Part 12

All through our colonial period women had a large influence in determining community questions, and in Massachusetts, under the old Providence Charter, they voted for all elective officers for nearly a hundred years. Here and there women--like Margaret Brent, of Maryland; Abigail Adams, of Massachusetts; or Mrs. Corbin, of Virginia--put forward their right to participate in the public life around them. But, in 1776, women were not voting, and the Federal Constitution left the matter of determining electoral rights to the several States. They all decided for male suffrage.

The initial impulse to secure suffrage for American women came from Europe. After the Revolution, Frances Wright, a young Scotchwoman, came to America to lecture and write, claiming equal political rights with men. In 1836, Ernestine L. Rose came from Poland and also advocated equal political rights. All the teachings of the American Revolution had favored the idea of human equality; and, as has been pointed out, when, with established peace after the War of 1812, women engaged in anti-slavery, temperance and allied movements, they were driven by the logic of events to demand the suffrage.

In 1848, the women of the country began to organize. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Martha C. Wright called together at Seneca Falls, New York, the first convention in America to further equal suffrage. No permanent organization was founded, but in 1850 a convention was held in Salem, Massachusetts, and in 1852 a Woman's Rights Convention was called in Syracuse, New York, with delegates present from eight States and Canada. Miss Susan B. Anthony had meantime joined the movement; and from this time on conventions and appeals became common.

The Civil War distracted attention from all social and political issues but one. The Equal Rights Association turned its attention mainly to the rights of negroes; and in 1869 the National Woman's Suffrage Association was organized to work exclusively for woman's rights. Backed by such women as Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe, and aided by men like Henry Ward Beecher, the association became a national power. In 1890, the two organizations were united under the name of The National American Woman's Suffrage Association. This organization still leads the movement in America.

The History of Woman Suffrage, by ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, SUSAN B. ANTHONY, and IDA HUSTED HARPER, 4 vols. Rochester, N.Y.

In 1902, an international meeting was called in Washington; and in 1904 the International Suffrage Alliance was formed in Berlin with Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt as president. Thirteen nations are now affiliated with the Alliance; and the women of the world are highly organized to further equal suffrage.

Two generations of women have given themselves to this movement, and a third still faces it. To the first group belong those leaders we have already named: Emma Willard, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Julia Ward Howe, Susan B. Anthony and their associates. It was their problem to secure woman's control of her own body and property, some share in the direction of her children, and some opportunity to train her own mind and earn an independent living. These women bore the heat and burden of a conflict in which all the blind prejudices of a fixed régime were strongly massed, presenting few promising points of attack. It is small wonder that some of these leaders gained a reputation for being hard, dogmatic, aggressive, and sometimes careless of popular sensibilities. The first generation of reformers in any field must be made of stern stuff; and their beneficiaries are apt to forget the conditions that justified means no longer necessary.

The lives of these women could not be expected to fully illustrate the type of life they hoped to see their sisters living when opportunity was finally won. Only women who participated in this struggle could fully appreciate the splendid devotion of these lives to the service of a group many of whom, being personally comfortable, were insensible to the needs of less fortunate women; and were sometimes even willing to fight back any advanced ideas which might disturb their own comfort. The feeling within this group of leaders, and the failure of oncoming generations of American women to recognize the debt of obligation they owe to its efforts, was illustrated by an incident that came up in connection with the Third International Congress of Women which met in London in 1899. The session was opened in Westminster Town Hall, with seven hundred delegates present, representing the most thoughtful women of the world. Lady Aberdeen was in the chair, and Mrs. Creighton, wife of the late Bishop of London, was reading a paper. In the midst of deep attention, a door at the rear of the platform was gently opened, and Miss Susan B. Anthony stepped onto the stage. She had just arrived from America. Her strong figure was bent with the weight of years; her face was squared by the conflict and partial ostracism she had met; but her glance had lost none of its stern kindliness, and her bearing none of its indomitable courage. As she appeared, this most representative audience of women in the world sprang to its feet and burst into wild cheering. In vain did Lady Aberdeen rap for order and beg the audience to let Mrs. Creighton proceed. Not until Miss Anthony came to the front and urged the women to sit down was quiet restored. These women knew the price of a life which their champion had paid for their opportunities.

A few months after this the school children of the prosperous city of Rochester, N.Y., where Miss Anthony had been a leading citizen for many years, were asked to write school compositions in which they named the person they would most wish to be like. Over three thousand girls, in the elementary grades, wrote these papers, but not one chose Miss Anthony. This first generation of women reformers could not establish the type of womanhood for the modern world; they had not the leisure, nor the freedom, nor could they see all that lay in the future. But all the more, because their lives were hard, should they be held in grateful remembrance.

To the second generation of leaders belong women like Alice Freeman Palmer, Mary Sheldon Barnes and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. They came on the scene when the first campaign had been won; they could command their own bodies and property; college doors were swinging open where they could secure the training that should fit them for the struggle to win educational, industrial, social and political opportunity for all their sisters. They were still looked upon as blue-stockings and queer; they had often to serve as the butt of ridicule; but they had education, income, a certain degree of leisure, and a social recognition which, if grudging in some quarters, was all the more generous in others.

With the rapid development of higher education, these women found themselves associated with large groups of independent women who could create a society of their own in advanced centers of population. There was still much to be done in securing opportunity for women; but they could go on establishing the type of life that free women were to live. Their problems were, however, even more complex than those which confronted their predecessors. What line of education should women pursue? What lines of work could they best undertake? How could they combine an independent professional or industrial career with the life of a home and the responsibilities of a mother? How far must older social restraints be modified in the interest of intellectual and industrial freedom? It was a time for constructive statesmanship, rather than for revolution; and each woman knew she was under criticism, and that her success or failure was vastly more than her own personal concern. In her all free women were being judged.

To the third generation belongs the host of women who are to-day filling our college halls, managing the women's clubs, teaching the state schools, and competing with men in every industrial calling. Theirs is the task of completing woman's social and political emancipation, and of educating them to meet their newfound liberties. It is possible that this present generation has a keener sense of rights than of duties; and the young women of to-day must be led to realize that the delicate adjustments still to be worked out require devotion equal to that of the earlier generations, if the toll of wasted life is not to be excessive.

What now is the relation of women to the range of political activity described in the last chapter? Have they need of the protection which government gives? Are they able to form political judgments? Have they knowledge of the working of political machinery; or, lacking it, are they prepared to obtain it? Are they able to make a wise selection of people to represent them in political action? Have they need of the training which participation in political life gives? Have they the preliminary preparation to take up that training to advantage, and can they undertake these duties without serious loss of qualities desirable in women?

Women certainly have need of protection; each has a life dear to her, and honor which is dearer to her than life. In this respect she has a greater need than men. Most women, also, have property of some kind, and we are increasingly recognizing their right to control this for themselves; hence they need property protection the same as men. We do not need to think of Mrs. Sage, Mrs. Harriman, Miss Gould or Mrs. Green, in this connection, for in every community we now have many women who are immediately responsible for large property interests which new legislation might affect most seriously.

In matters of institutional regulation by government, women are at least as vitally interested as men. In all that touches the family, marriage, or divorce, women have more at stake than men; and there are as many wives as husbands involved. The schools are also nearer to women than to men; more girls than boys attend them; more women are teachers; and more women than men are interested parents of school children. The church is also more vital to women to-day than to men. On the side of industries, it is clear that our 8,000,000 independent wage-earning women have a desperate stake in all governmental action touching the regulation of working conditions. In whatever concerns general sanitation, safe water, and pure foods, all are equally interested who must breathe and eat to live. Surely the need of women for political protection is quite as great as that of men.

In the matter of forming political judgments, not even the wisest men are beyond improvement. International affairs, monetary systems, the best way of raising taxes, and similar problems, often divide the male electorate pretty evenly into rival parties. Since both cannot be right, a great deal of poor political thinking must be done by the present body of voters. Meantime, women are showing their ability to deal intelligently with all sorts of subjects in our educational institutions, in business and in social life. Their judgments command respect in every other field; and it is hard to see why they could not apply their powers to political questions.

We must remember, too, that during these last years the field of political life has been rapidly broadening, through the awakening of social consciousness among the people. To concern one's self with politics now is to be interested in good market facilities, in rapid transit for cities, in recreation centers for children, in honest labelling of food products, in reformation of criminals, in preventing marriage among the unfit, and in a hundred similar matters. Here women will doubtless bring us a strong addition to our political efficiency. They have long been considered the natural directors of social life and, in spite of being disfranchised, they mainly handle such matters at present. Now that these subjects are being brought into the political field, women should follow them there, as they have followed their industries from the homes into the factories. There is no reason to believe that their judgments will be less sound than those of their brothers and husbands.

Of course, women's knowledge of means and methods is much less than that of men in their own class. Not only have they not participated in political life, but they have been steadily warned away from that particular tree of knowledge. Yet the present generation of women has gone through the same preliminary education in schools with its brothers; and many women in high schools and colleges have made a more extended study of political institutionalism. Still more important, more than a million women have been educating themselves for some years in this direction through voluntary associations of some kind; while in most States they have had some political practice through limited suffrage, and in a few States full experience.

In selecting representatives to carry out their will, women have certain obvious defects of temperament and training. Having been brought up for generations to judge men only as providers of sustenance and fathers of children, they must at first find it difficult to consider candidates impersonally. Still, their general morality and their standards of right are probably superior to those of men, and they are more intolerant of faults, and they find it harder to compromise on matters of character than do men. One can hardly believe that 1,700 women could be found among the respectable, church-going, American-born residents in any county of America, who would sell their votes, year after year, as that number of men voters has recently confessed to doing in Adams County, Ohio. In fact, Judge Blair says: "There was one class of the population which rebelled against the practice. It was the womanhood of Adams County, which had never become reconciled to the custom, and whose continual hostility has resulted finally, I hope, in its abolishment."

Seventeen Hundred Rural Vote-Sellers, by A.Z. Blair, McClure's Magazine, November, 1911.

Of the need of women for the training which participation in political life gives there can be no doubt. Their lives have always been directly dependent upon other individuals, and they are prone to think in small details. Any training which extends the horizon of their interests and enables them to deal more largely with these details will fit them better for living in a world where industrial, business and social changes are so rapidly merging details in larger wholes. Experience in selecting candidates for public office would also do much to broaden women's judgments of life, and would help to break down the pettiness which sometimes characterizes their personal relations.

In the case of women, the community has a double reason for desiring that they shall develop political judgments and become acquainted with political methods. It is not only that they may share in the general intelligence and carry their fair part of the political burdens; but they have become the teachers, both in homes and schools, of the oncoming generation of male voters. We no longer live in small communities where children can see the simple processes of government operating around them, but in a complex civilization where it must all be interpreted to them, and mainly by women. Many boys who complete our elementary schools never work a day under the direction of a man. In the homes, busy fathers increasingly turn over the training of children to their wives. How can these women train safe citizens for the future if they do not understand the processes involved well enough to use them themselves?

Meantime the old arguments against woman suffrage are too outworn to need serious attention. In the past decades our civilization has become so complex, with so many groups carrying on differentiated functions, that even if we had not the millions of educated, property-owning, wage-earning, voting women that now fill our public life, the old arguments would still be obsolete. The issues of life are no longer primarily military, and but a fraction of men voters is capable of meeting modern requirements as policemen and soldiers; in time of crisis, all men would be called into the reserves; but in such periods women have always fought in the breach, from Carthage to Paris. Still, in modern warfare, those who guard the rear and furnish supplies are as necessary as those who go to the front.

It has also long been recognized that women who rear finest sons and daughters must sometimes turn away from the cradle to refresh their lives with the touch of other interests. It has also been demonstrated a thousand times over that women do not incite the lawless element to riot about the polls; but that, instead, their presence tends to remove the polling-place from the saloon and make it safer for men to go there on election-day. The plea that women would introduce a new element of sex into politics, thereby confounding its real issues, is certainly not well grounded. Sex has always played a great part in politics, as it has in all the vital affairs of life. In the open competitions of education, business or politics, sex ceases to be as significant as it is in the drawing-room.

Nor do thoughtful people imagine to-day that if women participated in political life they would suddenly bring about a reign of universal peace and righteousness. It has taken many centuries for men to learn to play the game of politics indifferently well as they do. The first effect of woman's participation would probably be to lower the efficiency of the electorate in some directions; but they are starting much farther along than men began, and they would learn more rapidly than men have learned.

It is often claimed that women do not want to vote; and, of course, there are many who do not care to assume such arduous and often difficult duties, if they can avoid it. The same holds true of many intelligent, but selfish men who desire the advantages of good government without its burdens. All such must be urged to do their duty to the state. Those who have vision and a large sense of duty can be trusted to do their fair part in caring for the public welfare. Those who wish to enjoy the benefits of peace and settled government, participating in the advantages of education, engaging in business, and having their persons and property protected, without sharing the burdens of government, should be forced to play their part.

If a woman should board a street-car to-day and, when asked for her fare, should hide her face with womanly modesty and declare that she did not wish to be involved in such public matters, but preferred that the man swinging on the strap before her should pay, she would be informed that all who use the cars must pay for their maintenance. Women in America now have more than their share of education and leisure. If they do not wish to pay their fair proportion of service, they should withdraw from the high schools and colleges, from literature and music, from offices and factories, and not crowd into places where they are unwilling to play the game. The woman who leads the movement against equal suffrage in England has made a fortune in the open market as a writer, protected by the national copyrights; she maintains a house where she is protected in person and property by the city of London, the organization and administration of which calls for the constant attention of all intelligent citizens; and yet she urges women to take what they can get, but to refrain from doing their fair share of the city and national housekeeping, lest they lose their feminine charm. Surely those who profit by government should give their share of service.

It is idle to claim that equal suffrage will make no change in women. It will certainly accentuate the changes already made by higher education and by a freer business life. Some loss there must inevitably be in any such far-reaching change. We lost something of chivalry and of the spirit of noblesse oblige in the transition from feudalism to democracy. In transferring causes of personal difference from the dueling field to the courts of law, we lost a degree of poetic feeling and tragic exaltation, of personal initiative and physical courage. So when women passed from slavery to serfdom we lost something of male dominance and of female submission. We shall lose something in the present transition; but one must be content to lose Louis XIV and Versailles if one thereby finds modern France; one must be satisfied to lose an institution which gave us the tragically pathetic death of Alexander Hamilton, if it increases human justice and saves fathers to their families. We must even be content to lose the languishing and weeping lady of chivalry, and the coquetting, crocheting and confiding maiden of the eighteenth century if we gain in return fair minded comrades in daily living, devoted partners in family life, and strong, intelligent mothers for the coming generations. The sex instinct needs no fostering; it has led us to our best developments in civilization; and its work has only begun.