What eight million women want Part 15

American men are accustomed to women in almost all trades and professions. It doesn't astonish a New Yorker to see a hospital ambulance tearing down the street with a white-clad woman surgeon on the back seat. A woman lawyer, architect, editor, manufacturer, excites no particular notice. In the Western States men are beginning to elect women county treasurers, county superintendents of schools, and in Chicago, second largest city in the country, a Board of Education, overwhelmingly masculine, recently appointed a woman City Superintendent of Schools.

Yet to the vast majority of American men women do not look like citizens.

As for the majority of American women they have always until recently thought of themselves as a cla.s.s,--a favored and protected cla.s.s. They cherished a sentimental kind of delusion that the American man was only too anxious to give them everything that their hearts desired. When they got out into the world of action, when they began to ask for something more substantial than bonbons, the club women found that the American man was not so very generous after all.

A typical instance occurred down in Georgia. A few years ago the women of Georgia found a way to introduce into the legislature a child-labor law. It was really a very modest little bill and it protected only a fraction of the pitiful army of cotton-mill children, but still it was worth having. The women worked hard and they got some very powerful backing and a barrel or two of pet.i.tions. Nevertheless, the bill was defeated. One legislative orator rose to explain his vote.

"Mr. Speaker," he said eloquently, "I am devoted to the good women of my State. If I thought that the women of my State wanted this bill pa.s.sed I would vote for it; but, sir, I have every reason to believe that the good women of my State are opposed to this bill, and therefore;"

At this juncture another member handed to the orator a pet.i.tion bearing the name of five thousand of the best known women in Georgia. The orator stammered, turned red, felt for his handkerchief, mopped his brow, and continued: "Mr. Speaker, I deeply regret that I did not see this pet.i.tion yesterday. As it is, my vote is pledged."

Incidents of this kind have occurred too frequently for the women of the United States to escape their meaning. They have learned that they cannot have everything they want merely by asking for it. Also they have learned, or a large number of them have learned that the old theory of women being represented at the polls by their husbands is very largely a delusion.

The entrance of women in large numbers into labor unions, and into membership in the Women's Trade Union League is another factor in the increasing interest of American women in suffrage. After a decision of the New York Court of Appeals that the law prohibiting night work of women was unconst.i.tutional, nearly one thousand women book-binders in New York City made a public announcement that they would thenceforth work for the ballot. They had been indifferent before, but this close application of politics to their industrial situation--bookbinding is one of the night trades--made them alive to their own helplessness.

The shirt-waist strike and the garment workers' strike in New York and Philadelphia, waged so bitterly in 1910, brought great numbers of women into the suffrage ranks. Not only were the women strikers convinced that the magistrates and the police treated them with more contempt than they did the voting men, but they perceived the need of securing better labor laws for themselves. The conviction that women of the wealthier cla.s.ses would stand by them in securing favorable laws, as they stood by the strikers in the industrial struggle, was a strong lever to turn them towards the suffrage ranks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MRS. HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH]

The Women's Trade Union League building, used as strike headquarters in all strikes involving women workers, is a veritable center of suffrage sentiment in New York! One floor houses the offices of the Equality League of Self Supporting Women, of which Harriot Stanton Blatch is founder and president. This society, which is entirely made up of trade and professional workers, claims an approximate membership of twenty-two thousand. A number of unions belong to the League, and there is also a very large individual membership.

In Chicago the suffrage movement and the labor movement is more closely a.s.sociated than in any other American city. In Chicago, it will be remembered, the Teachers' Federation is a trade union and is allied to the Central Labor Union. Teachers, almost everywhere denied equal pay with men for equal work, are eager seekers for political power. When, as in Chicago, they are a.s.sociated with labor, they become convinced suffragists.

Organized labor has always been friendly to woman suffrage, but in Chicago not only the union women but the union men are actively friendly towards the cause. The original moving spirit in the Chicago organization was a remarkable young working girl, Josephine Casey. Miss Casey sold tickets at one of the stations of the Chicago Elevated, and she formed her first woman suffrage club among the women members of the Union of Street and Elevated Railway Employees. Later she organized on a larger scale the Women's Political Equality Union, with membership open to men and women alike. The interest shown in the union by workingmen, many of whom had never before given the matter a moment's thought, was, from the first, extraordinary. During the first winter of the society's existence, union after union called for Woman Suffrage speakers.

Addresses were made before fifty or more. Some of the more popular speakers often made four addresses in an evening. Mrs. Raymond Robins, president of the National Women's Trade Union League, and Miss Alice Henry, secretary of the Chicago branch of the League, won many converts by their expositions of the exceedingly favorable labor laws of Australia and New Zealand, where women vote.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEETING A RELEASED SUFFRAGETTE PRISONER.]

Unquestionably the mighty battle which is waging in England made a deep impression on American women of all cla.s.ses. The visits made in this country by Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, Mrs. Borrman Wells, Mrs. Philip Snowden, and, most of all, Mrs. Pankhurst, leader of the militant English Suffragists, aroused tremendous enthusiasm from one end of the country to the other. Never, until these women appeared, telling, with rare eloquence, their stories of struggle, of arrest and imprisonment, had the vote appeared such an incomparable treasure. Never before, except among a few enthusiasts, had there existed any feeling that the suffrage was a thing to fight for, suffer for, even to die for.

Up to this time the suffrage was a theory, an academic question of right and justice. After the visits of the English women, American suffragists everywhere began to view their cause in the light of a political movement. They began to adopt political methods. Instead of private meetings where suffrage was discussed before a select audience of the already convinced, the women began to mount soap boxes on street corners and to talk suffrage to the man in the street.

The first suffrage demonstration was held in New York in February, 1908.

The members of a small but enthusiastic Equal Suffrage Club announced their intention of having a parade. Most of the women being wage earners they planned to have their parade on a Sunday. When they applied at Police Headquarters for the necessary permit they found to their disgust that Sunday parades were forbidden by law.

"Not unless you are a funeral procession," said the stern captain of the police.

The woman replied that they were anything but a funeral procession, and threatened darkly to hold their parade in spite of police regulations.

They got plenty of newspaper publicity in the succeeding days, and on the following Sunday a huge crowd of men, a sprinkling of women, a generous number of plain clothes men, and New York's famous "camera squad" a.s.sembled in Union Square, where all incendiary things happen.

The dauntless seven who made up the suffrage club were there, and at the psychological moment one of the women ran up the steps of a park pavilion and spoke in a ringing voice, yet so quietly that the police made no move to stop her.

"Friends," she said, "we are not allowed to have our parade, so we are going to hold a meeting of protest at No. 209 East 23d Street. We invite you to go over there with us." She and the others walked calmly out of the square, and the crowd followed. They turned into Fifth Avenue, and the crowd grew larger. Before three blocks were pa.s.sed there were literally thousands of people marching in the wake of ingenious suffragists.

The sight aroused the indignation of many respectable citizens.

"Officer," exclaimed one of these, addressing an attendant policeman, "I thought you had orders that those females were not to parade."

"That ain't no parade," said the policeman, serenely; "them folks is just takin' a quiet walk."

The suffragists have taken more than one quiet walk since then. Street speaking has become an almost daily occurrence. At first there was some rioting, or, rather, some display of rowdyism on the part of the spectators and some show of interference from the police. The crowds listen respectfully now, and the police are friendly.

The most practical move the New York Suffragists have made was the organization, early in 1910, of the Woman Suffrage Party, a fusion of nearly all the suffrage clubs in the greater city into an a.s.sociation exactly along the lines of a regular political party. At the head of the party as president is Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the International Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation. Each of the five boroughs of the city has a chairman, and each senatorial and a.s.sembly district is either organized or is in process of organization.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WOMEN'S TRADES PROCESSION TO THE ALBERT HALL MEETING, APRIL 27, 1909]

Absolutely democratic in its spirit and its organization, the party leaders are drawn from every rank of society. The chairman of the borough of Manhattan is Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, wife of a prominent Wall Street banker. Mrs. Frederick Nathan, president of the New York State Consumers' League, is chairman of the a.s.sembly district in which she lives. Mrs. Melvil Dewey, whose husband is head of a department at Columbia University, is chairman of her own district. Other chairmen are Helen Hoy Greeley, lawyer; Lavinia Dock, trained nurse; Anna Mercy, an East Side physician; Maud Flowerton, buyer in a department store; Gertrude Barnum, sociologist and writer. Practically every trade and profession are represented in the party's ranks.

The object of the Woman Suffrage Party is organization for political work. Last winter the party made the first aggressive move towards forcing the Judiciary Committee of the a.s.sembly to report on the bill to give women votes by const.i.tutional amendment. They succeeded in getting a motion made for the discharge of the committee, sixteen legislators voting for the women.

New York is the present center of the progressive suffrage movement, with Chicago not very far behind.

In rather amazing fashion are women in many American communities beginning to realize that politics are as much their business as men's.

In Salt Lake City when a city council undertakes to give away a valuable water franchise, or extend gamblers' privileges, or otherwise follow the example of many another city council in bending before the G.o.d of greed, the women of Salt Lake send the word around. When the council meets the women are in the room. They don't say anything. They don't have to say anything. They can vote, these women. More than once the deep-laid plans of the most powerful politicians in Salt Lake City have been completely frustrated by a silent warning from the women. The city council has not dared to pa.s.s grafting measures with a roomful of women looking on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HELEN HOY GREELEY]

Even the non-voting woman has discovered the power which attaches to her presence, in certain circ.u.mstances. In San Francisco during the second Ruef trial, when the decent element of the city was fighting to down one of the worst bosses that ever cursed a community, the women, under the leadership of Mrs. Elizabeth Gerberding, performed this new kind of picket duty. The courtroom where the trial was held was, by order of the boss's attorney, packed with hired toughs whose duty it was to make a mockery of the prosecution. Every point against the Ruef side was received by these toughs with jeers and hootings. The district attorney was insulted, badgered, and openly threatened with violence.

Mrs. Gerberding, whose husband is editor of a newspaper opposed to boss rule, attended several sessions, and induced a large number of women of social importance to attend with her. These women went daily to the courtroom, occupying seats to the exclusion of many of the tough characters, and by their presence doing much to preserve order and to a.s.sist the efforts of the district attorney. When the a.s.sa.s.sin's bullet was fired at the district attorney a number of the women were present.

Out of the horror and detestation of this crime was organized the Women's League of Justice, which soon had a membership of five hundred.

The league fought stoutly for the reelection of Heney as district attorney. Heney was defeated, and the league became the Women's Civic Club of San Francisco, pledged to work for political betterment and a clean city government.

In four States of the Union, Washington, Oregon, South Dakota, and Oklahoma, the voters will this autumn vote for or against const.i.tutional amendments giving women the right to vote. It is not very probable that the Suffragists will win in any of these States, not because the voters are opposed to suffrage, but because they are, for the most part, uninformed. The suffrage advocates have not yet learned enough political wisdom to further their cause through education of the voters.

Although enormous sums of money have been spent in suffrage campaigns, in no one has enough money been available to do the work thoroughly. In the four States where the question is at present before the voters, complaint is made that there is not enough money in the treasuries properly to circulate literature.

Many of the wisest leaders in the National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, including Dr. Anna Shaw, Ida Husted Harper, and others, are advising an altogether new method of conducting the struggle for the ballot. They advocate selecting a State, possibly Nebraska, where conditions seem uncommonly favorable, and concentrating the entire strength of the national organization, every dollar of money in the national treasury, all the speakers and organizers, all the literature, in a mighty effort to give the women of that one State the ballot. The vote won in Nebraska, the national a.s.sociation should pa.s.s on to the next most favorable State and win a victory there. The moral effect of such campaigns would no doubt be very great.

One of the princ.i.p.al reasons why men hesitate in this country to give the voting power to women is that they do not know, and they rather fear to guess, how far women would unite in forcing their own policies on the country. If an Irish vote, or a German vote, or a Catholic vote, or a Hebrew vote is to be dreaded, say the men, how much more of a menace would a woman vote be. I heard a man, a delegate from an anti-suffrage a.s.sociation, solemnly warn the New York State Legislature, at a suffrage hearing, against this danger of a woman vote. "When the majority of women and the minority of men vote together," he declared, "there will be no such thing as personal liberty left in the United States."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SUFFRAGETTES IN MADISON SQUARE.]

Under certain conditions a woman vote is not an unthinkable contingency.

It has even occurred.

For the edification of the possible reader who is entirely uninformed, it may be explained that women are not entirely disenfranchised in the United States. Women vote on equal terms with men, in four States. They have voted in Wyoming since 1869; in Colorado since 1894; in Utah and Idaho since 1896. They vote at school elections and on certain questions of taxation in twenty-eight States.

While it is true that in the States which have a small measure of suffrage the women show little interest in voting, in the four so-called suffrage States, they vote conscientiously and in about the same proportion as men.

But here is a notable thing. The women of the suffrage States differ so little from the women of other States, and women in general, that the chief concerns of their lives are the home, the school, and the baby,--the Kaiser's "Kirche, Kuche, und Kinder" over again. They vote with enthusiasm on all questions which relate to domestic interests, that is, which directly relate to them and their children. Aside from this, the woman vote has made a deep impression on the moral character of candidates and that is about all it has meant. In general politics women have counted scarcely more than have the women of other States.

But the new interest in suffrage, the new realization of themselves as citizens that has been aroused all over the United States within the past two years have seriously affected the women voters of at least one suffrage State, Colorado.

The women of Colorado, especially the women of Denver, have for several years taken an active part in legislation directly affecting themselves and their children. The legislative committee of the Colorado State Federation of Clubs has held regular meetings during the sessions of the State Legislature, and it has been a regular custom to submit to that committee for approval all bills relating to women and children. This never seemed to the politicians to be anything very dangerous to their interests. It was, in a manner of speaking, a chivalric acknowledgment of women's virtue as wives and mothers.

But lately the women of Colorado have begun to wake up to the fact that not only special legislation, but all legislation, is of direct interest to them. It has lately dawned upon them that the matter of street railway franchise affects the home as directly as a proposition to erect a high school. Also it has dawned on them that without organization, and more organization, the woman vote was more or less powerless. So, about a year ago they formed in Denver an a.s.sociation of women which they called the Public Service League. Nothing quite like it ever existed before. It is a political but non-partisan a.s.sociation of women, pledged to work for the civic betterment of Denver, pledged to fight the corrupt politicians, determined that the city government shall be well administered even if the women have to take over the offices themselves.

The League is, in effect, a secret society of women. It has an inflexible rule that its proceedings are to be kept inviolable. There is a perfect understanding that any woman who divulges one syllable of what occurs at a meeting of the League will be instantly dropped from membership. No woman has yet been dropped.