Part 13

So far we have taken the popular position, and have discussed this matter as though it were still in the period of debate. The fact is, it long ago passed from the field of theory; it is now a condition. In six of our States, women have now full participation in managing public affairs. In Wyoming, since 1869; in Colorado, since 1893; in Idaho, since 1896; in Washington, beginning in 1910; and in California, since 1911, women have been sharing the vote with men. In twenty-nine States they have school suffrage, and in many places municipal suffrage. In newer parts of the world, like New Zealand and Australia, women have complete suffrage, while in old countries, like Norway, Sweden and Finland, they have essentially all the rights of men. In England, there are 1,141 women on Boards of Guardians and 615 on Educational Committees; and they are demanding full participation in all political life. In Canada they have school and municipal suffrage. It is no longer a time for argument; it is time for adjustment.

BERTHA REMBAUGH, The Political Status of Women in the United States, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1912, gives complete information to date.

Meantime the results of woman's full participation in political life, even where they have had the suffrage for some years, are difficult to determine, because of the fact already pointed out that political life in a modern democracy is so closely bound up with all the other life about it. It is quite as difficult to estimate these effects as it would be to estimate the effects of housekeeping or of woman's special costume. And yet some results are clear enough to have a large bearing on the extension of woman's suffrage in new localities.

In 1906, the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League engaged Miss Helen Sumner to make a careful study of the actual working of equal suffrage in the State of Colorado. Miss Sumner, aided by several assistants, spent nearly two years in the investigation. She gathered and carefully analyzed written answers to an extended set of questions from 1,200 representative men and women of Colorado, some opposing and some favoring equal suffrage; and she and her assistants interviewed many more. They also made a general study of industrial conditions and of legislation for the State as a whole, and a detailed study of election records and newspaper files for representative cities and counties. Her report is a masterpiece of patient research and scientific exposition.

HELEN L. SUMNER, Equal Suffrage. The Results of an Investigation Made in Colorado for the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League of New York State. New York: Harper & Bros., 1909.

Equal suffrage goes back to 1893 in Colorado; and while the influence of women has been in no way revolutionary, this report shows that, on the whole, political conditions have improved and woman's intelligence and her general public spirit have increased with no appreciable loss in distinctive feminine charm. One cannot help feeling as one reads this report that it is what a disinterested observer would have to say about the effect of woman's larger educational or industrial life since 1870.

In all democracies it is difficult to bring voters to the polls unless, as in some Swiss cantons, they are fined for absence. In Colorado, Miss Sumner shows that women cast about forty per cent. of the total vote in the earlier years of their enfranchisement, though they were in a minority of the total population. In the work of the primaries they were in a much smaller minority, except when some special problem or candidate appealed to them. The more intelligent the community, the larger the woman's vote; and it is largest of all in the best residence districts of Denver, the capital city. The vote of American born women is larger than that of foreigners; and while the prostitutes of Denver have been voted in the interests of the party in power, public opinion is steadily making this more difficult. In Idaho, all residents of the red light district have been disfranchised by statute; and practically they do not vote.

Mr. LAWRENCE LEWIS, in the Outlook, for January 27, 1906, analyzes the election returns for parts of Pueblo City and vicinity, and he finds from 25 to 46 per cent. of the vote was cast by women, and the proportion of women increased with the intelligence and morale of the precinct.

There is no appreciable tendency on the part of women to form a new party, nor to favor their own sex. They are more inclined than men to scratch the ticket and, as illustrated in the case of Judge Lindsey, they sometimes rally efficiently around an independent candidate, especially on a moral issue. On the whole, women vote with their husbands, just as sons vote with their fathers; but the strength of the family vote, as compared with the vote of unsettled people, is certainly desirable.

Since the beginning of equal suffrage, Colorado has fully held her own with other States in advanced legislation, especially in social and educational lines. Women have suffered no insult at the polls, and on the whole polling-places have improved; but how far this is due to women's presence no one can say. Women have occasionally held legislative and executive offices; but they have especially distinguished themselves as State and county superintendents of schools.

When it comes to estimating the effect of voting on the women themselves, it is still harder to form an opinion. A large majority of those reporting to Miss Sumner think that women have become more intelligent and more public-spirited, but some doubt it. Morally, they have shown themselves less corrupt than men; but a considerable number think women as a whole have suffered some deterioration. This is a question bound up with our deepest feelings and our most conservative ideals; and it is inevitable that some observers should find any change for the worse. On the whole, belief in equal suffrage seems to have increased in Colorado during the twelve years under survey. Probably the results are much what they would be if one were to study a group of the most intelligent and refined men in the same community.

During the summer of 1911, I spent a month in the State of Idaho; and as I had long been interested in the problem of equal suffrage, both in England and America, I seized eagerly on the opportunity to study its practical workings at first hand. On the streets and in the tram-cars, in hotel lobbies and in lecture halls, when dining out or when making a call, few people escaped inquisition. I interviewed working men and women, men of affairs, ranchers, sheep raisers and miners, doctors, lawyers, teachers, ministers and practical politicians, both men and women.

The thing that first impresses one who has been intimately in touch with the excited and turbulent condition of mind among the English suffragettes, and the sustained and often impassioned feeling of Eastern suffrage leaders, is the absence of any burning interest in the subject on the part of men or women in Idaho. In London or New York, a suffrage inquirer would constantly strike "live wires;" in Idaho, every one is insulated. The subject is no more an issue than civil service reform or state versus national control of banking systems. Most people have even forgotten the passage of the constitutional amendment conferring equal suffrage, in 1896. Since then, men and women have gone on voting and holding office until the woman's right has become as commonplace as, and no more interesting or questionable than, the vote of any busy citizen in New Jersey.

The first question that one raises, is naturally whether women do actually vote and hold office in Idaho. To answer this question, there is no body of statistics available. Every one, however, declares that they pretty generally vote. On account of long distances in the country side, they poll less votes than men, especially if the weather is bad. Probably about three-quarters as many women as men go to the polls. Often I met women who said that they did not care for the vote, and sometimes one who said she thought women ought not to vote; but these same women often added that since they had the responsibility they felt it their duty to cast a ballot; and no woman told me that she did not fulfil the obligation.

In the first legislature which met after the granting of equal suffrage, that of 1898, three women were seated, Mrs. Hattie F. Noble, Clara L. Cambell, and Mary A. Wright; Mrs. Wright afterward became chief clerk of the House. In 1908, another woman, Mrs. Lottie J. McFadden, was returned; but there was no woman in the last legislature, and so far as I can learn, only these four have taken part in law-making. When asked why, after the first ardor of emancipation, women have taken so little part in legislation, most people said it was because they had found the work and conditions surrounding it unsuited to them. It seems generally agreed, however, that a woman could be elected to the legislature at any time if she represented a cause which needed to be brought before the people through that body.

Theorists have always insisted that equal suffrage would greatly improve the material conditions which surround the polls on election day. One of the prominent political leaders in Idaho, who has been intimately in touch with conditions for a quarter of a century, said that of course there had been great improvement in the last fifteen years. "Things would have improved any way," he said, "but I am sure that the women have had a large influence. No woman has ever been insulted at the polls in Idaho and she runs no more danger of annoyance than she would in buying her ticket at a railway window. Men are not always sober in either place; but if a man made a remark to a woman that was not polite, or used annoying language in her presence, he would be mobbed by the men even in the roughest mining camp in the State." Doubtless women have helped to break the connection between the saloon and the polling-place, but no one claims that women have made voting into a drawing-room ceremony. On the contrary, women are very persistent workers at the polls, seeking to direct doubtful voters.

Advocates of equal suffrage have pretty generally held the belief that if women were given the ballot their superior moral standards would lead to a marked change in the handling of such problems as the liquor traffic and the control of red light districts. Of woman's superior moral standards there can be no doubt; of the actual effect of her vote upon these questions there is a great deal of doubt. While I was in Idaho, the question of local option came up before the voters of Salt Lake City, in the neighboring equal suffrage State of Utah, and the "wets" won by a vote of 14,775 to 9,162. Thousands of women must have voted for license to bring about this result. In April, 1911, the question of license or no license was voted on in Boisé. In this case again the "wets" won by a considerable majority.

Take another case. For several years in Boisé, until 1909, the red light district was segregated in two alleys in the heart of the city. In the municipal election of that year this issue came fairly before the voters, and the democratic nominee for mayor, who was pledged to break up the system, was elected by a considerable majority, though the city is strongly republican. This result was undoubtedly due to the women's vote. After two years, the issue came up again; and the republican nominee, who was opposed to the scattering policy though not pledged to segregation, was elected; and this result must again have been due to the woman's vote. Prominent women of the city told me that during the two years when the scattering policy prevailed, the evil was very conspicuous, and women going about alone felt far less comfortable than under the older system.

There are two ways to explain the fact that, after fifteen years of political experience, the women of Boisé voted in large numbers for license and for a policy in handling the red light district which they knew would mean a return to police control. In the first place, it may be said that fifteen years of steady contact with political life had blunted the sensibilities of women and dulled their moral feeling. On the other hand, it may be held that practical experience, under the steady pressure of responsibility, had made them realize the difficulties involved in the handling of these great social problems and had made them feel that a law which could command the support of public opinion, even though it regulated these difficulties, was better than a law which they might consider ideal, but which was incapable of execution.

In Idaho, as in Colorado, the payment of women political workers seems to have become a rather wide-spread abuse. Under the conditions of the State, with many new settlers constantly arriving, it has long been thought necessary to employ paid workers to register voters, get them out on election-day and influence those who are uncertain. After 1896, women were often hired to do this work, and were paid from three to five dollars a day. With their weak sense of party affiliation, it is claimed that they will work for the party that pays best. A candidate with plenty of money may hire so many workers that it becomes a system of wholesale bribery. It is universally conceded that this is an abuse, and that many women look upon election service as a source of pin money to a degree that is undesirable. Meantime, practical politicians assured me that it was a system the women found in operation when they came in; that far more men than women were paid; and that the abuse could be corrected by proper legislation.

To summarize the matter, we may say that equal suffrage in Idaho has simply accentuated the movement toward setting women free to live their individual lives which general education and participation in industrial life has already carried so far all over the country. Equal suffrage is accepted there, as the higher education of women is accepted in Massachusetts, and the results in the two cases have been much the same.

Surely these reports carry the matter beyond the experimental stage. Conditions in Colorado and Idaho are not identical with those in the East, but they are similar enough to make the experience of these States amount to a demonstration. Meantime the new obligation resting on women is profound. They must learn to "sweat their tempers and learn to know their man." They must become students of public affairs and of institutional life. Old issues are past; and equal suffrage will soon prevail everywhere. Women, like men, have more "rights" in our modern democracies than they can use. Woman's Rights are largely realized; from now on we must front Woman's Duties.

The Modern Family

The most powerful influence in shaping our lives to-day is the sexual impulse which has created the institution we call the family. Few of us, at least in our modern democracies, live in daily fear that our neighbors will attack and kill us, or carry us off into slavery. Even the hunger for food, that once forced men into action, plays little direct part in the shaping of the lives of most of us. None of those who read these pages would starve if they never did any more work. If they tried to starve, they would be arrested and sent to jail; and if they persisted, they would be fed by force.

Meantime it is sex hunger, manifesting itself in a hundred forms of beauty and ugliness, courtesy and insult, cultivated conversation and ribald jest, beautiful dancing and suggestive indecencies, honor and dishonor, self-repression and prostitution, love and lust, children of gladness and children of shame, that lifts us to such heights as we attain, or plunges us into the hells we create for ourselves. If one could insure one good thing in life for the child one loves, one would ask, not money nor fame, but a continuously happy marriage.

In the past, women have always looked upon marriage and family life as a career; and the majority of men have found their most significant life in the building up of the family institution. To-day, however, family life as a career is everywhere called in question. Many women claim to prefer educational opportunity, professional recognition or an independent bank account to husband and children. Social service is exalted; domestic service is debased. Why is it so much nobler to care for other people's children in a social settlement, or in a school, than to care for one's own in a home? Why should women mass themselves together in vast groups as industrial workers, as teachers, as suffragettes? We hear of women's work, of women's careers, of women's clubs, associations and parties, of women's interests, movements, causes. In November, 1911, two hundred and twenty women were arrested in London for assaulting the English government in the supposed interest of women. Why do women prefer social to domestic service?

Two reasons spring at once to the mind of any intelligent observer of the life about him. The first is the complexity of our modern life; the second is the nature of the institution of marriage.

A man or woman wishes to live with the one he or she loves. Sexual love is in its very nature restricted, circumscribed, monopolistic--in a word, monogamic. As has been said repeatedly in this volume, the human unit is neither a man nor a woman; it is a man and a woman united in a new personality through the unifying and blending power of love. To say that this unit is exclusive and monogamic is simply saying that it respects its own personality. It can no longer act simply as a man or a woman; it is a family and it must act as such in order to satisfy its own demands. A man can no more act independently of the woman he loves than the heart can act independently of the lungs. The man and woman who compose the new unit are not only flesh of one flesh, but they are one soul, one life; they are a complete organism. And the life of this organism must be persistent to realize its own aims. In all the higher forms of existence, processes move slowly. For nine months a woman carries her baby as a part of her own body; then for three years the father and mother carry the child in their arms; for a score of years they must support, protect and train it before they let it go to seek its own. Hence sexual love must be persistent as well as monogamic.