The History of Woman Suffrage Volume IV Part 15

[35] Senator Brown did not enter the army during the Civil War.

[36] As a lawyer Senator Brown was always exempt from jury service.

[37] Senator Brown had this done by his representatives, as any woman could do.

[38] As every private family urgently needs the man and the woman, why are both not needed in this "great aggregation?"

[39] Do women have no hardships or hazards in time of war?

[40] If her duties are just as laborious, responsible and important as man's, do they not ent.i.tle her to a voice in the Government?

[41] Since this tremendous responsibility is placed upon woman, why should she not have a voice in the conditions which surround these children outside the home? Why should man alone determine these conditions which often counteract all the mother's training?

[42] Senator Brown a.s.sumes that all women are wives and the mothers of young children, and that the mother's sense of duty would not hold her to the care of her children if she had a chance to go into politics.

[43] Would any man be willing to exchange his influence for that of a woman in the affairs of government?

[44] This would seem to be the very influence which ought to be enforced by a vote.

[45] In readjusting the qualifications for the suffrage the Southern States have been very careful to secure the right to all the illiterate _white_ men.

[46] Senator Brown says in the preceding paragraph that the "delicate and lovely women" would not remain at home but would consider it an imperative duty to go to the polls.

[47] Is it because women lack physical strength that they are not allowed to practice law in Georgia or to act as notaries public or to fill any office, even that of school trustee, and that no woman is permitted to enter the State University? The men should at least give their "queens" and "princesses" and "angels" an education.

[48] Yes, if the husband has to enforce it with a club. This paragraph does not tally with the one in the early part of the Senator's speech where all women were placed on a throne, and all men were declared to be their natural protectors.

[49] The picture of family life in Georgia is not alluring, but the Senator takes small account of the woman who does not happen to possess a "male," or rather to be possessed by one.

[50] Therefore the wife should not be allowed any individuality.

Statistics, however, from the States where women do vote prove exactly the opposite of this a.s.sertion in regard to divorce.

[51] For account of the unconst.i.tutional disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the women of Washington Territory by its Supreme Court, see chapter on that State.

[52] This does not seem to apply to negro suffrage in the Southern States.

[53] One hearing Senator Brown's blood-curdling descriptions would think they were more than "inconveniences."

[54] Observe that Senator Vest's entire argument against woman suffrage is based wholly on sentiment and emotion and is entirely devoid of logic.

[55] The Senator meant that it is a right which comes from the men of the State, from one-half of its people.

[56] Because of a few such brutes millions of women must be deprived of the suffrage. If women had some control over the conditions which tend to make men brutes, might the number not be lessened? The Senator ignores entirely the secret ballot which would prevent the aforesaid brutes from knowing how the women voted.

[57] In the preceding paragraph she did not seem to be on a pedestal.

[58] The advocates of woman suffrage have repeatedly had bills in the various Legislatures asking that women might be appointed on the boards of all State inst.i.tutions, and as physicians in all where women and children are placed, but up to the present day not one woman is allowed this privilege in Senator Vest's own State of Missouri.

[59] This does not accord with the argument of Senator Brown that man must do the voting for the family on account of his superior physical strength.

[60] These were Susan B. Anthony, Nancy R. Allen, Lillie Devereux Blake, Lucinda B. Chandler, Abigail Scott Duniway, Helen M. Gougar, Mary Seymour Howell, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Dr. Clemence S.

Lozier, Julia Smith Parker, Caroline Gilkey Rogers, Elizabeth Lyle Saxon, May Wright Sewall, Mary A. Stuart, Sara Andrews Spencer, Harriette R. Shattuck, Zerelda G. Wallace, Sarah E. Wall--nearly all of national reputation.

[61] YEAS: Blair, N. H.; Bowen, Col.; Cheney, N. H.; Conger, Mich.; Cullom, Ills.; Dolph, Ore.; Farwell, Ill.; h.o.a.r, Ma.s.s.; Manderson, Neb.; Mitch.e.l.l, Ore.; Mitch.e.l.l, Penn.; Palmer, Mich.; Platt, Conn.; Sherman, O.; Teller, Col.; Wilson, Iowa--16. NAYS: Beck, Ky., Berry, Ark, Blackburn, Ky., Brown, Ga., Call, Fla., c.o.c.krell, Mo., c.o.ke, Tex., Colquitt, Ga., Eustis, La., Evarts, N. Y., George, Miss., Gray, Del., Hampton, S. C., Harris, Tenn., Hawley, Conn., Ingalls, Kan., Jones, Nev., McMillan, Mich., McPherson, N. J., Mahone, Va., Morgan, Ala., Morrill, Vt., Payne, O., Pugh, Ala., Saulsbury, Del., Sawyer, Wis., Sewell, N. J., Spooner, Wis., Vance, N. C.; Vest, Mo., Walthall, Miss., Whitthorne, Tenn., Williams, Cal., Wilson, Md.--34.

ABSENT: Aldrich, R. I., Allison, Ia., Butler, S. C., Camden, W. Va., Cameron, Penn., Chace, R. I., Dawes, Ma.s.s., Edmunds, Vt., Fair, Nev., Frye, Me., Gibson, La., Gorman, Md., Hale, Me., Harrison, Ind., Jones, Ark., Jones, Fla., Kenna, W. Va., Maxey, Tex., Miller, N. Y., Plumb, Kan., Ransom, N. C., Riddleberger, Va.; Sabin, Minn., Stanford, Cal.; Van Wyck, Neb., Voorhees, Ind.--26.

CHAPTER VII.

THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE CONVENTION OF 1887.

The Nineteenth national convention a.s.sembled in the M. E. Metropolitan Church of Washington, Jan. 25, 1887, continuing in session three days.

On no evening was the building large enough to accommodate the audience. The Rev. John P. Newman, pastor of the church, prayed earnestly for the blessing of G.o.d "on these women, who, through good and evil report, have been striving for the right."[62] Miss Susan B.

Anthony came directly from the Capitol and opened the convention by reading a letter from Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was in England.

She then referred to the fact that while this convention was in session the United States Senate was discussing the question of woman suffrage. There would be taken the first direct vote in that body on a Sixteenth Amendment to enfranchise women. The attention of the advocates of woman suffrage was directed to Congress for the first time when the Fourteenth Amendment was under discussion in 1865. That article in the beginning was broad enough to include women but political expediency inserted the word "male," so that if any State should disfranchise any of its _male_ citizens they should be counted out of the basis of representation. She continued:

This taught us that we might look to Congress. We presented our first pet.i.tion in 1865. In December, 1866, came the discussion in the Senate on the proposition to strike the word "male" from the District of Columbia Suffrage Bill and nine voted in favor. From that day we have gone forward pressing our claims on Congress.

Denied in the construction of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments we have been trying for a Sixteenth Amendment. We have gained so much as a special committee, who hear our arguments and have four times reported in our favor; Senator h.o.a.r, chairman in 1879, Senator Lapham in 1882, Senator Palmer in 1884, and Senator Blair in 1886. This is the bill which is pending now. We are not asking Congress to enfranchise us, because it does not possess that power. We are asking it to submit a proposition to be voted on by the Legislatures.

Mrs. Stanton's letter said in part:

For half a century we have tried appeals, pet.i.tions, arguments, with thrilling quotations from our greatest jurists and statesmen, and lo! in the year of our Lord, 1887, the best answer we can wring from Senators Brown and c.o.c.krell, in the shape of a minority report, is a "chimney corner letter" written by a woman ignorant of the first principles of republican government, which, they say, gives a better statement of the whole question than they are capable of producing. Verily this is a new departure in congressional proceedings! Though a woman has not sufficient capacity to vote, yet she has superior capacity to her representatives in drawing up a minority report....

But if Senators c.o.c.krell and Brown hope to dispose of the question by remanding us to "the chimney corner" we trust their const.i.tuents will send them to keep us company, that they may enliven our retirement and make us satisfied 'in the sphere where the Creator intended we should be' by daily intoning for us their inspired minority report.

The one pleasant feature in this original doc.u.ment is the harmony between the views of these gentlemen and their Creator. The only drawback to our faith in their knowledge of what exists in the Divine mind, is in the fact that they can not tell us when, where and how they interviewed Jehovah. I have always found that when men have exhausted their own resources, they fall back on "the intentions of the Creator." But their plat.i.tudes have ceased to have any influence with those women who believe they have the same facilities for communication with the Divine mind as men have.

The right and liability to be called on to fight, if we vote, as continually emphasized by our opponents, is one of the greatest barriers in our way. If all the heroic deeds of women recorded in history and our daily journals, and the active virtues so forcibly ill.u.s.trated in domestic life, have not yet convinced our opponents that women are possessed of superior fighting qualities, the s.e.x may feel called upon in the near future to give some further ill.u.s.trations of their prowess. Of one thing they may be a.s.sured, that the next generation will not argue the question of woman's rights with the infinite patience we have had for half a century, and to so little purpose. To emanc.i.p.ate woman from the fourfold bondage she has so long suffered in the State, the church, the home and the world of work, harder battles than we have yet fought are still before us.

Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.) paid a beautiful tribute to Miss Anthony, "the Sir Galahad in search of the Holy Grail," and closed with an eloquent prophecy of future success. Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.) gave a clever satire on The Rights of Men, which was very imperfectly reported.

....Surely it is time that some one on this platform should say something for this half of humanity, which we really must confess after all is an important half. Ought we not admit that men have wrongs to complain of? Are they not constantly declaring themselves our slaves? Is it not a well known fact, conceded even here, that women shine in all the tints of the rainbow while men must wear only costumes of dull brown and somber black? Nor is this because men do not like bright colors, for never a belle in all the sheen of satin and glimmer of pearls looks half so happily proud as does a man when he has on a uniform, or struts in a political procession with a white hat on his head, a red ribbon in his b.u.t.tonhole and a little cane in his hand.

Then, too, have not men, poor fellows, had to do all the talking since the world began? Have we not heretofore been the silent s.e.x? Even to-day a thousand men speak from pulpit and platform where one woman uplifts her voice.

But let us pa.s.s to other and more important rights which have been denied to man in the past. The first right that any man ought to be allowed--a right paramount to all others--is the right to a wife. But look how even in this matter he has been hardly dealt with. Has he had just standards set before him as to what a wife should be? No, but he has been led to believe that the weak woman, the dependent woman, is the one to be desired....

Look again at the unhappy mess into which man all by himself has brought politics and public affairs. Is it not too bad to leave him longer alone in his misery? Like the naughty boy who has broken and destroyed his toys, who needs mamma to help him mend them, and perhaps also to administer to him such wholesome discipline as Solomon himself has advised--so does man need woman to come to his rescue. Look what politics is now. Who to-day can tell the difference between a Democrat and a Republican? Even a Mugwump is becoming a doubtful being....

Do not these wrongs which men suffer appeal to our tenderest sympathies? Is it not evident that the poor fellows can't go on alone much longer, that it is high time we should take the boys in hand and show them what a correct government really is?

There is another question which deserves our gravest consideration. Man sinks or rises with woman; if she is degraded he is tempted to vice; if she is oppressed he is brutalized. What is the industrial condition of women to-day?...

In behalf of the sons, the brothers and the husbands of these wage-earning women we ask for that political power which alone will insure equality of pay without regard to s.e.x. For the sake of man's redemption and morality we demand that this injustice shall cease, for it is not possible for woman to be half-starved and man not dwarfed; for many women to be degraded and all men's lives pure; for women to be fallen and no man lost.