Woman and the Republic Part 11

She says: "The s.e.x relations of women as lovers, as wives, as mothers, as daughters, remain untouched, certainly unimpaired, by the demand to extend beyond these. What is impaired is not the s.e.x relation, nor s.e.x condition, but the social disabilities, the personal and social subordination, the condition of political non-existence, which have been foisted upon that s.e.x condition."

The repeated demand to "extend beyond" the s.e.x relations of either s.e.x _is_ a demand to touch those relations, and whether it is a demand to impair them depends upon the question whether it is true that disabilities and subordination have been foisted upon the s.e.x conditions. In olden times they were. Men were subject to social disabilities, personal and social subordination, and political non-existence. It followed that women were also in the same subjection. As men threw off the yoke, the s.e.x relations began to a.s.sume their natural position. Man was the protector, woman the protected. In the natural relations, the protector is at the service of the protected, and that is the state of things to-day. In order to be preserved in bodily, mental, and spiritual freedom, woman must yield with grace to the hand that serves her. In order to protect, man must see to it that this freedom he has won is kept sacred and inviolable. He cannot be at once a tyrant and a guard. This freedom removes from woman all disabilities save those of s.e.x. The question then is, can all the intelligence and all the weakness of women be represented for their own welfare and their own defence, by the same methods as those by which men attain that end, and yet leave these fundamental s.e.x relations untouched and unimpaired?

The Suffrage leaders did not expect or intend to leave them untouched, or unimpaired, if complete change was impairment. In the "History" they say: "It is often asked if political equality--would not arouse antagonism between the s.e.xes? If it could be proved that men and women had been harmonious in all ages and countries, and that women were happy and satisfied in their slavery, we might hesitate in proposing any change whatever; but the apathy, the helpless, hopeless resignation of a subject cla.s.s, cannot be called happiness. A woman growing up under American ideas of liberty in government and religion cannot brook any disability based on s.e.x alone, without a deep feeling of antagonism with the power that creates it."

Dr. Jacobi says: "Manhood Suffrage in America may seem to result, historically, from the general average equality of social conditions among the inhabitants of the Thirteen States. But it may also be deduced as a philosophical necessity from the Idea of Individualism, which became the core of the Federal Union. This idea, at first suggested only for men, has, little by little, spread to women also."

Individualism, in the sense of personal moral responsibility, became the core, first of the Hebrew Theocracy, and last of the American National life. But that republicanism which has come to rest on s.e.x distinction is the combined result of Individualism and Authority. Suffrage discussion for years has turned upon the idea of Individualism _versus_ Authority.

In a government like ours, where all the intelligence and all the weakness _are_ represented for their own welfare and defence, authority must to a certain extent hold a stern hand over individualism, because freedom for all means license for not a single one, be it man or woman. Mrs. f.a.n.n.y Ames says: "Any argument [against Suffrage] worth anything at all, comes down to this--an argument against American democracy--and must rest there." Many arguments have been adduced against Woman Suffrage that were also arguments against democracy; because there are always people, and wise people too, who fear the test of the ultimate experiment. To this fear the Suffragists catered when, in contradiction to their own dictum of universal suffrage, they asked Congress for a sixteenth amendment that should require an educational qualification for all, both men and women.

But, guided by the statesmanship that seeks to form a true and enduring democracy, this Republic has come to the s.e.x basis.

Dr. Jacobi says: "The complex contradictions in the present distributions of sovereign power are further intensified by the vulgarization of the general ideal. It is one thing to say, 'Some men shall rule,' quite another to declare, 'All men shall rule,' and that in virtue of the most primitive and rudimentary attribute they possess,--that, namely, of s.e.x.

If the original contempt for ma.s.ses of men has ever diminished, and the conception of mankind been enn.o.bled, it is because, upon the primitive animal foundation, human imagination has built a fair structure of mental and moral attribute and possibility, and habitually deals with that. This indeed is no new thing to do; for it was to this moral man that Pericles addressed his funeral oration, and of whom Lincoln thought in his speech at Gettysburg. Of this moral man, women--the s.e.x hitherto so despised--are now recognized to const.i.tute an integral part. It is useless, therefore, to attempt to throw them out by an appeal to the primitive conditions of a physical force to which no one appeals for any other purpose."

The immortal orator at Gettysburg was commander-in-chief of an army and navy whose physical power was then in the very act of saving the nation and redeeming it from the sin of slavery. The soldier-statesman of Greece, in his funeral oration, was addressing an army. The fair structure of mental and moral attribute and possibility has not been built by human imagination. The conception of the moral man that has enn.o.bled mankind is older than any man who has embodied it. It is as old as mankind itself, upon whose primitive animal foundation G.o.d implanted side by side the conception of the moral man, woman--and of the governing man, man.

That no inequality should be possible when this idea should really rest upon the most primitive, rudimentary and yet continuing and controlling attribute, instead of upon complex contradictions in regard to the distribution of sovereign human power, G.o.d, speaking through the ideal which the moral man had grasped, said: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh."

Man is not the hereditary sovereign in a republic. He is an actual, present, continuing sovereign, and he is that only so long as he obeys the law of his being and const.i.tutes himself, by reason of his manhood strength, the defence of the republic's laws for all. In woman suffrage democracy has met a most dangerous foe. It has been asked "If it would be best for man to make over half his sovereignty to woman?" I cannot imagine how he could do this, whatever might be his wish. Sovereignty in a republic is only divisible among those who are equals as to sovereign power; and any effort to divide with those who lack the essential attribute must result in despotism or anarchy. Men are as subject to the restrictions and requirements of s.e.x as are women, and when they try an experiment contrary to those conditions, the end must be destruction of government itself.

Prof. Goldwin Smith says: "One of the features of a revolutionary era is the prevalence of a feeble facility of abdication. The holders of power, however natural and legitimate it may be, are too ready to resign it on the first demand.... The nerves of authority are shaken by the failure of conviction."

This is true, and it is what makes the present situation portentous. From the very tenderheartedness of the men of our time comes the danger to the women of this nation. So far from desiring to hold the slightest restriction over the women of the Republic, they may rush into an attempt at abdication of a sovereignty that did not originate in their will but in their environment, in order to prove the sincerity of their desire that woman should not even appear to be compelled to obey.

This movement is a feature of the revolutionary era that seems suddenly to have extended to the men with whose theories it belongs. Not at once, nor everywhere equally, but finally and completely would this change come.

Man, as well as woman, must "consent to be governed" by the laws of being.

If man really could "share his sovereignty," there might be some show of reason in the Suffrage claim that he should do so. But unless he can abdicate the very essentials of his s.e.x condition, he cannot abdicate his sovereignty. His laws are dead letters whenever more men than those who pa.s.sed them and approve them choose that they shall be dead. He would have no material outside the men in this country, with which to execute the wishes of the woman voters whom it is proposed to introduce to make laws which they know they cannot themselves enforce.

And this leads us right round again to consider the "disabilities foisted upon s.e.x conditions." The first thing demanded of a voter is that, in the ordinary state of things, he should be able to vote. A body of citizens is asking that a s.e.x be admitted to franchise when it is known to all that a large part of that s.e.x would at every election find it physically impossible, or improper, to go to the polls. Suffragists say: "No women need vote who do not wish to; but they have no right to hinder us." Is this the Individualism of Democracy? It is the Individualism of Anarchy.

It is not the rule of the majority. It is cla.s.s rule with a vengeance; and as for "consenting to be governed," there never was a man or a government that so coolly a.s.sumed to govern without their consent such a body, as do the Suffragists. The disabilities "foisted upon s.e.x" would be felt first of all by the wives and mothers who are most interested in the laws.

The next duty of citizenship is jury service. The leaders said: "We demand, in criminal cases, that most sacred of all rights, trial by jury of our own peers." In regard to jury duty Suffragists are not agreed; which fact alone shows that that service would be felt to be an impairment of s.e.x conditions. So impossible has jury duty been found, even in small communities, that in Wyoming the jury service of women ceased with the first judge who admitted them to serve at all; and in Colorado but one or two women have ever served. The judges there do not allow them to be called. It was found to be expensive, and not promotive of the ends of justice. Whether this is held to be man's cruel withholding of woman's rights or not, it shows that either the s.e.x condition or the co- extensiveness of woman's work with man's must be impaired. Dr. Jacobi says in regard to jury service: "The numerous cases for exemption now admitted for men would be certainly paralleled for women, but they would not always be identical. Men are now more often excused for business; women would be excused on the plea of ill-health. Of course the special plea of family cares with young children would rule out thousands of women during a number of years of their lives."

Who would establish the "special plea" for so large a proportion of the voting population? No law of justice on which a solid government can rest could do it; and that it would be asked, and needed, shows that s.e.x conditions would interfere with voting conditions. A criminal case often lasts weeks, even months, during which time the jury are kept together and alone, locked up at night, and walked out by day. This second duty cannot be, and is not, performed; not because many women would not make good jurors, not because they should not try delicate cases, and might not serve well at certain times, and in special ways, but because jury duty, like military service, cannot take account of s.e.x conditions when they are the rule and not the exception.

Office-holding is the next necessary concomitant of the ballot. Of course it can be said at once: "Why, mult.i.tudes of men never hold office, why should women?" It may be answered that mult.i.tudes of men do hold office, that no American would think of extending the ballot without expecting that, as an accompaniment, the duty, or the privilege, of office-holding should follow.

Not only is it true that if more than half the population were added to the voting list mult.i.tudes among them would attempt to rush into office, but it was mainly for office that a majority of those who have been pressing the demand cared for the vote. The authors of the "History" say: "As to offices, it is not be supposed that the cla.s.s of men now elected will resign to women their chances, and, if they should to any extent, the necessary number of women to fill the offices would make no apparent change in our social circles. If, for example, the Senate of the United States should be entirely composed of women, but two in each State would be withdrawn from the pursuit of domestic happiness."

How could "the cla.s.s of men now elected" help resigning, if women enough chose to put up a woman and give her a majority of votes,--provided, as Suffragists say, that the vote secures the office and retains it by a mere mandate? But it is not one office, or set of offices, which we have to consider. It is the entrance upon political life, permanently, of a large body of women. What that means to the social life that "would not miss them," we well know. There could be no domestic ties; no hindering child.

The time would be short before this unnatural position would breed a race of Aspasias--without the intellect that ruled "the ruler of the land, when Athens was the land of fame."

The "History" says: "An honest fear is sometimes expressed 'that women would degrade politics, and politics would degrade women,'" and the writers answer: "As the influence of woman has been uniformly elevating in new civilizations, in missionary work in heathen lands, in schools, colleges, literature, and general society, it is fair to suppose that politics would prove no exception." We do not need to depend upon forecast or inference. The influence of women upon politics, and the influence of politics upon women, have already been degrading. This is true of political intrigue in the old world, and of the "Female Lobby" in Washington. It is astonishing to what an extent it is true in our new country, with our fresh and sweet traditions.

In 1851, Mrs. Stanton, writing to a convention at Akron, Ohio, said: "The great work before us is the education of those just coming on the stage of action. Begin with the girls of to-day, and in twenty years we can revolutionize this nation. Teach the girl to go alone by night and day, if need be, on the lonely highway, or through the busy streets of the crowded metropolis. Better for her to suffer occasional insults, or die outright, than live the life of a coward, or never move without a protector....

Teach her that it is no part of life to cater to the prejudices of those around her. Make her independent of public sentiment, by showing her how worthless and rotten a thing it is.... Think you, women thus educated would long remain the weak, dependent beings we now find them? They would soon settle for themselves this whole question of Woman's Rights."

Fifty years of such teaching has had its effect. The fine bloom has too often been brushed from our girls' delicacy of thought. They can strut through the street in the daytime wearing a shirt-front, a cravat, a choker, a vest, and a man's hat, and carrying a cane. A few can flaunt themselves in bloomers and knickerbockers, and ride astride a bicycle.

They ape men in everything except courtesy to women. But the result is not what was expected. These customs have introduced the chaperone, and have put an end to simple freedom between boys and girls. The Puritan maiden in her modesty could let John Alden speak for himself, because the John who could summon courage to speak of love to such a girl would not dare to breathe impurity. When the young woman requires a social spy, the young man is apt to forget that her innocent dignity is her own best guardian.

With the pa.s.sing of the "lady," American women may fail to remember that a gentlewoman need pretend to no aristocracy but that of the _n.o.blesse oblige_ of her own femininity. In the paragraph quoted above, women are spoken of as those who are "uniformly elevating" and as "weak and dependent" to a contemptuous degree. They cannot be both at once, and it seems to me that in fact they are neither. Woman is not an angel nor a demon, not a conqueror nor a slave. But the seed from which any of these conflicting natures may develop lies in more fertile soil, within her impa.s.sioned and impressible soil, than in man's. The Suffrage movement will leave her much better or worse than it found her. The phrase "the new woman," with the instinctive explanation that she "is as refined, or as good a wife, mother, sister, daughter, housekeeper," as the old, is ominous.

Suffrage writers seem to hold two views in regard to s.e.x. One is, that it is so pervasive that it cannot be affected by any line of conduct. The other is, that, so far as mind is concerned, it is purely a fanciful barrier, and the less there appears of external distinction the better will this be realized. The Suffrage "History" says: "s.e.x pervades all matter. Whatever it is, it requires no special watchfulness on our part to see that it is maintained." At the same time the dictum "There is no s.e.x in mind," has been a Suffrage war-cry. It seems to me that both views are unscientific and dangerous to social morals. s.e.x integrity is pervasive of the whole nature only when men and women are true to the ideal of the essential distinctions in each. The true environment of woman is womanliness; not to fit her nature to the utmost that womanliness can mean to the world, is to fail of womanly attainment. But making herself a distorted woman cannot make her even an imperfect man. The mere act of going to the polls is not unwomanly; it might be as proper as going to the post-office; but attempting to encroach upon duty that is laid upon man in her behalf is neither womanly nor manly.

In demanding equality, Suffragists a.s.sume that there is not and has not been equality. In a.s.serting that "there is no s.e.x in mind," they really have had to maintain that there is one s.e.x in mind, and that the masculine, to which woman must conform. If man wanted clinching arguments to prove his superiority, could he find another to match this one which suffrage has furnished him? The quaint wit of the Yankee put it neatly when he gave the toast, "Woman--once our superior, now our equal!" Man has said: "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." He has also said, with Martin: "Whatever may be the customs and laws of a country, the women of it decide the morals." The civilization of no nation has risen higher than the carrying out of the religious ideals of its best womanhood. If man has the outward framing of church and state, woman has the framing of the character of man. There is no schism in the body of human duties as the Lord established them. The issues have become more distinctly and openly moral issues; and in so far as woman can make it consist with that inner life of the home and the child, which alone can make the family and fix the state on any sure foundation, she is welcomed by man to meet the common foe. Such new avenues to wealth and distinction as she can enter with womanly dignity and grace will open to her as fast as man can make them places where she can walk with security and comfort to herself and advantage to them both. And they will open no faster.

The woman Suffragist has had to wage as bitter a warfare against physical science as against religion. Eliza Burt Gamble, in her volume which discusses "The Evolution of Woman," takes up the cudgels against both the Bible and man's scientific cla.s.sification of woman, or rather his failure to cla.s.sify her properly at all. She says: "When we bear in mind the past experience of the human race, it is not perhaps surprising that, during an era of physical force and the predominance of the animal instincts in man, the doctrine of male superiority should have become firmly grounded. But with the dawn of scientific investigation it might have been hoped that the prejudices resulting from a lower condition of human society would disappear. When, however, we turn to the most advanced scientific writers of the present century, we find that the prejudices which throughout thousands of years have been gathering strength are by no means eradicated. Mr. Darwin, whenever he had occasion to touch on the mental capacities of women, or, more particularly, the relative capacities of the s.e.xes, manifested the same spirit which characterizes an earlier age."

Herbert Spencer, in his essay on "Justice," says that he once favored woman suffrage "from the point of view of a general principle of individual rights." Later he finds that this cannot be maintained, because he "discovers mental and emotional differences between the s.e.xes which disqualify women from the burden of government and the exercise of its functions." He also considers it absurd for women to claim the vote and military exemption in the name of equality.

Science has told us of the active, as well as the pa.s.sive, part that the mother plays in the growth of the embryo, and at the same time has told us that the s.e.x of that embryo is determined by the nourishing power of the mother. The commonplace statistics of the census come in with their verifying word, and we find that in rude times and hard conditions more boys are born. Gentle conditions and abundance are favorable to the birth of girls. Here is the same story we have learned so often. Man the protector, woman the protected. Woman the inspiring force, man the organizing and physical power.

So the Bible, Science, and Republican government, according to Suffragist and Anti-suffragist, have planted themselves squarely on the s.e.x issue. It is solid standing-ground, and neither apparent irrelevancy nor real antagonism will dislodge the argument.

Dr. Jacobi, in her address before the Const.i.tutional Convention, said: "Still, all women do not demand the suffrage. We are sometimes told that the thousands of women who do want the suffrage must wait until those who are now indifferent, or even hostile, can be converted from their position. Gentlemen, we declare that theory is preposterous. It is true that the exercise of an independent sovereignty necessitates the demonstration of a very considerable amount of independence. A rebel state that cannot break its own blockade may not call upon a foreign power to move from its neutrality to do so. But the demand for equal suffrage is in nowise a.n.a.logous to a claim for independent sovereignty. It is rather a.n.a.logous to the claim to the protection of existing laws, which any group of people, or even a single person, may make."

Under a democratic government a claim for equal suffrage is a claim to share the independent sovereignty that protects, and therefore it cannot be a.n.a.logous to a claim for protection, individual or otherwise, under that sovereignty. Does Dr. Jacobi mean that in asking for suffrage she does not ask to be as much an independent sovereign as any masculine voter of them all? The comparison of woman's claims to suffrage to the protection afforded by existing laws, suggests a narrowing of the demand to fit the requirements of an apparently hopeless struggle for a majority vote of women.

The Government is spoken of by Suffragists as if it were something exterior to and apart from the individual voters--a code of laws that had been set going and would run of itself, the laws being changed by more or fewer votes, but the power to execute being automatic and continuous. As this is the opposite of the actual situation, these rebels will have to "break their own blockade" like any others.

The "pacific blocade" that is enforced by the Quaker guns of this movement has its peaceful war-cries. One of the most exultant is an allusion to the expression "We the people" in the preamble of our national Const.i.tution, with the question whether "people" does not include women. A reading of the entire preamble shows that, of the six achievements there specified as the purpose of the Const.i.tution, every one is a thing that only men can do--with the possible exception of the fifth, which proposes rather vaguely to "promote the general welfare."

As to the thousands of women who want the vote, there are some figures as to the majority that "are indifferent or even hostile." I see by the pamphlet published by the New York State Suffrage a.s.sociation, that they have but 1,600 paying members, which is not one in a thousand of the women in the State over twenty years of age. As Mrs. Winslow Crannell has made a careful computation from figures published in the "Woman's Journal,"

edited by Henry B. Blackwell and his daughter Alice Stone Blackwell, I quote her results: In Maine there are but 12 Suffragists to every 100,000 of the people; in New Hampshire, but 5 to every 100,000; in Ma.s.sachusetts, but 51 to every 100,000; in Connecticut, but 23 to every 100,000.

Pennsylvania has but 14 in 100,000; Kentucky has 32 to 100,000; Michigan, but 6 to 100,000; Illinois has 13 to 100,000; Ohio has 11 to 100,000; Iowa has 6 to 100,000; Virginia, but 1 to 100,000; New Jersey, 8 to 100,000; Arkansas, 3 to 100,000; South Carolina, 3 to 100,000. California has 33 in every 100,000, and Maryland has 6 in 100,000. If the suffrage is claimed for tax-paying women, it can be shown that there are, in New York State, for instance, at least 1,500,000 women who do not pay taxes. But, as a matter of fact, the tax-paying women of this State were among the first signers of Anti-suffrage pet.i.tions.

CHAPTER XI.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE HOME.

The tenth count in the Suffrage Declaration is: "He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to a.s.sign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her G.o.d."

In the "History of Woman Suffrage," the editors say: "Quite as many false ideas prevail as to woman's true position in the home as elsewhere.

Womanhood is the great fact of her life; wifehood and motherhood are but incidental relations."

The first legislation demanded by the Suffragists was that which called for a change of the marriage laws, so as to admit of divorce, first for drunkenness, and later for several other causes. In discussing the matter in convention, Mrs. Stanton presented resolutions that declared, among other things, "That any const.i.tution, compact, or covenant between human beings that failed to produce or promote human happiness, could not, in the nature of things, be of any force or authority; and it would be not only a right, but a duty, to abolish it. That though marriage be in itself divinely founded, and is fortified as an inst.i.tution by innumerable a.n.a.logies in the whole kingdom of universal nature, still a true marriage is only known by its results; and like the fountain, if pure, will reveal only pure manifestations. That observation and experience daily show how incompetent are men, as individuals, or as governments, to select partners in business, teachers for their children, ministers of their religion, or makers, adjudicators or administrators of their laws; and as the same weakness and blindness must attend in the selection of matrimonial partners, the dictates of humanity and common-sense alike show that the latter and most important contract should no more be perpetual than either or all of the former."

In supporting these resolutions, Mrs. Stanton said, "I place man above all governments, ecclesiastical and civil--all const.i.tutions and laws." "In the settlement of any question, we must simply consider the highest good of the individual." Antoinette Brown Blackwell followed Mrs. Stanton with a series of resolutions in which she opposed her, and defended the sanct.i.ty of marriage. Wendell Phillips moved that neither series of resolutions be entered on the journal. Mr. Garrison said they did not come together to settle the question of marriage, but he should be sorry to rule out Mrs. Stanton's resolutions and speeches. Miss Anthony said: "I hope Mr. Phillips will withdraw his motion.... I totally dissent from the idea that this question does not belong on this platform. Marriage has ever been a one-sided matter. By it, man gains all, woman loses all.

Tyrant law and l.u.s.t reign supreme with him; meek submission and ready obedience alone befit her.... By law, public sentiment, and religion, from the time of Moses down to the present day, woman has never been thought of other than as a piece of property, to be disposed of at the will and pleasure of man.... She must accept marriage as man proffers it, or not at all."

The resolutions were carried and recorded, and are published to this day, with added testimony to the same effect from a hundred Suffrage sources.

We turn back to trace one of the lines through which this teaching has come down. The Suffrage leaders mention as special inspirers of their movement besides Ernestine Rose (who seconded Mrs. Stanton's resolutions) and Frances Wright, Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft. In the writings of those women we find the same sentiments set forth with delicacy or vulgarity, according to the nature of the writer. Margaret Fuller, in her Dial essay, published in 1843, "The Great Lawsuit--Man Versus Woman, Woman Versus Man," says: "It is the fault of marriage, and of the present relation between the s.e.xes, that the woman belongs to the man, instead of forming a whole with him. It is a vulgar error to suppose that love--a love--is to woman her whole existence. She is also born for Truth and Love in their universal energy. Would she but a.s.sume her inheritance, Mary would not be the only virgin mother." Mary Wollstonecraft believed that marriage consisted solely of mutual affection, and that there should be no outward promise or tie to bind. If love were to die, the heart should seek other affinity. The licentious words of Frances Wright need not be repeated. With Mephistophelian promptings, Ernestine Rose stood forever a-tip-toe, whispering in the ear of the purer American feeling that would often have faltered. At the time of the pa.s.sing of Mrs. Stanton's resolutions she said: "But what is marriage? A human inst.i.tution, called out by the needs of the social, affectional human nature for human purposes.... If it is demonstrated that the real objects are frustrated, I ask, in the name of individual happiness and social morality and well-being, why should such a marriage be binding for life?... I ask that personal cruelty to the wife may be made a State's-prison offence, for which divorce shall be granted. Wilful desertion for one year should be a sufficient cause for divorce....

Habitual intemperance, or any other vice which makes the husband or wife intolerable and abhorrent to the other, ought to be sufficient cause for divorce." Essentially the same idea was repeated by Dr. Hulda Gunn in a recent Suffrage meeting.