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Woman and the Republic

by Helen Kendrick Johnson · English · Gutenberg #7300 · 476,252 chars · public domain (US)

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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

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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 Commi

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