with eight hundred women, lies in the fact
that the defeated minority knows, if it had a free hand and was allowed to
use fisticuffs, it could pound into a jelly a majority composed so largely
of women. It would feel, therefore, sullen, restive, and justly indignant,
that it should be prohibited from using this power and obliged to submit
to a merely nominal force and supremacy."

The objection to seeing seven hundred men defeated by a coalition of three
hundred men with eight hundred women, lies in the fact that the defeated
minority knows that it has a free hand, and that nothing less than eight
hundred men could prevent it from using its physical power, were it so
inclined. Only a force and supremacy that was real, and not nominal, could
make it to submit. The rhetorical trick of belittling the matter by
speaking of it as "fisticuffs" will not pass in this discussion. When the
South Carolina negroes on election day looked into the rifle-barrels of
the Red-shirt clubs, it was no matter of fisticuffs. When every statesman
in our country was eagerly seeking a peaceful solution of the Hayes-Tilden
dispute, it was not fisticuffs that they feared. When the Dostie
convention was broken up and its leaders murdered in New Orleans, it was
not by means of fisticuffs. When the Chicago anarchists threw their bomb
into the ranks of the policemen in Haymarket Square, they were not playing
at fisticuffs. When the rail way strikers in Pittsburg stopped the trains,
"killed" the locomotives, and burned the freight, there was no fisticuffs
about it. And when a Southern minority refused to abide by the result of
the election of 1860, and the Northern majority shouldered muskets and
went down and compelled them to, not the most flippant writer would have
thought of calling it fisticuffs. All these are simply readily recalled
instances of the necessity for power in the enforcement of law.

She goes on to say: "But is it only in such a hypothetical case that a
minority would know it could, if allowed to resort to physical force,
shiver to fragments the majority? The burly brakemen in railroad strikes
would, probably, in a fair hand-to-hand encounter, be much bested over all
the stockholders of the road,--weakened, not only because they included
women in their midst, but also by sedentary habits and predominately
indoor occupations. Why do they not try this way of settling their
difficulties? Why do not the classes in England, who still remain entirely
disfranchised, and with whom rests so much physical strength, drop their
fists into the balance as Brennus did his sword, and cut short the futile,
womanish discussion? The answer is ready in every one's mouth. It is not
that it cannot be done, but that, on the whole, people are all agreed that
it is best it should not be done. It is not that physical force is
respected less, but that mental force is respected more."

I reply that both these things have been attempted over and over again,
and the agreement of all the wise and good people that it is best that it
should not be done cannot prevent it. Behind the burly brakemen who have
seized the train, and the stockholders to whom it lawfully belongs, there
lies a power greater than all the brakemen and stockholders together. We
call it the power of law. It is, in fact, the power of a sovereign people,
who, having made that law, are able to enforce it against the breakers of
it. It is necessary, in the discussion of this point, to have clearly in
mind the difference between sovereign power and delegated power. When a
member of a stock company attends the annual meeting and casts one vote
for every share that he holds, he is exercising delegated power. The
sovereign people, acting through their representatives in the legislature,
have delegated to the company the power to regulate its affairs in this
way, and guaranteed to each shareholder this privilege. Should a
combination of some of the shareholders attempt to prevent one from
exercising it, he would appeal to the court, and behind the court stands
the power of the people, many times larger than any stock company that
exists. On the other hand, when men go to the polls on election day, they
exercise, not delegated, but sovereign, power. There is no greater power,
above and beyond themselves, to regulate their actions. The enfranchised
classes in England do drop their fists into the balance, and, as a result,
we have seen the extensions of suffrage that marked the years 1832 and
1848, and the reason some classes are still unfranchised is, that the
monarchy that wills their unfranchisement has, as yet, more power at
command than those who would enfranchise them. Mental and moral force is
more respected with every rolling year, because those who respect it have
been able to obtain control of the physical power that can force its
decrees upon those who do not respect it.

The third count in the indictment is: "Having deprived her of the first
right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without
representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all
sides." As, in securing the exact number of grievances mentioned by the
Fathers, the Mothers were compelled to string out their distresses
somewhat, I will quote the next count in the indictment, and consider
these two together. "After depriving her of all rights as a married woman,
if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a
government which recognized her only when her property could be made
profitable to it."

The many-sided oppression, and the deprivation as a married woman, belong
in other chapters. The remaining portions of the two counts may be summed
up under the familiar cry: "No taxation without representation." What did
that just accusation mean when our fathers uttered it in regard to English
tyranny? Did they mean that their property was taxed, and they had no
redress? The phrase originated with Patrick Henry, who read to the
Virginia House of Burgesses the decision gleaned from a study of "Coke
upon Lyttleton," that "Englishmen living in America had all the rights of
Englishmen living in England, the chief of which was, that they could only
be taxed by their own representatives," and on that was founded the
resolution adopted by them that the colonies could not be lawfully taxed
in a body in which they were not represented; for the colonies, as well as
individuals, had no vote in Parliament. They meant that their property
could not be so taxed, and they meant far more. The more that they meant
was embodied by Jefferson in the first draft of the Declaration of
Independence, when he said: "Can any one reason be assigned why a hundred
and sixty thousand _electors_ in the island of Great Britain should give
law to four million in the States of America?" John Hancock meant that and
more when he said: "Burn Boston and make John Hancock a beggar, if the
public good requires it." He was offering his taxed property to defend the
liberties of the four millions against the hundred and sixty thousand
electors. The refusal of the majority to be ruled longer by the minority
was the main motive of determination not to submit. But at that time all
voting was connected with a tax on property, and so was the suffrage
established by these men. And under those property-tax laws women who held
property could vote. It was when taxation ceased to go with
representation, that the women ceased to vote. There is now no connection
between taxation of property and representation. When people were allowed
votes in proportion to the amount of property they held, and could vote in
different counties and States, there was a connection, and that law gave
the rich man more voting power than the poor man. But all aristocratic
qualification was done away with, and the government came to rely solely
on the strength of individual men for its defence, instead of upon men and
women with money enough to raise soldiery. There is a money tax levied on
the property of men and women alike; and in return for the payment of this
tax the property of both men and women is made secure against unlawful
injury. In order to make it secure, the state lays, upon men alone, a
service tax, and with that tax goes representation, or the vote. This
service tax does not fall upon woman, and it cannot be demanded of her; so
it is not true that "Man has taxed her to support a government which
recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it." He
has, in return for the money tax, so guarded her property through the
service tax on men that it is of profit to her, which without that guard
it could not be.

The tax on property is collected from that of minors and unnaturalized
citizens, resident or non-resident, and to all these classes, as well as
to non-voting women, is given the right of petition and legal redress of
whatever sort. The men do not have "equal rights" in regard to public
control of their taxable property, if equal rights means that each man
shall be able to say what shall be done to, or with, or about, the
property on which he pays taxes. The penniless voter can have as much to
say as to whether a railroad shall cross the lands of a millionaire as the
millionaire himself. At every town election the minority are unheeded, so
far as the vote goes, and women with property interests would be no better
off if they secured votes in the only way they can be secured--one voice,
one vote.

Lydia Maria Child said, in a letter reprinted in the Woman's edition of
"The Rochester Post-Express" in 1896: "I reduce the argument to very
simple elements. I pay taxes for property of my own earning and saving,
and I do not believe in taxation without representation. As for
representation by proxy, that savors too much of the plantation system,
however kind the master may be. I am a human being, and every human being
has a right to a voice in the laws which claim authority to tax him, to
imprison him, or to hang him."

Not only has every human being in the United States a right to a voice in
the laws that claim authority to tax him, imprison him, or hang him, but
he can exercise that right in all portions of the United States where the
laws that claim this authority are able to enlist sufficient physical
force to execute the authority claimed. Where they have not that power,
neither the voter nor the non-voter has any redress against violence
offered to property or limb or life. Gerrymanders and lynchings in many
parts of our land prove the truth of this. The mastery of men who abide by
and execute law is not a mastery over women for the sake of the spoils of
taxation or the disposal of life, but the mastery over lawlessness
everywhere in order that tax-payers of either sex, native or alien, voters
or non-voters, may be enabled to have that voice in the laws which, as
human beings, is their right. As to the "vote by proxy," if Mrs. Child
could not trust her husband, her son, her brother, or best friend to look
after her interests, she certainly could not trust the carrying out of her
wish, as expressed in her vote, to the men who cast in their ballots by
her side.

In return for the taxes paid, women get just what men get, namely, roads,
gas, water, schools, etc. The women who have refused to pay their taxes
because they did not vote, have been treated with a leniency that proves
the courtesy of the law-enforcers. They would have made short work with
men who were non-voters, who had tried the same tactics. When a man's vote
is challenged and refused, he does not dream of saying: "I shall not pay
my tax," and the assessor never inquires whether he votes or desires to
vote. The men in the District of Columbia do not find their unfranchised
condition assuaged by the smallness of their account with the assessor.
Neither do they realize or believe that they are governed without their
consent, or exempt from police or military duty. This is a striking proof
that the vote is not a reward for service. They are male American
citizens, over twenty-one years old, and they must contribute service
simply and solely for that reason. This is the price they pay for
established order.

For, after all, what is government, and what are taxation and
representation? When and how did society consent to be governed? When did
it agree to be taxed and to be represented? The awful story of history,
from the slaying of Abel to the slaughter of half a million men in the War
of Secession, is the answer. It never did agree, it has not yet agreed.
The struggle of civilization is the effort to make it agree. Implanted in
the bosom of man by his Maker is the belief in his individual freedom, of
worship as concerns that Maker, of protection as concerns man. Side by
side with that, was implanted the principle of surrender of a part of that
freedom for just cause. There came a time when men said: "Let us use
arguments instead of force in these decisions," and some form of vote was
instituted. With this they fought and voted by turns, as they set up or
knocked down emperors, kings, popes, and presidents. War has been changed
by progress because man has changed; but main strength to drive home the
truths gained on the moral battlefield is still the power behind the
throne of the National conscience, even in this enlightened land.

Though the Mothers of the Rebellion did not ask, and apparently did not
think of asking, to share the military duties incident to suffrage, we
must discuss it, if we are to consider the subject thoroughly. To be a
voting citizen, is to be a possible soldier citizen. There is no way of
fulfilling the moral part of the duty, and leaving unfulfilled the
physical, and it is cowardly to attempt it. So the question comes, could
American women be soldiers? They could, for a few in disguise were in
service during the War of Secession. Titled women of Europe are honorary
officers; but this playing soldier is a relic of Middle-Age chivalry.
Women can be seriously destructive; but no one will claim that organized
military duty is really practicable for them. And the suffrage proposition
does not look to anything of the kind. The Suffragists demand equal vote
in sending their fathers, brothers, sons, husbands, and lovers to the
military field of action, and propose to be absolutely exempt from equal
share in the duty that that vote now lays upon male voters. Before the law
there could be no distinction of duty on account of race, sex, or previous
condition of servitude. The "emancipated" woman would be emancipated into
that which the Declaration of Independence expressly called for, "the
right and privilege of the people to bear arms."

The constitution of Utah says that the State militia is to consist of
"able-bodied males," and I have not yet heard that the women who vote
there have insisted that the word "male" be struck out of that clause of
the Constitution. By no means, every woman expects to be exempt. After
women had succeeded in getting the framers of the constitution of every
State to strike out the word "male," from its voting qualification, they
would expect them to insert the word "male" in mentioning the service
qualification. O Equality, where is thine equal for granting privilege!
Such chivalry, it would seem, is an insult to the power and intelligence
of the women of Utah, who celebrated their "enfranchisement" by a
convention to favor the free coinage of silver, 16 to 1, and whose
behavior on that occasion was, to say the least, boyish. The tax upon time
and strength, and the money loss of citizen service, Suffrage leaders did
not once allude to. They did not, and do not, propose to pay even a double
money tax on account of expected exemption. Little as this would have
availed to meet the actual situation, it would have shown their good will,
and some comprehension of justice, while they talked of an absurd and
intangible "right."

But, it might be said, "Utah did insert such a clause into her
constitution, and so could other States. It is, after all, common sense
that rules, and men can legislate what they please." The law passed by
Utah, which provided that "male voters must be tax-payers, while female
voters need not be," was decided to be unconstitutional, and this one also
may well be. At the end of Utah's Constitution, as of every other, and of
every bill that is passed, occurs or is understood something like this
sentence from the United States Constitution: "The Congress shall have
power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." Is it the
"appropriate legislation" that gives to Congress, or to any other body,
the power to enforce the article decided upon by a majority? We know that
it is not. It is the men who can enforce it if it is disobeyed. Every day
we see that some laws are "dead letters," not because the legislation
appropriate to their enforcement was not perfect, but because they are not
enforced. When Mr. Roosevelt became Chairman of the Police Commission
there had been for some time a bill, duly legislated, for the enforcement
of the Sunday closing of liquor saloons in New York city. But the saloons
had not been closed. Mr. Roosevelt summoned the police, and proceeded to
enforce the law. If they had refused, the militia stood behind them. Do
you say, "Very well, if Miss Willard had been Chairman of the
Commissioners she could have done the same." There would have been this
great difference. Mr. Roosevelt himself was as much subject to serve at
the call of the law, as were the policemen. He was not a dictator merely,
he was part and parcel of the strength that he invoked. The reason for
obedience rested on the same ground in each case--service in which each
stood equal. It is a specious form of mistake to suppose that "men can
legislate just what they wish to." They can legislate only what the
majority decrees, and they can legislate effectively only what they have
power to enforce. Had the saloon-keepers refused to obey Miss Willard, not
she, but Mr. Roosevelt and other men would have had to enforce the law.

It is absurd in itself, and annoying to Suffrage advocates, to talk about
military duty for woman. Her very nature forbids it. So it is, and so it
does, and therefore it is equally absurd to talk about her attempting to
assume duties whose very nature forbids their being done by her. Were
voting only a matter of obtaining the _opinion_ of women on matters that
concern the country, or concern them (and all matters that concern the
country concern them), all precedent gathered from the treatment of
American women by American men goes to prove that no urging would have
been required to secure for them as large a measure of suffrage as was
consistent with their duties and their desires.

In 1879 an earnest discussion on Woman Suffrage was held in the
legislature of Massachusetts. Four propositions were pending. The first
was that a constitutional amendment should be submitted to the people,
which, if accepted, would decree to women full suffrage. Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, Lucy Stone and William Lloyd Garrison argued the case for the
women. Col. Higginson said that if ability to fight were made the test of
voting "a large proportion of men, especially of professional men, would
be disfranchised. The report of the Surgeon-General of the United States
showed that of the thousand clergymen who volunteered or were drafted
during the war, 945 were declared to be unfit for service. Of the lawyers
who volunteered or were drafted, 650 were rejected, and of the physicians,
745." He added, "You must go down to the mechanics and laborers before you
can find a class of men a majority of whom will fulfil this requirement.
Of the clergymen who preach that woman suffrage is wrong because women can
do no military duty, only one twentieth would themselves be accepted for
such service. There is but one class of men better fitted than mechanics
for military service, and that is the prize-fighting class, and therefore
the constituency which sent John Morrissey to Congress was the only
constituency that ever carried out this idea to the end." Col. Higginson,
who played a gallant part in the Civil War, should have remembered what
poor fighting material the country found in such men as formed the
constituency of John Morrissey. The regiment of Zouaves raised in New York
City by Billy Wilson, the pugilist, was found to be so mischievous, as
well as worthless, that it was shipped to the Dry Tortugas in order to rid
the army of a pest. On the other hand, many of the most gallant as well as
most orderly soldiers came from dry-goods stores and apothecary shops. The
pugilists and roughs are the very ones that are good for nothing as
soldiers; they belong to the class that makes soldiery necessary.

When Col. Higginson can use such logic, it is no wonder that women have
repeated the argument. The question was not whether, because certain men
who were naturally looked upon by the Government as its defenders, and as
such were called upon to fight, proved physically unable, but whether the
Government had a right, because of its very existence, to call upon those
men, and in case of need, to say to them "Put yourself into physical
condition for this service." If it had such a right, by what law under the
constitution of the United States could Lucy Stone ask to vote and not
expect to have her military fitness inquired into, and be asked to put
herself into physical condition for it?

Recalling the action of her grandfather, she, better than some other
women, might have realized the necessity of force for government. Her
defiant spirit might well have descended from that ancestor who led four
hundred men in Shays's Rebellion, when, in the State before whose tribunal
she was speaking, he assisted in preventing court sessions, and swelled
the ranks of the rioters who were decrying taxes and calling for fiat
money, in a land that was impoverished and was struggling for a sound
financial standing after a war that had been waged to guarantee the
blessings of freedom to her and to her children.

As a matter of fact, many of those men whom Col. Higginson referred to as
deemed unfit, did go into immediate training, and "muscular Christianity"
would now present to the Surgeon-General a different showing. It was one
of the surprising things, in a statistical way, to find that city-bred
boys stood the marching and exposure of the Civil War campaigns better
than their country brothers, and that the yard-stick turned into as
effective a sword as the pruning-hook. Garrison, who maintained for so
many years that men should not vote because the government was founded on
force, had the grace not to speak on this phase of the question, but he
said it was cruel that women should be disfranchised and classed with
paupers, idiots, and criminals. Senator Hayes asked him if there was no
"difference between a person who was disfranchised and one who never had
been enfranchised?" and added that "he could see no argument for woman
suffrage in the proposition that certain classes of men were not permitted
to vote." Neither can I.

The argument for woman suffrage which bases it upon a fancied grouping of
women with the vile and brainless element in the country, appears to me to
be at once the weakest and the meanest of all. When the United States
Government invited its woman citizens to share in making the Columbian
Exposition the most wondrous pageant of any age, they responded from every
town and hamlet by sending of their best. But the national Suffrage
Association, as its official exhibit, gave a picture of the expressive
face of Miss Willard surrounded by ideal heads of a pauper, an idiot, and
a criminal, with a legend recording their belief that it was with these
that American men placed American women. So false a picture must have
taught the thoughtful gazers the opposite lesson from the one intended. It
could have told them that the United States Government had at least
guarded one trust with sacred care. The pauper was excluded from the
ballot as not being worthy to share with freemen the honor of its defence.
The unfortunate was excluded by an inscrutable decree of Providence. The
criminal was excluded as being dangerous to society. The women were exempt
from the ballot because it was for their special safety that a free ballot
was to be exercised, from which the pauper and the criminal must be
excluded. They were the ones who have given to social life its meaning and
its moral, the ones who give to civic life its highest value.

The authors of the "History" so often referred to, in answer to the claim
that "government needs force behind it, and those who make the laws must
execute them, and a woman could not be a sheriff or policeman," say:
"Woman might not fill these offices as men do, but might far more
effectively guard the morals of society and the sanitary conditions of our
cities." A "moral guard" might be an excellent thing to ward off the
ghosts in a country burying-ground, but would hardly prove effective
against the riot of a Tammany mob on the night of an exciting election. It
is absurd to speak in such fashion of work that is needed every hour. The
crust of our civilization is very thin--how thin, the nation learned
during the campaign just passed. Like a tempest from a clear sky, or one
of their own cyclones, burst an influence from a portion of the West and
South, that would have overturned the Government. Men struck fanatically
and misguidedly at the integrity of the Supreme Court, at the power of the
United States to hold jurisdiction over its own public affairs where they
conflicted with State right, at the currency that gave the country ability
to be honest at home and abroad, at the prosperity and honor of every
citizen.

Fifteen years ago Suffrage leaders wrote in view of the wonderful advance
of woman: "The broader demand for political rights has not commanded the
thought its merits and dignity should have secured." If this was true, it
had not been for lack of having the demand pressed home upon Congress and
upon every State and Territorial legislature (save in most of the South),
in season and out of season, by every device known to politics, as well as
by a steady and impetuous flow of literature and petitions. How have these
bodies answered this long appeal? It would take too much time and space,
even were it of value, to follow the course of its ups and downs through
all these years, but I mention first the fact that no State in New England
has ever granted constitutional, or even municipal suffrage, although in
some of the old thirteen it could have been done by an act of the
legislature, a constitutional amendment not being needed. These are some
of the figures for the past few years:

In Vermont, in 1892, the House passed a municipal suffrage bill--yeas 149,
nays 83. In 1894 the House defeated a similar bill by a vote of 108 to
106, and refused reconsideration by a vote of 124 to 96. Thus a favorable
majority of 66 in 1892 was changed to an adverse majority of 28 in 1894.

In Massachusetts, in 1894, the House passed a municipal suffrage bill by a
vote of 119 to 107. In 1895 it defeated a similar bill, the vote standing,
yeas 97, nays 137, on the question of carrying the bill to a third
reading. In the same year an act was passed permitting all persons
qualified to vote for school committee to express their opinion at the
state election by voting "Yes" or "No," to the question: "Is it expedient
that municipal suffrage be granted to women?" Not one woman in four voted
in favor of the proposition, although if suffrage has any traditionary
power outside of New York State, that power should have been felt in
Massachusetts.

In Maine, in 1893, the Senate passed a municipal suffrage bill, which was
defeated in the House. In 1895 the House passed a municipal suffrage bill,
which was defeated in the Senate.

In New Hampshire, in 1895, the House refused a third reading to a
municipal suffrage bill, by a vote of 185 to 108.

In Connecticut, in 1895, the Senate rejected a House municipal suffrage
bill, while a presidential suffrage bill did not reach a vote. And in
Rhode Island a proposition for a suffrage Constitutional amendment was
referred to the next legislature.

All these States had granted school suffrage and could grant municipal
suffrage by act of the legislature. In 1893 municipal suffrage bills were
defeated in Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Full
suffrage bills were defeated in Arizona and New Mexico. A township
suffrage bill was defeated in Illinois, a license suffrage bill in
Connecticut, and a village suffrage bill in New York. In that year, also,
the Supreme Courts gave decisions adverse to suffrage laws. In 1893 a bill
was defeated in the United States Senate which proposed to give women the
municipal vote in the Cherokee Outlet. The vote stood 40 to 9.

In Washington Territory the Legislature passed a law conferring suffrage
on woman in 1883; but this was declared invalid by the courts in 1887,
because its nature was not sufficiently defined in its title. It was re-
enacted in 1888, and again declared invalid by the United States
Territorial Court, on the ground that the Act of Congress which organized
the Territorial legislature did not empower it to extend the suffrage to
women. In 1889 the people, in forming their State constitution, decided
against suffrage.

In 1894, in the election of November 6, Kansas defeated a constitutional
amendment granting full suffrage, by a majority of 34,827.

In Iowa, in the same year, the Senate defeated a proposition to submit a
suffrage constitutional amendment to the people. In 1895, bills for full
suffrage and for municipal suffrage again failed to pass, and the question
was submitted to the people in 1896, and resulted in defeat.

In 1895, also, a township suffrage bill was twice defeated in Illinois.

In Indiana a proposition to strike the word "male" out of the
Constitution, was not even reported from the committee to which it was
referred.

In the same year, in Kansas, a bill passed the Senate which proposed to
confer upon nine specified women the full suffrage in response to their
petition. The Senate also passed a bill conferring upon women the vote for
presidential electors; but neither ever reached a vote in the House. In
Michigan, the same year, a proposition to submit a constitutional
amendment was defeated, and a similar resolution in Missouri was also
defeated. Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin, and
South Carolina also defeated propositions to submit the question to the
people in 1895.

Since January, 1897, Nova Scotia, two Territories, and ten States have
dealt with the suffrage proposal, and all but one of these have rendered
adverse decisions. In Nova Scotia an old bill was reconsidered, and a
larger majority was obtained against it. The territories are Arizona and
Oklahoma. The states in which it was defeated are Iowa, Nevada, Nebraska,
Kansas, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, and California. The last two had
given it heavy defeats but a few months previously. Indiana's Supreme
Court handed down an adverse decision. The favorable state was Washington,
where the Legislature voted to submit an amendment to the people next
year.

Certainly, the question cannot be said not to have received the attention
that any vital subject might have claimed, and the answers show that, as
comprehension of the meaning of democracy has grown, and as liberty of
thought and action for men and women has increased, the proposition to
cast an unequal burden, not upon a disfranchised class, but upon an
unfranchised sex which in every class has its own correlative and equal
duties, rights, and privileges, is losing ground.

But, it is answered, look at the suffrage triumphs in Utah State and
Idaho. Let us look at them more closely. It is my opinion that a few more
such triumphs would end in its utter overthrow. Utah introduced suffrage
by a simple legislative act. Woman suffrage was abolished in Utah
Territory by Federal statute, because it was found to be sustaining the
Mormon Church and the institution of polygamy. The Suffragists profess to
hold in abhorrence churchly and polygamous rule. Here was an opportunity
for them to say to the Government: "This is not what we meant by suffrage,
nor what we desire suffrage to be used for. We approve this real
disfranchisement." Did they do anything of the kind? Far from it. In 1876
they passed the following: "Resolved, That, the right of suffrage being
vested in the women of Utah by their constitutional and lawful
enfranchisement, and by six years of use, we denounce the proposition
about to be again presented to Congress for the disfranchisement of the
women of that Territory, as an outrage on the freedom of thousands of
legal voters and a gross innovation of vested rights; we demand the
abolition of the system of numbering the ballots, in order that the women
may be thoroughly free to vote as they choose, without supervision or
dictation; and that the chair appoint a committee of three persons, with
power to add to their number, to memorialize Congress, and otherwise watch
over the rights of women of Utah in this regard during the next
twelvemonth."

In 1878 the report of Utah's governor contained the following: "All voters
must be over twenty-one years of age, and must have resided in the
Territory six months, and in the precinct one month. If males, they must
be native born or naturalized citizens of the United States, and tax-
payers in the Territory. A female voter need not be a tax-payer, and if
the wife, widow or daughter of a native or naturalized citizen, need not
herself be native or naturalized!" In 1892 the Utah Commission made to the
Secretary of the Interior a report which gave it as their opinion that the
sanction of the Church had been withdrawn only temporarily in regard to
polygamous practices, and would be restored after a political purpose had
been served. That same year a party was formed calling itself the "Liberal
Party," and it carried Salt Lake City in the first election in which
National party lines were drawn. This was one plank of its platform:
"Anxious as every Liberal is to see every difference adjusted, as anxious
as they are to exercise the utmost privileges accorded to the most favored
Americans, they remember what first caused clashing here was the presence
and control of an unyielding Theocracy and an _imperium in imperio_, and
they cannot fail to note that at the last conference of this theocratic
organization the old assumptions were all renewed." They therefore
deprecated immediate Statehood. The bill granting it passed Congress in
1894. The Republican, Democratic and Populist parties in Utah all favored
Statehood, and at the election following the Constitutional Convention
these parties all inserted planks favoring free coinage of silver 16 to 1,
demanding the return by government of "real estate belonging to the Mormon
Church," and favoring the retention of woman suffrage.

The women of Utah were greatly in evidence during the late presidential
election. Several of them were candidates for office; but it is a
significant fact that, even in Utah, and even on the Republico-Demo-
Populist ticket, the women's vote ran far behind that for the men. "The
Salt Lake Herald" for November 13, 1896, records the fact that "Woman
suffrage gave Utah to Bryan," and in another place it says: "The women on
both tickets polled a small number of votes." Martha Cannon, who was
elected State Senator, obtained 8,167 votes. The men on the same ticket,
elected to the same office, polled, respectively, 9,875, 9,355, 9,244,
9,036 votes. Mrs. Cannon was on the free silver ticket against her
husband, who was nominated for the same office on the Republican ticket.
Of the other candidates for the senatorships on that ticket, four were men
and one a woman. The men's vote stood: 6,405, 6,197, 6,129, 5,961. The
woman's was 4,692. The only woman put up for State Representative ran
2,000 votes behind her ticket. One man only, "the ex-dog-catcher" of the
county, fell below her. The woman's vote was 4,879, the dog-catcher's
4,325.

I copy from the "Salt Lake Herald" a few sentences taken from an interview
with Mrs. Cannon, State Senator elect. When asked if she was a strong
believer in woman suffrage, she answered: "Of course I am. It will help
women, and it will purify politics. Women are better than men. Slaves are
always better than their masters." "Do you refer to polygamy?" was asked.
"Indeed I do not," she answered. "I believe in polygamy. My father and
mother were Mormons, and I am a Mormon.... A plural wife isn't half as
much of a slave as a single wife. If her husband has four wives, she has
three weeks of freedom every single month.... Of course it is all at an
end now, but I think the women of Utah think, with me, that we were better
off in polygamy.... Sixty per cent. of the voters of this State are women.
We control the State.... What am I going to do with my children while I am
making the laws for the State? The same thing I have done with them when I
have been practicing medicine. They have been left to themselves a good
deal.... Some day there will be a law compelling people to have no more
than a certain amount of children, and the mothers of the land can live as
they ought to live." This is the character and opinion presented by the
highest State official that woman suffrage has as yet given to the United
States. Comment upon it seems unnecessary, so far as it would be needed to
express the disgust of the majority of American women at such sentiments
and such a situation. But has any Suffrage speaker or meeting denounced
them, or deprecated the result of the election? I have heard of none. The
National Suffrage Convention, which was held in Iowa, in January, 1897,
had the newly-elected Populist women as guests of honor, and held a
jubilation over the two new Suffrage States--Utah and Idaho. Idaho has
elected a Populist woman or two. The vote in that State in favor of the
gold standard and that against woman suffrage tally within forty-two
votes.

The instinctive alliance of the Woman Suffrage movement with the uncertain
and dangerous elements in our political life is well exemplified by the
campaign in California in connection with the late presidential election.
Mrs. Barclay Hazard, who was almost the sole woman to express publicly the
opposition which the majority of women felt, to the Suffrage idea, has
given me the following clear account of the conditions and result. She
says: "If the advocates of Woman Suffrage give a really frank and truthful
answer to the question, 'What caused the defeat of the movement in the
late campaign in California?' they must reply, 'Public sentiment was
against it.' In all fairness, there is no other reason. Let us consider
the conditions under which the campaign was carried on. In the first
place, the Suffragists were most fortunate in choosing a time when the
whole country, as well as the State of California, was torn by a question
of such vital importance to continued life and well-being that all other
matters were in danger of going by default.

"Second: They were extremely well organized and had command of a campaign
fund of no mean magnitude, which enabled them to keep in the field such
able and experienced agitators as Miss Susan B. Anthony and the Rev. Anna
Shaw, to say nothing of numerous lesser lights.

"Third: There was absolutely no organized opposition to the movement. The
women who disapproved were as a rule entirely unaccustomed to public
speaking and were averse to coming forward in any way. They remonstrated
in private but would not express their views openly.

"Fourth: Last but by no means least, our Suffrage friends may be said to
have had the press of the State with them. The 'Los Angeles Times' (the
most influential paper in the southern part of the State) cannot be said
to have aided the movement, neither did it actively antagonize it beyond
admitting to its columns occasionally letters from the 'Antis.' Yet for
this small opposition I heard an ardent advocate propose that the
Suffragists should boycott the paper!

"Now, was ever a cause fought for under conditions more conducive to
success? 'Every thing,' to use a current slang phrase, 'seemed to be going
their way.' They fully expected to win, and those of us most opposed to
their ideas in private sadly conceded their probable victory. The result
when it came was all the more a surprise and blow to the Suffragists and a
welcome reassurance to the friends of stability and conservatism. The
figures show us that while the stronghold of Populism, the South, went for
the measure, Alameda County turned the scale. One must know California to
realize what that means. Alameda County contains the city of Oakland,
which is admittedly the most respectable and moral city in California; it
also contains the town of Berkeley, which is the home of the University of
California with its large faculty of clever men, most of them from the
East. Yes, it was here in the stronghold of morals and intellect that the
Woman Suffrage movement in California met its fate."

A question constantly and properly asked is: "How does woman suffrage work
where it is exercised?" So far as I can obtain information, where it has
worked at all, it has been detrimental to women and to the State.

Of Wyoming there is much testimony to the fact that during the Territorial
period (1868-'89) women did little voting, and played no appreciable part
in political life. Populism and Free Coinage had begun to play a prominent
part in the whole section when Wyoming was admitted to Statehood in 1890.
At the election that followed its admission there was a fusion that
resulted in the election of a Populist Governor, and such was the riotous
state of feeling that the Governor was obliged to enter the State House
through a broken window. A year later this same Governor, in his annual
message, proclaimed woman suffrage to be a notable success. As a proof, he
pointed to the fact that there were no criminals in the State, and that
the jails were empty. A little research into official documents showed
that there might be other reasons, because the criminals and those guilty
of small offences were at that time lodged in other States, and a year
later, when the authorities took possession of Laramie Prison, given by
the Government, and brought home their evil-doers, they outnumbered, in
proportion to population, those of New Mexico, which certainly should be a
fair place for comparison.

For a time, women served on juries, and there is testimony to the fact
that in many respects they served well. But the practice of calling them
was soon suspended, and never has been renewed. The only public office of
consequence held by them was bestowed by the Republicans but a year or two
ago, when Miss Reel was made State Superintendent of Schools. In our late
crucial election, Wyoming and its woman suffrage gave their voices for
Populism and Free Coinage. The scale hung in the balance. Why, if woman is
a greater political power for good than man, did she not turn it for the
principles which the State had held were best? The true test of the
working of woman suffrage lies in a study of the legislation connected
with it, and this will be presented under its appropriate heading.

The scenes of shameful defiance of law and order in the midst of which
Colorado admitted woman to the ballot are of more recent occurrence and
are fresh in memory. Populism never has played in Colorado the part that
it has in Kansas, but "anything for free coinage" has been the motto, and
in abiding by it the State brought in, and afterward turned out, Gov.
Waite, of disgraceful memory. Again, last year, there was Republican-
Democratic-Populist fusion to beat the gold standard, and much Populist
rule was again the result. One good authority writes me that women "have
introduced an element of order and respectability upon election day that
was never observed before." He says he thinks that, "as a whole, the
people are very much satisfied with woman suffrage and believe that it has
resulted beneficially in so far as it has made politics a little better
than they were." Another says that "the influence of woman in politics did
not prevent the last Republican caucus of Arapahoe Co. from being the most
disgraceful in the history of the State. The Convention, though presided
over by a woman, was completely in the power of the 'gang,' and sent to
Pueblo the most unworthy delegate ever sent." This gentleman also says he
has "heard numbers of intelligent women state that they were sorry the
ballot had ever been given to them." Orderliness at the ordinary elections
is expected here, without calling upon women to act as "moral police" at
the polls. So quiet are they that it has been found practicable to place
coffee-stands in charge of women near some of the booths, when women have
requested it in the hope of preventing drunkenness. A friend said to me
some time ago: "You know that I have been a Suffragist. I am most
thoroughly converted. I have been three months in Colorado. It is enough
to cure any one."

A Denver correspondent of the "Chicago Record," says: "The women of
Colorado took no active part in the recent campaign, but they did not
forget to vote.... The experiment of having women in the State Assembly
did not prove satisfactory, at the last session, and it was quite
generally conceded that there would be no more women sent to that body;
but the Populists won in this county, and on their ticket were three woman
candidates, so the coming session will again have three women as members."

Of course the effect of suffrage in new States is not a criterion of its
effect elsewhere. And whether the effect could be shown to be good or bad,
the main argument would not be touched. The interesting thing to trace is
the affiliations of the movement.


In addition to those that have been mentioned we recall the fact that in
our recent political campaign, four parties that nominated candidates for
President and Vice-President of the United States, had in their
conventions women as delegates and members of committees. They were the
Populist, the Free-Silver, the Prohibition, and the Socialist-Labor
parties. The woman-suffragists of the Prohibition party left the rock-
ribbed champion that had put a Suffrage plank in every platform for years,
in order to go with Free Silver and Populism of the most extravagant type.
These parties also had Suffrage planks. Altgeld and Debs, Coxey and
Tillman were only men, but Mary Ellen Lease furnished to the campaign that
strain of exalted fanaticism that at once points out woman's glory and
woman's danger.

The Suffrage indictment we have been considering is summed up as follows:
"Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one half of the people of
this country, their social and religious degradation--in view of the
unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves
aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred
rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and
privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States."

Dr. Jacobi in "Common Sense" says: "To this very day the survivors of that
group of pioneer women have an abstract way of stating their claim which,
to modern ears, sounds somewhat archaic."

She is not archaic when she says: "During the long ages of class rule,
which are just beginning to cease, only one form of sovereignty has been
assigned to all men--that, namely, over all women. Upon these feeble and
inferior companions all men were permitted to avenge the indignities they
suffered from so many men to whom they were forced to submit."

Mary A. Livermore is not archaic when in the "North American Review" for
February, 1896, she says: "Her physical weakness, and not alone her mental
inferiority, has made her the subject of man. Toiling patiently for him,
cheerfully sharing with him all his perils and hardships, the
unappreciated mother of his children, she has been bought and sold, petted
and tortured, according to the whims of her brutal owner, the victim
everywhere of pillage, lust, war, and servitude. And this statement
includes all races and peoples of the earth from the date of their
historic existence."

I deny the truthfulness of the archaic accusation, and denounce as an
absurdity the bombastic demand. I resent, as an unwarranted insult to
woman and to man, the still more bitter modern representations of woman's
condition and woman's rights in this world, and especially in this
Republic. They are simply false.

Archaic or modern, the dictums of the Suffrage pioneers have been repeated
at their every convention. Overlaid with sentiment as much of the Suffrage
idea has become, contradictory as it is in argument and in statement of
fact, blended as are its sophisms with the real progress of the time,
sincere and well-meaning as are many of its advocates, sex antagonism is
the corner-stone of its foundation. The Woman's Rebellion is a more
complex affair than the American Revolution. The latter was the natural
result of the earnest and united protest, by a large majority of men and
women of the American Colonies, against the tyranny of a monarchical
government. The former was a protest by a small band of women and men
against what they claimed to be universal tyranny. They attacked law and
custom all along the line, and the weapon forever kept in order for the
service was the demand for woman's possession of the ballot. Where she
does not possess it, and has not asked it, her influence is mightiest. The
relation of woman to the Republic is a study worthy the most exalted
patriotism. In it is involved the broader question of her relation to man
and to the destiny of the race. When told of her son's heroism in crossing
the Delaware, Mary Washington said, "George will not forget the lessons I
have taught him." Through the mother's devoted faith and the son's
obedient power, the foundations were laid of a government whose sole
reliance must still be on woman's inspiration and man's willing strength.
These are evidently God's instruments for our Nation's upbuilding.




CHAPTER IV.


WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND PHILANTHROPY.


The extinction of human bondage, more perhaps than any other one event,
has emphasized the progress of the century about to close. Our generation
has witnessed the destruction of serfdom in Russia, and of slavery in
Brazil and the United States. Freedom was gained; but of the enlightened
rulers through whom it was won, two were assassinated and one was exiled
to die. Sacrifice is still the price of liberty.

Much stress has been laid by Suffragists upon the supposed fact that the
Woman-suffrage movement grew up as a logical conclusion from the Anti-
slavery movement. It grew out of it in the sense of having been born in
its midst; but I believe that the truth will be found to be that it was
the most prolific source of the dissensions that marred that noble cause,
and was identified with the small element that adopted wild notions or
used the notoriety gained by opposition to slavery in order to propagate
mischief. The conduct of those who later entered the Suffrage movement
hindered the public work of women from the time of organized effort for
the slave until slavery fell pierced to death amid the horrors of a
fratricidal war. I will take a brief survey of the Anti-slavery struggle
as it blended itself with the doctrines of those abolitionists who were
the earliest and staunchest friends of the Suffrage movement, and compare
it with the statements and claims of the women themselves.

I first refer to the "Life of James G. Birney," by his son, General
William Birney. James G. Birney was an early friend of Henry B. Stanton,
husband of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and with him helped to lay the
foundations of the Free-Soil Party, and later the Republican Party.
General Birney says of his father: "In his visit to New York and New
England, in May and June, 1837, Mr. Birney's chief object had been to
restore harmony among Anti-slavery leaders on doctrines and measures, and
especially to check a tendency, already marked in Massachusetts, to burden
the cause with irrelevant reforms, real or supposed. With this view he had
attended the New England Anti-slavery Convention held at Boston, May 30 to
June 2 inclusive, accepted the position of one of its vice-presidents, and
acted as a member of its committee on business. Rev. Henry C. Wright, the
leader of the No-Human-Government, Woman's-Rights, and Moral-Reform
factions, was a member of the Convention, but received no appointment on
any committee. On June 23, in the 'Liberator' [his newspaper], Mr.
Garrison denounced human governments. July 4, he spoke at Providence, as
if approvingly, of the overthrow of the Nation, the dismemberment of the
Union, and the dashing in pieces of the Church. July 15, an association,
of Congregational ministers issued a 'pastoral letter' against the new
doctrines. August 2, five clergymen, claiming to represent nine tenths of
the abolitionists of Massachusetts, published an 'appeal' which was
directed more especially against the course of the 'Liberator.' August 3,
the abolitionists of Andover Theological Seminary issued a similar appeal.
Among the complaints were some against 'speculations that lead inevitably
to disorganization, anarchy, unsettling the domestic economy, removing the
landmarks of society, and unhinging the machinery of government.' A new
Anti-slavery society in Bangor passed the following resolution: 'That,
while we admit the right of full and free discussion of all subjects, yet,
in our judgment, individuals rejecting the authority of civil and parental
governments ought not to be employed as agents and lecturers in promoting
the cause of emancipation.'"

In his Autobiography, speaking of this time, Frederick Douglass says: "I
believe my first offence against our Anti-slavery Israel was committed
during these Syracuse meetings. It was in this wise: Our general agent,
John A. Collins, had recently returned from England full of communistic
ideas, which ideas would do away with individual property and have all
things in common. He had arranged a corps of speakers of his communistic
persuasion, consisting of John O. Wattles, Nathaniel Whiting, and John
Orvis, to follow our Anti-slavery conventions, and while our meeting was
in progress in Syracuse Mr. Collins came in with his new friends and
doctrines and proposed to adjourn our Anti-slavery discussions and take up
the subject of communism. To this I ventured to object. I held that it was
imposing an additional burden of unpopularity on our cause, and an act of
bad faith with the people who paid the salary of Mr. Collins and were
responsible for these hundred conventions. Strange to say, my course in
this matter did not meet the approval of Mrs. Maria W. Chapman, an
influential member of the board of managers of the Massachusetts Anti-
slavery society, and called out a sharp reprimand from her, for
insubordination to my superiors." John O. Wattles labored hard to
introduce Woman Suffrage into the State Constitution of Kansas. Mr.
Collins worked for it in California in the early days. Mrs. Chapman, who
had embraced Mr. Collins's doctrines, was one of the first pillars of the
Suffrage movement.

Later, when Mr. Douglass determined to establish a newspaper and become
its editor, he was obliged to leave New England, "for the sake of peace,"
he says, as his Anti-slavery friends opposed it, saying that it was absurd
to think of a wood-sawyer offering himself as an editor. In Rochester, N.
Y., he established "The North Star." He says, "I was then a faithful
disciple of William L. Garrison, and fully committed to his doctrine
touching the pro-slavery character of the Constitution of the United
States, also the non-voting principle, of which he was the known and
distinguished advocate. With him, I held it to be the first duty of the
non-slaveholding States to dissolve the union with the slaveholding
States, and hence my cry, like his, was 'No union with slaveholders.'
After a time, a careful reconsideration of the subject convinced me that
there was no necessity for 'dissolving the union between the northern and
southern States;' that to seek this dissolution was no part of my duty as
an abolitionist; that to abstain from voting was to refuse to exercise a
legitimate and powerful means for abolishing slavery; and that the
Constitution of the United States not only contained no guarantees in
favor of slavery, but, on the contrary, was in its letter and spirit an
Anti-slavery instrument, demanding the abolition of slavery as a condition
of its own existence as the supreme law of the land. This radical change
in my opinions produced a corresponding change in my action. Those who
could not see any honest reasons for changing their views, as I had done,
could not easily see any such reasons for my change, and the common
punishment of apostates was mine. ... Among friends who had been devoted
to my cause were Isaac and Amy Post, William and Mary Hallowell, Asa and
Hulda Anthony, and indeed all the committee of the Western New York Anti-
Slavery Society. They held festivals and fairs to raise money, and
assisted me in every other possible way to keep my paper in circulation
while I was a non-voting abolitionist, but withdrew from me when I became
a voting abolitionist."

The Posts, the Hallowells, and the Anthonys were among the first to attach
themselves to the Suffrage movement.

The Grimké sisters, who were intensely interested in the abolition
agitation, followed Garrison to the extreme, and adopted the socialistic
ideas with which his wing became to a large extent identified. They were
also early in the Suffrage cause. In August, 1837, Whittier wrote to them
as follows: "I am anxious to hold a long conversation with you on the
subject of war, human government, and church and family government. The
more I reflect upon the subject the more difficulty I find, and the more
decidedly am I of opinion that we ought to hold all these matters aloof
from the cause of abolition. Our good friend, H. C. Wright, with the best
intentions in the world, is doing great injury by a different course. He
is making the Anti-slavery party responsible in a great degree for his, to
say the least, startling opinions.... But let him keep them distinct from
the cause of emancipation. To employ an agent who devotes half his time
and talents to the propagation of 'no-human or no-family government'
doctrines in connection, _intimate_ connection, with the doctrines of
abolition, is a fraud upon the patrons of the cause. Brother Garrison
errs, I think, in this respect. He takes the 'no-church and no-government'
ground."

Mr. Garrison wrote to the American Anti-slavery Society of his desire to
crush the "dissenters," and Maria W. Chapman wrote: "Why will they think
they can cut away from Garrison without becoming an abomination? ... If
this defection should drink the cup and end all, we of Massachusetts will
turn and abolish them as readily as we would the colonization society."
Henry B. Stanton wrote to William Goodell: "I am glad to see that you have
criticised Brother H. C. Wright. I have just returned from a few months'
tour in eastern Massachusetts, and he has done immense hurt there." A. A.
Phelps, agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery society, wrote: "I write
you this in great grief, and yet I feel constrained to do it. The cause of
abolition here was never in so dangerous and critical a position before.
Mutual jealousies on the part of the laity and clergy are rampant; indeed,
so much so that, let a clerical brother do what he will, it is resolved as
a matter of course into a sinister motive! ... Of this stamp, more than
ever before, is friend Garrison. And Mrs. Chapman remarked to me the other
day that she sometimes doubted which needed abolition most, slavery or the
black-hearted ministry. For this cause alone we are on the brink of a
general split in our ranks.... And as if to make a bad matter worse,
Garrison insists on yoking perfectionism, no-governmentism, and woman-
preaching with abolition, as part and parcel of the same lump."

In 1840, Emerson, in his Amory Hall lecture, said: "The Church or
religious party is falling from the Church nominal, and is appearing in
Temperance and non-resistant societies, in movements of abolitionists and
socialists, and in very significant assemblies called Sabbath and Bible
conventions, composed of ultraists, of seekers, of all the soul and
soldiery of dissent, and meeting to call in question the authority of the
Sabbath, of the priesthood, of the Church. In these movements nothing was
more remarkable than the discontent they begot in the movers.... They
defied each other like a congress of kings, each of whom had a realm to
rule, and a way of his own that made concert unprofitable."

These ideas blossomed, in due course of time, into Socialistic
communities. There was a distinctly Anti-slavery one at Hopedale,
Massachusetts. The founder, Adin Ballou, published a tract setting forth
the objects of the community, from which I make the following extracts:
"No precise theological dogmas, ordinances, or ceremonies are prescribed
or prohibited. In such matters all the members are free, with mutual love
and toleration, to follow their own highest convictions of truth and
religious duty, answerable only to the great Head of the Church Universal.
It enjoins total abstinence from all God-contemning words and deeds; all
unchastity; all intoxicating beverages; all oath-taking; all slave-holding
and pro-slavery compromises; all war and preparations for war; all capital
and other vindictive punishments; all insurrectionary, seditious,
mobocratic, and personal violence against any government, society, family,
or individual; all voluntary participation in any anti-Christian
government, under promise of unqualified support, whether by doing
military service, commencing actions at law, holding office, voting,
petitioning for penal laws, or asking public interference for protection
which can only be given by such force. It is the seedling of the true
democratic and social Republic, wherein neither caste, color, sex, nor age
stands prescribed. It is a moral-suasion temperance society on the
teetotal basis. It is a moral-power Anti-slavery society, radical and
without compromise. It is a peace society on the only impregnable
foundation, that of Christian non-resistance. It is a sound theoretical
and practical Woman's Rights Association." Among other Suffragists, Abby
Kelly Foster was resident at Hopedale. Another community, at Northampton,
was sometimes described as "Nothingarian."

Of the state of things at this time in the Anti-slavery societies, General
Birney says, "The no-government men made up in activity what they lacked
in numbers. While refusing for themselves to vote at the ballot-box, they
voted in conventions and formed coalitions with women who wished to vote
at the ballot-box." Mr. Henry B. Stanton wrote to William Goodell: "An
effort was made at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts society, which
adjourned today, to make its annual report and its action subservient to
the non-resistant movement, and through the votes of the women of Lynn and
Boston it succeeded." A little later, January, 1839, Mr. Stanton wrote
again to Mr. Goodell, as follows: "I have taken the liberty to show your
letter to brothers Phelps, George Allen, George Russell, O. Scott, N.
Colver, and a large number of others, and they highly approve its
sentiments. They, with you, are fully of the opinion that it is high time
to take a firm stand against the no-government doctrine. They are far from
regarding it merely as a humbug." John A. Collins, the Anti-slavery agent
referred to, founded a community at Skaneateles, N. Y., based upon the
following dictums: A disbelief in any special revelation of God to Man, in
any form of worship, in any special regard for the Sabbath, in any church,
disbelief in all governments based on physical force, because they are
"organized bands of banditti," whose authority is to be disregarded, a
disbelief in voting, in petitioning, in doing military duty, paying
personal or property taxes, serving on juries, testifying in "so-called"
courts of justice. A disbelief in any individual property. A belief that
as marriage is designed for the happiness of the parties to it, when such
parties have outlived their affections, the sooner the separation takes
place the better, and that such separation shall not be a barrier to their
again uniting with any one. The community lived two and a half years, and
broke up with a debt of ten thousand dollars. John O. Wattles, who was
associated with Collins in the disturbance referred to by Frederick
Douglass, founded a community in Logan County, Ohio, which was called "The
Prairie Home." They had no laws, no government, no opinions, no
principles, no form of society, no test of admission. They professed to
take for their creed the dictum "Do as you would be done by." The
association broke up in anarchy within a few months. Mr. Collins and Mr.
Wattles were always promoters of the Woman-Suffrage movement.

Mr. Garrison said: "We cannot acknowledge allegiance to any human
government. We can allow no appeal to patriotism to revenge any national
insult or injury." Again he said: "If a nation has no right to defend
itself against foreign enemies, no individual possesses that right in his
own case.... As every human government is upheld by physical strength, and
its laws are enforced at the point of the bayonet, we cannot hold office.
We therefore exclude ourselves from every legislative and judicial body,
and repudiate all human politics, worldly honors, and stations of
authority."

Ralph Waldo Emerson says: "They withdraw themselves from the common labors
and competitions of the market and the caucus.... They are striking work,
and calling out for something worthy to do.... They are not good citizens,
not good members of society; unwilling to bear their part of the public
burdens. They do not even like to vote. They filled the world with long
beards and long words. They began in words, and ended in words."

Charles Sumner said: "An omnibus-load of Boston abolitionists has done
more harm to the Anti-slavery cause than all its enemies."

Angelina Grimké, writing at this time to Mr. Weld, said: "What wouldst
thou think of the 'Liberator' abandoning abolitionism as a primary object,
and becoming the vehicle of all these grand principles?"

In his published volume "Anti-slavery Days," James Freeman Clarke says of
the first Garrison Anti-slavery society: "There was no such excitement to
be had anywhere else as at these meetings. There was a little of
everything going on in them. Sometimes crazy people would come in and
insist on taking up the time; sometimes mobs would interrupt the smooth
tenor of their way; but amid all disturbance each meeting gave us an
interesting and impressive hour. I think that some of the Garrisonian
orators had the keenest tongues ever given to man. Stephen S. Foster and
Henry C. Wright, for example, said the sharpest things that were ever
uttered. Their belief was, that people were asleep, and the only thing to
be done was to rouse them; and to do this it was necessary to cut deep and
spare not. The more angry people were made, the better." Again, in the
same volume, he says, after describing the political Anti-slavery party:
"While these political anti-slavery movements were going on, the old
abolitionists, under the lead of Garrison, Phillips, and others, had
decided to oppose all voting and all political efforts under the
Constitution. They adopted as their motto, 'No union with slaveholders.'
Their hope for abolishing slavery was in inducing the North to dissolve
the Union. Edmund Quincy said the Union was 'a confederacy with crime,'
that 'the experiment of a great nation with popular institutions had
signally failed,' that 'the Republic was not a model but a warning to the
nations;' that 'the whole people must be either slaveholders or slaves;'
that the only escape for 'the slave from his bondage was over the ruins of
the American Church and the American State:' and it was the unalterable
purpose of the Garrisonians to labor for the dissolution of the Union."
Freeman Clarke goes on to say: "Wendell Phillips said on one occasion,
'Thank God, I am not a citizen of the United States.' As late as 1861 he
declared the Union a failure, and argued for the dissolution of the Union
as 'the best possible method of abolishing slavery.' If the North had
agreed to disunion and had followed the advice of Phillips, 'To build a
bridge of gold to take the slave States out of the Union,' slavery would
probably be still existing in all the Southern States. At all events, it
was not abolished by those who wished for disunion, but by those who were
determined at all hazards and by every sacrifice to maintain the Union."

On April 8, 1839, Henry B. Stanton wrote to William Goodell as follows:
"At this very time, and mainly, too, in that part of the country where
political action has been most successful, and whence, from its promise of
soon being triumphant, great encouragement was derived by abolitionists
everywhere, a sect has arisen in our midst whose members regard it as of
religious obligation in no case to exercise the elective franchise. This
persuasion is part and parcel of the tenet which it is believed they have
embraced, that as Christians have the precepts of the gospel of Christ,
and the spirit of God to guide them, all human governments, as necessarily
including the idea of force to secure obedience, are not only superfluous,
but unlawful encroachments on the Divine government as ascertained from
the sources above mentioned. Therefore they refuse to do anything
voluntarily that would be considered as acknowledging the lawful existence
of human governments. Denying to civil governments the right to use force,
they easily deduce that family governments have no such right. They carry
out the 'non-resistant' theory. To the first ruffian who would demand our
purse or oust us from our house, they are to be unconditionally
surrendered unless moral suasion be found sufficient to induce him to
desist from his purpose. Our wives, our daughters, our sisters, our
mothers, we are to see set upon by the most brutal, without any effort on
our part except argument to defend them! And even they themselves are
forbidden to use in defence of their purity such powers as God has endowed
them with for its protection, if resistance should be attended with injury
or destruction to the assailant. In short, the 'no-government' doctrines,
as they are believed now to be embraced, seem to strike at the root of the
social structure, and tend, so far as I am able to judge of their
tendency, to throw society into entire confusion and to renew, under the
sanction of religion, scenes of anarchy and license that have generally
hitherto been the offspring of the rankest infidelity and irreligion."

Again, he wrote: "The non-government doctrine, stripped of its disguise,
is worse than Fanny-Wrightism, and, under a Gospel garb, it is Fanny-
Wrightism with a white frock on. It goes to the utter overthrow of all
order, yea, of all purity. When carried out, it goes not only for a
community of goods, but a community of wives. Strange that such an infidel
theory should find votaries in New England!"

The editors of the "History of Woman Suffrage" say in their opening
chapter: "Among the immediate causes that led to the demand for the equal
political rights of women, in this country, we may note these: First, the
discussion in several of the State legislatures of the property rights of
married women; Second, the great educational work that was accomplished by
the able lectures of Frances Wright, on political, religious, and social
questions. Ernestine L. Rose, following in her wake, equally liberal in
her religious opinions, and equally well-informed on the science of
government, helped to deepen and perpetuate the impression Frances Wright
had made on the minds of unprejudiced hearers. Third, and above all other
causes of the Woman-Suffrage movement, was the Anti-slavery struggle in
this country." By referring to the columns of the secular and religious
press of that period, we find that most of the respectable and
representative opinion of the country was "prejudiced." Halls and assembly
rooms in all the cities were closed against Fanny Wright, not only because
her doctrines were absolutely infidel and materialistic, but because they
were deemed subversive of law, order, and decency. The better portion of
society in the United States was of one mind in its estimate of "The
Pioneer Woman in the Cause of Woman's Eights," as she was called. In the
columns of "The Free Inquirer," a newspaper which she and Robert Dale Owen
established and edited in New York City in 1829, she attacked religion in
every form, marriage, the family, and the State. She pretended to no basis
of scientific investigation, but in a brilliant flood of words endeavored
to sweep away faith in the Bible, the home, the Republic, in favor of
negation, communism, free love. I have place for but a single quotation
from one of her "Fables," published in the "Free Inquirer." It will show
the drift of her work in one direction:

"'Is my errand sped, and am I a master on earth?' said the infernal king
(Pluto). 'Even as I promised,' said the Fury. 'Love hath forsaken the
earth. Under the form of religion I aroused the fears and commanded the
submission of mortals; and our imp now reigns on earth in the place of
Love, under the form of Hymen.' Pluto smiled grimly, and smote his thigh
in triumph. 'Well conceited, well executed, daughter of Night. Our empire
shall not lack recruits, now that innocence is exchanged for superstition,
and the true affection of congenial and confiding hearts is replaced by
mock ceremonies and compulsory oaths!'"

Frances Wright had founded, in 1825, at Nashoba, Tennessee, a community
that had for its professed aim the elevation and education of the Southern
negroes. In describing her object, Miss Wright said: "No difference will
be made in the schools between the white children and the children of
color, whether in education or in any other advantage. This establishment
is founded on the principle of community of property and labor: these
fellow-creatures, that is, the blacks, admitted here, requiting these
services by services equal or greater, by filling occupations which their
habits render easy, and which to their guides and assistants might be
difficult or unpleasing." This form of helotism flourished but three years
on American soil. It is doubly interesting as containing the germs of
communism and anti-slavery that blended themselves in the beginnings of a
movement for suffrage which was directly inspired by Frances Wright.

The editors of the "Suffrage History" say that "above all other causes of
the suffrage movement, was the Anti-slavery struggle in this country."
They add: "In the early Anti-slavery conventions, the broad principles of
human rights were so exhaustively discussed, justice, liberty, and
equality so clearly taught, that the women who crowded to listen, readily
learned the lesson of freedom for themselves, and early began to take part
in the debates and business affairs of all associations. And before the
public were aroused to the dangerous innovation, women were speaking in
crowded promiscuous assemblies. The clergy opposed to the Abolition
movement first took alarm, and issued a pastoral letter, warning their
congregations against the influence of such women. The clergy identified
with Anti-slavery associations took alarm also, and the initiative steps
to silence women, and to deprive them of the right to vote in the business
meetings, were soon taken. This action culminated in a division in the
Anti-slavery Association. The question of woman's right to speak, vote,
and serve on committee, not only precipitated the division in the ranks of
the American Anti-slavery society, in 1840, but it disturbed the peace of
the World's Anti-slavery Convention, held that same year in London. In
summoning the friends of the slave from all parts of the two hemispheres
to meet in London, John Bull never dreamed that woman, too, would answer
to his call. Imagine, then, the commotion in the conservative Anti-slavery
circles in England when it was known that half a dozen of those terrible
women who had spoken to promiscuous assemblies, voted on men and measures,
prayed and petitioned against slavery, women who had been mobbed,
ridiculed by the press, and denounced by the pulpit, who had been the
cause of setting all the American Abolitionists by the ears, and split
their ranks asunder, were on their way to England."

These quarrels, stirred up through the unseemly conduct of men and women,
as we have seen, they were willing to precipitate upon a convention in a
foreign land, a convention, too, which had declared its desire not to
receive them as delegates. Upon the calling of the roll, the meeting was
thrown into excitement and confusion on a subject foreign to that which
brought them together. Wendell Phillips eloquently pleaded for the
admission of the women. The English officers, while showing their personal
courtesy, begged to remind them that the Queen, and many ladies in various
stations, were represented by male delegates, and that to admit the
American ladies would be to cast a slight upon their own active members,
many of whom were present. During the heated discussion Mr. James Fuller
said: "One friend has stated that this question should have been settled
on the other side of the Atlantic. Why, it _was_ so settled, and in favor
of the women." Mr. James G. Birney answered: "The right of the women to
sit and act in all respects as men in our Anti-slavery associations was so
decided in the Society in May, 1839, but not by a large majority, which
majority was swelled by the votes of the women themselves. I have just
received a letter from a gentleman in New York (Lewis Tappan)
communicating the fact that the persistence of the friends of promiscuous
female representation in pressing that practice on the American Anti-
Slavery society, at its annual meeting on the 12th of last month, had
caused such disagreement that he, and others who viewed the subject as he
did, were deliberating the question of seceding from the old
organization."

Lewis Tappan, a founder of the American Missionary Society, was intimately
connected with his brother Arthur in all anti-slavery work. Arthur was a
founder of the American Tract Society, and of Oberlin College, and a
benefactor of Lane Seminary. He established "The Emancipator," and was
president of the American Anti-Slavery Society until compelled, with his
brother Lewis, to withdraw on account of the conduct of the no-government
men and women, and take nearly all the Society with him.

When the vote was taken in the London meeting the women were excluded on
the ground that "it being contrary to English usage, it would subject them
to ridicule and prejudice their cause."

George Thompson then said: "I hope, as this question is now decided, that
Mr. Phillips will give us the assurance that we shall proceed with one
heart and one mind." Mr. Phillips replied, "I have no doubt of it. There
is no unpleasant feeling on our part. All we asked was an expression of
opinion; we shall now act with the utmost cordiality."

But Mr. Phillips had reckoned without his host and hostesses. Mr. Garrison
had not been present at the discussion, but he arrived at this juncture
and took his seat with the excluded delegates. During a twelve-days'
discussion of the momentous cause that had called them together, which he
had professed especially to champion, he took not the slightest part. Such
was his mistaken zeal that he was willing so to stultify himself, and the
women were willing to applaud him in so doing. The spirit that looked upon
the American Constitution as "a covenant with death and an agreement with
hell" was there. The spirit that defied all authority and could confound
liberty of conscience with the formal acts of courtesy between man and
man, was there. The spirit that took for its motto "You cannot shut up
discord" was there. And out of these combined elements, trained in the
school of thought that had treated as tyranny the religious and civil
liberty of the United States, grew directly the Woman-Suffrage movement.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was not a delegate. The delegates were Abby Kelly,
Esther Moore, and Lucretia Mott. Mrs. Stanton was a bride, and in the
immediate party on this, their wedding trip, was Mr. Birney, her husband's
special friend. The writers of the "History" say: "As the ladies were not
allowed to speak in the Convention, they kept up a brisk fire, morning,
noon, and night, on the unfortunate gentlemen who were domiciled at the
same house." Mrs. Stanton had not been identified with any of these
abolition quarrels; but she records that now she took her full share of
the "firing," notwithstanding her husband's "gentle nudges under the
table" and Mr. Birney's ominous frowns across it. In the volume entitled
"Woman's Work in America," in a contribution called "Woman in the State,"
written by Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, she says: "The leaders in the new
[suffrage] movement, Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Stanton, with their husbands,"
did thus and so in originating it. Lucretia Mott's husband was with her as
a silent member of the conventions, but Elizabeth Cady Stanton's husband
is conspicuous for his absence from every list of officers or attendants,
from the inception of the Suffrage movement until his death. He may have
been in perfect sympathy with his wife; but since the names of all the men
already mentioned in connection with the mad "no-civil, no-family, no-
personal government" movement, do appear, and his does not, it is
impossible not to challenge Mrs. Livermore's statement. The last reference
to him in the "History" was as voting on the occasion of the London
meeting, in favor of the women's admission to the World's Convention. No
mention is made of any speech, or of reasons given. Certain it is, that
while Mr. Garrison became the conspicuous standard-bearer for the Woman's
Rights movement, Mr. Stanton became one of the conspicuous bearers of the
standard of the Free Soil and Republican parties, which included some of
Anti-slavery's staunchest friends, who were denounced by Garrison as its
foes.

Thus it seems evident to me that the Woman-Suffrage movement no more grew
logically out of the great discussions on human bondage which began with
Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, and John Jay, and ended
with Sumner, Seward, and Lincoln, than the communes of this country grew
out of the utterances of the Fathers based on the declaration that "All
men are created equal, and are endowed with certain inalienable rights,
among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

It was among those whose mistaken zeal and wild conduct were most
mischievous, that the Suffrage sentiment gathered head. Their lack of
judgment in defying the opinions of their own sex, as well as of the
other, their wrapt forgetfulness of proprieties, which incited mobs and
proved a fine tool for the frenzy of so-called social reformers, brought
contempt upon womanhood as well as upon the cause they advocated. Women,
in the churches and out, were the strength of the Anti-slavery movement;
but not these women. As to the notable meeting in London, had the
delegates been the highest and largest minded and most cultured of their
sex, and had their cause been the noblest, they and it would have been
dishonored by the method of its presentation. American women of to-day
would no more applaud such conduct than did those of fifty years ago.
Women have won lasting public favor and place, while Suffrage has won an
uneasy footing by unenviable methods.

This survey enables us to understand what otherwise would seem most
strange, how the women of the Suffrage movement, in claiming the right of
suffrage, ignored the duties and powers based upon and connected with it--
those that formed the defence which made possible any such nation as ours.
Added to the extreme Quaker doctrine of peace-at-any-price, was the
fanatical notion of the sinfulness of all war, all use of physical force,
and a cool assumption that opinion was law. Mrs. Maria Chapman read, at
one of the early Woman's-Rights conventions, a string of verses that
reveals the absurdity of the situation. It was in reply to "A Clerical
Appeal," issued by the Rev. Nehemiah Adams, whose "South-Side View of
Slavery" received more Anti-slavery attention than it deserved, for it
expressed only his own fantastic ideas. In the "Appeal" he maintains that
women should paint in water colors only, not in oil. Mrs. Chapman says:

  "Our patriot fathers, of eloquent fame,
     Waged war against tangible forms;
   Aye, _their_ foes were men--and if ours were the same,
     We might speedily quiet their storms;
   But, ah! their descendants enjoy not such bliss,
     The assumptions of Britain were nothing to this.

  "Could we but array all our force in the field,
     We'd teach these usurpers of power
   That their bodily safety demands they should yield,
     And in presence of womanhood cower;
   But alas! for our tethered and impotent state,
   Chained by notions of knighthood--we can but debate."

       *       *       *       *       *

  "Oh! shade of the prophet Mahomet, arise!
     Place woman again in her 'sphere,'
   And teach that her soul was not born for the skies,
     But to flutter a brief moment here.
   This doctrine of Jesus, as preached up by Paul,
     If embraced in its spirit will ruin us all."

Mention of Mrs. Chapman recalls her attitude toward Frederick Douglass and
the further fact that he became an advocate of Suffrage. In his "Life and
Times" he says: "I could not meet her [Mrs. Stanton's] arguments except
with the shallow plea of 'custom,' 'natural division of duties,'
'indelicacy of woman's taking part in politics,' 'the common talk of
woman's sphere,' and the like, all of which that able woman brushed away
by those arguments which no man has yet successfully refuted." Mr.
Douglass might have called to mind the fact, to the recognition of which
he had been so thoroughly converted, and which he set forth on page 460 of
his book, when he wrote: "I insisted that the liberties of the American
people were dependent upon the ballot-box, the jury-box, and the
cartridge-box." He forgot that Mrs. Stanton, in defiance of those social
laws that had weight with him, was asking to use the first, to use
partially the second, and to ignore the third, on which both of the others
depend for continuance.

The "History" is dedicated to Harriet Martineau (among other women) as one
who influenced the starting of the Suffrage movement. Turning to Miss
Martineau's "Society in America," published in 1837, I find the following
in her account of the Anti-slavery movement in the United States: "The
progress of the Abolition question within three years throughout the whole
of the rural districts of the North, is a far stronger testimony to the
virtue of the nation than the noisy clamor of a portion of the
slaveholders of the South, and the merchant aristocracy of the North, and
the silence of the clergy, against it. The nation must not be judged of by
that portion whose worldly interests are involved in the maintenance of
the anomaly; nor yet by the eight hundred flourishing Abolition societies
of the North, with all the supporters they have in unassociated
individuals. If it be found that the five Abolitionists who first met in a
little chamber five years ago, to measure their moral strength against
this national enormity, have become a host beneath whose assaults the
vicious institution is rocking to its foundations, it is time that slavery
was ceasing to be a national reproach."

An observer who could be made to believe that these five Abolitionists had
really accomplished more toward the overthrow of slavery than eight
hundred flourishing Abolition societies and their outside supporters, and
that the great body of clergymen were silent, because they did not adopt
the methods of the five who set themselves against church and state, shows
a credulity that leads one to question the information and the conclusions
on which her judgment of the relation of American women to the Republic
were based.

As a proof that when women entered into public work in a womanly way they
found support from the church and the Abolitionists, we may point to
perhaps the first organized charitable and industrial work done among
women in this country. In 1834 Mrs. Charles Hawking, of New York City, had
convened in the Third Free Church, corner of Houston and Thompson streets,
a meeting which resulted in the immediate formation of "The Moral Reform
Society." Clergymen who were in sympathy with the movement addressed the
meeting. "The Female Guardian Society" was founded by them a year later,
and a newspaper was established to present its claims. The officers were
women. They visited the Tombs, and held weekly prayer-meetings. They
secured the legislation necessary to bring about the separation of men and
women in the city prisons, and the appointment of matrons for the women.
In 1853 they procured an enactment "whereby dissipated and vicious
parents, by habitually neglecting due care and provision for their
offspring, shall forfeit their natural claim to them, and whereby such
children shall be removed from them and placed under better influences
till the claim of the parents shall be re-established by continued
sobriety, industry, and general good conduct." They secured the passage of
the Truant Act, and the appointment of Truant Officers. Mr. Lewis Tappan
was not only the auditor for the organization, but gave effective help by
suggestions that led to the establishment of the first Home for the
Friendless, of which there are now seven in charge of the society. In
1854, Industrial schools were added. Cooking, housekeeping, kindergarten,
and fresh-air work developed rapidly. There are now twelve industrial
schools, where six thousand children are taught. The report of the first
semi-annual meeting, held in Utica, N. Y., is in quaint contrast to the
reports of the first Suffrage meetings. They say: "The utmost harmony and
union of feeling have characterized all the proceedings, and as we looked
around and saw the intelligence and piety and moral worth that was
assembled there, and listened to the discussion of subjects of practical
importance, while every one was manifestly seeking to know and do her
duty, we could not but feel that the most determined opposer of 'women's
meetings' would have found nothing to censure had he been present. There
has been no frivolity, no fanaticism, no disorder. We are sure that not a
wife or mother was there who was not at least as well disposed and
prepared to discharge her relative duties as she would have been if she
had kept at home."

Upon the great cause of Temperance, also, the Woman-Suffrage movement
early laid a blighting hand. As will be remembered, total abstinence was
one of the doctrines to which many of the no-government, common-property,
men and women were pledged. Western and Central New York has been the
birthplace of some of the wildest and most destructive movements that our
social life has witnessed. If the year 1848, which saw the beginnings of
the Woman-Suffrage movement, was wonderful for revolutions and
insurrections the world over, the years that preceded it were remarkable,
especially in this country and this State, for some of the maddest
vagaries that ever have been known here. There and then arose the Shaker
excitement, so fantastic that only now and then was the outside world
permitted to know what was being done. Then and there Fourierism found its
most fruitful field, and of the dozen or more communities that were
started, several united in forming, near Rochester, an Industrial Union.
John Collins started a number of vague branches of what the Fourierites
called the "no-God, no-government, no-marriage, no-money, no-meat, no-
salt, no-pepper" system of community. Here John H. Noyes, under the guise
of a new heaven on an old earth, established his foul community at Oneida.
There and then the Millerite madness sent whole congregations into the
cemeteries, in white gowns, to await the sounding of the trump of Gabriel.
There and then arose the great spiritualistic movement that began in Wayne
County with the Fox family, became famous as the Rochester Knockings, and
blossomed into communities in which "Free Love" grew out of "Individual
Sovereignty." Then and there, in Wayne County, Joseph Smith pretended that
the Angel Maroni had shown him, the Book of Mormon. Many of these
movements were in sympathy with Woman Suffrage, and workers in them early
found their way into its ranks.

In the midst of the Anti-slavery excitement, secret temperance
organizations were formed among the women in New York State, known as the
"Daughters of Temperance." "Finding," as they said, "that there was no law
nor gospel in the land," they became a law unto themselves, and visited
saloons, where they broke windows, glasses, and bottles, and threw kegs
and barrels of liquor into the streets. A few were arrested, but they were
soon discharged. As time went on, these secret organizations began to form
themselves into regular bodies, and in January, 1852, they assembled their
delegates at Albany to claim admission to the State Temperance
organization, with no invitation or authority but their own. Susan B.
Anthony was the first speaker, and when the convention decided not to hear
her, it was announced that they would withdraw and hold a meeting where
"men and women would be equal," which they accordingly did. The movement
continued, until, three months later, Miss Anthony called "The New York
State Temperance Convention," of which Mrs. Stanton was elected President.
Among the resolutions that she introduced in her opening speech, were
these: that "no woman remain in the relation of wife to a confirmed
drunkard;" that the State should be petitioned so to "modify its laws
affecting marriage and the custody of children, that the drunkard shall
have no claims on either wife or child;" that "no liquor should be used
for culinary purposes;" and that "as charity begins at home, let us
withdraw from all associations for sending the gospel to the heathen
across the ocean, for the education of young men for the ministry, for the
building up of a theological aristocracy and gorgeous temples to the
unknown God, and devote ourselves to the poor and suffering about us. Let
us feed and clothe the naked and hungry, gather children into schools, and
provide reading-rooms and decent homes for young men and women thrown
alone upon the world." The organization of "The Woman's New York State
Temperance Society" was formed, and Mrs. Stanton was elected its
President. She issued an appeal to the women of the State, and sent a
letter to the Convention at Albany which "was so radical, that its friends
feared to read it," but Susan B. Anthony finally did so. They elected as
delegates to the "Men's New York State Temperance Convention," to be held
in Syracuse in June, Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, and Gerrit
Smith. When they arrived they were met by the Rev. Samuel J. May, who told
them that the men were shocked at the idea of admitting them, and said
that he was commissioned to beg them to withdraw. They decided to present
their credentials, and of course the stormy scene which they had invited
followed their action. This scene was repeated in every part of the State,
the agitators figuring upon their own platforms as martyrs to the noble
causes of Anti-slavery, Temperance, and Woman's Rights. A single quotation
from a letter of Miss Anthony's, written at this time to the league, shows
that then, as now, the radical woman workers for Prohibition were nothing
if not political. She says: "And it is for woman now, in the present
presidential campaign, to say to her father, husband, or brother, 'If you
vote for any candidate for any office whatever, who is not pledged to
total abstinence and the Maine law, we shall hold you alike guilty with
the rum-seller.'"

In January, 1853, a great mass-meeting was held in Albany of all the State
temperance organizations. The Woman's society met in a Baptist church,
which was crowded at every session. Miss Anthony presided. Twenty-eight
thousand women had signed petitions for prohibitory legislation. The rules
of the House were suspended, and the women were invited to present them at
the speaker's desk. They were then invited to New York, and, in
Metropolitan Hall, addressed a large audience, as well as in the Broadway
Tabernacle and Knickerbocker Hall, Brooklyn. In the next two months they
made successful tours of many cities of the State. But, like Mr. Garrison,
and Stephen Foster, and H. C. Wright, the women thought that if they were
not attacking and being attacked there could be no "progress" or "reform."
They demanded divorce for drunkenness, they denounced wine at private
tables, and called on the women to leave all church organizations where
"clergymen and bishops, liquor-dealers, and wine-bibbers, were dignified
and honored as deacons and elders." They denounced the church for its
"apathy," and the clergy for their "hostility to the public action of
women," and they soon began to turn the kindly feeling that was
endeavoring to work with them into enmity, and were of course denounced in
their turn.

The Society decided to invite men into their organization, but not to
allow them to hold office or to vote. This they did for a year, after
which men were admitted to full membership. The first annual meeting of
the Woman's State Temperance Society was held in Rochester, June 1, 1853,
Mrs. Stanton presiding, and the attendance was larger than they had had at
any time. In the course of the meetings a heated debate on the subject of
divorce took place. Mrs. Stanton and Lucy Stone took the ground that it
was "not only woman's right, but her duty, to withdraw from all such
unholy relations," and Mrs. Nichols and Antoinette Brown opposed them.

The men were admitted to this convention, and, to use the words of the
women, "it was the policy of these worldly-wise men to restrict the debate
on Temperance to such narrow limits as to disturb none of the existing
conditions of society." This farce in reform soon came to an end, and the
following is the epitaph pronounced over it by its founders: "The society,
with its guns silenced on the popular foes, lingered a year or two, and
was heard of no more." On May 12, the friends of Temperance met in Dr.
Spring's Old Brick Church, New York City. A motion was made that all
gentlemen present be admitted as delegates. Dr. Trall, of New York, moved
an amendment, that the words "and ladies" be added, as there were
delegates present from the "Woman's State Temperance Society." The motion
was carried, and the credentials were received. A motion was then made
that Susan B. Anthony be added to the business committee, and all was in
an uproar at once. "Mayor Barstow twice asked that another chairman be
appointed, as he would not preside over a meeting where woman's rights was
introduced, or women were allowed to speak." Some of the gentlemen present
said that "the ladies were there expressly to disturb." The ministers
present, like the laymen, were divided in opinion in regard to the
admission of the delegates; but the credentials were withdrawn, and in due
time the bearers of them withdrew also. The writers of the "History" say:
"Most of the liberal men and women now withdrew from all temperance
organizations, leaving the movement in the hands of time-serving priests
and politicians, who, being in the majority, effectually blocked the
progress of the reform for the time--destroying, as they did, the
enthusiasm of the women in trying to press it as a political measure."
Comparing this work with their Anti-slavery campaign, they say: "When
Garrison's forces had been thoroughly sifted, and only the picked men and
women remained, he soon made political parties and church organizations
feel the power of his burning words." It was the men and women from whom
he and his were sifted who spoke the burning words that ended in burning
deeds for the extinction of slavery; and thus it was with Temperance.
There remained after the "sifting" many societies, of one of which William
E. Dodge and President Mark Hopkins were chief officers, and John B. Gough
was principal orator.

The writers of the "History" further say, in regard to the death of their
organization: "Henceforward women took no active part in temperance until
the Ohio Crusade revived them all over the nation, and gathered the
scattered forces into the Woman's National Christian Temperance Union, of
which Frances E. Willard is President." This is a mistake, for women were
very active in connection with Temperance societies of which men were
officers, and in organizations of their own, before and after the W. C. T.
U. was founded. The history of that great body furnishes another proof of
the injurious effect of the Suffrage movement upon the cause of
Temperance. In 1872 a political Temperance party was formed in Columbus,
Ohio, which, four years later, at Cleveland, became the Prohibition Party.
From the first, this party inserted a plank in its platform favoring
universal suffrage, and mentioning especially the extension of suffrage to
women. The W. C. T. U. was founded as a non-denominational and non-
partisan body, and was divided and sub-divided into committees, each
having charge of a distinct branch of philanthropic work, which was by no
means confined solely to Temperance measures. This has given the body
great working strength, and its efforts are well known. Everything except
its Suffrage labor has had rich reward. I was present at the Metropolitan
Opera House in New York City (in 1886, I think), and witnessed with
amazement the high-handed fashion in which an organization whose
constitution forbade political coalition was handed over to the
Prohibition Party, pledged to give aid and comfort. The division and
bitter feeling that resulted were a serious injury to the cause of
Temperance. In her contribution to the volume entitled "Woman's Work in
America," Miss Willard says: "After ten years' experience, the women of
this Crusade became convinced that until the people of this country divide
at the ballot-box, on the foregoing [Temperance] issue, America can never
be nationally delivered from the dram-shop. They therefore publicly
announced their devotion to the Prohibition Party, and promised to lend it
their influence, which, with the exception of a very small minority, they
have since most sedulously done." Writing in "The Outlook" for June 27,
1896, Lady Henry Somerset says, in closing a sketch of Frances Willard:
"The Temperance cause, in spite of the gigantic strides it has made of
late years toward success, is still relegated to the shadowy land of
unpopular and supposedly impracticable and visionary reform."

The Temperance cause is not relegated to a shadowy land, but has just
taken, in many places, notably in New York State, another gigantic stride
toward success. Prohibition has proved less faithful to the women than
Miss Willard said the women had proved to it; for, in the struggle to
survive the attack upon its life made by Populism in 1896, it refused to
re-insert the Woman-Suffrage plank in its platform. Mrs. Helen Gougar
bolted with the Populists. Mrs. Boole, of New York, in behalf of the
W.C.T.U., moved the re-insertion in the platform of the Woman-Suffrage
plank, which had been stricken out when it was decided to make prohibition
the only issue. Amidst great confusion, Mrs. Boole was obliged to withdraw
her motion, and when she changed her claim from that for a plank in the
platform to one for a resolution which declared the convention to be in
favor of Woman Suffrage, it was accepted by the Committee on Resolutions,
and adopted with only a few dissenting votes. In view of the fact that the
party has had a Suffrage plank since 1872, when it began to be, this does
seem like a turning of the back rather than of the cold shoulder. When to
its motto "No sectarianism in religion, no sectionalism in politics," the
W. C. T. U. added "No sex in citizenship," it fastened itself to a
principle that has not progressed. Its Temperance work "for God and home
and native land" has gone on; but the political alliance and effort have
alike proved futile. A striking proof of this fact is seen in the reports
of the non-political sections of the W. C. T. U. itself. Police matrons
have been placed through their petitions, and educational and
philanthropic work that is directly in the line of doing away with the
liquor evil, and is worthy of high praise, has been accomplished. Miss
Willard, in her article already alluded to, reports that "under the
leadership of Mrs. Mary H. Hunt, the W. C. T. U. has secured laws
requiring scientific temperance instruction in thirty States." The number
is now forty-two, and I cannot help believing that Mrs. Hunt must feel
more hopeful of the favorable results to temperance of well-directed
effort to influence those who have the power to execute the laws they
pass, than Miss Willard has reason to feel for its success through
prohibition and the forceless votes of women whose power in philanthropy
is fully recognized and cheerfully acknowledged. Women talk as if the
solid vote of their sex would be cast in favor of temperance. The census
of 1890 reveals the fact that there were in that year three times as many
woman hotel-keepers as in 1870, and seven times as many saloon-keepers and
bar-tenders.

Again, in the Nation's greatest crisis, Woman Suffrage showed itself to be
the antipodes of woman's progress. Those of us whose once sable locks are
now silvered are content to wear the badge of years, when we remember that
we were permitted to live long enough ago to have felt the expansion of
soul, the fervor of loyal love, the melting power of an overwhelming
universal sorrow and a united joy, which filled the mighty days during a
war for freedom and for the life of the Republic. Most of the women of the
land were working with a devotion that spared neither strength nor life.
What was the Woman-Suffrage Association doing? I answer in their own
words. In their "History," they say: "While the most of women never
philosophize on the principles that underlie national existence, there
were those in our late war who understood the political significance of
the struggle: the 'irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery;
between national and State rights.' They saw that to provide lint,
bandages, and supplies for the army, while the war was not conducted on a
wise policy, was labor in vain; and while many organizations, active,
vigilant, self-sacrificing, were multiplied to look after the material
wants of the army, these few formed themselves into a National Loyal
League to teach sound principles of government, and to impress on the
nation's conscience, that 'freedom to the slaves was the only way to
victory.'" They further say: "Accustomed as most women had been to works
of charity, to the relief of outward suffering, it was difficult to rouse
their enthusiasm for an idea, to persuade them to labor for a principle.
They clamored for practical work, something for their hands to do; for
fairs, sewing societies to raise money for soldiers' families, for
tableaux, readings, theatricals, anything but conventions to discuss
principles and to circulate petitions for emancipation. They could not see
that the best service they could render the army was to suppress the
rebellion, and that the most effective way to accomplish that was to
transform the slaves into soldiers. The Woman's Loyal League voiced the
solemn lessons of the war; universal suffrage, and universal amnesty."

The Woman's Loyal League "voiced" the fact that the professional agitators
of the Suffrage movement were not patriots. Again they filled the land
with words, while all the others of their sex were blazoning the page of
their country's history with deeds of the noblest self-sacrifice, the most
gentle daring. When we remember with what infinite patience the great
emancipator was waiting for the hour when in his wisdom he discerned that
he could "best save the Union by emancipating all the slaves," we realize
what added sorrow may have been pressed upon his heart by the foolish
petitions that the League were rolling up by the hundred thousand and
sending to a Congress that was powerless to heed them if it would.
Statesmen and Generals were staggered by the stupendous task of guiding a
great people and saving the Union in the most powerful rebellion ever
known; but these few women knew from the beginning that "the war was not
conducted on a wise policy," and that to provide for the army was "labor
in vain." They joined the great body of fault-finders and talkers, and
lifted not a finger in practical work. And they are the women who would
fain vote for and become America's rulers! The "other women," who were
narrow-minded enough to prepare stores and raise money for the army, and
do such concrete work as nursing in the hospital and on the field, had
been busy for nearly two years when the Suffrage women bestirred
themselves in their own way. In March, 1863, they issued the following
appeal to the "Loyal Women of the Nation," which I quote at length because
it is an excellent example of their methods, which "began in words and
ended in words:"

"In this crisis of our country's destiny, it is the duty of every citizen
to consider the peculiar blessings of a republican form of government, and
decide what sacrifices of wealth and life are demanded for its defence and
preservation. The policy of the war, our whole future life, depends on a
clearly-defined idea of the end proposed, and the immense advantages to be
secured to ourselves and all mankind by its accomplishment. No mere party
or sectional cry, no technicalities of constitution or military law, no
mottoes of craft or policy, are big enough to touch the great heart of a
nation in the midst of revolution. A grand idea, such as freedom or
justice, is needful to kindle and sustain the fires of a high enthusiasm.
At this hour the best word and work of every man and woman are
imperatively demanded. To man, by common consent, is assigned the forum,
camp, and field. What is woman's legitimate work, and how she may best
accomplish it, is worthy of our earnest counsel with one another. We have
heard many complaints of the lack of enthusiasm among Northern women; but,
when a mother lays her son on the altar of her country, she asks an object
equal to the sacrifice. In nursing the sick and wounded, knitting socks,
scraping lint and making jellies, the bravest and best may weary if the
thoughts mount not in faith to something beyond and above it all. Work is
worship only when a noble purpose fills the soul. Woman is equally
interested and responsible with man in the final settlement of this
problem of self-government; therefore let none stand idle spectators now.
When every hour is big with destiny, and each delay but complicates our
difficulties, it is high time for the daughters of the Revolution, in
solemn council, to unseal the last will and testament of the Fathers--lay
hold of their birthright of freedom, and keep it a sacred trust for all
coming generations. To this end we ask the Loyal Women of the Nation to
meet in the church of the Puritans (Dr. Cheever's), New York, on Thursday,
the 14th of May next." This was signed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and
Susan B. Anthony, in behalf of the Woman's Central Committee.

Having set forth their belief that by common consent the forum, the camp,
and the field were assigned to men, these women secured a forum from which
to promulgate advice and direction to the men who were indeed allowed
possession of the camp and the field. After a speech, in which, among
other things, Miss Anthony said: "Instead of suppressing the real cause of
the war, it should have been proclaimed, not only by the people, but by
the President, Congress, Cabinet, and every military commander," she
presented resolutions, which included this:

"Resolved: that there can never be a true peace in this Republic until all
the civil and political rights of all citizens of African descent and all
women are practically established."

The reading of the resolutions was followed by one of the long,
acrimonious debates with which those who read the reports of their
conventions are familiar. They resented it bitterly when Mrs. Hoyt, of
Wisconsin, said: "The women of the North were invited here to meet in
convention, not to hold a Temperance meeting, not to hold an Anti-slavery
meeting, not to hold a Woman's Rights convention, but to consult as to the
best practical way for the advancement of the loyal cause. We have a great
many very flourishing Loyal Leagues throughout the West, and we have kept
them sacred from Anti-slavery, Woman's Rights, Temperance, and everything
else, good though they may be. In our League we have several objects in
view. The first is, retrenchment in household expenses, to the end that
the material resources of the Government may be, so far as possible,
applied to the entire and thorough vindication of its authority. Second,
to strengthen the loyal sentiment of the people at home, and instil a
deeper love of the National flag. The third and most important object is
to write to the soldiers in the field, thus reaching nearly every private
in the army, to encourage and stimulate him in the way that ladies know
how to do." After expressions of strong resentment, those who had called
the convention returned to their generalizing in regard to the duty and
influence of woman, and to denunciations of the Government for its conduct
of the war. The resolutions which had called forth the strictures were
accepted, and Miss Anthony announced that "The resolution recommending
practical work was not yet prepared." It was written at a business meeting
following, and read thus:

"Resolved, that we, loyal women of the nation, do hereby pledge ourselves
one to another, in a Loyal League, to give support to the Government in so
far as it makes the war a war for freedom."

If the Government of the United States had received no more practical
pledges, from no more loyal hearts than these, there would have been
little reward for the patriotic devotion that laid down life in defence of
the Union. A sentiment that was often expressed by the Suffragist was that
as woman had no vote she could not properly be called upon to be loyal.
The "practical" work finally accomplished was the gathering of another
monster petition, in which they told President Lincoln that "Northern
power and loyalty can never be measured until the purpose of the war be
liberty to man." To the close of the war they did nothing but sign such
petitions.

I turn to Dr. Brockett's great book, "Woman in the Civil War," and I find
recorded the names and the work of four hundred and eighty-four women who
gave invaluable and honorable special service, some of them even to the
sacrifice of life itself; and of all this number, only a half dozen are
known in Suffrage annals.

Cure by ballot has been the one and only remedy suggested by Suffrage
conventions for all the ills, real or imaginary, that are endured by
women. As long ago as 1854, in a convention in Philadelphia, they uttered
the same sentiment. In commenting upon Mrs. Jane G. Swisshelm's book,
"Half a Century," they say: "While ever and anon during the last forty
years Mrs. Swisshelm has seized some of these dilettante literary women
with her metaphysical tweezers, and held them up to scorn for their
ridicule of the Woman Suffrage conventions, yet in her own recently
published work, in her mature years, she vouchsafes no words of approval
for those who have inaugurated the greatest movement of the centuries. ...
It is quite evident from her last pronunciamento that she has no just
appreciation of the importance and dignity of our demand for justice and
equality. A soldier without a leg is a fact so much more readily
understood than all women without ballots, and his loss so much more
readily comprehended and supplied, that we can hardly blame any one for
doing the work of the hour, rather than struggling a lifetime for an idea.
Hence it is not a matter of surprise that most women are more readily
enlisted in the suppression of evils in the concrete, than in advocating
the principles that underlie them in the abstract, and thus ultimately
choosing the broader and more lasting work."

In her "Reminiscences," contributed to the "History," Mrs. Emily Collins
says: "From 1858 to 1869 my home was in Rochester, N.Y. There, by brief
newspaper articles and in other ways, I sought to influence public
sentiment in favor of this fundamental reform. In 1868 a society was
organized there for the reformation of abandoned women. At one of its
meetings I endeavored to show how futile all their efforts would be while
women, by the laws of the land, were made a subject class."

This was typical action. Thus it was in Anti-slavery, thus in Temperance,
thus in the Civil War, and thus it has been with general reforms. What
Suffragists have deemed to be an abstract "right" has prevented them from
taking active part in any efforts put forth to end a concrete wrong. As
time goes on, this spirit becomes more injurious, because progress is
carrying philanthropy into higher fields of moral action, and in so doing
is carrying it away from and above the plane where rests the ballot-box.
While Suffrage effort is directed toward keeping all issues in the
political arena, the trend of legislation is to take them out of politics.
By the public votes of men and the private votes and public appeals of
women, philanthropic and educational matters are being removed from the
uncertainties and fluctuations of party action. As they are thus brought
out of the sphere where woman is powerless and into that in which it is
natural for her to act, the whole force of sympathy, and her ability to
picture and to pursue an ideal, are finding exercise and are hastening the
day when there will be no slavery, no drunkenness, no war, and no
violation of woman's chastity. Dr. Jacobi, in her volume, says: "Why
should we wonder at the low tone which habitually prevails in relation to
public affairs, when the women who stand as guardians at the fountain
sources and household shrines of thought are trained to believe that there
are no Rights, but only Privileges, Expediencies, Immunities? Can those
who cower before the public ridicule which greets the enunciation of the
Rights of Women; who are habituated to stifle generous impulses for their
own larger freedom at the authoritative dictation of the men they see in
power,--can such women be relied upon to nerve the Nation's heart for
generous deeds?" Who were trained by women at the fountain sources and
household shrines? The very men whom they now see in "authoritative
dictation." And so well did they train them that when both are called upon
to nerve the nation's heart for generous deeds, they act together--the
trainer and the trained--moved by the same magnetic impulse of a noble
devotion. It is purely gratuitous to assume, because women generally have
discredited the dogma of Woman Suffrage, that they have therefore no just
conception of rights. Women are as ambitious, as self-assertive, as are
men. They deal more naturally with abstractions, and are more tenacious of
purpose. They are impatient of hindrance, and it is inconsistent with
facts to infer that they have been "stifling generous impulses for their
own larger freedom," at the dictation of their own sons. The executive
power and wisdom of these sons they feel to be the very thing they most
desire for them, a reward for their own abounding faith and love.
Privileges, Expediencies, and Immunities are their Rights. How well fitted
such rights are to enable them to nerve the Nation's heart was seen in the
great crisis we have been considering, when the ignoble dogma of Suffrage
caused its believers to fail in generous impulse and to stand aloof in the
time of a supreme need.

I cannot agree with Dr. Jacobi that a low tone habitually prevails in
relation to public affairs. The guards freshly thrown about the ballot,
and the greater watchfulness over entrance to citizenship, are two of the
most obvious advances at this moment.




CHAPTER V.


WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE LAWS.


In the fourth and fifth counts of the Declaration of Sentiments, the
Suffragists say: "Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen,
the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the
halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides." "He has made
her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead."

The following four counts all refer to a married woman's civil deadness;
and I will give them in order, and then consider the five counts together:

"He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she
earns." "He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can
commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of
her husband." "In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise
obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her
master--the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to
administer chastisement." "He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to
what shall be proper causes, and, in case of separation, to whom the
guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of
the happiness of women--the law, in all cases, going upon a false
supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands."

That the women did not find themselves, as might be supposed from their
charges, living under the edicts of the Middle Ages, is proved by their
hunt through statute-books for such of the eighteen grievances as relate
to laws. They also say that "while they had felt the insults incident to
sex, in many ways, as every proud thinking woman must, yet they had not in
their own experience endured the coarser forms of tyranny resulting from
unjust laws; but had souls large enough to feel the wrongs of others."
Until they knew what those wrongs were, it would seem they could hardly
have felt for them intelligently. It would seem, too, that the great body
of American women were also unaware that they had been, and were still
being, legally and morally robbed, enslaved, and murdered. In fact,
Suffrage speakers have been compelled to account for their unconcern by
considering it the result of long subjection, and at the same time have
had to claim that these stupid beings were fit to rule with and over men.

While the counts contain concrete statements, the closing clause--"the law
in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and
giving all power into his hands"--sets forth an abstract idea in
justification of which they furnish no proof. In the counts as they stood
in the Declaration of Sentiments, the general laws were not accused of
doing any injustice, personal or civil, to an unmarried woman, except in
reference to the one matter of withholding the vote, which they claimed
was wrong because she had an inalienable right to the ballot and was
subject to tax. Not a personal law did they ask to have changed for her
protection. They recognized the fact that, unless she was married, a woman
in the United States stood upon a legal equality with man. The hue and cry
in regard to a married woman was, that she was not treated as if _femme
sole_. The _femme sole_ could make contracts and wills, sue and be sued,
and do all and sundry in her own name that her brother could do. With a
married woman the situation was different. Will any one contend that in
the past the married woman has been held in less honor than the unmarried?
Can it be thought for a moment that the law-makers expressed their
contempt for wives and mothers, and their respect for daughters and
sisters who were unmarried? Tradition and fact, poetry and prose, romance
and reality, all go to prove that the reverential feeling of the world has
gathered about the wife and the mother. The men who made those laws turned
for their ideals of abstract justice to their mothers' faith and teaching;
and it seems most incongruous to assume, as do the Suffrage arguments,
that, while all the laws relating to women were tyrannical at some point,
those in regard to married women were the ones wherein men embodied their
most cruel and revengeful feeling. It also appears to be a gratuitous
assumption that whatever was different in the legal treatment of men and
women came from man's belief in his own supremacy, especially toward the
wife into whose hands he had committed the keeping of his home and his
honor.

In 1881, after more than thirty years of agitation of the subject, the
Suffrage leaders said: "The condition of married women under the laws of
all countries has been essentially that of slaves, until modified in some
respects, within the last quarter of a century, in the United States." And
again they said: "The change from the old common law of England, in regard
to the civil rights of women, from 1848 to the advance legislation in most
of the Northern States in 1880, marks an era both in the status of woman
as a citizen and in our American system of jurisprudence. When the State
of New York gave married women certain rights of property, the individual
existence of the wife was recognized, and the old idea that husband and
wife are one, and that one the husband, received its death-blow. From that
hour the statutes of the several States have been steadily diverging from
the old English codes. Most of the Western States copied the advance
legislation of New York, and some are now even more liberal."

This sentence contains another of the constantly recurring instances of
the methods by which the Suffrage mind jumps to unwarranted conclusions.
When the State of New York gave married women certain property rights, it
recognized their legal existence in a new way, but not their individual
existence--that had been recognized by every act of law and custom, from
the registry of their birth to that of their marriage or their death.
Socially and civilly, every woman in the United States had had opportunity
to make her individuality felt, and if there was any difference in
advantage in respect of this, it was supposed to lie with the married
woman. So true is this, that Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Mott had to hunt for
oppressive laws, and most of the women of this land have no real sense of
the great and liberal change in laws concerning married women since 1848.
I am no more approving of or admiring the old English common law, or the
canon law, concerning women, than I am approving of or admiring the law
that came to light recently in the Transvaal and would have allowed the
torture of Jameson and his men, who, as a matter of fact, were allowed to
go almost unpunished. The law of the Dutch Government in Africa belonged
to the Middle Ages; their conduct belonged to to-day. I only believe that
at the time when it was possible for one man to frame for another man such
laws of physical and mental torment as every code reveals, their laws for
women were the best they could devise, and were those which led to the
freedom of the women of to-day. A law of England still favors only the
first-born son, and he only because he is the firstborn. What wonder that
girls have been denied succession; and what an evidence of man's desire to
show favor and not the "insult incident to sex," that he has placed woman
on thrones upon which he has had to sustain her by main force.

There is no need that I should darken my pages with the English laws
concerning married women. The Suffrage leaders have spread them abroad;
Blackstone says they were intended for woman's protection and benefit, and
adds the remark, "So great a favorite is the female sex with the laws of
England." If I quoted them, I should be constrained to quote barbarous
laws concerning men of the same era, and to note the lack of all laws
concerning the brute creation; for neither of these matters is touched by
Suffrage writers. Dr. Jacobi is willing to say that "in the eye of the
law, the married white woman in the North was as devoid of personality as
the African slave in the South," and she also says: "By another error of
interpretation, certain laws which remain on the statute-book, or which
have been recently added, have been considered so peculiarly favorable to
women, that they are thought to prove a legislative tendency to grant
special immunities to women so long as they consent to remain
unfranchised." Does she mean to say that the lawmakers have asked the
women if they would consent to remain unfranchised? I thought that leaving
them unfranchised without asking their consent was, in Suffrage eyes, the
very front of the offending. The laws that remain on the statute-book, and
those that have been recently added, go to prove to my mind that the old
laws were meant to be generous as well as just; second, that the trend of
legislation _is_ peculiarly favorable to woman; and, thirdly, that those
laws which between man and man might be looked upon as offsets to suffrage
equality, between man and woman could not be so considered. They were,
therefore, proper immunities for persons whose consent was not asked
through the vote because, in the nature of the difference between the
sexes, a prime requisite for compliance was lacking. Dr. Jacobi goes on to
say: "The fear has been expressed that these 'immunities' and 'privileges'
would be forfeited were the franchise conferred. And this fear has
actually been advanced as an argument--as the basis of protest against
equal suffrage." Either the law is tyrannical to women, or it is not. If
Suffrage leaders are actually talking of its privileges and immunities to
women, and trying to explain them away, we may leave the burden of proof
to them. But as to the gist of her remark in regard to the connection
between legal privileges and equal suffrage: Fear of losing the legal
immunities that are granted to both married and unmarried women on account
of their attitude as wards of the State when they are not able to assume
the first duty implied in giving up the wardship--that of physical defence
to themselves and others--is a most legitimate fear, and is a sound reason
for protest against equal suffrage. Wrapped up with the legal privileges
of women are those of their children--the rights of minors. For boys,
special privileges cease at the age of twenty-one. For girls, they do not.
Legal equality would set the boy and the girl on the same level at once.
The law of equality could know no such thing as "exemption" for the
unmarried woman, or "dower right" or "maintenance" for the married woman
that would not be equally binding on both husband and wife. In Germany,
rich American women are maintaining their land-poor husbands under legal
stress, "in the style to which they have been accustomed," because the law
of Germany is "equal" in respect to property maintenance of husband and
wife. In Ohio, where Suffrage agitation has been persistent, the
legislature in 1894 passed an act "enabling a husband, as well as a wife,
to sue and obtain alimony pending divorce proceedings."

We began by talking of legal disabilities, and, led by the Suffragists
themselves, are already discussing legal immunities.

The editors of the "History" say: "The laws affecting woman's civil rights
have been greatly improved during the past thirty years, but the political
demand has made but questionable progress, though it must be counted as
the chief influence in modifying the laws. The selfishness of man was
readily enlisted in securing woman's civil rights, while the same element
in his character antagonized her demand for political equality." If it was
his selfishness that procured woman civil rights and privileges, was it
his unselfishness that formerly denied them? The fact that the States that
granted them first, and most fully, are the ones where Suffrage has made
least progress, suggests the injustice of the charge.

But a question of real interest is, must the political demand made by
women be counted as the chief influence in modifying the laws?

In 1836, Judge Hertell presented, in the New York Legislature, a bill to
secure property rights to married women, which had been drawn up under the
supervision of the Hon. John Savage, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,
and the Hon. John C. Spencer, one of the revisers of the statutes. In its
behalf Ernestine Rose and Paulina Wright Davis circulated a petition, to
which they gained only five signatures among their own sex.

Ernestine Rose was a Polish Jewess who had renounced all faith with her
own. She was an extreme communist, and before coming here to labor for
Liberalism and Woman Suffrage, she had presided over a body called "An
Association of all Classes of all Nations, without distinction of sect,
sex, party condition, or color." Paulina Wright Davis, gifted though she
was, was a radical of an extreme type. How much the character of the
advocates had to do with their failure, it is impossible to say, but it
appears to be another proof of the evil influence of Suffrage action upon
woman's progress that so good a work should have been in hands so unfitted
for it. The bill did not become a law. Mrs. Rose records that she
continued to send petitions with increased numbers of signatures until
1848-49; that from 1837 to 1848 she addressed the New York Legislature
five times, and a good many times after the latter date. That she was not
recognized as an aid to legislation seems evident from the testimony that
follows.

In the previous chapter I have quoted the editors of the "History" as
saying that the first thing that led them to demand political rights was
the discussion, in several of the State legislatures, of these property
questions in regard to married women. Another proof that they did not
inspire the early laws is seen in the following extracts from a letter
from the Hon. George Geddes, written to Mrs. Gage, in 1880, and answering
her question as to who was responsible for the Married-Woman's Property-
Rights bill, which was passed in 1848. He said:

"I have very distinct recollections of the whole history of this very
radical measure. Judge Fine, of St. Lawrence, was its originator, and he
gave me his reasons for introducing the bill. He said that he married a
lady who had some property of her own, which he had, all his life, tried
to keep distinct from his, that she might have the benefit of her own, in
the event of any disaster happening to him in pecuniary matters. He had
found much difficulty, growing out of the old laws, in this effort to
protect his wife's interests.... I, too, had special reasons for desiring
this change in the law. I had a young daughter, who, in the then condition
of my health, was quite likely to be left in tender years without a
father, and I very much desired to protect her in the little property I
might be able to leave.... I believe this law originated with Judge Fine,
without any outside prompting. On the third day of the session he gave
notice of his intention to introduce it, and only one petition was
presented in favor of the bill, and that came from Syracuse, and was due
to the action of my personal friends.... We all felt that the laws
regulating married women's, as well as married men's, rights demanded
careful revision and adaptation to our times and to our civilization....
In reply to your inquiries in regard to debates that preceded the action
of 1848, I must say I know of none, and I am quite sure that in our long
discussions no allusion was made to anything of the kind."

It would thus appear that neither Mrs. Gage, nor Mrs. Stanton, nor Miss
Anthony knew the names of the proposer and defenders of the bill that
opened the way in New York for all the liberal legislation that has
followed, and thirty years after its passage they inquired whether any
debates had preceded it. Certainly, then, their own had not. It is also
evident how much "selfishness" prompted the bill.

In a pamphlet published by the New York Woman-Suffrage Association to
report their proceedings during the Constitutional Convention of 1894, it
is recorded that Mr. F. B. Church, of Alleghany, presented an appeal from
his county asking for the suffrage. In the course of his remarks he said:
"Sir, beginning in 1848, the male citizens of the State of New York, not
at the clamor of the women, as I understand it, but actuated by a sense of
justice, began to remove the disabilities under which women labored at
that time. Gradually, from that time on, the barriers had been stricken
away, until, in 1891, I believe, the last impediments were removed."

In 1844, Rhode Island had passed property laws for married women. In 1848-
9 Connecticut and Texas, as well as New York, did so, apparently
uninfluenced by anything except their "sense of justice." In 1850-'52
Alabama and Maine passed such laws. In 1853 New Hampshire, Indiana,
Wisconsin, and Iowa changed their laws in this respect. They moved forward
in this reform, as did the other States, before there was even a beginning
of Suffrage agitation in them.

In 1847, Mrs. C. J. II. Nichols, who afterward became a Suffrage worker,
addressed to the voters of Vermont a series of editorials setting forth
the property disabilities of women. In October of that year, Hon. Larkin
Mead, moved, he said, by her presentation, introduced a bill into the
Senate, which, becoming a law, secured to the wife real estate owned by
her at marriage, or acquired by gift, devise, or inheritance during
marriage, with the rents, issues, and profits, as against any debts of the
husband; but to make a sale or conveyance of either her realty or its use
valid, it must be the joint act of husband and wife. She might by last
will and testament dispose of her lands, tenements, hereditaments, and any
interest therein descendable to her heirs, as if "sole." Mrs. Nichols says
that in 1852 she drew up a petition signed by more than two hundred
business men and tax-paying widows, asking the Legislature to make women
voters in school matters. Mrs. Nichols's report is clear, sound, definite,
and she seems to have been of real service, and to have won what she
sought. She says, "Up to 1850 I had not taken position for suffrage,
although I had shown the absurdity of regarding it as unwomanly." She
appears to have done a great deal of clever as well as earnest and
spirited talking in the West, after she had "taken position for suffrage,"
and she reports that, when she removed to Kansas, her claims were for
"equal educational rights and privileges in all the schools and
institutions of learning fostered or controlled by the State." "An equal
right in all matters pertaining to the organization and conduct of the
common schools." "Recognition of the mother's equal right with the father
to the control and custody of their mutual offspring." "Protection in
person, property, and earnings for married women and widows, the same as
for men." The first three were fully granted, the fourth was changed as to
"personal service." In her pleading for "political rights," she was
associated with John O. Wattles, and the amendment they proposed was
defeated in the Legislature.

Petitions for "Woman's Right" and changes of the laws were circulated in
Massachusetts as early as 1848. In 1849, a year after the first Suffrage
Convention, Ohio, Maine, Indiana, and Missouri, had passed laws giving to
married women the right to their own earnings. A "Memorial" was sent by
the Suffrage Association to the Ohio Constitutional Convention in 1850,
from which I take the following: "We believe the whole theory of the
common law in relation to woman is unjust and degrading." (Then follows
political injustice.) "We would especially call your attention to the
legal condition of married women." (Then follow general statements and
quotations from the common law.) The attention of the memorialists was
called by the proper authorities to the fact that the statute laws of Ohio
had radically changed the general matters charged. In answering comment,
Mrs. Coe said: "The committee were perfectly aware of the existence of the
statutes mentioned, but did not see fit to incorporate them in the
petition, not only on account of their great length, but because they do
not at all invalidate the position which the petition affects to
establish--the inequality of the sexes before the law; because if the wife
departs from the conditions of the statutes, and thus comes under the
common law, they are against her." She then adds: "There are other laws
which might be mentioned, which really give woman an apparent advantage
over man; yet, having no relevancy to the subject in the petition, we did
not see fit to introduce them."

The ignorance displayed here is phenomenal. Common law is operative only
in the absence of statute law. The Ohio statute (as with all statutes)
superseded the common law; and if the woman "departs from the condition of
the statute," she suffers the penalty prescribed therein, without
reference to her previous position before the law.

One of the earliest demands made by the Suffrage Association was for a law
that should allow of absolute divorce for drunkenness; and this was soon
followed by demands for divorce for other causes. In presenting a petition
to the New York Legislature, pressing these measures, Mrs. Stanton
addressed the Assembly, and from her remarks I take the following words:
"Allow me to call the attention of that party now so much interested in
the slave of the Carolinas to the similarity in his condition and that of
the mothers, wives, and daughters of the Empire State. The negro has no
name. He is Cuffy Douglas, or Cuffy Brooks, just whose Cuffy he may chance
to be. The woman has no name. She is Mrs. Richard Roe, or Mrs. John Doe,
just whose Mrs. she may chance to be. Cuffy has no right to his earnings;
he cannot buy or sell, nor make contracts, nor lay up anything that he can
call his own. Mrs. Roe has no right to her earnings; she can neither buy,
sell, nor make contracts, nor lay up anything that she can call her own.
Cuffy has no right to his children; they may be bound out to cancel a
father's debts of honor. The white unborn child, even by the last will of
the father, may be placed under the guardianship of a stranger, a
foreigner. Cuffy has no legal right to existence; he is subject to
restraint and moderate chastisement. Mrs. Roe has no legal existence; she
has not the best right to her person. The husband has the power to
restrain and administer moderate chastisement. The prejudice against
color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It
is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way.
The negro's skin and the woman's sex are both _prima facie_ evidence that
they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man. The few
social privileges which the man gives the woman, he makes up to the negro
in civil rights. The woman may sit at the same table and eat with the
white man; the free negro may hold property and vote."

It is difficult for our thought to reach the low level from which this
comparison is made. It ignores all the moral and spiritual conceptions
that gave rise to and hallow marriage. But looking upon marriage as a mere
financial compact, and taking the laws even as they then were, a few
things may be said. "Cuffy has no name that he can call his own."
Elizabeth Cady Stanton has her own baptismal name, the name of her honored
father, and that of her honored husband, and the opportunity to make those
names more her own by personal achievement than any one's else. Her
mother, her father, her husband, and her son are as dependent upon her for
preserving the character and distinctiveness of that name, as she is upon
them. Why Lucy Stone should have put inconvenience and indignity upon both
herself and her husband for the sake of continuing to wear her father's
name instead of assuming her husband's, I never could understand. She did
not share the name she gave her child. And there is another distinction
between the nameless Cuffy and the trebly-named Saxon woman. The husband's
name was not thrust upon her. By uttering the simple monosyllable "No,"
she could decline to wear it. It was only as she consented to be mistress
of a husband's heart and home that she passed from the condition of _femme
sole_ and acquired a title and an additional name. "Cuffy has no right to
his earnings." This would be of less consequence to Cuffy if he had a
right to his master's earnings. When a right to another's earnings goes
along with the mutual relation toward a home of master and mistress, the
difference between Cuffy and Mrs. Roe is unspeakable. "Cuffy cannot buy or
sell, make contracts, nor lay up anything that he can call his own." If
Cuffy had the right to prevent his master from buying, selling, making
contracts, or laying up anything that he could call his own until Cuffy's
wants had been provided for in the most ample manner, the world would have
felt less moved over Cuffy's wrongs. "Cuffy has no right to his children."
Mrs. Roe has a right to compel Mr. Roe to bestow his name upon her
children, and to support the boys until they are twenty-one, and the girls
forever. "Cuffy has no legal right to existence." Mrs. Roe has so much
legal right to existence that she stands toward the State and toward her
husband in the relation of a preferred creditor. The State cannot call
upon her for its most arduous duties, which must however be performed in
her behalf. Her husband cannot dispose of real property without her
signature. If he dies solvent, nothing can prevent her taking a fair share
of his estate, and he may give her the whole; but if he dies bankrupt,
neither his will, nor the State, nor anything else, can make her pay one
dollar of his debts. "Cuffy is subject to restraint and moderate
chastisement." "The husband has the power to restrain and administer
moderate chastisement." The public horsewhipping of a husband by his wife
is a rare sight, but when it occurs the law is far more ready to overlook
the breach of order than it is to permit the slightest attempt at assault
and battery upon the wife. As the remaining statements have no reference
to the laws, I may excuse myself from telling how strangely beneath the
dignity of truth they seem to me. That they were urged in connection with
a bill asking for divorce for drunkenness suggests that such a plea was
made an entering wedge for the radical divorce measures that have been
advocated in Suffrage conventions. Any State would, at that time, grant
legal separation for a wife from a drunken husband, and would compel the
husband to support the wife to the extent of his means.

This matter of easier divorce has been pressed steadily from the
beginning, but with very little of the result that the Suffragists
desired.

In the Convention of the National Council of Women, which met in
Washington, D. C., in February, 1895, the Suffrage Associations were
largely represented. Their committee on divorce reform consisted of Ellen
Battelle Dietrick, Chairman, and Mary A. Livermore and Fanny B. Ames.
Their report was, in part, as follows: "In accordance with the
instructions of the Executive Committee of the Council, your chairman sent
forty-eight letters to the Governors of States and Territories, asking
each to call the attention of his legislature to the situation concerning
divorce laws, and requesting the appointment of a committee to consider
the matter, said committee to consist of an equal number of men and
women."

Here it is the same old story. Theirs is not an intelligent presentment of
changes desired, but simply a continued urging of women for personal share
in the making of the laws. In commenting upon the refusal of the Governor
of Iowa, among others, the Committee says: "And yet Iowa is one of the
States which has recently formed a commission of men to consider making
Iowa divorce laws uniform with those of all other States." The laws that
make it possible for a woman divorced in one State to be looked upon in
another State as still bound, were not petitioned against.

Uniformity in the divorce laws of the United States is one of the great
legislative reforms that are moving slowly but surely; and with that, it
appears, the Suffrage appeal has nothing to do. The Committee closed its
report by saying: "We might as well face the fact that the official
servants of the United States cherish frank contempt for woman's opinions
and wishes, and that, too, in regard to a matter which concerns the
welfare of women far more vitally than it does the welfare of men. The one
thing we should deprecate is having men make any new laws or fresh
provisions for women's protection."

In the spring of 1854 Miss Anthony and Ernestine Rose presented a petition
to the New York Legislature, and the Albany "Argus," of March 4, published
a résumé of their appeal. The demands were: That husband and wife should
be tenants in common of property, without survivorship, but with a
partition on the death of one; that a wife should be competent to
discharge trusts and powers the same as a single woman; that the statute
in respect to a married woman's property be changed so that her property
could descend as though she had been unmarried; that married women should
be entitled to execute letters testamentary, and of administration; that
married women should have power to make contracts and transact business as
though unmarried; that they should be entitled to their own earnings,
subject to their proportional liability for support of children; that
post-nuptial acquisitions should belong equally to husband and wife; that
married women should stand on the same footing as single women, as parties
or witnesses in legal proceedings; that they should be sole guardians of
the minor children; that the homestead should be inviolable and
inalienable for widows and children; that the laws in relation to divorce
should be revised, and drunkenness made cause for absolute divorce; that
better care should be taken of single women's property, that their rights
might not be lost through ignorance; that the preference of males in the
descent of real estate should be abolished; that women should exercise the
right of suffrage, and be eligible to all offices, occupations, and
professions, and to act as jurors; that courts of conciliation should be
organized as peacemakers; that a law should be enacted extending the
masculine designation in all statutes of the State to females.


I cannot fully understand Miss Anthony's position; but in some notable
particulars, not her laws but better ones are in force. When Miss Anthony
wrote to inquire who was responsible for repealing an act of 1860 for
which she had worked with her well-known zeal, Judge Charles J. Folger
replied, in part: "I think--with deference I say it--that you are not
strictly accurate in calling the legislation of 1862 a repealing one. In
but one thing did it repeal, in the sense of taking away right or power or
privilege or freedom that the Act of 1860 gave. On the contrary, in some
respects it gave more or greater."

Miss Anthony says, in comment on Judge Folger's letter: "Mr. Folger makes
mistakes in regard to the effect of these bills; quite forgetting that the
wife has never had an equal right to the joint earnings of the
copartnership, as no valuation has ever been placed on her labor in the
household, to which she gives all her time, thought, and strength. A law
securing to the wife the absolute right to half the joint earnings, and,
at the death of the husband, the same control of property and children
that he has when she dies, might make some show of justice; but it is a
provision not yet on the statute-books of any civilized nation."

If it were to be placed on the statute-book, would not one have to be
placed beside it making the wife equally responsible for the support of
the husband? The law can only take cognizance of the earnings of that
member of the firm who transacts business with the outside world. How the
proceeds of mutual labor shall be best made their own is for each husband
and wife to settle; it cannot be matter of legislation. It is interesting
to think what an increase of domesticity there would be if a business
partnership, such as Miss Anthony suggests, were demanded by the statutes.
The law, which now lays the whole support on the husband and father,
whether the wife and daughter work in the home or not, would make it
obligatory for the home partner to give all her time, thought, and
strength to labor in the household, in order to bring in her bill for
services.

The real test of the working of woman suffrage is to be found in the
answer to the question whether better laws have been framed as a
consequence?

There has been no advance in legislation in Utah or Wyoming through the
action or votes of women. The authorities whom I have consulted do not
know of any legislation in Colorado which, can be traced directly to the
presence of women in the legislature. Exception may possibly be made in
regard to the Age-of-Consent bill, which, in common with nearly all the
States, Colorado passed in favor of raising the age. That bill was
introduced by a woman member, and was strongly advocated by the others,
and it called forth an unwise discussion and a repulsive scene in the
House. A great many women have been elected to county offices, in that
State, especially those connected with the schools, and those of Clerk and
Treasurer. In answer to a question, my correspondent adds: "I do not know
of any great improvements of any kind or description in our county affairs
that have been made in the past four years."

In Wyoming, where women have voted so many years, less restraint is
imposed on liquor-selling than in most of the other States. Divorce is
granted for any one of eleven causes, after a residence of but six months.
The age of consent was only fourteen years as late as 1890. Gambling is
legal; not only do the laws mention many games with cards as lawful, but a
statute declares: "No town, city, or municipal corporation in this
Territory shall hereafter have power to prohibit, suppress or regulate any
gaming-house or game, licensed as provided for in this chapter."
"Excusable homicide" is also defined by statute. It is allowable "when
committed by accident or misfortune, in the heat of passion or sufficient
provocation, or upon a sudden combat; provided that no undue advantage is
taken, nor any dangerous weapon used, and that the killing is not done in
a cruel or unusual manner." The laws could hardly have been worse before
women voted.

It is matter of surprise to find how generally in Western towns and States
in which woman has voted or held office, "Woman has degraded politics, and
politics has degraded woman." This is not, to my mind, proof that American
women are degenerating, but it suggests that the women who have sought
political life are not representative.

Another legal demand very early made by the Suffrage leaders was that for
the entrance of women into men's colleges. So far as the State could
control this by law, it has done so. Every educational institution that
receives State support, from the primary school to the State University,
is now open to women. Cornell University, opened in October, 1868, was
aided by a State gift of a million acres, and opened its doors to women in
April, 1872. In the West, the State Universities would have been closed
for lack of pupils, during the war, if women had not attended them.

The New York State Suffrage Association includes in its report of the
doings at the Constitutional Convention a report of its legislative work
for the twenty-two years of its existence. Of the many petitions presented
during those years, but three relate to anything but Suffrage in some
form, and these did not originate with the New York Suffrage Association.
One of these three related to the bill to secure police matrons in New
York City. Work was begun in 1882 and ended in success in 1891, there
being strong opposition to it. The act to provide woman physicians for
prisons, and one making mother and father joint guardians of children,
passed in 1888 and 1892. Three of the Suffrage bills refer to school
matters, one of which was successful and two were lost. Five relate to
municipal suffrage, all of which were defeated. The remaining sixteen
bills were all for full suffrage, were all urged by many speakers, and
were all defeated. I give, in closing, Mr. Francis M. Scott's summary of
the laws of New York State that relate especially to women and are in
force to-day. Much special legislation urged by Suffrage petitions has not
been enacted at all, and much has been passed in a different form.
Suffragists say that the change of laws constitutes no reason for opposing
suffrage, but to my mind it constitutes a most excellent one. What has
been done by petition proves the power to do more by the same means, and
the fact that much of the best legislation has been against the demand of
the Suffragists or in precedence of it, proves that the rights of women
are in hands that are capable of meeting fresh interests as they arise.

Every profession and business is open to women to exactly the same extent
as to men, and already women have found a place in law, medicine,
architecture, journalism, and other professions.

Single women always could engage in commercial and mercantile pursuits
without hindrance or restriction.

Notwithstanding her marriage, a woman now holds and enjoys her separate
property, however acquired, freed from any interference or control on the
part of her husband, and from all liability for his debts.

She may sell, assign, and transfer her real and personal property, and
carry on any trade or business and perform any labor and services on her
own sole and separate account, and her earnings are her own sole and
separate property.

She may sue and be sued, as if she were unmarried, and may maintain an
action in her own name for injury to her person or character (including
actions for slander or libel), and the proceeds of any such action are her
sole and separate property.

She may contract to the same extent, with like effect in the same form as
if she were unmarried, and she and her separate estate are liable thereon.

A widow is endowed of the third part of all the real estate whereof her
husband is seized of an estate of inheritance at any time during the
marriage. This interest, termed during the lifetime of her husband
_inchoate_, attaches at the instant of marriage to all real estate the
husband then owns, and after marriage to all real estate he acquires.
Having once attached, it cannot be divested by any act of the husband, or
any of his creditors. The wife alone can release it, and she forfeits it
only in case of a divorce dissolving the marriage for her misconduct.

The husband cannot either sell or devise his real estate, except subject
to this dower right of his wife. The husband's estate by courtesy in his
wife's real estate is by no means so broad or so well secured as is the
wife's right of dower. It does not attach at all until the birth of a
living child, and the wife may absolutely defeat it at any time without
any consent on the part of her husband, either by conveying her real
estate during her lifetime, or by devising it by her will. It is no longer
necessary for the husband to join with the wife in conveying her property.

A husband is liable for necessaries purchased by his wife, and also for
money given to the wife by a third person in order to enable her to
purchase necessaries, and he is bound to support her and her children
without regard to the extent of her individual and separate estate. No
similar obligation to furnish necessaries to a husband is imposed upon a
wife. The legal definition of necessaries is very broad, being "such
things as are actually required for the wife's support commensurate with
the husband's means, her wonted living as his spouse, and her station in
the community."

In case of a divorce, whether partial or absolute, obtained by the wife,
the husband is required to pay _alimony_ for her support during the rest
of her life, even if she should re-marry. A wife from whom a husband
obtains a divorce cannot be required to contribute in any way to his
support.

Although the law has opened wide the door for all women to engage in
business, it still discriminates in their favor in many particulars. No
woman can be arrested in a civil action, or held by an execution against
the body, except in cases in which it is shown that she has committed "a
wilful injury to person, character, or property," or has been guilty of
such an evasion of duty as is equivalent to a contempt of court. Thus a
woman engaged in business cannot be arrested in an action for a debt
fraudulently contracted.

All women judgment debtors, whether married or single, enjoy certain
exemptions from the sale of their property under execution, which, in the
case of men, extend only to a householder; that is, a man who has, and
provides for, a household or family.

Every married woman is the joint guardian of her children with her
husband, with equal powers, rights, and duties in regard to them with her
husband. It is only the survivor, be it father or mother, who possesses
the right to appoint a guardian by deed or by will. She has now equal
rights with the father over her children.

As matter of practice, the courts when called upon to award the custody of
minor children in cases of separation, determine the question with
reference solely to the interests of the child, with a strong leaning in
the mother's favor.

A husband's creditors have no claim upon the proceeds of a policy of
insurance upon his life for the benefit of his wife, unless the annual
premiums paid by him shall have exceeded five hundred dollars. The
proceeds of such a policy are exempt from execution for any debt owed by
the wife.

The statutes contain a large number of special provisions for the benefit
of female employees in factories and mercantile houses. In the city of New
York, if any man fails to pay the wages due a female employee up to fifty
dollars, not only is none of his property exempt from execution, but he is
liable to be imprisoned upon a body execution, and kept in close
confinement without the privilege of bail. A similar rule is applicable in
Brooklyn.

No woman can be called upon to perform military duty.

No woman can be required to serve upon any jury.

No woman can be called upon by the sheriff or any peace officer to assist
in quelling a disturbance or making an arrest.




CHAPTER VI.


WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE TRADES.


The fifth count in the Suffrage Declaration of Sentiments reads as
follows: "He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and
from those she is permitted to follow she receives but scanty
remuneration."

The women who wrote that in 1848, in common with the majority of American
women, were presumably being well provided for in their own homes, by men
whose boast it was that their wives and daughters did not need or care to
seek employment elsewhere. It is true that at that time, because of this
supposed advantage, as married women they could not have engaged in
separate business that would involve the making of contracts or distinct
bargain and sale. To the world the husband was the wife's financial
manager. But at that time the wife could enter any of the employments as a
paid clerk or worker. This count seems more surprising in view of the fact
that, writing only three years later, to a Suffrage convention that met in
Akron, Ohio, Mrs. Stanton said: "The trades and professions are all open
to us; let us quietly enter and make ourselves, if not rich and famous, at
least independent and respectable." Two years later still, Colonel Thomas
W. Higginson wrote to another Suffrage convention that met in Akron, Ohio:
"We complain of the industrial disadvantages of women, and indicate at the
same time their capacities for a greater variety of pursuits. Why not
obtain a statement on as large a scale as possible, first of what women
are doing now, commercially and mechanically, throughout the Union, and
secondly, of the embarrassments which they meet, the inequality of their
wages, and all the other peculiarities of their position." This would have
been most valuable and interesting, and it would seem that something of
the kind should have preceded the sweeping accusation made in the
Declaration; but there appears in their "History" no evidence of its
having been done. In 1859 Caroline H. Ball said, in addressing a Suffrage
convention: "I honor women who act. That is the reason that I greet so
gladly girls like Harriet Hosmer, Louisa Landor, and Margaret Foley.
Whatever they do, or do not do, for Art, they do a great deal for the
cause of labor. I do not believe any one in this room has an idea of the
avenues that are open to women already." Then follows a list of the trades
then pursued by women in Great Britain. Of the United States she said: "Of
factory operatives in 1845 there were 55,828 men and 75,710 women. Women
are glue-makers, glove-makers, workers in gold and silver leaf, hair-
weavers, hat and cap-makers, hose-weavers, workers in India-rubber, paper-
hangers, physicians, picklers and preservers, saddlers and harness-makers,
shoe-makers, soda-room keepers, snuff and cigar-makers, stock and
suspender-makers, truss-makers, typers and stereotypers, umbrella-makers,
upholsterers, card-makers, photographers, house and sign-painters, fruit-
hawkers, button-makers, tobacco-packers, paper-box makers, embroiderers,
and fur-sewers." She added: "In New Haven seven women work with seventy
men in a clock factory (at half wages)." And in summing up she said: "The
great evils that lie at the foundation of depressed wages are that want of
respect for labor which prevents ladies from engaging in it, and that want
of respect for women which prevents men from valuing properly the work
they do. Make women equal with men before the law, and wages will adjust
themselves."

Women are equal with men legally and wages have not adjusted themselves,
and the law has had no control over the feelings and opinions of men and
women. Those who were large-minded enough to respect labor asked no
warrant from legislation, and those who were small-minded enough to
undervalue woman's work because it was woman's, do so still despite the
statutes, and would if women voted at every election. Men were equal with
each other before the law, but that did not compel the respect of foolish
men, nor did their wages adjust themselves to equality on that account. If
there were more men working in a trade in a given place than the demand
for their products required, the wage would fall, and so it must with
women. But reasons entered into the market value of woman's work that did
not enter into that of men. Mrs. Dall mentions but one trade in which the
wages were lower for women, and there they competed with men. Those seven
women working with the seventy men in New Haven were not expected to be
called upon to support a family by their earnings. If they were girls, in
the natural course of things they were expected to leave the work whenever
they were ready to marry. If one of them married one of the seventy men,
the firm of employers would lose her services entirely; but the man who
married her would be depended upon to work more steadily than before, and
he would also have more incentive to do better work in order to command
still higher wages. The long cry of Suffrage has not been able to bring
about "equal pay for equal work," even where legislation to that effect
has been introduced into Trades Unions and State laws. This has still
rested, and must rest, with the employer, and his action must be governed
by quality and demand and supply. The attempt to secure "equal wages"
among men has resulted in bringing down the wages of all to the point of
the poorer workers. The general laws of trade, like those of government,
are based on principles of universal equity, and however strenuously
temporary deviations may be pressed, they return at last to the natural
position. This is not saying that there is not great injustice toward
labor by capital, and toward capital by labor, but that the foundation
principles tend to govern the mutual relations, and forcing that is
contrary to these cannot be permanently successful. If the work of women
for any reason is unequal, the wages will be, and the mere fact that some
particular women work for some particular time the same number of hours,
and as well as do the men in the same establishments, does not do away
with the fact that women's work in general is not as steady as men's, and
is not expected to meet the same emergency of family support. No one can
believe more fully than I in equal wages for work that is really equal;
but it seems to me that private contract, and not public action, must
regulate the matter of special wage.

Government reports show that the average age of the working-girl in this
country is but twenty-two years, and that after twenty the number falls
off rapidly. Unskilled labor must forever take the place of that which is
withdrawn, which is another and most valid reason for lower wages. That
lower wages are the result of natural causes, and not of unnatural
feeling, is shown in many ways. Woman teachers at the West, where
teachers were needed, received as good pay as did men. In New York I heard
Superintendent Jasper, I think it was, say: "I am in favor of equal pay
for equal work, for the two sexes; but we cannot give it here. We can get
twice as many good women teachers as men teachers, and when we need men we
must pay at a higher rate." This does not extend to the highest grade of
teachers, superintendents, and professors in colleges, where men compete
with one another. There the compensation is the same for equal work. In
the highest forms of work women compete on equal terms. In literature
women are paid, for books or articles, the same prices that men receive.
In art this is true. It is the picture or statue or musical ability that
counts. Singers receive as much for the soprano as for the tenor voice.
Actresses are paid according to "drawing" power, and woman dancers and
acrobats, alas! command the highest price.

There is, among others, this fundamental difference between the business
life of men and women. For men who pursue occupations outside the home,
there are women to manage that home. For women who pursue occupations
outside the home, there are, not men, but other women, to manage the home.
The final domestic care of the world must come upon women. The final
attention to social life must come upon women. In behalf of the women who
are constrained, or who choose, to sacrifice their share in this part of
the world's necessary work, some other women must do double duty. That
this rule has seeming exceptions does not make it less the universal rule.

Nothing, not even "industrial emancipation," is gotten for nothing.

When the count cited above from the Suffrage indictment was written, the
factory system had been established in this country twenty-six years. From
the Revolution down to 1822, the women of the land had been busy in the
homes making the household and personal wear. Sixteen years after the
introduction of machinery into Lowell, Mass., 12,507 operatives were at
work there, the majority of whom were women, American women and girls. New
York State also had its mills. "Fanny Forester" (afterward Mrs. Judson)
worked in a mill near her home in that State. She went there, as did hosts
of New England girls, Lucy Larcom and Harriet Robinson among the number,
to relieve the home, but especially to gain the means of education, for
themselves and for their brothers and sisters. The towns afforded better
libraries, and there were evening classes that they could attend, things
not to be had in the farming districts. In 1850, in twenty-five States,
the factory census reported 32,295 men and 62,661 women workers. In 1860
there were 46,859 men and 75,169 women. Hosiery machinery at this time was
giving employment to three times as many women as men. But the emigrant,
and not the American man, had been the means of turning out the native
woman worker; it was the foreign-born woman who worked for "unequal pay."
In 1846, the sewing-machine had been invented. Previous to that time,
61,500 women were employed making boys' clothing by hand for the market,
which was twice the number of men so employed, while the woman tailor was
as familiar a figure as the dress-maker in every village, where she went
from house to house.

In 1861 came our Civil War, with its awful sacrifice of young men. With
that also came the heavy money loss, and consequent inability of many men,
even where life and limb had been spared, to support their families in the
homes. That great conflict, with its stern necessities, its lessons of
mutual helpfulness, its military discipline, which taught the value of
organization, did more than could ten thousand conventions, even had they
been working with knowledge and system, to instruct women in love for work
for others. It nerved them to labor for self-support and for the support
of those who were now dependent upon them' because the strong arm had
fallen and the willing heart had ceased to beat. Before the year 1861 had
closed, there were a million women in this country earning their daily
bread by honorable labor. As time went on, and the slaughter continued,
and the nation's debt piled up, and prices became almost fabulous, more
and more women asked through blinding tears, "What can I do?" Every trade
was thrown open to women, and the laws had placed the married woman where
she could compete on equal terms with her unmarried sister, even though
she still had the advantage of a husband's support.

A great pother has lately been made by Suffrage workers in New York
because a bill was proposed prohibiting married women from teaching in the
public schools. This has been the unwritten law in many places for years.
The practice was adopted to offset the maintenance of married women.
Teachers should receive more pay, but so should poets and artists, and we
all hope the time will come when brain work will have more tangible market
value.

The sewing-machine had thrown women out of employment, as with it one
woman could do the work of many. The number of work-seekers was enlarged
by the influx, from the desolated South, of women whose entire living had
been swept away. This army of uneducated workers from all sections were
compelled not only to compete with men but with themselves as well. They
sought, and could seek, only the lighter employments. Suffragists had
their wish in regard to man's relinquishment of the "profitable
employments," but not in the way they intended. The women for whose sake
those profitable employments had been "monopolized" were now not only
allowed by law but compelled by circumstance to toil from sun to sun at
the best they could find to do; their frailer organizations were forced to
bear "the double curse of work and pain." A nobler army of martyrs never
turned their sorrows into blessings by the spirit in which they met them,
than the American women who put their shoulders to the wheels of business
that were moving in a hundred ways.

In 1843 a humble beginning at industrial education for girls had been made
by the Female Guardian Society. In 1854 Peter Cooper established the
Cooper Union with its generous facilities for women in industry and the
arts. The Young Women's Christian Association was founded in Normal,
Illinois, in 1872, and its work in the industrial branch spread, before
many years, to every city and town in the land. Men originated for women
the first "Woman's Protective Union." In twenty-five years it had reported
legal suits won for 12,000 women, and $41,000 collected. In 1869 the great
organization of the Knights of Labor was founded, and in its body of rules
was one "to secure for both sexes equal pay for equal work." Failure
proves that labor cannot, any more than paper, be coined into money by the
mere fiat of a government or an organization.

But the great impulse to industrial education came through the Centennial
Exposition held at Philadelphia in 1876. While the land was filled with
the hum of preparation, as their contribution to that indication of
peaceful progress, the Suffrage Associations were rolling up another
petition in which to set forth their wrongs. After General Hawley, manager
of the Exposition, had courteously refused to receive it in a public
meeting, it was "pressed upon the Nation's heart" by delegates who pushed
their way into Independence Hall. Outside that historic building, under
the broiling sun, with Matilda Joslyn Gage to hold an umbrella over her,
Miss Anthony read aloud a "Declaration of Independence" that re-echoed the
sentiments of their first Declaration. It began by saying: "While the
nation is buoyant with patriotism, and all hearts are attuned to praise,
it is with sorrow we come to strike the one discordant note"--a typical
and prophetic sentence.

From 1876 girls, as well as boys, received manual training in the public
schools, and when that proved impracticable, the way was found to open
industrial schools that should include classes for girls. Every State, and
almost every city and town of any size, had them. It was not long ere
multitudes of societies and organizations furnished means for women's
education in business and mechanic arts. The growth of the philanthropy of
self-help is one of the wonders of the past twenty-five years, and women,
without the ballot, have largely assisted in developing it.

John Graham Brooks, in a lecture delivered in New York in the winter of
1895-6, on "Some Economic Aspects of the Woman Question," said: "Woman who
used to do her work in the house now does it in the factory, and the same
work, doing her work under absolutely new and different conditions, a
change so great that it closes finally one argument that I hear again and
again by those opposed to woman suffrage--namely, that the place for woman
is in the home."

One condition under which she works that is not "absolutely new and
different" is that of sex. Whatever as a woman she could not do in the
home she cannot do abroad as a working-woman. She is in business as a
business woman, not as a business man. Economic equality in such things as
she can do is as unlike to a similarity in work which ignores sex
conditions as a business corporation is to the government under whose laws
it exists and by which its rights are defended. But even the external
conditions are not so changed as might at first appear. The statistical
proof of the youth of the majority of workers, the comparatively small
number out of the whole population who go into business, and the fact that
the domestic work for these very workers must be done by women, all show
this.

The United States Census of 1890 shows that not quite four million women
are "engaged in gainful occupations." Of these more than one and a half
million are in domestic service, and nearly half a million in professional
service, mainly as teachers. The most striking gain has been made in the
lighter forms of profitable labor--by stenographers, typewriters,
telegraph and telephone operators, cashiers, bookkeepers, etc. In 1870
there were 19,828 of these; in 1890, there were 228,421. The invention of
the type-writing machine appears to be the ballot that has mainly produced
this result. Carrol D. Wright says that in twenty cities examined in the
United States he found, among 17,000 working-women, that 15,887 were
single, 1,038 were widows, and 745 were married. This tells the same
story. The mass of these women, like the mass of men, are working, not for
public influence or station, but for the owning and holding of a home. The
latest effort in self-help for the working class is the wise one of
building them good homes. The best renting property has been found to be
that which gives privacy and those distinctions that mark the family.

The latest report of the New York Bureau of Statistics of Labor shows that
of 8,040 persons who registered for employment in New York city, 6,458
were men, and 1,582 were women. Of these, the foreign-born numbered 4,804,
of whom 3,674 were men and 1,140 were women. The native-born numbered
3,234, of whom 2,796 were men, and 442 were women. The list included every
trade and profession, from that of day laborer to that of clergyman, from
that of school teacher to that of domestic servant, and showed that in the
city where more women are employed than in any other place, the proportion
of women to men was less than one fifth, and of native American to
foreign-born women two fifths.

Mr. Brooks would favor suffrage because "in this new career there are
reasons for every whit of protection." He mentions, as proof of woman's
changed attitude as an industrial unit, that the Supreme Courts of
Illinois and California have decided against special legislation for
women. They did so on the ground that "they were now earning their
livelihood under men's conditions, and should not have special legislation
in business relations." If Mr. Brooks thinks that women wish the ballot to
restore the special legislation, he does not know the Suffrage demand for
equality. In England, when the laws were under discussion that forbid the
employment of women more than a certain number of hours, and of children
under certain ages, the Woman Suffrage leaders protested against the
former as an infringement of personal rights and the ability to make
contracts. But the special legislation for business women goes on,
because, after all, the State knows that they are business women, and not
business men, and the Suffrage quarrel in regard to privilege _versus_
right goes on also.

Before the Committee of the Constitutional Convention, Mrs. Ecob, of
Albany, said: "You speak of chivalry. We scorn the word! What has your
chivalry done for the weaker sex? Women are the unpaid laborers of the
world--outcasts in government." Mrs. Hood, of Brooklyn, on the same
occasion said: "Who dares insult our American manhood by declaring that
men will be less courteous to mother, wife, and sister, because they are
political equals? Woman's equality in the industrial world has to-day
produced a nobler, better chivalry than was ever conceived by the knights
of old."

These two Suffrage leaders will have to settle between themselves the
question which they have placed in dispute. It serves to point the moral
of dilemma that attends an attempted adjustment of unnatural claims.
Meantime government is caring for the weak, and chivalry is doing justice.
The Labor Law that went into effect in this State on September 1st
provided that children be classified so that those under fourteen years
should not be employed in mercantile pursuits. Children between the ages
of twelve and fourteen will be permitted to work in vacation, if they can
show that they have attended school through the year. The girls between
fourteen and twenty-one are not to be allowed to work more than ten hours
a day. Their employment before 7 A.M. and after 10 P.M. is forbidden.
Women and children are not allowed to work in basements, without permits
from the Health Board as to the condition of the basement. Seats are to be
provided for woman employees, forty-five minutes given them for luncheon,
and proper lunch and toilet rooms to be secured. Penalties, ranging from a
fine of $20 for the first offence to imprisonment, are prescribed for
violation of the law. In his last report, published in January 1897, the
New York Commissioner of Labor considers the low wages and petty wrongs of
working women and girls in New York City. He advises the formation of
unions among themselves for their better protection.

Mr. Brooks does not agree with those who claim that possession of the
ballot would raise wages. Mrs. Ames and Dr. Jacobi think it would only
raise them through the indirect influence of the greater respect in which
the worker would be held. This is safe ground again, because it is
debatable; but the domestic servants of those who hold the former opinion
might give them an object-lesson. Unfranchised as the servants are, they
have only to make a threat of leaving to secure better wages.

Harriette A. Keyser, who was the special Suffrage champion of the working-
woman before the Committee of the Constitutional Convention, gave not one
fact or figure to show that the working-woman, where she had the ballot,
had already been helped by it, or that it was likely to help her, or how
and why it might help her. Among the generalities she uttered was the
following; "But the greatest value of the working-woman, to my mind, is
that without her economic value this present demand for equal suffrage
could never be made. Indeed, the suffrage of the world is due to her. Do I
mean by this that every working-woman in the country sees her own value so
clearly that she demands enfranchisement? I could not say this with truth.
I make this statement irrespective of what any individual working-woman
may think. It is based upon what she is. As through the last half century
the contention for equal rights has continued, the working-woman has been
the great object-lesson. It was not from women of leisure, having all the
rights they want, that inspiration has been received. It has been caught
from the patient worker, healing the sick, writing the book, painting the
picture, teaching the children, tilling the soil, working in the factory,
serving in the household. Every stroke of these workers has been a protest
against a disfranchised individuality." Miss Keyser has mentioned most of
the classes in this country, for, so far as my experience goes, there is
no such thing as a leisure class, in the sense of an idle class, of women.
Women are almost universally industrious, and it is a mistake to suppose
that their early industry in the house was not as much appreciated and
counted in the general fund of work as their more public activity now. It
is well for Miss Keyser to make her estimate of the Suffrage value of the
working-woman one that shall have no reference to the expressed views of
the working-woman herself; because the working-woman seems almost
universally not only unconscious of but indifferent to her attitude as a
great object-lesson in favor of the ballot. But here is something new.
Suffragists have first claimed that there could be no working-woman unless
there was a ballot in woman's hand; then they claimed that, although there
was a working-woman despite the fact that she had not been enfranchised,
she was made by the agitation for the ballot; and now comes Miss Keyser to
say that, not only is the working-woman not due to the ballot, or to
ballot-seeking, but "the suffrage of the world is due to her," for
"without her economic value this present demand for equal suffrage could
never have been made!" Tar baby ain't sayin' nuthin'.

Dr. Jacobi, in "Common Sense," says: "Whatever may be the personal
privileges of their lot, whatever the legal protection accorded to their
earnings, the public status of such a class remains strictly that of
aliens. At the present moment this vast and constantly growing army of
women industrials constitutes an alien class. The privation for that class
of political right to defend its interests is only masked, but not
compensated, by its numerous inter-relations with those who have rights."
So they are conceded to have personal privileges, and legal protection for
earnings. The alienism is then purely political, and works no hardship but
what Suffragists conceive to be in the mental attitude of the worker.

Foreign capitalists who own land or plant in the United States are
unfranchised. We have large numbers of men working in trades and
professions who never have been naturalized, but we do not dream that all
these constitute an alien class of industrials. No distinction is made in
business opportunity between the voter and non-voter. Neither is any
social distinction made regarding worker or employer on account of the
relations of either to the ballot. Market value is not measured by
suffrage, except in dishonorable transactions, and the women "with ballots
in their hands" are not the Government's preferred creditors. The men in
the District of Columbia are not conscious of lower wages and industrial
ostracism. Again, Dr. Jacobi says: "The share of women in political rights
and life--imperfect and deferred during the predominance of militarism--
has become natural, has become inevitable, with the advent of
industrialism, in which they so largely share."

Industrialism has no more power to change the basis of government than the
abolition movement had when certain advocates of it shouted that it was
"sinful to vote or hold office, because the government was founded upon
physical force and maintained itself by muskets." Industrialism is
bringing into this country some of the gravest problems it has ever met.
The sympathy of the people is on the side of labor that uses honorable
means; but Cleveland and Leadville are among the places that suggest
afresh the fact that industrialism must be kept in order for its own sake,
for the sake of general peace, and for the sake of its increasing ranks of
"alien" women who look to it for "every whit of protection," save that
which their own self-respect and that of public opinion can win them.

Again, Dr. Jacobi says: "Notwithstanding the repression of women's civil
rights, and their absolute exclusion from even the dream of a political
sphere, the women of France engage more freely than anywhere else in
business and industry." There is a moral here deeper than can be read at a
glance. The first thought suggested is, that industrial success for woman
is not in the least dependent upon the vote. The second is, that
industrial progress does not command the vote. The third is, that American
freedom has worked in the opposite direction from French unstable
republicanism. And the fourth is, that industrious France stands appalled
at the lack of increase of its population. There are many forces that sap
its national life, but perhaps the most conspicuous is the socialistic and
anarchistic tendency of its labor organizations. The woman-suffrage idea
was first openly proclaimed during the French Revolution. In 1851 the
annual Suffrage Convention in this country was called by Paulina Wright
Davis, to meet in Worcester, Mass. Ernestine Rose read to the convention
two letters addressed to that body through her, written by Jeanne Deroine
and Pauline Roland, from a Paris prison. During the revolutionary
movements of 1848, these women had played conspicuous roles. One of them
had attempted to nominate the mayor in her native city, the other to be a
candidate for the Legislative Assembly. They wrote: "Sisters of America!
Your socialist sisters of France are united with you in the vindication of
the right of woman to civil and political equality. We have, moreover, the
profound conviction that only by the power of association based on
solidarity--by the union of the working-classes of both sexes in organized
labor, can be acquired, completely and pacifically, the civil and
political equality of woman, and the social right for all."

I know the feud, and the grounds for it, between socialism and anarchy.
But both are enemies of the social order, and both are favorers of woman
suffrage. How "pacifically" the labor movement that originated in France
in 1848, and spread throughout Europe, was likely to proceed, we may judge
by its constant outbreaks kindred to the recent bomb-throwing in Paris. In
the German Working-man's Union, Hasenclever, for many years the leading
socialist in the German Reichstag, said: "The Woman Question would be
taken by the developed, or, more correctly speaking, the communistic
state, under its own control, for in this state" (which was to consist of
men and women with equal vote) "when the community bears the obligation of
maintaining the children, and no private capital exists, the woman need no
longer be chained to one man. The bond between the sexes will be merely a
moral one, and if the characters do not harmonize could be dissolved." The
"Social Democrat" of Copenhagen has for mottoes: "All men and women over
twenty-one should vote." "There should be institutions for the proper
bringing up of children." All the communistic and anarchistic labor
organizations in Germany, France, Switzerland, Denmark, and England
proclaim woman suffrage as a prime factor, and the disruption of the
family as its corollary.

There are many who remember the visit to this country of the socialist,
Dr. Aveling, and his (so-called) wife, the daughter of Karl Marx. His
legal wife had been left in England. Miss Marx said, in reply to the
question of a Chicago lady, that love was the only recognized marriage in
Socialism, consequently no bonds of any kind would be required. Divorces
would be impossible; for when love ceased, separation would naturally
ensue.

At a meeting of the Woman's Council held in Washington, in 1888, Mrs.
Stanton said: "I have often said to men of the present day that the next
generation of women will not stand arguing with you as patiently as we
have for half a century. The organizations of labor all over the country
are holding out their hands to women. The time is not far distant when, if
men do not do justice to women, the women will strike hands with labor,
with socialists, with anarchists, and you will have the scenes of the
Revolution of France acted over again in this republic."

Mrs. Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in her lecture in
this country two years ago on "The Economic Emancipation of Woman," said
that she rejoiced in every co-operative working-woman's dwelling, because
it was a blow aimed at the isolated home, and she has just repeated in New
York her proposition for the institutional care of children. Alice Hyneman
Rhine, in her article on "Woman's Work in America," says of socialistic
labor, "It aims to benefit woman by recognizing her as a perfect equal of
man, politically and socially; by fixing woman's means of support by the
state so as to render her independent of man." "Freedom," a radical
socialistic newspaper published in Chicago, where Emma Goldman and her ilk
have revealed the true inwardness of such movements, recommends as the
first step "equal rights for all, without distinction of race or sex," and
the abolition of "class rule." Our most radical socialistic Labor National
Convention in New York, this year, had four woman delegates.

The Knights of Labor who first put "equal pay for equal work" into their
platform, appeared in their late convention, under the lead of Sovereign,
who declared that Gov. Altgeld "was one of the finest types of American
manhood to-day." They seem to be drifting toward that phase of Socialism
to which Alice Hyneman Rhine referred. There are no greater tyrants than
some of the Labor organizations, and one evidence of this is the fact that
they prevent the colored man from doing any work outside of a few of the
least noble occupations.

With such edged tools as these are our American women playing when they
demand, in the name of democracy, in the name of the family, in the name
of the working-woman, that the word "sex" shall be inserted in the United
States Constitution, and the word "male" be stricken from every State
constitution that now contains it.




CHAPTER VII.


WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE PROFESSIONS.


The sixth count in the Declaration of Sentiments reads: "He closes against
her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most
honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is
not known."

That statement contains another evidence of the untruthfulness of a half
truth. First, it is an unwarrantable assumption, of which no proof is
offered, that man had closed against woman any avenue to wealth and
distinction, or that he felt toward woman the selfish and monopolizing
spirit implied in such accusation. Second, but three of the avenues, all
of which he was said to have closed against her, are mentioned. Whatever
may be the truth about those three, the no less honorable, although less
arduous, avenues to wealth and distinction were as open to her as to him.
As educator, author, artist, in painting, music, and sculpture, she could
freely attain to the same coveted end. The Suffragists did not decry man's
"monopoly" of the honorable and profitable but severe professions of civil
engineering, seamanship, mining engineering, lighthouse keeping and
inspecting, signal service, military and naval duty, and the like. These,
and the drudgery of the world's business and commerce, man was welcome to
keep.

But, most of all, this Suffrage indictment contains, as do all the rest,
another tacit untruth when it assumes that woman's work has not in the
past been as honorable to herself and as profitable to the world as has
that of man. By setting up a false standard for achievement, and
attempting to make everything conform to it, the Suffrage movement has
done incalculable harm. It is not progressing to push into an unwonted
place merely because it is unwonted, and because you can push in. It is
progress to enter it in response both to an inward and an outward need.

When the first Suffrage convention had adopted the Declaration of
Sentiments, Lucretia Mott offered a resolution, which was also adopted,
declaring that "the speedy success of our cause depends upon the zealous
and untiring efforts of men and women for the overthrow of the monopoly of
the pulpit, and for the securing to woman an equal participation with men
in the various trades, professions, and commerce."

The most remarkable thing about this resolution is, that it was
promulgated by a woman who was at that very time a gifted and eloquent
preacher, so that to her, who cared for it so highly, man had not closed
that avenue to wealth and distinction. As she had a husband to support her
and her children, she was much more free to attain those desirable ends
than most of the ministers who were preaching for humanity's sake and the
gospel's, at salaries ranging from five hundred to two thousand dollars a
year, and who had families to support out of their slender pittance. If
any woman was in a position to "overthrow the monopoly of the pulpit,"
surely she was. Stately and beautiful of mien, fervent in spirit, eloquent
in language, one who had learned the Hebrew and Greek that she might read
the Scriptures in the original tongues, what did she lack? Not only was no
pulpit of another faith than hers ever opened to her, but more than half
those of her own form of worship were closed against hearing the inner
voice as interpreted by her. In that schism that rent the Society of
Friends as no other religious body has ever been rent, she threw in her
fortunes, or led others to throw in their fortunes (for she had been
preaching nine years when the division occurred), with that portion that
placed the "inner light" above all Scripture. When the Friends came from
the London meeting to testify against the teachings of the schismatics,
they besought Lucretia Mott to return to the faith of her childhood, but
she resisted from conviction that she was right. Elias Hicks, her leader,
had instigated the members of his congregation to refuse to pay their
taxes to the Government during and following the war of 1812, on the
ground that they represented an encroachment of the secular power on
Christian liberty, and were used to support war, which was sin. Lucretia
Mott preached that "no Christian can consistently uphold a government
based on the sword, or relying on that as an ultimate resort." The country
has always suffered from this doctrine. The Tory Quakers of the Revolution
called publicly upon Friends "to withstand and refuse to submit" "to
instructions and ordinances" not warranted by "that happy Constitution
under which we have long enjoyed tranquillity and peace." Thomas Paine,
whose parents were Friends, in "The Crisis," says: "The common phrase of
these people is, 'Our principles are peace.' To which it may be replied,
'and your practices are the reverse.'" Another striking instance of this
disagreement between principle and practice is seen in Lucretia Mott's
behavior. From the platform where she demanded the ballot for woman, she
proclaimed that all voting was sinful. That bodies of people who so held
should continue to enjoy the Government's protection of themselves and
their property, through the sacrifices made by those who carried on
government by giving willingly their money and their strength, is a proof
of our wonderful freedom.

Elizabeth Fry and most of the English Friends would not mention the name
of Mrs. Mott. Mrs. Stanton once asked her what she would have done after
the Hicksite faction had been voted out of meeting at the World's
Conventicle of Friends in London, if the spirit had moved her to speak
when the chairman and members had moved that she be silent, and she
answered, "Where the spirit of God is, there is liberty." This is the
liberty of anarchy, and it had its due weight in the Suffrage movement.
Mrs. Stanton, in the course of a eulogy pronounced at Mrs. Mott's funeral,
said: "The 'vagaries' of the Anti-slavery struggle, in which Lucretia Mott
took a leading part, have been coined into law; and the 'wild fantasies'
of the Abolitionists are now the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth
amendments to the National Constitution.... The 'infidel' Hicksite
principles that shocked Christendom are now the cornerstones of the
liberal religious movement in this country." The vagaries of the Anti-
slavery struggle are exactly those that were _not_ coined into law. The
wild fantasies of the Abolitionists were rejected by those whose sober
judgment and steady courage made possible the last constitutional
amendments. And no truer is it that the "infidel" Hicksite principles are
the corner-stones of any genuine movement of Christian liberality. While
the Friends mourn that infidelity and Roman Catholicism have made inroads
upon their progress in some places, they have steadily advanced in the
other direction from that pointed out by Lucretia Mott. Their educated and
paid ministry, their First-day schools, their missions, home and foreign,
their music, and simple but set forms, their reports to London of
"conversion and profession of faith," and their rapid growth where these
things have taken place, all indicate the truth of this. The large meeting
at Swartmore College, in the summer of 1896, is another evidence.

The proportion of woman preachers to the different denominations is as
follows: The Hicksite-Quakers (as against the orthodox) have the most. So
have the German Methodists (United Brethren) as against the orthodox
Methodists. The Free-Will Baptists, as against the orthodox Baptists,
ordain more woman preachers. The Universalist preceded the Unitarian
church in so doing. The Presbyterian and Congregational churches, as a
body, have taken no steps in that direction. In the Congregational
denomination any separate body of worshippers can ordain whom it sees fit.
The Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches have orders which band women as
religious workers and remove them more or less from the ordinary life of
the world, but they have taken no steps toward ordaining women for the
ministry.

We may note that the denominations that have been foremost in building
colleges for woman, and in promoting her general advancement in
professions and trades, as well as in social and philanthropic matters,
are the ones whose pulpits she has not entered. They are also those by
which she is most cordially welcomed to speak on all Christian and
philanthropic themes. Where her influence is most broadly felt, she has
not been taken out of the ordinary life that she was meant to share and to
sway. It was from the great denominations that she first crossed the
threshold of home to carry home love and principle to foreign countries.
In missions she has served in every conceivable form of public
benevolence, side by side with man. Real reforms work from within. If the
time comes when the other branches of the Christian Church feel as do a
few at present, that the exercise of the ministerial office is consistent
and appropriate for woman, one that compels no sacrifice of the life and
work that are, and must be, peculiarly her own, the ballot will not be
needed to place her or to keep her in their pulpits. Whatever may be
thought of the profession of the ministry for woman, it must certainly be
acknowledged that it is the one farthest removed from political thought
and action. If any class of women should be glad to be exempted from the
vote, it is the woman preachers.

In her book, "Common Sense," Dr. Jacobi says: "The profession of medicine
was thrown open to women when, in 1849, the year following the Revolution,
and the passage of the Married Woman's Property Rights Bill, New York
State for the first time, at Geneva, conferred a medical diploma on a
woman, Elizabeth Blackwell. She was, or rather she became, the sister-in-
law of Lucy Stone; and the work of these two women, the one in medicine,
the other for equal suffrage, constituted the two necessary halves of one
idea."

In 1848, when the first Suffrage convention was held, twelve women were
studying medicine in different parts of the country. Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell was studying that year in Geneva, and when members of the
convention wrote to congratulate her, she said, in the course of her
reply: "Much has been said of the oppression that woman suffers; man is
reproached with being unjust, tyrannical, jealous. I do not so read human
life." Dr. Blackwell estimates that within ten years of that time three
hundred women had been graduated in medicine. In an address delivered in
1889 before the London Medical School for women in London, Dr. Blackwell
said: "I believe that the department of medicine in which the great and
beneficent influence of women may be specially exerted is that of the
family physician. Not as specialists, but as the trusted guides and wise
counsellors in all that concerns the physical welfare of the family, they
will find their most congenial field of labor." All this was the exact
opposite of the spirit that prevailed in the Association with which Lucy
Stone was identified. She declaimed against man's injustice; and when it
was proposed, after the civil war had taught the power of organization, to
have a constitution and by-laws for the Suffrage movement, Lucy Stone said
that she had felt the "thumb-screws and the soul-screws," and did not wish
to be placed under them again. "Our duty is merely agitation." After a
stormy quarrel, she left to form a new association in New England.
Elizabeth Blackwell's name is conspicuous for its absence from Suffrage
annals. In the letter referred to she wrote: "The exclusion and constraint
woman suffers is not the result of purposed injury or premeditated insult.
It has arisen naturally, without violence, because woman has desired
nothing more, has not felt the soul too large for the body. But when
woman, with matured strength, with steady purpose, presents her lofty
claim, all barriers will give way, and man will welcome, with a thrill of
joy, the new birth of his sister spirit."

The way in which barriers have fallen, and have been removed by men, in
order that woman may enter the noble profession of medicine, is one of the
strange stories of this half century. The Civil War, which taught us so
much, helped greatly in this. There were some genuine obstacles in the way
of woman's education in medicine, and that they were genuine is proved by
the fact that, as rapidly as arrangements can be made so that woman can
have thorough training by and with her own sex, this is being done. This
trend is in opposition to Suffrage action. Dr. Clemence Lozier, who was so
long at the head of the Suffrage association in New York City, was the
most persistent urger of mixed clinics, and marched in to them at
Bellevue, at the head of her classes, defying the delicate instincts of
both men and women.

The struggle of the "new" school, which was really as old as Hippocrates,
who said four hundred years before Christ that some remedies acted by the
rule of "contraries," and some by the rule of "similarity," was long and
hard compared with that of the entrance of woman upon the practice of
medicine, although the latter involved sex questions and the former only
forms, and professional prejudice did not die with woman's adoption of it.

Dr. Jacobi says: "We are perfectly well aware that industrial and
professional competition are entirely different matters from popular
sovereignty. But when we find the same instincts aroused, the same
opposition excited, the same arguments advanced, and the same
determination manifested, by trades unions, to exclude women from trades,
by learned societies to exclude them from professions, by universities to
exclude them from learning, and by voters to exclude them from the polls,
we cannot avoid asking whether the difference in the cases is not balanced
by the identity in the mental attitude of the opponents." The best trades
unions have admitted women to their protective and wage associations, or,
better still, have helped them to form their own; the worst trades unions,
the socialistic and anarchistic, have claimed for them the right to vote.
The learned societies are admitting them professionally as fast as they
make themselves worthy. The men who hold out against their admission to
men's universities are precisely the class of men who have been most
active in assisting to found for them equal colleges of their own, and
they are also the men who are most strenuous against their admission to
the polls. In medicine, while co-education is deemed better than
ignorance, the tendency is to separate the sexes in study as fast as
facilities can be made equal. The opponents of woman's progress and those
of woman suffrage are of opposite classes, and their mental attitudes are
entirely different. How much harm the struggle for "popular sovereignty"
for women has done in hindering the progress of industrial and
professional competition, can be judged somewhat by the success of the
latter and the failure of the former in the highest fields. It is a
significant fact that women do not avail themselves of opportunities open
to them in the professions to the extent that it has been claimed they
would. The medical examination advertised in January, 1896, by the New
York State Civil Service Commission for woman candidates, failed for lack
of applicants, although the salaries of women in the State hospitals range
from $1,000 to $1,500 a year.

The entrance of woman upon the legal profession raised constitutional
questions as to the enactment of law; and so here, as in the matter of the
school suffrage, we see how carefully republicanism guarded the post at
which must stand the sentinels of liberty. If it might involve law-
enforcement, woman could not practise law or vote on the school question;
but the Supreme Court of the United States decided that "the practising of
any profession violates no law of the Federal Constitution."

The study of law must prove of great benefit to woman, though here again
it has already been shown that it is possible that the greatest practical
advantage she will derive from entrance into this noble profession will be
from acquiring knowledge of her country's laws, and how to take care of
her own property. Widows and unmarried women have almost invariably placed
their moneyed interests in the hands of a man, when it would have been
better for all concerned that they should have spent some patient thought
on the details of their own affairs. The first woman who was admitted to
the bar in this State (New York) was a teacher in the Albany Normal
College, and she still remains there, and the women's classes for legal
study in New York City have been largely composed of those who had no
intention of claiming admittance to the bar. That women can and do enter
all these professions with credit to themselves, and that they thus
enhance the feeling of pride in their sex, which is a strong impulse with
women, is matter for profound congratulation, and is evidence that the
animus of the Suffrage movement is not that which stirs society.




CHAPTER VIII.


WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND EDUCATION.


The seventh count in the Suffrage indictment declared: "He has denied her
facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed
against her."

Among the resolutions passed in the first Suffrage convention was one
demanding: "Equal rights in the universities," and the first petition
presented by Suffrage advocates contained a clause asking that entrance to
men's colleges be obtained for women by legal enactment. We note that this
is far from being a demand for education for women equal to that given to
men in the universities. Men have founded colleges for women, men and
women have worked together in securing for woman every facility and
opportunity for education of the highest grade; but the "barrier of sex"
is not broken down in education. But few of the older colleges for men
admit women, and those few, so far as I have learned from conversation
with members of their faculties, speak of the arrangement as an
experiment, and give the need for economy, combined with a desire to
assist women, as a reason for making that experiment. Meantime the
knocking at men's literary portals by Suffrage advocates has gone on as
vigorously as if women could obtain education in no other way.

In the first Suffrage convention ever held in Massachusetts these two
resolutions were adopted: "That political rights acknowledge no sex, and
therefore the word 'male' should be stricken from every State
constitution;" and "That every effort to educate woman, until you accord
to her her rights, and arouse her conscience by the weight of her
responsibilities, is futile, and a waste of labor."

The State in which these sentiments were uttered abounded in fine schools
for girls, among which were Mount Holyoke and Wheaton seminaries.

A rapid survey of some of the educational conditions that led to the state
of things existing when Suffrage associations were formed, will be in
place. Learning seemed incompatible with worship early in the Christian
era. The faith that worked by love was "to the Jews a stumbling-block, and
to the Greeks foolishness." That great battle between the felt and the
comprehended, which in this era we have named the conflict between science
and religion, was decided in the mind of the apostle to the Gentiles when
he wrote: "We know in part, and we prophesy in part; when that which is
perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away." He recalled
the accusation, "Thou art beside thyself, much learning hath made thee
mad," and he hastened to assure the unlettered fishermen and the simple
and devout women who were followers of Christ, that "all knowledge" was
naught if they had not love; that even faith was vain if it led to the
rejection of the diviner wisdom that a little child could understand.

The great learning of Augustine and the Fathers brought into the Church
pagan speculations of God and morality, as well as pagan knowledge in art,
science, and literature. The Church became corrupted, and a great outcry
was made against the learning itself, which was falsely supposed to be the
cause of the degeneration of faith. Symonds says that during the Dark Ages
that followed upon this first battle between faith and sight, the meaning
of Latin words derived from the Greek was lost; that Homer and Virgil were
believed to be contemporaries, and "Orestes Tragedia" was supposed to be
the name of an author. Milman says that "at the Council of Florence in
1438, the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople, being
ignorant, the one of Greek, and the other of Latin, discoursed through an
interpreter." It was near the time of the Reformation that a German monk
announced in his convent that "a new language, called Greek, had been
invented, and a book had been written in it, called the New Testament."
"Beware of it," he added, "It is full of daggers and poison."

But the tradition of the love that book revealed had crept into the heart
of the world, and now awoke. Through what struggles the "spirit of all
truth" promised by Christ was leading, and would lead the world, the
history of civilization can tell. Women shared in some degree the outward
benefits of the Revival of Learning. They became in not a few instances
Doctors of Law and professors of the great universities that sprang up, as
well as teachers, transcribers, and illuminators in the great nunneries. I
could give a long and honorable list of names of woman writers and
artists, in many lands, from Mediaeval to modern times; and one of the
interesting things revealed by such a record would be the number who were
working with, or were directly inspired and helped by, a father or a
brother. The Court contained some women who, like Lady Jane Grey, upheld
the model of purity while acquiring the learning that naturally
accompanied wealth. But elegant letters had again become the associate of
moral and religious corruption in the courts, and the "ignorance of
preaching" arose to combat it, in Cromwell, the Roundheads, the
Dissenters, the Covenanters.

Yet sound learning was not to die that Christian truth might live. Of the
band of Pilgrims and Puritans that came first to our shores, about one in
thirty was college-bred. While subordinating book-knowledge to piety,
they had learned scarcely less the dangers of ignorance. Their first
college was founded because of "the dread of having an illiterate ministry
to the churches when our ministers shall lie in dust." Charles Francis
Adams says, in regard to the establishment of Harvard College: "The
records of Harvard University show that, of all the presiding officers
during the century and a half of colonial days, but two were laymen, and
not ministers of the prevailing denomination." He further says that "of
all who in early times availed themselves of such advantages as this
institution could offer, nearly half the number did so for the sake of
devoting themselves to the gospel. The prevailing notion of the purpose of
education was attended with one remarkable consequence--the cultivation of
the female mind was regarded with utter indifference."

It was attended with still another remarkable consequence, the effect of
which is felt up to this hour. Only men who were fitted for a profession
were given a college education. It is well within my memory when it began
to be seriously said: "A college education is good for a boy, whether he
intends to follow a profession or not; it will make him a better business
man, or even a better farmer." The country girl is now, as a rule, better
educated than her brother. It also happened in those earlier days, that
the artist and the musician were expected to attain knowledge by
intuition, save in technical branches.

The minister was, almost of necessity, like a magistrate in these semi-
religious colonies. The fact of the breaking up into various sects, which
we sometimes incline to look upon with regret as defeating Christian
unity, really saved the essentials of that unity by preventing the
clerical magistrate from establishing a church resting upon state
authority. It was obligatory that the civil rulers should be learned, even
at the expense of those who carried on the business and the home.

During the first two hundred years of our existence it would have been
almost absurd to expect that women would be extensively educated outside
the home. The country was poor, and struggling with new conditions, and
great financial crises swept over it. There were wars and rumors of wars.
Until after 1812-15 American independence was not an assured fact.
Whatever may be said of the present, woman's place in America then was in
the home, and nobly did she fill that place. That she had not been wholly
uninstructed in even elegant learning, is evidenced by the share she took
in literature and in the discussion of religious and public matters, and
in such personal records as that of Elder Faunce, who eulogized Alice
Southworth Bradford for "her exertions in promoting the literary
improvement and the deportment of the rising generation." Dame schools
were early established for girls, and here were often found the sons of
the farmer and the mechanic. These were established in Massachusetts in
1635. Late in 1700, girls were admitted through the summer to "Latin
schools" where boys were taught in winter, and in 1789 women began to be
associated with men as teachers. In 1771 Connecticut founded a system of
free schools in which boys and girls were taught. In 1794 the Moravians
founded a school for girls at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Here were educated
the sisters of Peter Cooper, the mother of President Arthur, and many
women who became exponents of culture.

New England began before this to have fine private schools for girls, but
no great step was taken until Miss Hart (afterward Mrs. Willard) had
become so successful with her academy teaching in her native town of
Berlin, Connecticut, and in Hartford, that three States simultaneously
invited her to establish schools within their borders. She went to
Massachusetts, but afterward, at the solicitation of Governor Clinton, of
New York, she removed her school to Troy, in 1821. It was a new departure,
and there was ignorant prejudice to overcome. Governor Clinton, in an
appeal to the legislature for aid, said: "I trust you will not be deterred
by commonplace ridicule from extending your munificence to this
meritorious institution." They were not deterred. An act was passed for
the incorporation of the proposed institute, and another which gave to
female academies a share of the literary fund. The citizens of Troy
contributed liberally, and the success of an effort in woman's high
education was assured.

As early as 1697 the Penn Charter School was founded, and it has lived
until to-day. Provision was made "at the cost of the people called
Quakers," for "all children and servants, male and female, the rich to be
instructed at reasonable rates, the poor to be maintained and schooled for
nothing." They also provided for "instruction for both sexes in reading,
writing, work, languages, arts and sciences." The boys and girls have been
taught separately, the girls' school being much behind the boys', neither
Latin nor other ancient language forming a part of their curriculum.
Friends are just beginning to discuss giving higher education to girls.
This is a fact especially significant in our discussion, because it has
always been claimed that the Quaker doctrine that "souls have no sex" led
them to place woman on an "equality" with man before other sects had
thought of allowing that they were equals. Lucretia Mott, Susan Anthony,
Abby Kelley, and a great body of the women who adopted the resolution that
set forth the uselessness of educating woman until she could vote, and who
clamored for her entrance to men's institutions, were all of this sect
that has kept its women generally far behind in the acquisition of
knowledge.

In 1845 Mrs. Willard was invited to address the Teachers' Convention that
met in Syracuse. She prepared a paper in which she set forth the idea
that, "women, now sufficiently educated, should be employed and furnished
by the men as committees, charged with the minute cares and supervision of
the public schools," but declined the honor tendered her of delivering it
in person. Sixty gentlemen from the convention visited her at the hotel,
and, at their earnest request, she read the essay, which met with their
emphatic approval of the plan she proposed. The employment of women in the
common schools, and the system of normal schools, were projected by her.

A Teachers' Convention was held in Rochester in 1852. Miss Anthony, though
a teacher, was not in attendance upon it, but she records that she went in
and listened for a few hours to a discussion of the causes that led to
their profession being held in less esteem than those of the doctor,
lawyer, and minister. In her judgment, the kernel of the matter was not
alluded to, so she arose and said: "Mr. President." She records that "at
length President Davies stepped to the front and said in a tremulous,
mocking tone," "What will the lady have?" "I wish, sir," she said, "to
speak to the question." "What is the pleasure of the convention?" asked
Mr. Davies. A gentleman moved that she be heard; another seconded the
motion; whereupon, she records, "a discussion, pro and con, followed,
lasting full half an hour, when a vote was taken of the men only, and
permission was granted by a small majority." She adds that it was lucky
for her that the thousand women crowding that hall could not vote on the
question, for they would have given a solid "No." The president then
announced "The lady can speak." "It seems to me, gentlemen," said she,
"that none of you quite comprehend the cause of the disrespect of which
you complain. Do you not see that, so long as society says a woman is
incompetent to be a lawyer, minister, or doctor, but has ample ability to
be a teacher, every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly
acknowledges that he has no more brains than a woman? Would you exalt your
profession, exalt those who labor with you. Would you make it more
lucrative, increase the salaries of the women engaged in the noble work of
educating our future Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen."

Several thoughts arise in regard to this scene, which was so strongly in
contrast with the conduct of Mrs. Willard or any of the great educators.
Miss Anthony gave no reason for her belief that the entrance of woman upon
the other professions would raise either the status or the wages of those
engaged in the teacher's profession, and as a matter of fact they have not
done so. It was not the society that cast scorn at woman's "lack of
brains" which assisted to remove the natural prejudice against her
assuming duties that had been deemed unsuited to her physique and her
necessary work.

Meantime, one year before the Rochester meeting was held, the first
college for women had been chartered at Auburn, New York, under the name
of "Auburn Female University." In 1853 it was transferred to Elmira, and
it was formally opened in 1855. It was placed under the care of the
Congregational Church, but its charter required that it should have
representative trustees from five other denominations. Its course of study
for the degree of A. B. was essentially the same that was then pursued in
the men's colleges of the State. It was expected to rely upon endowment,
which put woman's education upon a new and more secure footing.

Suffrage leaders lose no opportunity to represent the Church as an enemy
to woman's advancement. Nothing can be further from the truth; and in
striking evidence stand the colleges, which, while unsectarian in spirit
and in method, have been established and cared for by special religious
denominations. Dr. Jacobi, in her book "Common Sense," takes up the tale
and says: "The Mount Holyoke Seminary, the immediate successor of that at
Troy, was opened in 1837 by Miss Lyon, in spite of the opposition of the
clergy." Many besides the clergy were opposed to the plan for which Miss
Lyon was endeavoring to raise money. Her idea that the entire domestic
work of the establishment could be done by pupils and teachers, was
thought unwise and hopeless. In that noble school, where thousands of
women have been educated, a great number have become missionaries. When a
Suffrage convention in session in Worcester wrote to Miss Lyon, asking her
to interest herself in the wrongs of her sex, she answered, "I cannot
leave my work." Neither was Vassar College founded from any impulse or
suggestion of Suffrage agitators, but in a spirit exactly the opposite.
The real impetus to its founding came from Milo Parker Jewett, who was
born in Vermont in 1808, and was graduated at Dartmouth College and at
Andover Theological Seminary. He was active in the formation of the
common-school system of Ohio, and in 1839 he founded The Judson Female
Institute in Marion, Alabama. He established a seminary for girls in
Poughkeepsie in 1855. He had studied law, and became the friend and legal
adviser of Matthew Vassar, who, being unmarried, was casting about for a
method of disposing of his fortune. He suggested to Mr. Vassar an endowed
college for women, and visited the universities and libraries of Europe
with a plan of organization in mind. Mr. Vassar gladly accepted this great
enlargement upon an idea that had lain dormant in his own mind, and Vassar
College was founded, Dr. Jewett becoming its first president in 1862.

I may claim to have been beside the cradle of Vassar College; for when Dr.
Jewett resigned the presidency in 1864, my father named the successor who
was appointed, Dr. John H. Raymond, his life-long friend. Dr. Raymond came
to Rochester to discuss a plan of work, and, knowing my father's interest,
I was on tiptoe to hear about the new college. At my earnest solicitation,
he and Dr. Raymond and Prest. Anderson permitted me to be present at their
discussions. I learned to comprehend the value of womanliness to the world
by the estimate that those noble educators put upon it. It was evident
that they were arranging for those for whose minds they felt respect. They
made no foolish remarks about the superiority, inferiority, or equality of
the sexes, and had no contempt to throw upon the old education of tutor,
and library, and young ladies' seminary. They did not sneer at the "female
mind," but they did talk of the feminine mind as of something as distinct
in its essence from the masculine mind as the feminine form is distinct in
its outlines. To "preserve womanliness" was a task they felt they must
fulfil, or the women for whose good they labored would one day call them
to account. The dictum so frequently in the mouths of Suffrage leaders,
"There is no sex in brain," would have been abhorrent to them. In their
view, there was as much sex in brain as in hand; and the education that
did not, through cultivation, emphasize that fact, would be a lower and
not a higher product. They laid that intellectual corner-stone in love,
and in the faith that the same womanly spirit which, when there was not
college education enough to go round, had said, "Give it to the boys,
because their work must be public," would find, through the glad return
the boys were making, a way to teach the world still higher lessons of
womanly character and influence. Since that time, college after college
has arisen without a dream on the part of the founders, faculties, or
students that "every effort to educate woman, until you accord to her the
right to vote, is futile and a waste of labor," and it may well be that
the women educated in these colleges will decide that, because political
rights do acknowledge sex, therefore the word "male" should not be
stricken from any State constitution.

Before the committee of the New York State Constitutional Convention in
1894, Mr. Edward Lauterbach, who was arguing in favor of woman suffrage,
said: "It was only after the establishment of the Willard School at Troy,
only after its noble founder, believing that women and men were formed in
the same mould, successfully tried the experiment of educating women in
the higher branches, that steps for higher education became generally
taken." If Mr. Lauterbach imagines that Mrs. Willard was in the most
distant way an advocate of woman's doing the same work as man in the same
way, he is unfamiliar with her life and work. Mrs. Willard, in setting
forth her ideal of woman's education, said "Education should be adapted to
female character and duties. To do this would raise the character of
man.... Why may not housewifery be reduced to a system as well as the
other arts? If women were properly fitted for instruction, they would be
likely to teach children better than the other sex; they could afford to
do it cheaper; and men might be at liberty to add to the wealth of the
nation by any of the thousand occupations from which women are necessarily
debarred." Old-fashioned wisdom, but choicely good. Mr. Lauterbach further
said: "What wonder that, being so fully equipped in every mental
attribute, in every intellectual qualification, they will be able not only
to cast a vote but to take practical part in the administration of the
government?"

A female Solon would be a woman still, and in a democracy the intellectual
is not the only qualification needed. This certainly was the belief of
Mrs. Willard, and in 1868, when the Suffrage leaders were holding a
convention in Washington, and were urging that Congress should pass a
sixteenth amendment admitting women to suffrage, Almira Lincoln Phelps,
sister of Mrs. Willard, herself an educator and an author of text-books,
wrote to Isabella Beecher Hooker: "Hoping you will receive kindly what I
am about to write, I will proceed without apologies. I have confidence in
your nobleness of soul, and that you know enough of me to believe in my
devotion to the best interests of woman. I can scarcely realize that you
are giving your name and influence to a cause which, with some good, but,
as I think, misguided women, numbers among its advocates others with loose
morals.... If we could with propriety petition the Almighty to change the
condition of the sexes, and let men take a turn in bearing children and in
suffering the physical ailments peculiar to women, which render them unfit
for certain positions and business, why, in this case, if we really wish
to be men, and thought God would change the established order, we might
make our petition; but why ask Congress to make us men? Circumstances drew
me from the quiet domestic life while I was yet young, but success in
labors which involved publicity, and which may have been of advantage to
society, was never considered as an equivalent to my own heart for such a
loss of retirement. In the name of my sainted sister, Emma Willard, and of
my friend Lydia Sigourney, and, I think I might say, in the name of the
women of the past generation who have been prominent as writers and
educators (the exception may be made of Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances
Wright, and a few licentious French writers) in our own country and in
Europe, let me urge the high-souled and honorable of our sex to turn their
energies into that channel which will enable them to act for the true
interests of their sex."

In a woman's club, last winter, a New York teacher, Miss Helen Dawes
Brown, a graduate of Vassar College, founder of the Woman's University
Club and also one of the founders of Barnard College, in a speech said in
part: "The young girl who doesn't dance, who doesn't play games, who can't
skate and can't row, is a girl to be pitied. She is losing a large part of
what Chesterfield calls the 'joy and titivation of youth.' If our young
girl has learned to be good, teach her not to disregard the externals of
goodness. Let our girls, in college and out, learn to be agreeable. A
girl's education should, first of all, be directed to fitting her for the
things of home. We talk of woman as if the only domestic relations were
those of wife and mother. Let us not forget that she is also a
granddaughter, a daughter, a sister, an aunt. I should like to see her
made her best in all these characters, before she undertakes public
duties. The best organization in the world is the home. Whatever in the
education of girls draws them away from that, is an injury to
civilization."

At the close of an article in the "Outlook," written by Elizabeth Fisher
Read, of Smith College, she said, speaking of their last adaptation of
athletics: "From the beginning, the policy of Smith College has been, not
to duplicate the means of development offered in men's colleges, but to
provide courses and methods of study that should do for women what the
men's courses did for them. Emphasis has been put, not on the resemblances
between men and women, but rather on the differences. The effort has not
been to turn out new women, capable of doing anything man can do, from
walking thirty miles to solving the problems of higher mathematics.
Instead of this, the college has tried to develop its students along
natural womanly lines, not along the lines that would naturally be
followed in training men."

This sounds strangely like Mrs. Willard, who would be the first to rejoice
in the new education and in the old spirit that it can develop. Of course
Suffrage claims to have the same end in view. Every college woman must
decide for herself where she will stand on the question. So far, there
never has been any open affiliation between the colleges and the Suffrage
movement. We wait to hear a final verdict.

A contributor to the Suffrage department of the Woman's Edition of the
Rochester "Post-Express," March 26, 1896, said: "Will Rochester give to
its daughters the same advantages as to its sons, or will it say to the
girls who have no money to leave home and seek in Smith and Wellesley the
culture they cannot procure here: 'You cannot be thoroughly educated; you
have no money; you can have no education; sit and spin; bake and brew--but
don't bother about higher education,' or will the University of Rochester
recognize the one splendid opportunity that awaits it, the one last chance
to take its proper place and become all that the highest American
standards demand for a University?"

The time has not yet fully come when these same sentimentalists shall say
to the faculty and trustees of Vassar, Wellesley and Smith: "Will you not
give to the boys of Poughkeepsie, Northhampton, and Wellesley the same
advantages as to the girls? Or will you say to them: 'You cannot be
thoroughly educated; you have no money; you can have no education; work in
the shop or on the farm, but don't bother about higher education.'" This
is Suffrage logic, and there is no more reason why the educational
institutions in which men study from the age of eighteen to twenty-two
should be invaded by women of that age, than why women's institutions
should be invaded by men. Yet this would be the destruction of our women's
colleges. When Miss Anthony headed a delegation that went bodily to force
co-education on Rochester University, she was told that classes open to
women had been connected with the college for years.

The kind of education best suited to the idea of Suffrage is a training in
political history and present political issues; but the women who have
talked loudly and vaguely of the right of suffrage for years have been the
last to present such knowledge. I have read their "History," attended
their conventions, glanced at their magazines, but never have come upon
the discussion of a single public issue. I think those most familiar with
it will bear me out if I make the statement that their principal
periodical, "The Woman's Journal," edited by Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward
Howe, Mr. Blackwell, and Alice Stone Blackwell, has not contained any
presentations of questions of public policy in the past ten years.

Those whose names are signed to the Suffrage Woman's Bible, and who are
therefore responsible for that disgraceful effusion, have little right to
claim to be intelligent instructors of their sex. With an ignorance that
is monumental, Frances Ellen Burr glories in the fact that "the Revising
Committee refer to a woman's translation of the Bible as their ultimate
authority for the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew text," and they add that "Julia
Smith, this distinguished scholar," is the only person, man or woman, who
ever made a translation of the Bible without help. They say: "Wycliff made
a translation from the Vulgate assisted by Nicholas of Hereford. He was
not sufficiently familiar with Hebrew and Greek to translate from those
tongues. Coverdale's translation was not done alone. Tyndale, in his
translation, had the assistance of Frye, of William Roye, and also of
Miles Coverdale. Julia Smith translated the whole Bible absolutely alone,
without consultation with any one"! Again they say, "King James appointed
fifty-four men of learning to translate the Bible. Seven of them died, and
forty-seven carried the work on. Compare this corps of workers with one
little woman performing the Herculean task without one suggestion or word
of advice from mortal man "! Yes, compare it! Uncultured Julia Smith,
stirred by the Millerite prophecies, did the best she could to enlighten
her own mind, and should be honored for so doing; but what is to be said
of the women who in this day, in cool print, are willing to show that they
have no comprehension of her grotesque errors or of the difficulties that
beset a real scholar in his noble task? Protest at woman's educational
deprivation comes with ill-grace from those who have thus revealed their
own lack of knowledge of the oldest literature in the world, the model of
poetry and prose, the guardian of the purity of our English speech.

Educated women desire that woman should do all that strength and time
allow in the care of the public schools. The school suffrage ought to be a
boon for them. But it does not, so far, look as if women could make it so.
The figures of the school vote of women in Connecticut, for three years,
occasion serious question whether the use of the ballot is the way in
which woman is to effect anything. In Staten Island, ignorance in women
voted out education, and a tremendous effort had to be made to vote it in
again. The number of men who voted at the last general election in
Connecticut was about 164,000. The women outnumber the men, but the
following table represents the school vote in the State of Emma Willard.
It certainly does not represent the amount of interest taken in education,
nor in the common schools:

  COUNTIES.   1893. 1894. 1895.

  Hartford.   1293  1186   689
  New Haven.   973   949   570
  New London.  364   873   185
  Fairneld.    273   198   126
  Windham      176   182   148
  Litchfield   159    85    50
  Middlesex     60   136   101
  Tolland      372   137    37

This gives the results from all but three or four towns in the State.
Aside from any other considerations, the uncertainty attending the vote of
an element whose first call is elsewhere than at the polls, is a menace to
the welfare of the schools as well as of republican institutions.

One of the grievances of the Suffrage leaders lay in the fact that the
literary women of the country would express no sympathy with their
efforts. Poets and authors in general were denounced. Gail Hamilton, who
had the good of woman in her heart, who was better informed on public
affairs than perhaps any woman in the United States, and whose trenchant
pen cut deep and spared not, always reprobated the cause. Mrs. Stowe stood
aloof, and so did Catherine Beecher, though urged to the contrary course
by Henry Ward Beecher and Isabella Beecher Hooker. In a letter to Mrs.
Cutler, Catherine Beecher said: "I am not opposed to women's speaking in
public to any who are willing to hear, nor am I opposed to women's
preaching, sanctioned as it is by a prophetic apostle--as one of the
millennial results. Nor am I opposed to a woman's earning her own
independence in any lawful calling, and wish many more were open to her
which are now closed. Nor am I opposed to the organization and agitation
of women, as women, to set forth the wrongs suffered by great multitudes
of our sex, which are multiform and most humiliating. Nor am I opposed to
women's undertaking to govern boys and men--they always have, and they
always will. Nor am I opposed to the claim that women have equal rights
with men. I rather claim that they have the sacred superior rights that
God and good men accord to the weak and defenceless, by which they have
the easiest work, the most safe and comfortable places, and the largest
share of all the most agreeable and desirable enjoyments of this life. My
main objection to the Woman-Suffrage organization is this, that a wrong
mode is employed to gain a right object. The right object sought is, to
remedy the wrongs and relieve the sufferings of great multitudes of our
sex; the wrong mode is that which aims to enforce by law, instead of by
love. It is one which assumes that man is the author and abettor of all
these wrongs, and that he must be restrained and regulated by
constitutions and laws, as the chief and most trustworthy methods. I hold
that the fault is as much, or more, with women than with men, inasmuch as
we have all the power we need to remedy the wrongs complained of, and yet
we do not use it for that end. It is my deep conviction that all
reasonable and conscientious men of our age, and especially of our
country, are not only willing but anxious to provide for the good of our
sex. They will gladly bestow all that is just, reasonable, and kind,
whenever we unite in asking in the proper spirit and manner. In the half a
century since I began to work for the education and relief of my sex, I
have succeeded so largely by first convincing intelligent and benevolent
women that what I aimed at was right and desirable, and then securing
their influence with their fathers, brothers, and husbands, and always
with success. Why not take the shorter course, and ask to have the men do
for us what we might do for ourselves if we had the ballot? Now if women
are all made voters, it will be their duty to vote, and also to qualify
themselves for that duty. But already women have more than they can do
well in all that appropriately belongs to them, and, to add the civil and
political duties of men, would be deemed a measure of injustice and
oppression by those who are opposed."

Miss Beecher, like Mrs. Willard and Mrs. Phelps, made text-books for the
use of her own seminaries, and her Arithmetic, and Mental and Moral
Philosophy, and Applied Theology, were among the educational forces of her
day. It is one of the significant signs of the times that science and
education, as well as philanthropy, are occupying themselves just now with
childhood and motherhood and housewifery. Mrs. Willard's high ideal of
womanliness is beginning to be set forth by the electric light of modern
thought.




CHAPTER IX.


WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE CHURCH.


The eighth count in the Suffrage indictment reads: "He allows her in
Church, as well as in State, but a subordinate position, claiming
Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some
exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church."

More than thirty years later than this, Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, and
Mrs. Gage wrote in the preface to their "History of Woman Suffrage:"
"American men may quiet their consciences with the delusion that no such
injustice exists in this country as in Eastern nations. Though, with the
general improvement in our institutions, woman's condition must inevitably
have improved also, yet the same principle that degrades her in Turkey
insults her here. Custom forbids a woman there to enter a mosque, or call
the hour for prayers; here it forbids her a voice in Church councils or
State legislatures.... The Church, too, took alarm, knowing that with the
freedom and education acquired in becoming a component part of the
Government, woman would not only outgrow the power of the priesthood, and
religious superstitions, but would also invade the pulpit, interpret the
Bible anew from her own standpoint, and claim an equal voice in all
ecclesiastical councils. With fierce warnings and denunciations from the
pulpit, and false interpretations of Scripture, women have been
intimidated and misled, and their religious feelings have been played upon
for their more complete subjugation. While the general principles of the
Bible are in favor of the most enlarged freedom and equality of the race,
isolated texts have been used to block the wheels of progress in all
periods; thus bigots have defended capital punishment, intemperance,
slavery, polygamy, and the subjection of woman. The creeds of all nations
make obedience to man the corner-stone of her religious character.
Fortunately, however, more liberal minds are now giving us higher and
purer expositions of the Scriptures."

It is fifteen years since these statements were made, and we have now the
first instalment of "the Bible interpreted anew from her own standpoint,"
which presumably issues, in their view, from more liberal minds, and is
higher and purer than the old one. In the Introduction to that Suffrage
Woman's Bible (which is as yet only a commentary on the Pentateuch), Mrs.
Stanton says: "From the inauguration of the movement for woman's
emancipation the Bible has been used to hold her in her' divinely
appointed sphere' prescribed by the Old and New Testaments. The canon and
civil law, Church and State, priests and legislators, all political
parties and religious denominations, have alike taught that woman was made
after man, of man, and for man,--an inferior being, subject to man.
Creeds, codes, Scriptures, and statutes are all based on this idea. The
fashions, forms, ceremonies, and customs of society, church ordinances,
and discipline, all grow out of this idea.... So perverted is the
religious element in her nature, that with faith and works she is the
chief support of the Church and Clergy,--the very powers that make her
emancipation impossible."

I know that many believers in Suffrage are also believers in the Bible and
in denominational Christianity. Mrs. Helen Montgomery says, in the Woman's
edition of the Rochester "Post-Express," that one reason for her favorable
consideration of it is, that "Two-thirds of the membership of the
Christian church cannot express their conviction at the polls, since women
may not vote." "Much of the callousness of politicians to church opinion,"
she adds, "comes from the knowledge that that opinion is backed by few
votes." I also know that many of those who disbelieve in Suffrage may also
disbelieve in the Bible, the clergy, and the Church. I further recognize
the fact that the church and religion are not synonymous terms. I have no
attacks to make, and no special pleading to do. I am discussing the
question of Suffrage as I find it in the writing and the speech of its
proposers and its present conspicuous advocates. Each American woman has
this mighty problem before her, and she must settle it according to her
own conscience and best enlightenment.

Mrs. Stanton admits with shame that woman is one of the chief supporters
of the Church. Mrs. Montgomery says with delight that she forms two-thirds
of the Christian Church. Individual members of Suffrage organizations may
be in sympathy with Christianity, or against it; but the movement itself
cannot be on both sides of this question. What is its record? I will
endeavor to trace it, and will then, as best I may, attempt to say a few
words upon the general subject of the "subordination of woman."

In the course of the first clause of their accusation, the women say:
"Claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry." In
view of the fact that Paul frequently alludes to the teaching and
ministrations of women, it has come to be generally thought among
Christian scholars, I believe, that this injunction that they "keep
silence in the churches," referred to the propriety of their conduct in
the moral,--or rather the immoral,--atmosphere by which the Church at
Corinth was surrounded. This seems reasonable, because it may be observed
that, in writing to Timothy, who was in Macedonia, to Titus, who was in
Crete, and to the Church at Ephesus, while he repeats his general
injunctions of woman's submission to man, and especially to her husband,
he says nothing relative to her public work in the church. But if Paul had
been writing to the church in New England, in 1634, and in New York in
1774, his injunction to silence might well have been applied to the first
woman preachers to whom Americans were called upon to listen. When Anne
Hutchinson, in Boston, preached that "the power of the Holy Spirit
dwelleth perfectly in every believer, and the inward revelations of her
own spirit, and the conscious judgment of her own mind are of authority
paramount to any word of God," she shook the young colony to its
foundation, as no man had shaken it. The militia that had been ordered to
the Pequot war refused to march, because she had proclaimed their chaplain
to be "under a covenant of works, and not under a covenant of grace." Her
influence, and not her ballot, if she had one, threatened anarchy in the
state, and caused a schism in the church such as might have crushed out
the life from the infant body to which Paul was writing.

In 1774 appeared the next public woman preacher, Ann Lee. She proclaimed
that God was revealed a dual being, male and female, to the Jews; that
Jesus revealed to the world God as a Father; and that she,--Ann Lee,
"Mother Ann,"--was God's revelation of the Mother, "the bearing spirit of
the creation of God." She founded the sect of Shakers, whose main articles
of belief, besides the one above mentioned, were: community of goods; non-
resistance to force, even in self-defence; the sinfulness of all human
authority, and consequently the sinfulness of participation in any form of
government; absolute separation of the sexes, and consequently no marriage
institution. Her mission as "the Christ of the Second Appearing," began
with her announcement of God's, wrath upon all marriage, and the public
renunciation of her own. In New York, as in New England, her proclamations
against government and war tended directly to anarchy, and in the
momentous year 1776 she was for that reason imprisoned in Poughkeepsie,
whence she was released by Governor Clinton's pardon.

The next pulpitless preacher, in the succession we are considering,
appeared in this country in 1828. Her name was Frances Wright. She was a
person of totally different mind and methods from Anne Hutchinson and Ann
Lee. She was professedly an enemy of religion. Anne Hutchinson attacked
church and state in the name of Christian human perfection. Ann Lee
attacked church and state in the name of woman; she preached communism and
separation of the sexes in the name of Christ; she taught the abolition of
marriage. Frances Wright preached communism and sex license in the name of
irreligion. In opening the columns of the "Free Inquirer" to discussion,
in New York, in 1828, she said: "Religion is true--and in that case the
conviction of its truth should dictate every human word and govern every
sublunary action,--or it is a deception. If it is a deception, it is not
useless only, it is mischievous; it is mischievous by its idle terrors; it
is mischievous by its false morality; it is mischievous by its hypocrisy;
by its fanaticism; by its dogmatism; by its threats; by its hopes; by its
promises; and last, though not least, by its waste of public time and
public money." While deciding that it was a deception, she revealed the
evil results to which abandonment of all faith can lead a woman with a
clever brain and a fearless tongue. She constantly denounced religion as
the source of all injustice and bigotry and of the "enslavement of women."

The editors of the "Suffrage History" say: "As early as 1828 the standard
of the Christian party in politics was openly unfurled. Frances Wright had
long been aware of its insidious efforts, and its reliance upon women for
its support. Ignorant, superstitious, devout, woman's general lack of
education made her a fitting instrument for the work of thus undermining
the republic. Having deprived her of her just rights, the country was now
to find in woman its most dangerous foe. Frances Wright lectured that
winter in the large cities of the western and middle States, striving to
rouse the nation to the new danger which threatened it. The clergy at
once, became her most bitter opponents. The cry of 'infidel' was started
on every side, though her work was of vital importance to the country and
undertaken from the purest philanthropy."

It was high time that a Christian and a non-Christian party in politics
should unfurl a banner; for to the dauntless courage of the land from
which she came--Scotland--she added the polished manner of the country
from which came D'Arusmont, the husband from whom she was soon parted. To
the zeal of the Covenanter, the moral blackness of the infidel, and the
political creed of the Commune, she united the doctrine of Free Love. As
she set these forth with blandishments of speech and manner, the country
did indeed find in this woman a most dangerous foe. When "Fanny Wright
societies" sprang up in New York and the West, horror might well be felt
by lovers of the Republic.

Lucretia Mott was the next public preacher in this succession. Pure in
personal character, lofty in spirit, winning in address, she took for her
motto, "Truth for Authority, not Authority for Truth." As authority for
that truth, she took Elias Hicks.

Dr. Jacobi, in "Common Sense," says: "The abolitionists were declared to
have set aside the laws of God when they allowed women to speak in public:
and, by a pastoral letter, the Congregational churches of Massachusetts
were directed to defend themselves against heresy, by closing their doors
to the innovators. The Methodists denounced the Garrisonian societies as
no-government, no-Sabbath, no-church, no-Bible, no-marriage, women's
rights societies." Not the Methodists alone, but the Congregationalists,
the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, the Baptists, the Unitarians, the
Universalists, and the Quakers so denounced that faction of them in which
culminated many of the doctrines of Anne Hutchinson, Ann Lee, Frances
Wright, and Lucretia Mott.

In an appeal to the women of New York, in 1860, signed by Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Lydia Mott, Ernestine Rose, Martha C. Wright, and Susan B.
Anthony, we read: "The religion of our day teaches that, in the most
sacred relations of the race, the woman must ever be subject to the man;
that in the husband centres all power and learning; that the difference in
position between husband and wife is as vast as that between Christ and
the Church; and woman struggles to hold the noble impulses of her nature
in abeyance to opinions uttered by a Jewish teacher, which, alas! the mass
believe to be the will of God."

In 1895, among the names of those responsible for the Suffrage Woman's
Bible, we find three to which the title "Rev." is prefixed. The opening
commentary on the first verses of Genesis, where the creation of man is
described, says: "Instead of three male personages, as generally
represented, a Heavenly Father, Mother, and Son would seem more rational.
The first step in the elevation of woman to her true position, as an equal
factor in human progress, is the cultivation of the religious sentiment in
regard to her dignity and equality, the recognition by the rising
generation of an ideal Heavenly Mother, to whom their prayers should be
addressed, as well as to a Father." Here is Ann Lee's doctrine revived
with a mocking suggestion that savors more of Frances Wright than of its
poor, half-crazed author. The soul-sufficiency of Ann Hutchinson, the
spiritual anarchy of Lucretia Mott, the infidelity and the veiled
coarseness of Frances Wright, have all found fit setting in this
commentary on the Pentateuch. I know that Miss Anthony repudiates the
Suffrage Woman's Bible in the name of the Association of which she is
President. It certainly does not represent the faith or the culture or the
doctrines of many who belong to that body; but she cannot really repudiate
it for herself or for them. It was promised in the History of which she is
co-editor, it was foreshadowed in her circular quoted above, as well as in
innumerable speeches of hers in convention. Those Christian and
philanthropic bodies that have attached themselves to the Suffrage
movement have this book to account for and with. Whatever they may
personally decide to think or say of it, it is the consummate blossom of
the spirit of the Suffrage movement, and the names it bears upon its
title-page represent the varied classes that have worked for the political
enfranchisement of woman. By the world outside it will so be dealt with.

Few movements have been started, especially among women, that did not
professedly stand upon high moral and religious ground. Fourierism was
superhuman in its intention,--in this country, at least. Free-thinking
hopes to deliver the soul from the bondage of superstition in all
religion. Mormonism was founded as "the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-
Day Saints." Communism at Oneida was professedly built upon the doctrine
of human perfection in Christian love. The disaster to the soul is in
proportion to the amount of perversion of a living faith. Every movement
must be judged, not by what its advocates suppose themselves to believe,
but by that which time proves they do believe.

But to return to the Suffrage charge. "American men may quiet their
consciences with the delusion that no such injustice exists in this
country as in Eastern nations. Though, with the general improvement in our
institutions, woman's condition must inevitably have improved also, yet
the same principle that degrades her in Turkey insults her here." American
men _may_ quiet their consciences, while striving to enlighten them
further. The answer to Mohammedanism is Turkey. The answer to Christianity
is America. Ceremonial uncleanness is absolutely unlike religious and
social orderliness in the distribution of duties. How came there to be
"general improvement in our institutions?" There has been no improvement
in Turkey, in China, in India, or in Japan, except such as is creeping
back from the Christendom of which these Suffragists speak with a sneer.
Freedom and education have not been appreciably advanced by "woman's
becoming a component part of the government" in any land. The lands where
she has the most apparent governmental control are the ones that are least
educated and least free among those of modern civilization.

The church is an ever-growing body, and its clergy hold widely differing
beliefs. The Egyptian priesthood guarded the sacred mysteries and ruled
the state. Through the utmost that natural religion can do for man, they
had gleaned the secret of a Supreme Maker and Ruler of the universe.
Moses, who was "learned in all their wisdom," led the first exiles across
the sea to find "freedom to worship God," and, from that day to this, the
ministers of religion have stood as public guard over the mysteries of
faith and, in the beginnings of each civilization, have ruled the state.
Whenever they have forgotten the lesson that Moses taught, the lesson that
Paul more clearly taught, that to God alone is any soul responsible, they
have proved stumbling-blocks to progress. It is true that religious
bigots, as Suffrage writers say, have "defended capital punishment,
intemperance, slavery, polygamy, and the subjection of woman." But capital
punishment is defended by many besides bigots. Intemperance finds not only
its strongest but its most effective foes in the Christian ministry and
the Christian church. Slavery in our country rent in twain several great
religious bodies. James G. Birney says that "probably nine-tenths of the
Abolitionists were church-members." With polygamy came woman's subjection
and woman suffrage into our free States. And the bigots outside the
Christian ministry and church must share the same condemnation with any
who, professing freedom, have yet forgotten the injunction of the Bible
and the Christ.

"She would invade the pulpit." Invasion seems a strange word to use in
regard to woman's entrance upon one of the highest of human duties. A
pulpitless teacher she is and always has been. Missionary women have
taught multitudes of beings. The Salvation lassie has no thought of
invasion, or of self-exaltation, when she leads the service of a thousand
souls; and I am not willing to believe that a single woman who has entered
the regular ministry has any more. It is the spirit of Suffrage that looks
upon woman's advance as an attack.

But times have changed, say Suffrage leaders. Mrs. Cornelia K. Hood, in
her report of the King's County Suffrage work for 1895, says: "A circular
letter was addressed to all the clergymen known to be friends, asking them
that a sermon might be preached by them in favor of woman suffrage. This
request met with a liberal response, and many able addresses were made on
the Sunday morning set for that purpose." In her report of the Suffrage
campaign in New York city in the winter of 1895-96, Dr. Jacobi says,
speaking of the parlor meetings: "Several prominent clergymen joined us--
Mr. Rainsford, the Rev. Arthur Brooks, Mr. Percy Grant, Mr. Eaton, Mr.
Leighton Williams." In referring to the last regular meeting of the County
Suffrage Association held that winter in Cooper Union, she says: "The
meeting was addressed by Samuel Gompers, President of the Federation of
Labor, by Dr. Peters, an Episcopal clergyman, by Father Ducey, the
Catholic priest, Dr. Saunders, a Baptist minister, and Henry George, the
advocate of single tax." In her address before the Constitutional
Convention, she said: "The Church, which fifty years ago was a unit in
denouncing the public work of woman--even for the slave--is now divided in
its councils." The church never was a unit in denouncing the public work
of woman, and much of her noblest public work has been done under its
auspices. The behavior of Suffrage women in slavery times caused scandal
to church and state. The right of private judgment, claimed always by
Protestant Christianity, has divided the clergy on all questions; and "a
clergyman, a priest, and a minister" were as free to believe, and to speak
what they believed, on suffrage, as were Samuel Gompers, who lately
offended the Labor organization by inviting two anarchists to address it,
and Henry George, whose single-tax theories have lately turned law and
order upside down in Delaware.

"Interpret the Bible anew from her own standpoint." The volume in which a
beginning has been made in this work is a thick pamphlet bearing a motto
from Cousin on one cover, and the picture of a piano as an advertisement
on the other. It is with a profound sense of sadness and disgust that any
woman who honors God and loves her own sex turns its pages. Behold the
first dilemma in which the commentators find themselves involved. Mrs.
Stanton opens the comments on the Creation as follows: "In the great work
of the creation, the crowning glory was realized when man and woman were
evolved on the sixth day, the masculine and feminine forces in the image
of God, that must have existed eternally, in all forms of matter and
mind.... How then is it possible to make woman an afterthought?... All
those theories based on the assumption that man was prior in the creation,
have no foundation in Scripture. As to woman's subjection, on which both
the canon and civil law delight to dwell, it is important to note that
equal dominion is given to woman over every living thing, but not a word
is said giving man dominion over woman. No lesson of woman's subjection
can be fairly drawn from the first chapter of the Old Testament."

In commenting on the second account of the Creation, Ellen Battelle
Dietrick says: "It is now generally conceded that some one (nobody
pretends to know who) at some time (nobody pretends to know exactly when)
copied two creation myths on the same leather roll, one immediately
following the other. Modern theologians have, for convenience sake,
entitled these two fables, respectively, the Elohistic and the Jahoistic
stories. They differ not only in the point I have mentioned above, but in
the order of the 'creative acts,' in regard to the mutual attitude of man
and woman, and in regard to human freedom from prohibitions imposed by
deity. Now, it is manifest that both of these stories cannot be true;
intelligent women who feel bound to give the preference to either, may
decide according to their own judgment which is more worthy of an
intelligent woman's acceptance. My own opinion is, that the second story
was manipulated by some wily Jew, in an endeavor to give 'heavenly
authority' for requiring a woman to obey the man she married." Lillie
Devereux Blake takes still another horn of the dilemma. She says: "In the
detailed description of creation we find a gradually ascending series.
'Creeping things,' 'great sea-monsters,' every bird of wing,' 'cattle and
living things of the earth,' the 'fish of the sea and the birds of the
heavens;' then man, and, last and crowning glory of the whole, woman. It
cannot be maintained that woman was inferior to man, even if, as asserted
in chapter ii., she was created after him, without at once admitting that
man is inferior to the creeping things because created after them."

These commentators, on the whole, agree that the first account of creation
does not teach woman's subjection to man; that, although "some wily Jew"
inserted the second account in an endeavor to give "heavenly authority for
requiring a woman to obey the man she married," he has been outwitted
after all, for the ascending series of creation really teaches the same
lesson as the first account, and from it woman's inferiority cannot be
maintained. And yet it would seem that she must be an "afterthought" if
she is to be superior.

Mrs. Stanton, in summing up the concensus of opinion on a matter which is
not of the slightest importance to any of them, except that they feel an
interest, for the cause of Suffrage, in endeavoring to release woman from
the long bondage of superstition, says: "The first account dignifies woman
as an important factor in the creation, equal in power and glory with man.
The second makes her a mere afterthought. The world in good running order
without her, the only reason for her advent being the solitude of man.
There is something sublime in bringing order out of chaos; light out of
darkness; giving each planet its place in the solar system; oceans and
lands their limits,--wholly inconsistent with a petty surgical operation
to find material for the mother of the race. It is in this allegory that
all the enemies of woman rest their battering-rams, to prove her
inferiority. Accepting the view that man was prior in the creation, some
Scriptural writers say that, as the woman was of the man, therefore her
position should be one of subjection. Grant it. Then, as the historical
fact is reversed in our day, and the man is now of the woman, shall his
place be one of subjection? The equal position declared in the first
account must prove more satisfactory to both sexes; created alike in the
image of God--the heavenly Mother and Father. Thus, the Old Testament,' in
the beginning,' proclaims the simultaneous creation of man and woman, the
eternity and equality of sex; and the New Testament echoes back through
the centuries the individual sovereignty of woman growing out of this
natural fact. Paul, in speaking of equality as the very soul and essence
of Christianity, said, 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither
bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in
Christ Jesus.' With this recognition of the feminine element in the
Godhead in the Old Testament, and this declaration of the equality of the
sexes in the New, we may well wonder at the contemptible status woman
occupies in the Christian Church to-day."

So the woman who spurns the Bible as the book that is responsible for
woman's degradation, who denies that it is the word of God, who pours out
upon Paul the vials of her wrath, finds in them both her highest warrant
for believing in the "equal position" of woman, "the perfect equality of
the sexes." When the wrath of woman thus praises God, the one who believes
that through woman's status in the Bible and in the Christian Church this
perfect equality is being worked out day by day need not take up
controversial cudgels. Ribaldry in woman seems more gross than in man, and
this is woman's ribaldry. It is profane to speak of the "feminine element
in the Godhead." God is a spirit. There is no more a feminine than a
masculine element in the Godhead. Sex belongs to mortal life and its
conditions. It begins and ends with this earth. Christ has told us so:
There will be in another world "no marrying, nor giving in marriage, but
we all shall be as the angels in heaven." The equality of which Paul spoke
as "the very soul and essence of Christianity" is the equality of the
essence and soul of male and female humanity, and the oneness of the
believer's soul with that of the Christ in whom his soul believes. The
soul of humanity, as well as its body, is bound by sex conditions as long
as it draws the breath of this transitory life. Every thought and every
act reveal the governing power of the sex mould in which its form is cast
for this world's uses. The use of this world is to give preparation for
another and a better one; final spiritual triumph is the end to be
attained. Humanity is now in the image of God only in the essential sense
in which the full corn in the ear may be said to be wrapped up in its
kernel, and it can unfold only according to the laws of its being. The
first account of Creation sets forth, with the beautiful imagery of the
Orient, the general and ultimate truth. The second account, with the same
grand simplicity, foreshadows the method and the long, slow process by
which this ultimate end is to be attained.

In continuing their comments, the editors say: "In chapter v., verse 23,
Adam proclaims the eternal oneness of the happy pair, 'This is now bone of
my bone and flesh of my flesh;' no hint of her subordination. How could
men, admitting these words to be divine revelation, ever have preached the
subjection of woman? Next comes the naming of the mother of the race. 'She
shall be called woman,' in the ancient form of the word, 'womb-man.' She
was man and more than man, because of her maternity. The assertion of the
supremacy of the woman in the marriage relation is contained in chapter
v., 24: 'Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave
unto his wife.' Nothing is said of the headship of man, but he is
commanded to make her the head of the household, the home, a rule followed
for centuries under the Matriarchate."

A rule that has been followed rudely through all centuries, and is
followed to-day with far greater approach to perfect obedience. Maternity
was to be God's method of working out the problem of changing the
innocence of ignorant savagery to the holiness of enlightened
civilization. To this end, the more delicate and complex organism of the
womb-man must be cared for by the strength and steadiness that could find
full play because that subtler task was not demanded of it.

In commenting on chapter iii., which contains the account of the Garden of
Eden and the eating of the apple, they say: "As out of this allegory grow
the doctrines of original sin, the fall of man and of woman the author of
all our woes, and the curses on the serpent, the woman and the man, the
Darwinian theory of the gradual growth of the race from a lower to a
higher type of animal life is more hopeful and encouraging."

The Christian doctrine is more hopeful and encouraging still. It reveals
the growth of the race from a low type of animal life to the perfect life
of the soul.

We do not need to go back to the garden where our first parents dwelt, to
look for the substantiation of the eternal truth of this whole wondrous
story. Amid the landscape of the civilization of the noblest country that
the world possesses, we have the drama repeated. In the work of Anne
Hutchinson, Ann Lee, Frances Wright, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Stanton,
Susan Anthony, Ellen Dietrick, Lillie Blake, and their fellow-
commentators, we have re-enacted the Temptress and the Fall. Woman first
aspired. She stretched forth her eager hand to seize the good, and in so
doing snatched the evil that grew beside it. The woman in Eden had not
learned what maternity taught her later--that she could point the path,
but could not lead in entering it. Wherever woman has forgotten this hard-
won but glorious lesson, she has been the most dangerous of guides. The
conscience, that intellect of the soul, woke first in woman. By her
obedience to its voice, the faith that worketh by love had its perfected
work, and the promise that was given to her was fulfilled in the birth of
Christ. A Creation story without a gospel is chaos without gravitation,
primal darkness without the sun. Forward to divinity in human form woman
was able, through obedience, to point mankind. Backward to divinity in
human form she points again, until humanity itself shall become divine. If
she loses the final vision, or substitutes her own, she can neither point
nor guide. No wonder woman has been a mystery to the church. No wonder a
witch was not allowed to live, while a wizard might; she was more
dangerous. No wonder Paul was perplexed by the woman question. No wonder
monks fled to the desert. Christ has spoken the final words of woman, "Thy
faith hath saved thee." From the anguish of His cross he said: "Woman,
behold thy son!" "Behold thy mother," and the beloved disciple "took her
to his own home from that hour."

In the Suffrage appeal of 1860, the writers said: "The difference between
husband and wife is as vast as the difference between Christ and his
Church." Christ himself says that the difference between him and his
Church is that of degree, not of kind, and that the resemblance is that of
essential oneness. He says: "I am the vine, ye are the branches." Could
union be more completely pictured? The fruit-bearing branch cannot say to
the strength-giving vine, "I have no need of thee." The vine cannot say,
"I have no need of thee." Man in his imperious folly has pictured the
relationship as that of oak and vine which have no organic union; but,
despite imperiousness and folly, both men and women, through mutual
obedience to God, have thus far worked out, and are still working out, the
nobler destiny for both.

In summing up their opinion of the Pentateuch, the editors of the Suffrage
Woman's Bible say: "This utter contempt for all the decencies of life, and
all the natural personal rights of women, as set forth in these pages,
should destroy, in the minds of women at least, all authority to
superhuman origin, and stamp the Pentateuch at least as emanating from the
most obscene minds of a barbarous age." So low can woman fall in ignorance
and shameless audacity when the faith that works by love is lost. As the
spirit of the Commandments comes to prevail, the decencies of life and the
natural personal rights of woman become more secure. Here again Christ has
spoken the ultimate word. He says: "Ye have heard by them of old time'
Thou shalt not commit adultery,' but I say unto you whosoever looketh on a
woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his
heart." This is the standard of chastity to which mankind must come. When
the Hebrew mother in living faith cast the bread of her own life's being
upon the Nile, she was to find it after many days in the great law-giver
of her people. The Commandments received through him were the
foreshadowing of those greater oracles in which Christ summed up the whole
duty of man. The individual liberty which Moses was the first to proclaim
to a whole people, in the Pentateuch, Christ, his anti-type, proclaimed to
a whole world, and on his proclamation rests to-day the freedom of woman
and of the American Republic. The Bread of Life, again cast on the
troubled waters of this world, by woman's faith, through Mary the Virgin
Mother, is returning after many days.

Strange that we should forever turn back, as if the application of any
essential truth were finished. The child walks by faith. The childhood of
the world walked by faith, and left in the Bible the evidence of things
that are not seen but are eternal. The Suffrage movement has a quarrel
with the Bible because the Creator is there represented, for the reverence
of the race, under the guise of a Heavenly Father, and not a Heavenly
Mother, or rather, not as a human pair, equal in dignity and power. If the
first impulsion of love toward God had come into this world through the
mind of man, he would have represented the divine love that his soul
conceived under the guise of that being on earth whom he most loved. But
love was born with the "disabilities" of woman; it was evolved through
motherhood; and the same impulse that gave it, exalted, not itself, but
what it loved and trusted. "I have gotten a man from the Lord" said the
first recorded mother, who had learned to know the Lord through
motherhood; and the boy she bore was taught to look up with confidence to
the strength and protection of his father. She told him that the pity of
his father, which made him bring food and raiment, and which guarded his
home, was an image of the feeling that was felt for him by the divine
being. Could man have learned the lesson first, we can see that the story
would have been different, because man has named every beautiful and
gracious thing for woman. Virtue, temperance, truth, purity, love, faith,
hope, liberty, grace, beauty, charity, the inspirers of art and science,
of music and literature, of justice and of religion, all are feminine.
When man says: "Our Father which art in heaven," he prays as his mother
taught him. Through the self-abnegation that was unconscious of its
sacrifice, woman was to be the instrument for bringing human life up, on,
to the God who, being spirit, could act upon a clay-bound mind only
through the highest human thing that love could know. Men, as well as
women, have misunderstood and misinterpreted this. The love that "is not
puffed up," "doth not behave itself unseemly," cannot proclaim its own
virtue--to arrogate it is to lose it. But the secret of the Lord has been
with those who feared Him, and it has led the world aright in spite of
blunder and of sin.

If man, in his ignorant conceit, has fancied that this was the subjection
of woman, it has been a part of his mother's lesson to correct that
impression. If woman, in her folly, has allowed herself to make the same
mistake, that, too, is working out its cure through the love that so
arranged human nature that "a man should leave father and mother and
cleave unto his wife, and they twain should be one flesh," and that "_her
desire_ should be to her husband" in those matters wherein the mutual
interest required that he should bear sway. If there is a minister of
religion who holds to the perverted notion that, because woman ate the
original apple in disobedience to God's command, she was the bringer of
original sin into the world, and for that was and is punished by arbitrary
subjection to the authority of man, that minister does not deserve the
support of women. The fact that he would have few listeners, and fewer
followers, if women were not the bringers and the maintainers of religious
faith is sufficient proof against such an exposition of scripture. As a
matter of fact, while the dogmatism of belief, like the dogmatism of
unbelief, has made assertions that have dishonored both divine and human
nature, the practical working of formulated faiths of all names has been
to approach the standard laid down in the Old and the New Testament. The
model of being set by Christ is that of a little child. "Except ye become
as little children, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven." The
natural characteristics of the child are faith, and hope, and love--the
virtues that abide. When the virile apostle to the Gentiles "put away
childish things," he kept these childlike qualities. If woman first
attains them in perfection, she is superior; if man, he is superior. In
the race toward the final goal, to be equal in accomplishment it is
needful to be equal in obedience. The keynote of Paul's preaching was
obedience--the obedience of all human beings to God in Christ, the
obedience of all men and women to lawful civil authority for the sake of
Christ and the promotion of his kingdom,--the obedience of men to one
another in the churchly offices, for the sake of that "decency" that he
loved and enjoined--the obedience of the equal wife to the husband who was
the external representative of family life.

With Eastern nations the veil was the sign of retirement, of domestic
life, and it was assumed by wives when they were in the street or in a
public assembly. In heathen and barbarous countries it was also deemed a
sign of woman's subjection and inferiority. The Hebrews were the first
people to attain any truly spiritual conceptions, and they began to have a
commensurately higher idea of the possibilities of woman's nature and
work. When Christian women, in their new-found freedom, would have thrown
aside the veil, just as Christian men, in their new-found reverence for
God, would have repudiated the heathen wife, Paul said to them both that
Christian liberty was individual,--it changed the character, not the sex
relations. In arranging for church discipline, he advised that men should
uncover the head, and women should wear the veil. But he said, in
reference to that veil, that "woman should have _power_ on her head,
because of the angels." The angels are spoken of in the New Testament as
veiling their faces in the very presence of the Creator. In that truer
symbolism of Christianity, man was to uncover his head in token of
reverence to God and acceptance of the responsibility of the guardianship
of the earth. Woman was to cover her head in token of her acceptance of
man's guardianship and of her dominion over his heart, to which she had
revealed God's will.

Paul adds: "For as the woman is of the man, so is the man also of the
woman; but all things are of God." This relation was one of the mysteries
that Paul said he did not comprehend, nor could he, till the lessons he
taught should work out their results, and might serve as commentary.

Life itself, as well as all that life could come to mean, depended upon
woman's consenting. The word "obey" in some marriage services seems, like
what it really is, a survival. Obedience has brought its reward, and the
consent of the heart is more than the consent of the lips. But if there is
no consent of the heart to wifehood and motherhood, in time there will be
no chivalry, no progress, no final emancipation for the race. Consenting
is also commanding, and woman loses her life in order to find it in the
fulfillment of her wish. It was consent to her own teaching. The
chivalrous and tender-hearted Paul, who spoke of women with reverent
affection, who adopted as his own the mother of Rufus, was repeating the
lesson of every Jewish mother from Sarah to Deborah, and from Deborah to
the women who were last at Christ's cross and first beside his tomb.
Deborah, who was the judge, prophetess and poet, but first of all "a
mother in Israel," under whom her degenerate people had peace for forty
years, rebuked Barak and said, to their humiliation: "This day shall the
Lord deliver Israel by the hand of a woman." From this teaching Paul
uttered his rebuke to the wayward church at Corinth: "It is a shame for a
man to cover his head, inasmuch as he is the image and glory of God; but
the woman is the glory of the man." And he added, in speaking of the
wearing of the veil, "For this cause ought the woman to have power"
"because of the angels." In the Epistle to the Ephesians Paul admonishes
the Church to be "imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love,
even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself for you, an offering and a
sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." Again, he says: "Therefore,
as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own
husbands in everything." And as if to make doubly certain that no one
should think that such submission implied bondage or inequality, he adds
"Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the Church and _gave
himself for it_." Again, he says: "So ought men to love their wives, as
their own bodies.... Even as the Lord the Church," adding with almost
strained Oriental vehemence, "for we are members of his body, of his flesh
and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and his
mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they twain shall be one
flesh."

The comment most readily suggested is, that through this teaching the use
of the veil has now no such significance. The uncovering of the head is a
token of respect, largely to woman. The retention of the bonnet is not
dreamed of in connection with woman's relation to man, nor does it suggest
woman's power in the moral world. The obedience through which love
"constrained" a mind that had been bred to forms, was free. If anybody now
holds that woman was intended to glorify God indirectly, through man, or
to serve God by serving man, he makes an assumption long discredited, and
not in accord with the spirit of Christ and of Paul. Man is as much the
glory of woman as woman is the glory of man, and they reveal equally the
glory of God.

In speaking of the proprieties of life, Paul said: "Does not nature
herself teach you?" "If a man have long hair, it is a shame to him." "If a
woman have long hair, it is a glory to her." The badge of womanhood is a
glory, and the "short-haired women and long-haired men" of the early
Suffrage movement transformed the symbols of dignity and honor into those
of contempt and disgrace.

Canon law grew up during the Middle Ages, when came the great

  "Death-grapple in the darkness, 'twixt old systems and the Word."

The wondrous church that rose on the ruins of Roman militarism, and
overthrew Norman feudalism, gave evidence, in its code, of the bitterness
of the conflict and the rudeness of the time. The legal fiction that, in
acknowledging the oneness of husband and wife, yet made the husband that
one, was a perversion of Scripture.

It has been publicly said by Suffragists from the first, that the tenets
of the Church of Rome, in which Canon law had its origin, were inimical to
woman suffrage; and they have further said that those who canonize women
and worship the Virgin Mother, should naturally have been friendly to the
Suffrage idea. I suppose no one will deny that the spirit of the Roman
body is that of a state church. I have no more to say in criticism of it
as a Christian denomination than I have of others; but that organization
which has held temporal and spiritual power to be co-ordinate and
interdependent in government, presents a political phase that has direct
bearing on my theme, and I make my few comments as a historian. The Church
that inculcates Mariolatry would have far more ignorant women to add to
our body of voters than any other. It has done less for woman's education
and general advancement than any other, but its claims are not therefore
modest. The school elections in Staten Island last year gave an object-
lesson in regard to its intention to use the suffrage. In Connecticut, the
school election presented another evidence of the intense interest felt by
the Catholic clergy in public-school matters. In California, in the late
canvass for woman suffrage, that Church assisted largely in carrying on
the work to secure the amendment. While many of its individual members are
among the noblest friends that civil and religious freedom have in our
country, this church, by its traditions, and by its latest
pronunciamentos, shows itself as a force that, for its own selfish
reasons, may be reckoned on the side of woman suffrage in its conflict
with woman's progress.




CHAPTER X.


WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND SEX.


The ninth count of the Suffrage Declaration says: "He has created a false
sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and
women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude woman from society, are
not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in men." And the list of
grievances is summed up as follows: "Because women do feel themselves
aggrieved, oppressed and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred
rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and
privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States."

The writers do not say whether the code of morals referred to is a code of
law or an unwritten code of public sentiment. If they mean the former,
their statement is not true; for whatever laws affect moral delinquencies
visit their penalties equally upon men and women. If they mean public
sentiment alone, the answer is, that both men and women are responsible
for its creation. It is folly to deny that there is, in the nature of
things, more excuse for men than for women. A mother realizes that her son
has a natural temptation of which her daughter knows nothing. But this
fact, while it accounts in part for the different standard, by no means
exonerates man. One of the strangest anomalies of human experience exists
in connection with this matter. Man reposes his deepest faith in the
existence of goodness at its vital point, in the virtue of woman; and yet
when he tramples upon that virtue he screens himself behind the excuse
that her nature is as vulnerable as his own, while his temptation is
greater. The main reason, as it seems to me, why women often appear more
cruel to their fallen sisters than do men, lies in the fact that pure
women abhor this vice as they abhor no other. Besides bestowing upon woman
a loftier moral sense, her Creator has hedged about her virtue with a
feeling of physical repulsion that is distinct from the moral question
involved. The social life of the world is to a large extent in woman's
hands. When she says to men "You cannot bring your impurity into my home,"
"You must be the ones to guard our sons and daughters," the reform will be
begun in earnest. Woman's faith, and her abstract way of looking at moral
questions, prevent her from fastening her thought, as men naturally do, on
any special culprit, in her severe but vague sense of wrong in this
matter. The Suffragists have taken fewer steps in the direction of
removing the social plague-spot than in the direction of bringing about a
system of easier divorce--a thing that strikes a blow directly against,
instead of for, the virtue of their sex. Social opinion is causing a
change in some of the laws concerning social vice. Nearly every State
legislature has raised the age of consent. So far as Suffrage associations
have assisted in this, it proves their ability and their good will; but
much more is due to our educated physicians and philanthropists.

It seems at first thought as if there were no direct connection between
voting and social questions of sex; but I am following the lead of my
Suffrage texts. Others who attempt the discussion are led to the same
themes. Dr. Jacobi, in her book, says: "The problem is, to show why, in a
representative system based on the double principle that all the
intelligence in the state shall be enlisted for its welfare, and all the
weakness in the state represented for its own defence, women, being often
intelligent, and often weak, and always persons in the community, should
not also be represented." In replying to the anti-suffrage arguments of
Prof. Goldwin Smith, she says: "Do sex relations depend upon acts of
Parliament or constitutional amendments? Can women marry a ballot, or
embrace the franchise, otherwise than by a questionable figure of speech?
Must adultery and infanticide necessarily be favored by the decisions of
female jurors? Is divorce legislation, as arranged by the exclusive wisdom
of men, now so satisfactory that women--who must perforce be involved in
every case--should always modestly refrain from attempting amendment? This
entire class of considerations, however irrelevant to the issue, may be
grouped together and considered together, because, to a large class of
minds--the rudest, quite as much as those of Mr. Smith's cultivation--they
are the considerations that do come to the front whenever equal rights are
suggested." She adds that the reason they come to the front is, "that men,
accustomed to think of men as possessing sex attributes and other things
besides, are accustomed to think of women as having sex and nothing else."

Is there a ruder mind anywhere than one that could not only think but
write a sentiment so revolting and so false? And yet the statement admits
that, whatever the reason, the sex issue does underlie the whole Suffrage
question.

In their "History," the leaders not only set forth all the specific
charges in their Declaration of Sentiments, but of this "rebellion such as
the world has never seen" they say: "Men saw that with political equality
for woman, she could no longer be kept in social subjection. The fear of a
social revolution thus complicated the discussion."

In the Introduction to the Suffrage Woman's Bible, the commentators say:
"How can woman's position be changed from that of a subordinate to an
equal, without opposition?--without the broadest discussion of all the
questions involved in her present degradation? For so far-reaching and
momentous a reform as her complete independence, an entire revolution in
all existing institutions is inevitable."

Dr. Jacobi says: "To-day, when all men rule, and diffused self-government
has abolished the old divisions between the governing classes and the
governed, only one class remains over whom all men can exercise
sovereignty--namely, the women. Hence a shuddering dread runs through
society at the proposal to also abolish this last refuge of facile
domination."

Here, then, all these Suffragists present a problem far more momentous
than appears when it is proposed "to show why, in a representative system
based on the double principle that all the intelligence in the state shall
be enlisted for its welfare, and all the weakness in the state represented
for its defence, women, being often intelligent, and often weak, and
always persons, should not also be represented." It is the sex battle that
has been waged from the beginning. In the Suffrage Woman's Bible Mrs.
Stanton says: "The correction of this [the misinterpretation of the Bible
as concerns woman] will restore her, and deprive her enemy, man, of a
reason for his oppression and a weapon of attack." Disguise it as they
may, to themselves and to others, the Suffrage idea is compelled to claim
that man is woman's enemy, that the ballot is the engine of his power, and
that therefore she must vote. The reason that "these considerations come
to the front whenever equal rights is mentioned" is because the women of
that movement brought them there, and keep them there, and because no one
can seriously consider the matter without seeing that they belong there.

In discussing them, Dr. Jacobi says: "What is imagined, claimed, and very
seriously demanded, is, that women be recognized as human beings, with a
range of faculties and activities co-extensive with that of men, whatever
may be the difference in the powers within that range."

In another place she admits that "women are really recognized as
individuals, the same as men," and the fact that they are so recognized is
made the basis of an argument for their voting. Suppose men demanded that
they be given a "range of faculties and activities co-extensive with that
of women, whatever may be the difference in the powers within that range,"
if they demanded it "seriously" they would probably become laughing-
stocks.

She says: "The sex relations of women as lovers, as wives, as mothers, as
daughters, remain untouched, certainly unimpaired, by the demand to extend
beyond these. What is impaired is not the sex relation, nor sex condition,
but the social disabilities, the personal and social subordination, the
condition of political non-existence, which have been foisted upon that
sex condition."

The repeated demand to "extend beyond" the sex relations of either sex
_is_ a demand to touch those relations, and whether it is a demand to
impair them depends upon the question whether it is true that disabilities
and subordination have been foisted upon the sex conditions. In olden
times they were. Men were subject to social disabilities, personal and
social subordination, and political non-existence. It followed that women
were also in the same subjection. As men threw off the yoke, the sex
relations began to assume their natural position. Man was the protector,
woman the protected. In the natural relations, the protector is at the
service of the protected, and that is the state of things to-day. In order
to be preserved in bodily, mental, and spiritual freedom, woman must yield
with grace to the hand that serves her. In order to protect, man must see
to it that this freedom he has won is kept sacred and inviolable. He
cannot be at once a tyrant and a guard. This freedom removes from woman
all disabilities save those of sex. The question then is, can all the
intelligence and all the weakness of women be represented for their own
welfare and their own defence, by the same methods as those by which men
attain that end, and yet leave these fundamental sex relations untouched
and unimpaired?

The Suffrage leaders did not expect or intend to leave them untouched, or
unimpaired, if complete change was impairment. In the "History" they say:
"It is often asked if political equality--would not arouse antagonism
between the sexes? If it could be proved that men and women had been
harmonious in all ages and countries, and that women were happy and
satisfied in their slavery, we might hesitate in proposing any change
whatever; but the apathy, the helpless, hopeless resignation of a subject
class, cannot be called happiness. A woman growing up under American ideas
of liberty in government and religion cannot brook any disability based on
sex alone, without a deep feeling of antagonism with the power that
creates it."

Dr. Jacobi says: "Manhood Suffrage in America may seem to result,
historically, from the general average equality of social conditions among
the inhabitants of the Thirteen States. But it may also be deduced as a
philosophical necessity from the Idea of Individualism, which became the
core of the Federal Union. This idea, at first suggested only for men,
has, little by little, spread to women also."

Individualism, in the sense of personal moral responsibility, became the
core, first of the Hebrew Theocracy, and last of the American National
life. But that republicanism which has come to rest on sex distinction is
the combined result of Individualism and Authority. Suffrage discussion
for years has turned upon the idea of Individualism _versus_ Authority.

In a government like ours, where all the intelligence and all the weakness
_are_ represented for their own welfare and defence, authority must to a
certain extent hold a stern hand over individualism, because freedom for
all means license for not a single one, be it man or woman. Mrs. Fanny
Ames says: "Any argument [against Suffrage] worth anything at all, comes
down to this--an argument against American democracy--and must rest
there." Many arguments have been adduced against Woman Suffrage that were
also arguments against democracy; because there are always people, and
wise people too, who fear the test of the ultimate experiment. To this
fear the Suffragists catered when, in contradiction to their own dictum of
universal suffrage, they asked Congress for a sixteenth amendment that
should require an educational qualification for all, both men and women.
But, guided by the statesmanship that seeks to form a true and enduring
democracy, this Republic has come to the sex basis.

Dr. Jacobi says: "The complex contradictions in the present distributions
of sovereign power are further intensified by the vulgarization of the
general ideal. It is one thing to say, 'Some men shall rule,' quite
another to declare, 'All men shall rule,' and that in virtue of the most
primitive and rudimentary attribute they possess,--that, namely, of sex.
If the original contempt for masses of men has ever diminished, and the
conception of mankind been ennobled, it is because, upon the primitive
animal foundation, human imagination has built a fair structure of mental
and moral attribute and possibility, and habitually deals with that. This
indeed is no new thing to do; for it was to this moral man that Pericles
addressed his funeral oration, and of whom Lincoln thought in his speech
at Gettysburg. Of this moral man, women--the sex hitherto so despised--are
now recognized to constitute an integral part. It is useless, therefore,
to attempt to throw them out by an appeal to the primitive conditions of a
physical force to which no one appeals for any other purpose."

The immortal orator at Gettysburg was commander-in-chief of an army and
navy whose physical power was then in the very act of saving the nation
and redeeming it from the sin of slavery. The soldier-statesman of Greece,
in his funeral oration, was addressing an army. The fair structure of
mental and moral attribute and possibility has not been built by human
imagination. The conception of the moral man that has ennobled mankind is
older than any man who has embodied it. It is as old as mankind itself,
upon whose primitive animal foundation God implanted side by side the
conception of the moral man, woman--and of the governing man, man.

That no inequality should be possible when this idea should really rest
upon the most primitive, rudimentary and yet continuing and controlling
attribute, instead of upon complex contradictions in regard to the
distribution of sovereign human power, God, speaking through the ideal
which the moral man had grasped, said: "Therefore shall a man leave his
father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they twain
shall be one flesh."

Man is not the hereditary sovereign in a republic. He is an actual,
present, continuing sovereign, and he is that only so long as he obeys the
law of his being and constitutes himself, by reason of his manhood
strength, the defence of the republic's laws for all. In woman suffrage
democracy has met a most dangerous foe. It has been asked "If it would be
best for man to make over half his sovereignty to woman?" I cannot imagine
how he could do this, whatever might be his wish. Sovereignty in a
republic is only divisible among those who are equals as to sovereign
power; and any effort to divide with those who lack the essential
attribute must result in despotism or anarchy. Men are as subject to the
restrictions and requirements of sex as are women, and when they try an
experiment contrary to those conditions, the end must be destruction of
government itself.

Prof. Goldwin Smith says: "One of the features of a revolutionary era is
the prevalence of a feeble facility of abdication. The holders of power,
however natural and legitimate it may be, are too ready to resign it on
the first demand.... The nerves of authority are shaken by the failure of
conviction."

This is true, and it is what makes the present situation portentous. From
the very tenderheartedness of the men of our time comes the danger to the
women of this nation. So far from desiring to hold the slightest
restriction over the women of the Republic, they may rush into an attempt
at abdication of a sovereignty that did not originate in their will but in
their environment, in order to prove the sincerity of their desire that
woman should not even appear to be compelled to obey.

This movement is a feature of the revolutionary era that seems suddenly to
have extended to the men with whose theories it belongs. Not at once, nor
everywhere equally, but finally and completely would this change come.
Man, as well as woman, must "consent to be governed" by the laws of being.
If man really could "share his sovereignty," there might be some show of
reason in the Suffrage claim that he should do so. But unless he can
abdicate the very essentials of his sex condition, he cannot abdicate his
sovereignty. His laws are dead letters whenever more men than those who
passed them and approve them choose that they shall be dead. He would have
no material outside the men in this country, with which to execute the
wishes of the woman voters whom it is proposed to introduce to make laws
which they know they cannot themselves enforce.

And this leads us right round again to consider the "disabilities foisted
upon sex conditions." The first thing demanded of a voter is that, in the
ordinary state of things, he should be able to vote. A body of citizens is
asking that a sex be admitted to franchise when it is known to all that a
large part of that sex would at every election find it physically
impossible, or improper, to go to the polls. Suffragists say: "No women
need vote who do not wish to; but they have no right to hinder us." Is
this the Individualism of Democracy? It is the Individualism of Anarchy.
It is not the rule of the majority. It is class rule with a vengeance; and
as for "consenting to be governed," there never was a man or a government
that so coolly assumed to govern without their consent such a body, as do
the Suffragists. The disabilities "foisted upon sex" would be felt first
of all by the wives and mothers who are most interested in the laws.

The next duty of citizenship is jury service. The leaders said: "We
demand, in criminal cases, that most sacred of all rights, trial by jury
of our own peers." In regard to jury duty Suffragists are not agreed;
which fact alone shows that that service would be felt to be an impairment
of sex conditions. So impossible has jury duty been found, even in small
communities, that in Wyoming the jury service of women ceased with the
first judge who admitted them to serve at all; and in Colorado but one or
two women have ever served. The judges there do not allow them to be
called. It was found to be expensive, and not promotive of the ends of
justice. Whether this is held to be man's cruel withholding of woman's
rights or not, it shows that either the sex condition or the co-
extensiveness of woman's work with man's must be impaired. Dr. Jacobi says
in regard to jury service: "The numerous cases for exemption now admitted
for men would be certainly paralleled for women, but they would not always
be identical. Men are now more often excused for business; women would be
excused on the plea of ill-health. Of course the special plea of family
cares with young children would rule out thousands of women during a
number of years of their lives."

Who would establish the "special plea" for so large a proportion of the
voting population? No law of justice on which a solid government can rest
could do it; and that it would be asked, and needed, shows that sex
conditions would interfere with voting conditions. A criminal case often
lasts weeks, even months, during which time the jury are kept together and
alone, locked up at night, and walked out by day. This second duty cannot
be, and is not, performed; not because many women would not make good
jurors, not because they should not try delicate cases, and might not
serve well at certain times, and in special ways, but because jury duty,
like military service, cannot take account of sex conditions when they are
the rule and not the exception.

Office-holding is the next necessary concomitant of the ballot. Of course
it can be said at once: "Why, multitudes of men never hold office, why
should women?" It may be answered that multitudes of men do hold office,
that no American would think of extending the ballot without expecting
that, as an accompaniment, the duty, or the privilege, of office-holding
should follow.

Not only is it true that if more than half the population were added to
the voting list multitudes among them would attempt to rush into office,
but it was mainly for office that a majority of those who have been
pressing the demand cared for the vote. The authors of the "History" say:
"As to offices, it is not be supposed that the class of men now elected
will resign to women their chances, and, if they should to any extent, the
necessary number of women to fill the offices would make no apparent
change in our social circles. If, for example, the Senate of the United
States should be entirely composed of women, but two in each State would
be withdrawn from the pursuit of domestic happiness."

How could "the class of men now elected" help resigning, if women enough
chose to put up a woman and give her a majority of votes,--provided, as
Suffragists say, that the vote secures the office and retains it by a mere
mandate? But it is not one office, or set of offices, which we have to
consider. It is the entrance upon political life, permanently, of a large
body of women. What that means to the social life that "would not miss
them," we well know. There could be no domestic ties; no hindering child.
The time would be short before this unnatural position would breed a race
of Aspasias--without the intellect that ruled "the ruler of the land, when
Athens was the land of fame."

The "History" says: "An honest fear is sometimes expressed 'that women
would degrade politics, and politics would degrade women,'" and the
writers answer: "As the influence of woman has been uniformly elevating in
new civilizations, in missionary work in heathen lands, in schools,
colleges, literature, and general society, it is fair to suppose that
politics would prove no exception." We do not need to depend upon forecast
or inference. The influence of women upon politics, and the influence of
politics upon women, have already been degrading. This is true of
political intrigue in the old world, and of the "Female Lobby" in
Washington. It is astonishing to what an extent it is true in our new
country, with our fresh and sweet traditions.

In 1851, Mrs. Stanton, writing to a convention at Akron, Ohio, said: "The
great work before us is the education of those just coming on the stage of
action. Begin with the girls of to-day, and in twenty years we can
revolutionize this nation. Teach the girl to go alone by night and day, if
need be, on the lonely highway, or through the busy streets of the crowded
metropolis. Better for her to suffer occasional insults, or die outright,
than live the life of a coward, or never move without a protector....
Teach her that it is no part of life to cater to the prejudices of those
around her. Make her independent of public sentiment, by showing her how
worthless and rotten a thing it is.... Think you, women thus educated
would long remain the weak, dependent beings we now find them? They would
soon settle for themselves this whole question of Woman's Rights."

Fifty years of such teaching has had its effect. The fine bloom has too
often been brushed from our girls' delicacy of thought. They can strut
through the street in the daytime wearing a shirt-front, a cravat, a
choker, a vest, and a man's hat, and carrying a cane. A few can flaunt
themselves in bloomers and knickerbockers, and ride astride a bicycle.
They ape men in everything except courtesy to women. But the result is not
what was expected. These customs have introduced the chaperone, and have
put an end to simple freedom between boys and girls. The Puritan maiden in
her modesty could let John Alden speak for himself, because the John who
could summon courage to speak of love to such a girl would not dare to
breathe impurity. When the young woman requires a social spy, the young
man is apt to forget that her innocent dignity is her own best guardian.
With the passing of the "lady," American women may fail to remember that a
gentlewoman need pretend to no aristocracy but that of the _noblesse
oblige_ of her own femininity. In the paragraph quoted above, women are
spoken of as those who are "uniformly elevating" and as "weak and
dependent" to a contemptuous degree. They cannot be both at once, and it
seems to me that in fact they are neither. Woman is not an angel nor a
demon, not a conqueror nor a slave. But the seed from which any of these
conflicting natures may develop lies in more fertile soil, within her
impassioned and impressible soil, than in man's. The Suffrage movement
will leave her much better or worse than it found her. The phrase "the new
woman," with the instinctive explanation that she "is as refined, or as
good a wife, mother, sister, daughter, housekeeper," as the old, is
ominous.

Suffrage writers seem to hold two views in regard to sex. One is, that it
is so pervasive that it cannot be affected by any line of conduct. The
other is, that, so far as mind is concerned, it is purely a fanciful
barrier, and the less there appears of external distinction the better
will this be realized. The Suffrage "History" says: "Sex pervades all
matter. Whatever it is, it requires no special watchfulness on our part to
see that it is maintained." At the same time the dictum "There is no sex
in mind," has been a Suffrage war-cry. It seems to me that both views are
unscientific and dangerous to social morals. Sex integrity is pervasive of
the whole nature only when men and women are true to the ideal of the
essential distinctions in each. The true environment of woman is
womanliness; not to fit her nature to the utmost that womanliness can mean
to the world, is to fail of womanly attainment. But making herself a
distorted woman cannot make her even an imperfect man. The mere act of
going to the polls is not unwomanly; it might be as proper as going to the
post-office; but attempting to encroach upon duty that is laid upon man in
her behalf is neither womanly nor manly.

In demanding equality, Suffragists assume that there is not and has not
been equality. In asserting that "there is no sex in mind," they really
have had to maintain that there is one sex in mind, and that the
masculine, to which woman must conform. If man wanted clinching arguments
to prove his superiority, could he find another to match this one which
suffrage has furnished him? The quaint wit of the Yankee put it neatly
when he gave the toast, "Woman--once our superior, now our equal!" Man has
said: "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." He has also said,
with Martin: "Whatever may be the customs and laws of a country, the women
of it decide the morals." The civilization of no nation has risen higher
than the carrying out of the religious ideals of its best womanhood. If
man has the outward framing of church and state, woman has the framing of
the character of man. There is no schism in the body of human duties as
the Lord established them. The issues have become more distinctly and
openly moral issues; and in so far as woman can make it consist with that
inner life of the home and the child, which alone can make the family and
fix the state on any sure foundation, she is welcomed by man to meet the
common foe. Such new avenues to wealth and distinction as she can enter
with womanly dignity and grace will open to her as fast as man can make
them places where she can walk with security and comfort to herself and
advantage to them both. And they will open no faster.

The woman Suffragist has had to wage as bitter a warfare against physical
science as against religion. Eliza Burt Gamble, in her volume which
discusses "The Evolution of Woman," takes up the cudgels against both the
Bible and man's scientific classification of woman, or rather his failure
to classify her properly at all. She says: "When we bear in mind the past
experience of the human race, it is not perhaps surprising that, during an
era of physical force and the predominance of the animal instincts in man,
the doctrine of male superiority should have become firmly grounded. But
with the dawn of scientific investigation it might have been hoped that
the prejudices resulting from a lower condition of human society would
disappear. When, however, we turn to the most advanced scientific writers
of the present century, we find that the prejudices which throughout
thousands of years have been gathering strength are by no means
eradicated. Mr. Darwin, whenever he had occasion to touch on the mental
capacities of women, or, more particularly, the relative capacities of the
sexes, manifested the same spirit which characterizes an earlier age."

Herbert Spencer, in his essay on "Justice," says that he once favored
woman suffrage "from the point of view of a general principle of
individual rights." Later he finds that this cannot be maintained, because
he "discovers mental and emotional differences between the sexes which
disqualify women from the burden of government and the exercise of its
functions." He also considers it absurd for women to claim the vote and
military exemption in the name of equality.

Science has told us of the active, as well as the passive, part that the
mother plays in the growth of the embryo, and at the same time has told us
that the sex of that embryo is determined by the nourishing power of the
mother. The commonplace statistics of the census come in with their
verifying word, and we find that in rude times and hard conditions more
boys are born. Gentle conditions and abundance are favorable to the birth
of girls. Here is the same story we have learned so often. Man the
protector, woman the protected. Woman the inspiring force, man the
organizing and physical power.

So the Bible, Science, and Republican government, according to Suffragist
and Anti-suffragist, have planted themselves squarely on the sex issue. It
is solid standing-ground, and neither apparent irrelevancy nor real
antagonism will dislodge the argument.


Dr. Jacobi, in her address before the Constitutional Convention, said:
"Still, all women do not demand the suffrage. We are sometimes told that
the thousands of women who do want the suffrage must wait until those who
are now indifferent, or even hostile, can be converted from their
position. Gentlemen, we declare that theory is preposterous. It is true
that the exercise of an independent sovereignty necessitates the
demonstration of a very considerable amount of independence. A rebel state
that cannot break its own blockade may not call upon a foreign power to
move from its neutrality to do so. But the demand for equal suffrage is in
nowise analogous to a claim for independent sovereignty. It is rather
analogous to the claim to the protection of existing laws, which any group
of people, or even a single person, may make."

Under a democratic government a claim for equal suffrage is a claim to
share the independent sovereignty that protects, and therefore it cannot
be analogous to a claim for protection, individual or otherwise, under
that sovereignty. Does Dr. Jacobi mean that in asking for suffrage she
does not ask to be as much an independent sovereign as any masculine voter
of them all? The comparison of woman's claims to suffrage to the
protection afforded by existing laws, suggests a narrowing of the demand
to fit the requirements of an apparently hopeless struggle for a majority
vote of women.

The Government is spoken of by Suffragists as if it were something
exterior to and apart from the individual voters--a code of laws that had
been set going and would run of itself, the laws being changed by more or
fewer votes, but the power to execute being automatic and continuous. As
this is the opposite of the actual situation, these rebels will have to
"break their own blockade" like any others.

The "pacific blocade" that is enforced by the Quaker guns of this movement
has its peaceful war-cries. One of the most exultant is an allusion to the
expression "We the people" in the preamble of our national Constitution,
with the question whether "people" does not include women. A reading of
the entire preamble shows that, of the six achievements there specified as
the purpose of the Constitution, every one is a thing that only men can
do--with the possible exception of the fifth, which proposes rather
vaguely to "promote the general welfare."

As to the thousands of women who want the vote, there are some figures as
to the majority that "are indifferent or even hostile." I see by the
pamphlet published by the New York State Suffrage Association, that they
have but 1,600 paying members, which is not one in a thousand of the women
in the State over twenty years of age. As Mrs. Winslow Crannell has made a
careful computation from figures published in the "Woman's Journal,"
edited by Henry B. Blackwell and his daughter Alice Stone Blackwell, I
quote her results: In Maine there are but 12 Suffragists to every 100,000
of the people; in New Hampshire, but 5 to every 100,000; in Massachusetts,
but 51 to every 100,000; in Connecticut, but 23 to every 100,000.
Pennsylvania has but 14 in 100,000; Kentucky has 32 to 100,000; Michigan,
but 6 to 100,000; Illinois has 13 to 100,000; Ohio has 11 to 100,000; Iowa
has 6 to 100,000; Virginia, but 1 to 100,000; New Jersey, 8 to 100,000;
Arkansas, 3 to 100,000; South Carolina, 3 to 100,000. California has 33 in
every 100,000, and Maryland has 6 in 100,000. If the suffrage is claimed
for tax-paying women, it can be shown that there are, in New York State,
for instance, at least 1,500,000 women who do not pay taxes. But, as a
matter of fact, the tax-paying women of this State were among the first
signers of Anti-suffrage petitions.




CHAPTER XI.


WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE HOME.


The tenth count in the Suffrage Declaration is: "He has usurped the
prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her
a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God."

In the "History of Woman Suffrage," the editors say: "Quite as many false
ideas prevail as to woman's true position in the home as elsewhere.
Womanhood is the great fact of her life; wifehood and motherhood are but
incidental relations."

The first legislation demanded by the Suffragists was that which called
for a change of the marriage laws, so as to admit of divorce, first for
drunkenness, and later for several other causes. In discussing the matter
in convention, Mrs. Stanton presented resolutions that declared, among
other things, "That any constitution, compact, or covenant between human
beings that failed to produce or promote human happiness, could not, in
the nature of things, be of any force or authority; and it would be not
only a right, but a duty, to abolish it. That though marriage be in itself
divinely founded, and is fortified as an institution by innumerable
analogies in the whole kingdom of universal nature, still a true marriage
is only known by its results; and like the fountain, if pure, will reveal
only pure manifestations. That observation and experience daily show how
incompetent are men, as individuals, or as governments, to select partners
in business, teachers for their children, ministers of their religion, or
makers, adjudicators or administrators of their laws; and as the same
weakness and blindness must attend in the selection of matrimonial
partners, the dictates of humanity and common-sense alike show that the
latter and most important contract should no more be perpetual than either
or all of the former."

In supporting these resolutions, Mrs. Stanton said, "I place man above all
governments, ecclesiastical and civil--all constitutions and laws." "In
the settlement of any question, we must simply consider the highest good
of the individual." Antoinette Brown Blackwell followed Mrs. Stanton with
a series of resolutions in which she opposed her, and defended the
sanctity of marriage. Wendell Phillips moved that neither series of
resolutions be entered on the journal. Mr. Garrison said they did not come
together to settle the question of marriage, but he should be sorry to
rule out Mrs. Stanton's resolutions and speeches. Miss Anthony said: "I
hope Mr. Phillips will withdraw his motion.... I totally dissent from the
idea that this question does not belong on this platform. Marriage has
ever been a one-sided matter. By it, man gains all, woman loses all.
Tyrant law and lust reign supreme with him; meek submission and ready
obedience alone befit her.... By law, public sentiment, and religion, from
the time of Moses down to the present day, woman has never been thought of
other than as a piece of property, to be disposed of at the will and
pleasure of man.... She must accept marriage as man proffers it, or not at
all."

The resolutions were carried and recorded, and are published to this day,
with added testimony to the same effect from a hundred Suffrage sources.
We turn back to trace one of the lines through which this teaching has
come down. The Suffrage leaders mention as special inspirers of their
movement besides Ernestine Rose (who seconded Mrs. Stanton's resolutions)
and Frances Wright, Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft. In the
writings of those women we find the same sentiments set forth with
delicacy or vulgarity, according to the nature of the writer. Margaret
Fuller, in her Dial essay, published in 1843, "The Great Lawsuit--Man
Versus Woman, Woman Versus Man," says: "It is the fault of marriage, and
of the present relation between the sexes, that the woman belongs to the
man, instead of forming a whole with him. It is a vulgar error to suppose
that love--a love--is to woman her whole existence. She is also born for
Truth and Love in their universal energy. Would she but assume her
inheritance, Mary would not be the only virgin mother." Mary
Wollstonecraft believed that marriage consisted solely of mutual
affection, and that there should be no outward promise or tie to bind. If
love were to die, the heart should seek other affinity. The licentious
words of Frances Wright need not be repeated. With Mephistophelian
promptings, Ernestine Rose stood forever a-tip-toe, whispering in the ear
of the purer American feeling that would often have faltered. At the time
of the passing of Mrs. Stanton's resolutions she said: "But what is
marriage? A human institution, called out by the needs of the social,
affectional human nature for human purposes.... If it is demonstrated that
the real objects are frustrated, I ask, in the name of individual
happiness and social morality and well-being, why should such a marriage
be binding for life?... I ask that personal cruelty to the wife may be
made a State's-prison offence, for which divorce shall be granted. Wilful
desertion for one year should be a sufficient cause for divorce....
Habitual intemperance, or any other vice which makes the husband or wife
intolerable and abhorrent to the other, ought to be sufficient cause for
divorce." Essentially the same idea was repeated by Dr. Hulda Gunn in a
recent Suffrage meeting.

In asking for laws that carried out these claims, or some of them, Mrs.
Stanton said, in addressing the New York Legislature in 1854: "If you take
the highest view of marriage as a Divine relation, which love alone can
constitute and sanctify, then of course human legislation can only
recognize it.... But if you regard marriage as a civil contract, then let
it be subject to the same laws that control all other contracts. Do not
make it a kind of half-human, half-divine institution, which you may build
up but cannot regulate."

These doctrines--from those of Frances Wright to those of Mrs. Stanton and
Miss Anthony--were put forth in the name of social purity and true
marriage. A great body of Suffragists never have accepted them. They were
repugnant, in this form, to a majority who were demanding "equal rights."
In January, 1871, Mr. Hooker (husband of Isabella Beecher Hooker), said in
the New York Evening Post: "The persons who advocate easy divorce would
advocate it just as strongly if there was no Suffrage movement. The two
have no necessary connection. Indeed, one of the strongest arguments in
favor of Woman Suffrage is, that the marriage relation will be safer with
women to vote and legislate upon it than where the voting and legislation
are left wholly to men. Women will always be wives and mothers, above all
things else. This law of nature cannot be changed, and I know of nobody
who desires to change it." As he had just been referring to "persons who
advocated easy divorce," and who originated the Suffrage movement, his
statement that he knew of nobody who desired to change marriage seems
funny.

It was one of the matters remarked upon with satisfaction by Suffrage
leaders during our Constitutional Convention Suffrage campaign, that such
a large number of speakers advocated Suffrage because of its advantage to
the home. Mrs. Cora Seabury said: "Where woman is, homes naturally exist,
and not without her. The 'divine veracity in nature,' which in her case
has survived the chaos of ages and the varying civilization of six
thousand years, is not now to be disproved by an incident comparatively so
trivial as that of taking the ballot." Dr. Jacobi puts the idea in this
way: "Mr. Goldwin Smith declares that woman suffrage aims at such a
'sexual revolution' as must cause the 'dissolution of the family.' The
Suffrage claim does not aim at this; it seeks only to formulate,
recognize, and define the revolution already effected, yet which leaves
the family intact. The _Patria Potestas_ is gone. A man has lost, first,
the right to kill his own son, then the right to order the marriage of his
daughter, then the right to absorb the property of his wife. Nevertheless,
he survives, and the family, shorn of its portentous rights, bids fair in
America to remain the happiest of all conceivable natural institutions;
more profound than society, so immeasurably deeper than politics that the
fortunate wife, daughter, or sister is puzzled when the two are mentioned
in the same breath."

All these writers agree in demanding the ballot in order to make some
essential change in woman's condition. Some of them hold that this change
cannot be made unless the relations of wife and mother can be set aside
when the individual considers them detrimental; others hold that it can be
made and leave the relations intact; and one believes that this change is
already so far made, while the relations are still intact, that nothing
need be feared from further change. It reduces itself to matter of opinion
and prophecy on the part of those who agree with the early leaders that
essential change is needed, but do not agree with them as to the steps
necessary. The appeal must be to facts.

The originators of the movement ought to know what the movement meant. The
marriage laws were the first attacked, and are still being hammered at in
favor of divorce, although legislation has outrun their demand in changing
the outgrown laws in regard to property and contracts. Mr. Hooker said:
"The persons who advocate easy divorce would advocate it just as strongly
if there was no Suffrage movement." How can that be, when the women who
inspired the Suffrage movement, and who began it and still carry it on,
proclaimed this as a necessary part? But, this question aside, it may be
said that the marriage relation has been the most unsafe in the hands of
the women whose idea of equality either repudiates it outright or inveighs
against its present status. From the revolutionary and infidel portion of
France, from which it sprang, to the recently dead Oneida Community, who
but women who imbibed the doctrine that marriage was bondage, have
sustained the various forms of license which called itself freedom?
Transcendentalism and Libertinism worked together, and both found women
who could be fitted to the task of destroying the home.

Mrs. Seabury avers that where woman is, homes will naturally exist. Homes
have not existed "naturally." There was a long, long time in human history
when not a dream of a home existed. From lawless individualism to tribal
life, from tribe to clan, from the clan, at last, through mighty
struggles, the family was evolved--the final grouping of the race--the
social unit. That point was not reached until man the savage, man the
rover, had consented to be bound, and bound for life, to one woman. It has
been one object of Christian civilization to hold man to this saving
compact. First to hold his spirit by affection for wife and child, and
next to hold his material interests for the sake of society. The work has
so well progressed that to-day the man's family is dearer to him than his
own life. He will live for them, and fight for them; and the women who
proclaim that man is woman's enemy, are the assassins of their own peace
and of the growing peace of home.

A proof that "women will not always be wives and mothers above all things
else," is to be found in the story of the women who have engaged in
intrigue from the days of ancient Egypt. A woman State senator-elect says:
"I am a Mormon, and believe in polygamy." The organizations that are first
to proclaim the so-called freedom of woman from the marriage bond, are the
same that would repudiate all government, human and divine.

But man has no more set the bounds of woman's life than woman has set
those of man's. It is false to say that man has "usurped the prerogative
of Jehovah," in assigning her a sphere of action. He has assigned neither
her sphere nor his own. Their spheres have been worked out from the
conditions that made them male and female. The ideal that faith could
picture was presented in the Old Testament, and when Christ said, "For the
hardness of your hearts Moses commanded to write a bill of divorcement,
but in the beginning it was not so," he spoke the ultimate word. Save for
adultery, the family was not to be broken, and the laws of modern life,
which grow freer in every other respect, are approaching nearer to this
model as society progresses, and most rapidly so in the most progressive
states.

There is a fine bit of unconscious humor in Miss Anthony's remark that
"Woman must accept marriage as man proffers it, or not at all." Man is at
present blinded by the belief that he must proffer marriage as woman will
accept it, or not at all. Society has lodged with her what Mrs. Stanton
calls "only the veto power." Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton apparently wish
the women to do the proffering, the accepting, and the rejecting. With so
insignificant a part assigned him, it would seem a pity that there should
be a sort of necessity for man to play in the marriage role at all. When
Suffrage leaders have so arranged matters that the bride retains her
maiden name, she can spend her summers in Europe and her winters in
Florida, while her husband works all the year round in New York to support
her, without her being subjected to the mortification of seeming to desert
the man whose name she bears.

You cannot teach this untruth to the girl without teaching it to the boy.
The struggle of civilization has been to teach that manhood was not the
great fact of man's life, and he has learned it through the chivalry and
tenderness that appealed to and developed his higher nature. But if once
he understands that woman does not hold herself in need of his chivalry
and tenderness, the husbandhood and fatherhood that now bind him to one
sacred vow of married love, and tame the savage within him, will not long
prevent him from seeing his own advantage in the new order.

Wifehood and motherhood 'incidental relations.' They are incidental!
Incidental not only to the continuance of the race in civilization, but to
all that is best and holiest in that continuance. The mothers of the
Rebellion say: "The love of offspring, common to all orders of women and
all forms of animal life, tender and beautiful as it is, cannot as a
sentiment rank with conjugal love. The one calls out only the negative
virtues that belong to the apathetic classes, such as patience, endurance,
self-sacrifice, exhausting the brain forces, ever giving, asking nothing
in return; the other, the outgrowth of the two supreme powers in nature,
the positive and negative magnetism, the centrifugal and centripetal
forces, the masculine and feminine elements, possessing the divine power
of creation in the universe of thought and action. Two pure souls fused
into one by an impassioned love. This is marriage, and this is the only
corner-stone of an enduring home."

The "homes" built solely upon this cornerstone have not endured in this
country. The children born under such principles are taken care of by the
"Community" in a building apart from that occupied by the "pure souls."
The "institutional" bringing up of children was lately advocated in this
city by Mrs. Stanton Blatch at Suffrage meetings.

The virtues that the Suffrage leaders denounce as "apathetic" are those
that Christ signalized as the heavenly virtues, and are those which heroes
emulate, whether they be women or men.

Dr. Jacobi says the Suffrage movement, "aims only to regulate and define
the revolution already effected, and which leaves the family intact." I
think it has been proven from words and acts that it does aim at just such
a "sexual revolution" as threatens the family with dissolution. It aimed
to accomplish this by every means in its power, by an industrialism which
it desired should make woman independent of man, by divorce laws, and by
the use of the ballot. Who has shorn man of all his portentous rights? Man
himself, through the influence of woman. Is it likely, then, that he was
taking steps in the direction of the destruction of his own home? He was
endeavoring to build it on those sure foundations that make it what it is.
He can build if woman occupies, but he cannot both fight for the home and
against it. Circumstances, and not Suffrage cries, have forced or enticed
woman into the trades and professions. She has gone farther afield for her
work, partly because the Aegis of home is more broadly spread than it
formerly could be on account of the very strength of the marriage tie,
which makes honor, home, and woman more secure. So far as she has gone to
help the home, and because of love of it, such causes have not hurt the
family life, and will not. But when we come to Suffrage we have met a
different matter. The vote is not an affair of feeling or opinion, like
religious belief. The fact that the men of the family are the natural
defenders of law, and the women are not, is seen at close quarters in the
home, and in case of opposite votes and any serious resulting action, the
father and son must stand in the attitude of actual physical as well as
political antagonism to the mother and daughter. If it came to an issue,
man would have to decide whether he would defend his own opinion,
expressed in his ballot, or the opposite opinion expressed by his wife in
her ballot. And the mere suggestion of difference in family opinion, final
action upon which could only be taken by a resort to that in which the men
must always be superior, would not only endanger family life and peace,
but would develop a fatal inequality between the sexes. If the women of
the family vote with the men, they only double the vote and the expense,
without changing the result; if they vote against the men, they stand in
the ridiculous attitude of opposing them where they cannot do more than
pull hair, or inviting a revolution which they cannot stay.

As to the possibility of this, there are a few striking and suggestive
facts at hand. The sound judgment and law-abiding element of this country
expressed itself in no uncertain tones at the late election. After the
defeat of Mr. Bryan, he was given a tremendous demonstration of approval
at Denver, in which the women played a conspicuous part. Mrs. Bradford
said: "The women tried to welcome you to the White House. When a few more
stars have been added to the Equal Suffrage banner, the women _will_
welcome you to the White House." Mrs. Patterson, President of the Equal
Suffrage League, said in seconding the address of welcome: "Women of
Colorado, I present to you the first president of the twentieth century--
William Jennings Bryan." An invalid of whom I know, travelled from
California to her home in Colorado in order to cast her vote for Bryan,
while her husband cast his for McKinley in California. Mrs. Cannon, of
Utah, was elected on the Free-Silver ticket, against her husband on the
Gold-Standard ticket. Mrs. Cronine, a Populist member of the legislature
of Colorado, is reported as saying: "It hurt my husband, a lifelong
Republican, to see me vote against his party and carry both our children
with me." Should there be political disturbance in Colorado and Utah, in
1900, here are three husbands on record who might be called upon by the
United States authorities to put down by force, perhaps to kill, those
whose lawlessness their wives had instigated and abetted. In one instance
the man's own sons may fight against him, impelled to do so by the lessons
taught by their mother. It requires no stretch of fancy to see the
possibility of civil war brought to the doors of every home, when women
vote. And the occasion that would bring it would not be the saving of the
Nation's life, but its overthrow; not freedom for an oppressed class, but
mingled bondage and license for a sex now free; not the preservation of
home, but its destruction. The Suffrage women who here among us are
talking so foolishly about arbitration and universal peace, seem to have
no conception that with their next breath they are endeavoring to
establish the conditions for the most horrible of conflicts--that of Sex.
So far from the "taking of the ballot" being "trivial," it is the most
serious and dangerous business in which a woman can engage.

The home is not a natural institution unless it is maintained by natural
means, and woman suffrage and the home are incompatible. John Bright, in
reply to Mr. Theodore Stanton's question why he opposed suffrage, said, "I
cannot give you all the reasons for the view I take, but I act from the
belief that to introduce women into the strife of political life would be
a great evil to them, and that to our own sex no possible good could
arise. When women are not safe under the charge or care of fathers,
husbands, brothers, and sons, it is the fault of our non-civilization, and
not of our laws. As civilization founded on Christian principles advances,
women will gain all that is right for them to have, though they are not
seen contending in the strife of political parties. In my experience I
have observed evil results to many women who have entered hotly into
political conflict and discussion. I would save them from it."

How true this is, and how wise are the fears expressed by Mr. Bright, we
realize afresh at every study of the exciting campaign of November, 1896.
The Woman's Journal, the Suffrage organ, published a letter from its
California correspondent descriptive of the work of their women in
watching the count on the Suffrage amendment. One woman who felt "terribly
blue" says that a man patted her on the shoulder and told her to keep up
her courage, and she says: "It broke me up, I can tell you, for I never
could stand sympathy. If people will let me alone, I can grit my teeth and
stand it, but when they say kind things to me I go to pieces. However, as
I was bound I would not show those men how badly I felt, and give them a
chance to say women were hysterical, I smiled weakly--very weakly, I'm
afraid--but still it was a smile and passed as such. Then I began to get
sick--ye gods! how sick! The excitement in the booth stopped, but there
was an excitement in my head that had not been there before! Everything
got black and began to go round. They could have counted us out a dozen
times, and I should never have known the difference." Again the
correspondent says: "Mrs. W. was so tired that she broke down." "Mrs.
Babcock waxed eloquent, and had the meeting in tears. Miss Shaw said she
wanted to speak of one who had been forgotten, because she came here
before any of the rest, and worked so hard that she had ruined her health,
and lay pale and white on her couch at home. She stood there, and the
tears rolled down her cheeks, and she didn't try to wipe them away. Every
one was crying. Mrs. Blinn said, 'I cannot speak. I feel too much to say
anything,' and then she broke down and cried. Mrs. McCann soon had
everybody crying about Miss Hay, and when Miss Hay got up she was crying
too. So we had a very weepy morning, you see." In describing the departure
of Miss Anthony and Rev. Anna Shaw for the East she says: "Oh, it was
awful! awful! The whole thing was like a funeral."

With the steady improvement in machinery and in education, the wife and
mother can be more and more relieved of work. But the home depends as much
as ever upon her love, her skill, her care. She now has means, which
science has just taught the world, of learning how to provide, on proper
principles, for children, how to dress sensibly, cook wholesomely, make
the home sanitary. Nursing is a fine art now, and comforts can be placed
within the reach of every invalid, if the mother knows how to do it. If
home is to be hospitable, and a centre of social influence, all the
artistic and homely powers are demanded. If the family is to be well-
dressed, the mother must attend to it. If home is to be beautiful, the
mother and daughter must make it so. In these days, there is little need
of slaving; and there is a glimpse ahead of leisure for thought and self-
culture such as men would find it hard to make. The long and enforced
retirement of maternity may prove a time for most valuable improvement. In
our social life there is too little culture that is the result of
absorption by a quiet process of mental assimilation. The place where this
can be best achieved is in the home. The danger of our fascinating modern
life, with its endless calls and opportunities outside, lies in the strain
it puts upon systems that are far more delicately organized than man's.
Nature meant that women should have periods of quiet. Let us honor our own
natures, exalt our own opportunities, love and lead our own lives, and so
bless the world and the Republic through perfected homes.

I have considered this question mainly from the view-point of the wife and
mother; but the home relations are vastly broader. In regard to their
whole scope, some of the Suffrage leaders have uttered this dictum: "The
isolated household is responsible for a large share of woman's ignorance
and degradation." If this declaration does not mean that the Suffrage
movement aims to tear down the individual home, it means nothing. The
world must judge which system is responsible for the larger share of
woman's ignorance and degradation.




CHAPTER XII.


CONCLUSION.


In the opening of this volume I have given it as my opinion that the
movement to obtain the elective franchise for woman is not in harmony with
those through which woman and government have made progress. I have spoken
of the marvellous forward impulse that has marked the passage of the last
half-century, and have mentioned the growth of religious liberty, the
founding of foreign and home missions, the extinction of slavery, the
temperance movement, the settlement of the West, the opening of the
professions and trades to women, the progress of mechanical invention, the
sudden advance of science, the civil war, and the natural play of free
conditions, as among the causes of this impulse. I have pointed out the
fact that the Suffrage movement has nearly reached its semi-centennial
year, and has made a record by which its relation to these progressive
forces can be judged, and I have appealed from the repetition of its
claims to the verdict of its accomplishment.

In the second chapter I have considered the growth of republican forms the
world over, and endeavored to show that the dogma of Woman Suffrage is
fundamentally at war with true democratic principles, and that,
practically, woman suffrage has been allied with despotism, monarchy, and
ecclesiastical oppression on the one hand, and with the powers of license
and misrule that assail republican government on the other.

In the third chapter I attempt to prove this further by a study of the
origin of the Suffrage movement, and by its relation to the Government of
the United States. I try to refute the two propositions which it has put
forth as solid resting-ground for woman's claim to the elective franchise
in this land--"Taxation without representation is tyranny," and "There is
no just government without the consent of the governed." I have also set
forth the difference between municipal and constitutional suffrage, and
shown that the extension of school suffrage, so far from being a stepping-
stone to full suffrage, affords another evidence that such full suffrage
is unprogressive and undemocratic. It is held that regulated, universal
manhood suffrage is the natural and only safe basis of government.

In the fourth chapter I consider the early relation of the Suffrage
movement to the causes of anti-slavery and temperance. I also discuss the
attitude of the Suffrage leaders during the civil war, and indicate that
the Suffrage movement was not patriotic, and was a hindrance to
emancipation and reform.

The fifth chapter treats of the connection of the Suffrage movement with
the change that has taken place in the laws, and it contains a synopsis of
the present laws of New York regarding women. From this study it appears
that the Suffrage movement did not originate the change in the laws; that
many changes most vigorously urged by its associations never have been
enacted; and that change of laws has not been so much sought as a voice
upon change of laws--the fact being, that the vote _per se_ has been urged
as the panacea for all woman's wrongs.

The sixth chapter deals with Woman Suffrage and the trades. It shows that
this movement was not instrumental in opening the trades to women; that
the conditions of industrial life are not changed in such essentials as
would involve a change of sex relation to Government; and that, so far
from altering the basis of government, industrialism has introduced new
problems of such grave import that security in the enforcement of law is
doubly necessary. It shows, furthermore, that socialistic labor has been
naturally the friend of Woman Suffrage, while the safer and sounder
organizations have extended sympathetic help to woman.

The seventh chapter discusses the connection of Woman Suffrage with the
professions. It aims to show that here, too, suffrage has not been
necessary to gain, for women who were fitted to hold it, an honorable
place; and, in regard to the places they have not yet entered, it is held
that the impulse must come from within. It is argued that, in the
professions, as in the trades, Suffrage effort has hindered more than it
has helped, and that in the West its practical working is the most
damaging thing that has attended woman's real progress.

The eighth chapter considers the connection of Woman Suffrage with
education. Its conclusions are, that not education, but coeducation, was
the persistent demand of Suffragists, and that woman's advancement in
college and university was wrought out by the impulse gained from women
who opposed the Suffrage idea, and made practical by men to whom also that
idea was repugnant. It is suggested that women who could prepare and
defend the ignorant Suffrage Woman's Bible have no right to utter a
syllable in protest of the educational ideas of men and women who are
competent to speak on the subject, and whose verdict has been, on the
whole, for separate study during collegiate age, wherever such could be
afforded, while it is not disputed that coeducation has its place and its
uses.

The ninth chapter presents Woman Suffrage in its relation to the church.
It first discusses, briefly, a few points in the Suffrage Woman's Bible,
published in New York in 1895. This is a commentary on such passages in
the Pentateuch as relate to women, and the title "Rev." is prefixed to
four names of editors on its title-page. This book, or rather a book of
which this is the first instalment, was promised by Suffrage writers and
speakers from the beginning. It is considered to contain the consummate
blossom of the mind that first expounded the Suffrage theory--the mind
that grasped it as a whole, in its full meaning and intent, and never has
wavered in expression as to its ultimate object and the means by which
that object is to be sought. This chapter sets forth, in few words, the
present writer's view of woman in the creation, and of St. Paul's attitude
toward woman. The chapter further discusses woman's early preaching in
this country, and shows that it has not been such as to build up religion
or the state, but has been such as to suggest that, while the
possibilities of her nature tend to make her supreme in capacity to point
the way to higher regions, it also contains qualities that may render her
peculiarly dangerous as a public leader.

The tenth chapter, entitled "Woman Suffrage and Sex," alludes briefly to
the social evil, and then discusses the Suffrage ideas in regard to sex as
explained by both their older and more recent writers. It discusses the
disabilities of sex in relation to the suffrage--the difficulties in the
way of jury duty, police duty, and office-holding--and draws the
conclusion that the fulfilment of such necessary work of the voting
citizen is practically an impossibility for woman, and has been found to
be so in the Western States.

The eleventh chapter has for its title "Woman Suffrage and the Home." It
sets forth the belief that the Suffrage movement strikes a blow squarely
at the home and the marriage relation, and that the ballot is demanded by
its most representative leaders for the purpose of making woman
independent of the present social order. It argues that communism is the
natural ally of Suffrage, and that, as homes did not spring out of the
ground, they will not remain where men and women alter the mutual
relations out of which the institution of home has slowly grown.

The general conclusion of the book is, that woman's relation to the
Republic is as important as man's. Woman deals with the beginnings of
life; man, with the product made from those beginnings; and this fact
marks the difference in their spheres, and reveals woman's immense
advantage in moral opportunity. It also suggests the incalculable loss in
case her work is not done or ill done. In a ruder age the evident value of
power that could deal with developed force was most appreciated; but such
is not now the case. It lies with us to prove that education, instead of
causing us to attempt work that belongs even less to the cultivated woman
than to the ignorant, is fitting us to train up statesmen who will be the
first to do us honor. The American Republic depends finally for its
existence and its greatness upon the virtue and ability of American
womanhood. If our ideals are mistaken or unworthy, then there will be
ultimately no republic for men to govern or defend. When women are
Buddhists, the men build up an empire of India. When women are
Mohammedans, the men construct an Empire of Turkey. When women are
Christians, men can conceive and bring into being a Republic like the
United States. Woman is to implant the faith, man is to cause the Nation's
faith to show itself in works. More and more these duties overlap, but
they cannot become interchangeable while sex continues to divide the race
into the two halves of what should become a perfect whole. Woman Suffrage
aims to sweep away this natural distinction, and make humanity a mass of
individuals with an indiscriminate sphere. The attack is now bold and now
subtle, now malicious and now mistaken; but it is at all times an attack.
The greatest danger with which this land is threatened comes from the
ignorant and persistent zeal of some of its women. They abuse the freedom
under which they live, and to gain an impossible power would fain destroy
the Government that alone can protect them. The majority of women have no
sympathy with this movement; and in their enlightenment, and in the
consistent wisdom of our men, lies our hope of defeating this unpatriotic,
unintelligent, and unjustifiable assault upon the integrity of the
American Republic.

NEW YORK, _March, 1897_.

THE END.





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