The History of Woman Suffrage Volume V Part 29

From the early days of the National Suffrage a.s.sociation its representatives had appeared before committees of every Congress to ask for the submission of an amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution and during many years this "hearing" took place when the annual convention met in Washington. As it was to be held elsewhere this year and at a time when the Congress was not in session a delegation of speakers had gone before the committees the preceding March by arrangement of Mrs.

William Kent, chairman of the a.s.sociation's Congressional Committee.

At the hearing before a joint committee of the Senate Judiciary and Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage March 13 six of the members were present: Senators Overman (N. C.), chairman; Brandegee (Conn.); Bourne (Ore.); Brown (Neb.); Johnston (Ala.); Wetmore (R. I.). Senator John D. Works of California, who had introduced the resolution in the Senate, presented Dr. Anna Howard Shaw as "one of the best known and most distinguished of those connected with the movement for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women." As she took charge of the hearing she said in part:

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee, this is the forty-third year that the women suffragists have been represented by delegations appointed by the national body to speak in behalf of resolutions which have been introduced to eliminate from the Const.i.tution of the United States in effect the word "male," to eliminate all disqualifications for suffrage on account of s.e.x.

The desire of our a.s.sociation is not so much to put on record the opinions of this committee in regard to woman suffrage as to plead with it to give a favorable report, so that the question can come before the Congress, be discussed on its merits and then submitted to the various States for ratification. The Federal Const.i.tution guarantees to every State a republican form of government--that is, a government in which the laws are enacted by representatives elected by the people--and we claim that it has violated its own principle in refusing to protect women in their right to select their representatives, so we are asking for no more than that the Const.i.tution shall be carried out by the U.

S. Government. As the president of the National Suffrage a.s.sociation, I stand here in the place of a woman who gave sixty years of her life in advocacy of that grand principle for which so many of our ancestors died, Miss Susan B. Anthony. There is not a woman here today who was at the first hearing, nor a woman alive today who was among those that struggled in the beginning for this fundamental right of every citizen. I now introduce Mrs.

Susan Walker Fitzgerald of Ma.s.sachusetts. It has been said that women cannot fight. Mrs. Fitzgerald's father was an Admiral of the Navy and if she can not fight her father could.

Mrs. Fitzgerald spoke at length in the interest of the home and the family, showing the evolution that had taken place until now "the Government touches upon every phase of our home life and largely dictates its conditions while at the same time the woman is held responsible for them and is working with her hands tied behind her back and she asks the vote in order to do her woman's work better."

Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw of New York spoke beautifully of the desire of the mothers of the rising generation that their daughters should not have to enter the hard struggle for the suffrage and pictured the need for the highest development of the womanly character. Mrs. Elsie Cole Phillips of Wisconsin showed the standpoint of the so-called working cla.s.ses, saying in part:

The right to vote is based primarily on the democratic theory of government. "The just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed." What does that mean? Does it not mean that there is no cla.s.s so wise, so benevolent that it is fitted to govern any other cla.s.s? Does it not mean that in order to have a democratic government every adult in the community must have an opportunity to express his opinion as to how he wishes to be governed and to have that opinion counted? A vote is in the last a.n.a.lysis an expression of a need--either a personal need known to one as an individual as it can be known to no one else, or an expression of a need of those in whom we are interested--sister-women or children, for instance. The moment that one admits this concept of the ballot that moment practically all of the anti-suffrage argument is done away with.... Is it to strengthen the hands of the strong? Oh, no; it is to put into the hands of the weak a weapon of self-protection.

And who are the weak? Those who are economically handicapped--first of all the working cla.s.ses in their struggle for better conditions of life and labor. And who among the workers are the weak? Wherever the men have suffered, the women have suffered more.

But I would also like to point out to you how this affects the homekeeping woman, the wife and mother, of the working cla.s.s, aside from the wage-earning woman. Consider the woman at home who must make both ends meet on a small income. Who better than she knows whether or not the cost of living advances more rapidly than the wage does? Is not that a true statement in the most practical form of the problem of the tariff? And who better than she knows what the needs of the workers are in the factories?

Take the tenement-house woman, the wife and mother who is struggling to bring up a family under conditions which constantly make for evil. Who, better than the mother who has tried to bring up six or seven children in one room in a dark tenement house, knows the needs of a proper building? Who better than the mother who sees her boy and her girl playing in the streets knows the need of playgrounds? Who better than a mother knows what it means to a child's life--which you men demand that she as a wife and a mother shall care for especially--who, better than she, knows the cruel pressure that comes to that child from too early labor in what the U. S. census report calls "gainful occupations"?

There is a practical wisdom that comes out of the pressure of life and an educational force in life itself which very often is more efficient than that which comes through textbooks of college.... The ignorant vote that is going to come in when women are enfranchised is that of the leisure-cla.s.s woman, who has no responsibilities and knows nothing of what life means to the rest of the world, who has absolutely no civic or social intelligence. But, fortunately for us, she is a small percentage of the women of this land, and fortunately for the land there is no such rapid means of education for her as to give her the ballot and let her for the first time feel responsibilities....

Now the time has come when the home and the State are one. Every act, every duty of the mother in the home is affected by something the State does or does not do, and the only way in which we are ever going to have our national housekeeping and our national child-rearing done as it should be is by bringing into the councils of the State the wisdom of women.

James Lees Laidlaw of New York was introduced as president of the National Men's League for Woman Suffrage and after stating that such leagues were being organized throughout the country he spoke of the great change that had taken place in the status of women and said:

Most important of all is the change of woman's position in industrial, commercial and educational fields. We are all familiar with the exodus of millions of women from the home into the mill and the factory. Today they may enter freely into business either as princ.i.p.al or employee. I was astonished to hear reported at a recent meeting of the Chamber of Commerce in New York that in the commercial high schools of that city, where a business education is given, 85 per cent. of the pupils are girls. We have today a great body of intelligent citizens with many interests in the Government besides their primary interests as mothers and home-keepers. If men are not going to take the next logical step they have made a great mistake in going thus far. Why give women property rights if we give them no rights in making the laws governing the control and disposition of their property and no vote as to who shall have the spending of tax money? Why give women the right to go into business or trades, either as employees or employers, without the right to control the conditions surrounding their business or trades? Why train women to be better mothers and better housekeepers and refuse them the right to say what laws shall be pa.s.sed to protect their children and homes? Why train women to be teachers, lawyers, doctors and scientists and say to them: "Now you have a.s.sumed new responsibilities, go out into the world and compete with men,"

and then handicap them by depriving them of political expression?

Women now have the opportunity for equal mental development with men. Is it right or is it politically expedient that we should not avail ourselves of their special knowledge concerning those matters which vitally affect the human race?...

Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, president of the Illinois Suffrage a.s.sociation and member of the national board, contrasted the old academic plea for the ballot with the modern demand for it to meet the present intensely utilitarian age and continued: "Today we know that the ballot is just a machine. In fact it impresses us as being something like the long-distance telephone which we in this scientific age have grown accustomed to use. We go into the polling booth and call up central (the Government) and when we get the connection we deliver our message with accuracy and speed and then we go about our business.

Women have been encouraged during the past to have opinions about governmental matters and there is no denying that we do have opinions.

If we could submit to you today the list of bills which the Federations of Women's Clubs of the various States have endorsed and for which they are working you would know that women have a large civic conscience and an intelligent appreciation of the measures which affect both women and the homes. They have been encouraged to have these opinions but to try to influence legislation only in indirect ways. Today, being practical and scientific, we are asking ourselves all the time why should we be limited to expressing our opinion on governmental affairs in our women's clubs? Why should we breathe them only in the prayer meeting or in the parlors of our friends? Why not directly into the governmental ear--the ballot box? Why do we not go into that long-distance telephone booth, get connection with central, and then know that our message has been delivered in the only place where it is recorded. The Government makes no record whatever of the opinions which we express in our women's clubs and our prayer meetings."

Mrs. Caroline A. Lowe of Kansas City, Mo., spoke in behalf of the 7,000,000 wage-earning women of the United States from the standpoint of one who had earned her living since she was eighteen and declared that to them the need of the ballot was a vital one. She gave heart-breaking proofs of this fact and said:

From the standpoint of wages received we wage earners know it to be almost universal that the men in the industries receive twice the amount granted to us although we may be doing the same work.

We work side by side with our brothers; we are children of the same parents, reared in the same homes, educated in the same schools, ride to and fro on the same early morning and late evening cars, work together the same number of hours in the same shops and we have equal need of food, clothing and shelter. But at 21 years of age our brothers are given a powerful weapon for self-defense, a larger means for growth and self-expression. We working women, because we find our s.e.x not a source of strength but a source of weakness and a greater opportunity for exploitation, have even greater need of this weapon which is denied to us. Is there any justice underlying such a condition?

What of the working girl and her employer? Why is the ballot given to him while it is denied to us? Is it for the protection of his property that he may have a voice in the governing of his wealth, of his stocks and bonds and merchandise? The wealth of the working woman is far more precious to the welfare of the State. From nature's raw products the working cla.s.s can readily replace all of the material wealth owned by the employing cla.s.s but the wealth of the working woman is the wealth of flesh and blood, of all her physical, mental and spiritual powers. It is not only the wealth of today but that of future generations which is being bartered away so cheaply. Have we no right to a voice in the disposal of our wealth, the greatest that the world possesses, the priceless wealth of its womanhood? Is it not the cruelest injustice that the man whose material wealth is a source of strength and protection to him and of power over us should be given the additional advantage of an even greater weapon which he can use to perpetuate our condition of helpless subjection?...

The industrial basis of the life of the woman has changed and the political superstructure must be adjusted to conform to it. This industrial change has given to woman a larger horizon, a greater freedom of action in the industrial world. Greater freedom and larger expression are at hand for her in the political life. The time is ripe for the extension of the franchise to women.

We do not come before you to beg of you the granting of any favor. We present to you a glorious opportunity to place yourselves abreast of the current of this great evolutionary movement.

Mrs. Donald Hooker of Baltimore gave striking instances of the conditions in that State regarding the social evil, of the hundreds of virtuous girls who every year are forced into a life of shame, of the thousands of children who die because mothers have no voice in making laws for their protection. "There was never a great act of injustice,"

she said, "that was not paid for in human life and happiness. A great act of injustice is being perpetrated by denying women the right to vote."

Miss Leonora O'Reilly, a leader among the working women of New York, made an impa.s.sioned plea that carried conviction. "I have been a wage-earner since I was thirteen," she said, "and I know whereof I speak. I want to make you realize the lives of hundreds of girls I have seen go down in this struggle for bread. We working women want the ballot as our right. You say it is not a right but a privilege.

Then we demand it as a privilege. All women ought to have it, wage-earning women must have it." After plainer speaking than the committee had ever heard from a woman she concluded: "You may tell us that our place is in the home. There are 8,000,000 of us in these United States who must go out of it to earn our daily bread and we come to tell you that while we are working in the mills, the mines, the factories and the mercantile houses we have not the protection that we should have. You have been making laws for us and the laws you have made have not been good for us. Year after year working women have gone to the Legislature in every State and have tried to tell their story of need in the same old way. They have gone believing in the strength of the big brother, believing that the big brother could do for them what they should, as citizens, do for themselves. They have seen time after time the power of the big interests come behind the big brother and say to him, 'If you grant the request of these working women you die politically.'

"It is because the working women have seen this that they now demand the ballot. In New York and in every other State, we plead for shorter hours. When the legislators learn that women today in every industry are being overspeeded and overworked, most of them would, if they dared, vote protective legislation. Why do they neglect the women? We answer, because those who have the votes have the power to take the legislator's political ladder away from him, a power that we, who have no votes, do not have.... While the doors of the colleges have been opened to the fortunate women of our country, only one woman in a thousand goes into our colleges, while one woman in five must go into industry to earn her living. And it is for the protection of this one woman in every five that I speak...."

Mrs. Jean Nelson Penfield, chairman of the Woman Suffrage Party of New York numbering 60,000 members, said in part:

In the few moments given me I will confine myself to the handicap women have found disfranchis.e.m.e.nt to be in social-service work.

It is supposed by many that because our so-called leisure women have been able to do so much apparently good community betterment work without the ballot we do not need it. I should like to ask you to remember that the important thing is not that women succeed in this kind of work but that where they do succeed it is at tremendous and needless expenditure of energy and vital strength and at the cost of dignity and self-respect.

The dominant thought in the world today is that of conservation; the tendency of the whole business world is toward economy. How to lessen the cost of production; how to improve the machinery of business so as to reduce friction--these are the questions that are being asked not only in the business world but in the affairs of state. No intelligent man in this scientific day would try to do anything by an indirect and wasteful method if he could accomplish his purpose by a direct and economic method. Even the bricklayer is taught how to handle his bricks so that the best results may be secured at the least possible expenditure of time and energy. Women alone seem to represent a great body of energy, vitality and talent which is unconserved, unutilized and recklessly wasted. If a man wants reforms he goes armed with a vote to the ballot box and even to the Legislature with that power of the vote behind him; but if women want these things they are asked to take the long, questionable, roundabout route of personal influence, of pet.i.tion, of indirection. Women have accomplished a great deal in this way but it has required a long time.... Take, for instance, one cla.s.s of work--the establishment of manual training, domestic science, open-air schools, school gardens and playgrounds--all once just "women's notions" but now established inst.i.tutions. Women have had to found and finance and demonstrate them before munic.i.p.alities would have anything to do with them, but when city or State adopts these inst.i.tutions the management is immediately and entirely taken out of the hands of women and placed in the hands of men....

Among thinking women there is a growing consciousness of being cut off, shut out from the civic life in which they have an equal stake with men. We ask you to recognize that the time is here for you to submit an amendment to the States for ratification which will give women the influence and power of the suffrage.

In closing Dr. Shaw asked that her a.s.sociation might have some printed copies for distribution and was a.s.sured that it might have fifteen or twenty thousand if it desired them. She also urged that the committee would report the resolution to the Senate for discussion and as a third request said: "We are told that men are afraid to grant women suffrage lest fearful results should come to the Government and to the women. We have asked for years that Congress would appoint a committee to investigate its practical working in the States where it exists--there are now six of them--and we are entirely willing to risk our case on that investigation. We feel that its results would be such that we would not have to come here much longer and take up your time with our arguments on the subject."

Franklin W. Collins of Nebraska spoke in opposition, presenting his case in a series of over fifty questions but not attempting to answer any of them. Among the questions were these: If woman by her ballot should plunge the country into war, would she not be in honor bound to fight by the side of man? Will the ballot in the hands of women pour oil on the troubled domestic waters? Has not this movement a strong tendency to encourage the exodus from the land of bondage, otherwise known as matrimony and motherhood? Is it not true that every free-lover, socialist, communist and anarchist the country over is openly in favor of female suffrage?

The National a.s.sociation Opposed to Woman Suffrage sent from its bureau in New York a letter of "earnest protest" against the amendment signed by its president, Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge. Its auxiliary in the District of Columbia sent another of greater length signed by its chairman, Mrs. Grace Duffield Goodwin, which not only protested against a Federal Amendment but against the granting of woman suffrage by any method.

Six members of the House of Representatives had introduced the resolution for a Federal Suffrage Amendment--Raker of California; Lafferty of Oregon; Mondell of Wyoming; Berger of Wisconsin; and Taylor and Rucker of Colorado. The hearing before the Judiciary Committee proved to be of unusual interest. Sixteen of this large committee of twenty-one were present and a reason given for the absence of the others. They were an imposing array as they sat in a semi-circle on a raised platform. The chairman, Judge Henry D. Clayton of Alabama, treated the speakers as if they were his personal guests, a.s.sured them of all the time they desired and at the close of the hearing was photographed with Miss Addams and Mrs. Harper. Instead of listening in a perfunctory way the members of the committee showed much interest and asked many questions. Miss Jane Addams, first vice-president of the National American Suffrage a.s.sociation, presided and in presenting her with words of highest praise Representative Taylor said that all who had introduced the resolution would be pleased to speak in support of it at any time and that personally he wished to put in the record a statement of the results of woman suffrage in Colorado during the past eighteen years with a brief mention of 150 of the wisest, most humane and progressive laws in the country for the protection of home and the betterment of society, which the women of Colorado had caused to be put upon its statute books.

Miss Addams called the attention of the committee to the fact that more than a million women would be eligible to vote for the President of the United States in November. She named the countries where women could vote, saying: "America, far from being in the lead in the universal application of the principle that every adult is ent.i.tled to the ballot, is fast falling behind the rest of the world," and continued:

As I have been engaged for a good many years in various philanthropic undertakings, perhaps you will permit me, for only a few moments, to speak from my experience. A good many women with whom I have been a.s.sociated have initiated and carried forward philanthropic enterprises which were later taken over by the city and thereupon the women have been shut out from the opportunity to do the self-same work which they had done up to that time. In Chicago the women for many years supported school nurses who took care of the children, made them comfortable and kept them from truancy. When the nurses were taken over by the health department of the city the same women who had given them their support and management were excluded from doing anything more, and I think Chicago will bear me out when I say that the nurses are not now doing as good work as they did before this happened. I could also use the ill.u.s.tration of the probation officers who are attached to the juvenile court. For a number of years women selected and supported these probation officers.

Later, when the same officers, paid the same salary, were taken over by the county and paid from the county funds, the women who had been responsible for the initiation and beginning of the probation system and for the early management of the officers, had no more to do with them and at the present moment the juvenile court has fallen behind its former position in the juvenile courts of the world. I think the fair-minded men of Chicago will admit that it was a disaster when the women were disqualified by their lack of the franchise to care for it. The juvenile court has to do largely with delinquent and dependent children and there is no doubt that on the whole women can deal with such cases better than men because their natural interests lie in that direction. I could give you many other examples....

So it seems fair to say that if women are to keep on with the work which they have done since the beginning of the world--to continue with their humanitarian efforts which are so rapidly being taken over into the Government, and which when thus taken over are often not properly administered, women themselves must have the franchise....

Introducing Representative Raker Miss Addams said smilingly that while the women speakers were allowed ten minutes the men were to have but five. Judge Raker of California referred to the fact that he had pledged himself to this Federal Amendment when he was first a candidate for Congress eight years before and said: "This matter, as it appears to me, has pa.s.sed beyond the question of sentiment; it has pa.s.sed beyond the question of advisability; it has pa.s.sed beyond the question of whether or not women ought to partic.i.p.ate in the vote for the benefit of the home or the benefit of the State. As I view it it is a clean-cut question of absolute right and upon that a.s.sumption I base my argument--that we today are depriving one-half of the intelligence, one-half of the ability of this republic from partic.i.p.ating in public affairs and that from the economic standpoint of better laws, better homes, better government in the country, the city, the State and the nation, we need our wives', our sisters' and our mothers' votes and a.s.sistance."

"May I introduce one of my own fellow townswomen, Miss Mary E.

McDowell," said Miss Addams, "who has had what I may call a distressing life in the stockyards district of Chicago for many years, and she will tell you what she thinks of the franchise for women."

Miss McDowell said in part:

We are all together very human, it seems to me, both men and women, and it is because we are human, because this is a human proposition and not a woman proposition, that I am glad to speak for it and believe in it so firmly. Giving the vote to women is not simply a woman's question, it has to do with the man, the child and the home. Women have always worked but within much less than a century millions of women and girls have been thrust out of the home into a man-made world of industry and commerce. We know that in the United States over 5,500,000, according to the census of 1900, are bread winners.... Do we not see that the working women must be given every safeguard that workingmen have and now as they stand side by side with men in the factory and shop they must stand with them politically? The ballot may be but a small bit of the machinery that is to lift the ma.s.s of wage-earning women up to a higher plane of self-respect and self-protection but will it not add the balance of power so much needed by the workingmen in their struggle for protective legislation, which will in the end be shared by the women? Today women are cheap, unskilled labor and will be until organization and technical training and the responsibility of the vote in their hands develop a consciousness of their social value....

The vote and all that it implies will awaken this sense of value.

It will give to the wage-earning woman a new status in industry, for men will help to educate her when she is a political as well as an industrial co-worker. As man gave strength to the developing of the inst.i.tution of the home so woman must be given the opportunity to help man humanize the State. This can be done only when she has the ballot and shares the responsibility.

Representative A. W. Lafferty of Oregon said in his brief five minutes: "I believe it is not only practicable but that it would be profitable to the United States to extend equal suffrage to men and women. We have had here this morning a practical demonstration of the ability of the women of this country to partic.i.p.ate intelligently in the discussion of public questions. I think that we could not make a mistake in placing the ballot in the hand that rocks the cradle.

Having only the best interests of this republic at heart, I believe it would be a good thing if fifty of the mothers of this country were in the House of Representatives today and I wish that at least twenty-five of them were in the Senate. You should consider, as lawyers, as statesmen and as historians that in the history of the civilized world in monarchies women have partic.i.p.ated in the Government; it is a shame that in a republic like ours, the best form of government that has ever yet been established, women can not, under the present law, actively partic.i.p.ate in it."

The address which Representative Edward T. Taylor put into the _Congressional Record_ on this occasion was also printed in a pamphlet of forty pages and until the end of the movement for woman suffrage was a standard doc.u.ment for distribution by the National a.s.sociation.

He said in the introduction:

I want to recite in a plain, conversational way some of my personal experiences and individual observations extending over a period of thirty years of public life, during nearly nineteen years of which we have had equal suffrage in Colorado....

When I came to Congress I did not realize and I have not yet been able fully to understand the deep-seated prejudice, bias and even vindictiveness against woman suffrage and the astounding amount of misinformation there is everywhere here in the East concerning its practical operation. I have been equally amazed and indignant at the many brazen a.s.sertions I have seen in the papers and heard that are perfectly absurd and without the slightest foundation in fact, and I have had many heated discussions on the subject during the past three years. When I hear men and women who have never spent a week and most of them not an hour in an equal suffrage State attempt to discuss the subject from the standpoint of their own preconceived prejudices and idle impressions, I feel like saying: "May the Lord forgive them for they know not what they do." Let me say to them and to my colleagues in the House that it will not be ten years before the women of this country from the Pacific to the Atlantic will have the just and equal rights of American citizenship.[77]

Since coming here I have been frequently asked by friends what we think of woman suffrage in Colorado, and when I tell them that it is an unqualified success and that I doubt if even five per cent.

of the people of the State would vote to repeal it, they ask me what it has accomplished. I believe it is generally conceded by enlightened people that the laws of a State are a true index of its degree of civilization. I will, therefore, give a brief catalogue of some of the most important of the 150 legislative measures that have been either introduced by the women or at the request of the various women's organizations and enacted into law.