Woman and the Republic Part 8

But both are enemies of the social order, and both are favorers of woman suffrage. How "pacifically" the labor movement that originated in France in 1848, and spread throughout Europe, was likely to proceed, we may judge by its constant outbreaks kindred to the recent bomb-throwing in Paris. In the German Working-man's Union, Hasenclever, for many years the leading socialist in the German Reichstag, said: "The Woman Question would be taken by the developed, or, more correctly speaking, the communistic state, under its own control, for in this state" (which was to consist of men and women with equal vote) "when the community bears the obligation of maintaining the children, and no private capital exists, the woman need no longer be chained to one man. The bond between the s.e.xes will be merely a moral one, and if the characters do not harmonize could be dissolved." The "Social Democrat" of Copenhagen has for mottoes: "All men and women over twenty-one should vote." "There should be inst.i.tutions for the proper bringing up of children." All the communistic and anarchistic labor organizations in Germany, France, Switzerland, Denmark, and England proclaim woman suffrage as a prime factor, and the disruption of the family as its corollary.

There are many who remember the visit to this country of the socialist, Dr. Aveling, and his (so-called) wife, the daughter of Karl Marx. His legal wife had been left in England. Miss Marx said, in reply to the question of a Chicago lady, that love was the only recognized marriage in Socialism, consequently no bonds of any kind would be required. Divorces would be impossible; for when love ceased, separation would naturally ensue.

At a meeting of the Woman's Council held in Washington, in 1888, Mrs.

Stanton said: "I have often said to men of the present day that the next generation of women will not stand arguing with you as patiently as we have for half a century. The organizations of labor all over the country are holding out their hands to women. The time is not far distant when, if men do not do justice to women, the women will strike hands with labor, with socialists, with anarchists, and you will have the scenes of the Revolution of France acted over again in this republic."

Mrs. Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in her lecture in this country two years ago on "The Economic Emanc.i.p.ation of Woman," said that she rejoiced in every co-operative working-woman's dwelling, because it was a blow aimed at the isolated home, and she has just repeated in New York her proposition for the inst.i.tutional care of children. Alice Hyneman Rhine, in her article on "Woman's Work in America," says of socialistic labor, "It aims to benefit woman by recognizing her as a perfect equal of man, politically and socially; by fixing woman's means of support by the state so as to render her independent of man." "Freedom," a radical socialistic newspaper published in Chicago, where Emma Goldman and her ilk have revealed the true inwardness of such movements, recommends as the first step "equal rights for all, without distinction of race or s.e.x," and the abolition of "cla.s.s rule." Our most radical socialistic Labor National Convention in New York, this year, had four woman delegates.

The Knights of Labor who first put "equal pay for equal work" into their platform, appeared in their late convention, under the lead of Sovereign, who declared that Gov. Altgeld "was one of the finest types of American manhood to-day." They seem to be drifting toward that phase of Socialism to which Alice Hyneman Rhine referred. There are no greater tyrants than some of the Labor organizations, and one evidence of this is the fact that they prevent the colored man from doing any work outside of a few of the least n.o.ble occupations.

With such edged tools as these are our American women playing when they demand, in the name of democracy, in the name of the family, in the name of the working-woman, that the word "s.e.x" shall be inserted in the United States Const.i.tution, and the word "male" be stricken from every State const.i.tution that now contains it.

CHAPTER VII.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE PROFESSIONS.

The sixth count in the Declaration of Sentiments reads: "He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known."

That statement contains another evidence of the untruthfulness of a half truth. First, it is an unwarrantable a.s.sumption, of which no proof is offered, that man had closed against woman any avenue to wealth and distinction, or that he felt toward woman the selfish and monopolizing spirit implied in such accusation. Second, but three of the avenues, all of which he was said to have closed against her, are mentioned. Whatever may be the truth about those three, the no less honorable, although less arduous, avenues to wealth and distinction were as open to her as to him.

As educator, author, artist, in painting, music, and sculpture, she could freely attain to the same coveted end. The Suffragists did not decry man's "monopoly" of the honorable and profitable but severe professions of civil engineering, seamanship, mining engineering, lighthouse keeping and inspecting, signal service, military and naval duty, and the like. These, and the drudgery of the world's business and commerce, man was welcome to keep.

But, most of all, this Suffrage indictment contains, as do all the rest, another tacit untruth when it a.s.sumes that woman's work has not in the past been as honorable to herself and as profitable to the world as has that of man. By setting up a false standard for achievement, and attempting to make everything conform to it, the Suffrage movement has done incalculable harm. It is not progressing to push into an unwonted place merely because it is unwonted, and because you can push in. It is progress to enter it in response both to an inward and an outward need.

When the first Suffrage convention had adopted the Declaration of Sentiments, Lucretia Mott offered a resolution, which was also adopted, declaring that "the speedy success of our cause depends upon the zealous and untiring efforts of men and women for the overthrow of the monopoly of the pulpit, and for the securing to woman an equal partic.i.p.ation with men in the various trades, professions, and commerce."

The most remarkable thing about this resolution is, that it was promulgated by a woman who was at that very time a gifted and eloquent preacher, so that to her, who cared for it so highly, man had not closed that avenue to wealth and distinction. As she had a husband to support her and her children, she was much more free to attain those desirable ends than most of the ministers who were preaching for humanity's sake and the gospel's, at salaries ranging from five hundred to two thousand dollars a year, and who had families to support out of their slender pittance. If any woman was in a position to "overthrow the monopoly of the pulpit,"

surely she was. Stately and beautiful of mien, fervent in spirit, eloquent in language, one who had learned the Hebrew and Greek that she might read the Scriptures in the original tongues, what did she lack? Not only was no pulpit of another faith than hers ever opened to her, but more than half those of her own form of worship were closed against hearing the inner voice as interpreted by her. In that schism that rent the Society of Friends as no other religious body has ever been rent, she threw in her fortunes, or led others to throw in their fortunes (for she had been preaching nine years when the division occurred), with that portion that placed the "inner light" above all Scripture. When the Friends came from the London meeting to testify against the teachings of the schismatics, they besought Lucretia Mott to return to the faith of her childhood, but she resisted from conviction that she was right. Elias Hicks, her leader, had instigated the members of his congregation to refuse to pay their taxes to the Government during and following the war of 1812, on the ground that they represented an encroachment of the secular power on Christian liberty, and were used to support war, which was sin. Lucretia Mott preached that "no Christian can consistently uphold a government based on the sword, or relying on that as an ultimate resort." The country has always suffered from this doctrine. The Tory Quakers of the Revolution called publicly upon Friends "to withstand and refuse to submit" "to instructions and ordinances" not warranted by "that happy Const.i.tution under which we have long enjoyed tranquillity and peace." Thomas Paine, whose parents were Friends, in "The Crisis," says: "The common phrase of these people is, 'Our principles are peace.' To which it may be replied, 'and your practices are the reverse.'" Another striking instance of this disagreement between principle and practice is seen in Lucretia Mott's behavior. From the platform where she demanded the ballot for woman, she proclaimed that all voting was sinful. That bodies of people who so held should continue to enjoy the Government's protection of themselves and their property, through the sacrifices made by those who carried on government by giving willingly their money and their strength, is a proof of our wonderful freedom.

Elizabeth Fry and most of the English Friends would not mention the name of Mrs. Mott. Mrs. Stanton once asked her what she would have done after the Hicksite faction had been voted out of meeting at the World's Conventicle of Friends in London, if the spirit had moved her to speak when the chairman and members had moved that she be silent, and she answered, "Where the spirit of G.o.d is, there is liberty." This is the liberty of anarchy, and it had its due weight in the Suffrage movement.

Mrs. Stanton, in the course of a eulogy p.r.o.nounced at Mrs. Mott's funeral, said: "The 'vagaries' of the Anti-slavery struggle, in which Lucretia Mott took a leading part, have been coined into law; and the 'wild fantasies'

of the Abolitionists are now the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the National Const.i.tution.... The 'infidel' Hicksite principles that shocked Christendom are now the cornerstones of the liberal religious movement in this country." The vagaries of the Anti- slavery struggle are exactly those that were _not_ coined into law. The wild fantasies of the Abolitionists were rejected by those whose sober judgment and steady courage made possible the last const.i.tutional amendments. And no truer is it that the "infidel" Hicksite principles are the corner-stones of any genuine movement of Christian liberality. While the Friends mourn that infidelity and Roman Catholicism have made inroads upon their progress in some places, they have steadily advanced in the other direction from that pointed out by Lucretia Mott. Their educated and paid ministry, their First-day schools, their missions, home and foreign, their music, and simple but set forms, their reports to London of "conversion and profession of faith," and their rapid growth where these things have taken place, all indicate the truth of this. The large meeting at Swartmore College, in the summer of 1896, is another evidence.

The proportion of woman preachers to the different denominations is as follows: The Hicksite-Quakers (as against the orthodox) have the most. So have the German Methodists (United Brethren) as against the orthodox Methodists. The Free-Will Baptists, as against the orthodox Baptists, ordain more woman preachers. The Universalist preceded the Unitarian church in so doing. The Presbyterian and Congregational churches, as a body, have taken no steps in that direction. In the Congregational denomination any separate body of worshippers can ordain whom it sees fit.

The Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches have orders which band women as religious workers and remove them more or less from the ordinary life of the world, but they have taken no steps toward ordaining women for the ministry.

We may note that the denominations that have been foremost in building colleges for woman, and in promoting her general advancement in professions and trades, as well as in social and philanthropic matters, are the ones whose pulpits she has not entered. They are also those by which she is most cordially welcomed to speak on all Christian and philanthropic themes. Where her influence is most broadly felt, she has not been taken out of the ordinary life that she was meant to share and to sway. It was from the great denominations that she first crossed the threshold of home to carry home love and principle to foreign countries.

In missions she has served in every conceivable form of public benevolence, side by side with man. Real reforms work from within. If the time comes when the other branches of the Christian Church feel as do a few at present, that the exercise of the ministerial office is consistent and appropriate for woman, one that compels no sacrifice of the life and work that are, and must be, peculiarly her own, the ballot will not be needed to place her or to keep her in their pulpits. Whatever may be thought of the profession of the ministry for woman, it must certainly be acknowledged that it is the one farthest removed from political thought and action. If any cla.s.s of women should be glad to be exempted from the vote, it is the woman preachers.

In her book, "Common Sense," Dr. Jacobi says: "The profession of medicine was thrown open to women when, in 1849, the year following the Revolution, and the pa.s.sage of the Married Woman's Property Rights Bill, New York State for the first time, at Geneva, conferred a medical diploma on a woman, Elizabeth Blackwell. She was, or rather she became, the sister-in- law of Lucy Stone; and the work of these two women, the one in medicine, the other for equal suffrage, const.i.tuted the two necessary halves of one idea."

In 1848, when the first Suffrage convention was held, twelve women were studying medicine in different parts of the country. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell was studying that year in Geneva, and when members of the convention wrote to congratulate her, she said, in the course of her reply: "Much has been said of the oppression that woman suffers; man is reproached with being unjust, tyrannical, jealous. I do not so read human life." Dr. Blackwell estimates that within ten years of that time three hundred women had been graduated in medicine. In an address delivered in 1889 before the London Medical School for women in London, Dr. Blackwell said: "I believe that the department of medicine in which the great and beneficent influence of women may be specially exerted is that of the family physician. Not as specialists, but as the trusted guides and wise counsellors in all that concerns the physical welfare of the family, they will find their most congenial field of labor." All this was the exact opposite of the spirit that prevailed in the a.s.sociation with which Lucy Stone was identified. She declaimed against man's injustice; and when it was proposed, after the civil war had taught the power of organization, to have a const.i.tution and by-laws for the Suffrage movement, Lucy Stone said that she had felt the "thumb-screws and the soul-screws," and did not wish to be placed under them again. "Our duty is merely agitation." After a stormy quarrel, she left to form a new a.s.sociation in New England.

Elizabeth Blackwell's name is conspicuous for its absence from Suffrage annals. In the letter referred to she wrote: "The exclusion and constraint woman suffers is not the result of purposed injury or premeditated insult.

It has arisen naturally, without violence, because woman has desired nothing more, has not felt the soul too large for the body. But when woman, with matured strength, with steady purpose, presents her lofty claim, all barriers will give way, and man will welcome, with a thrill of joy, the new birth of his sister spirit."

The way in which barriers have fallen, and have been removed by men, in order that woman may enter the n.o.ble profession of medicine, is one of the strange stories of this half century. The Civil War, which taught us so much, helped greatly in this. There were some genuine obstacles in the way of woman's education in medicine, and that they were genuine is proved by the fact that, as rapidly as arrangements can be made so that woman can have thorough training by and with her own s.e.x, this is being done. This trend is in opposition to Suffrage action. Dr. Clemence Lozier, who was so long at the head of the Suffrage a.s.sociation in New York City, was the most persistent urger of mixed clinics, and marched in to them at Bellevue, at the head of her cla.s.ses, defying the delicate instincts of both men and women.

The struggle of the "new" school, which was really as old as Hippocrates, who said four hundred years before Christ that some remedies acted by the rule of "contraries," and some by the rule of "similarity," was long and hard compared with that of the entrance of woman upon the practice of medicine, although the latter involved s.e.x questions and the former only forms, and professional prejudice did not die with woman's adoption of it.

Dr. Jacobi says: "We are perfectly well aware that industrial and professional compet.i.tion are entirely different matters from popular sovereignty. But when we find the same instincts aroused, the same opposition excited, the same arguments advanced, and the same determination manifested, by trades unions, to exclude women from trades, by learned societies to exclude them from professions, by universities to exclude them from learning, and by voters to exclude them from the polls, we cannot avoid asking whether the difference in the cases is not balanced by the ident.i.ty in the mental att.i.tude of the opponents." The best trades unions have admitted women to their protective and wage a.s.sociations, or, better still, have helped them to form their own; the worst trades unions, the socialistic and anarchistic, have claimed for them the right to vote.

The learned societies are admitting them professionally as fast as they make themselves worthy. The men who hold out against their admission to men's universities are precisely the cla.s.s of men who have been most active in a.s.sisting to found for them equal colleges of their own, and they are also the men who are most strenuous against their admission to the polls. In medicine, while co-education is deemed better than ignorance, the tendency is to separate the s.e.xes in study as fast as facilities can be made equal. The opponents of woman's progress and those of woman suffrage are of opposite cla.s.ses, and their mental att.i.tudes are entirely different. How much harm the struggle for "popular sovereignty"

for women has done in hindering the progress of industrial and professional compet.i.tion, can be judged somewhat by the success of the latter and the failure of the former in the highest fields. It is a significant fact that women do not avail themselves of opportunities open to them in the professions to the extent that it has been claimed they would. The medical examination advertised in January, 1896, by the New York State Civil Service Commission for woman candidates, failed for lack of applicants, although the salaries of women in the State hospitals range from $1,000 to $1,500 a year.

The entrance of woman upon the legal profession raised const.i.tutional questions as to the enactment of law; and so here, as in the matter of the school suffrage, we see how carefully republicanism guarded the post at which must stand the sentinels of liberty. If it might involve law- enforcement, woman could not practise law or vote on the school question; but the Supreme Court of the United States decided that "the practising of any profession violates no law of the Federal Const.i.tution."

The study of law must prove of great benefit to woman, though here again it has already been shown that it is possible that the greatest practical advantage she will derive from entrance into this n.o.ble profession will be from acquiring knowledge of her country's laws, and how to take care of her own property. Widows and unmarried women have almost invariably placed their moneyed interests in the hands of a man, when it would have been better for all concerned that they should have spent some patient thought on the details of their own affairs. The first woman who was admitted to the bar in this State (New York) was a teacher in the Albany Normal College, and she still remains there, and the women's cla.s.ses for legal study in New York City have been largely composed of those who had no intention of claiming admittance to the bar. That women can and do enter all these professions with credit to themselves, and that they thus enhance the feeling of pride in their s.e.x, which is a strong impulse with women, is matter for profound congratulation, and is evidence that the animus of the Suffrage movement is not that which stirs society.

CHAPTER VIII.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND EDUCATION.

The seventh count in the Suffrage indictment declared: "He has denied her facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her."

Among the resolutions pa.s.sed in the first Suffrage convention was one demanding: "Equal rights in the universities," and the first pet.i.tion presented by Suffrage advocates contained a clause asking that entrance to men's colleges be obtained for women by legal enactment. We note that this is far from being a demand for education for women equal to that given to men in the universities. Men have founded colleges for women, men and women have worked together in securing for woman every facility and opportunity for education of the highest grade; but the "barrier of s.e.x"

is not broken down in education. But few of the older colleges for men admit women, and those few, so far as I have learned from conversation with members of their faculties, speak of the arrangement as an experiment, and give the need for economy, combined with a desire to a.s.sist women, as a reason for making that experiment. Meantime the knocking at men's literary portals by Suffrage advocates has gone on as vigorously as if women could obtain education in no other way.

In the first Suffrage convention ever held in Ma.s.sachusetts these two resolutions were adopted: "That political rights acknowledge no s.e.x, and therefore the word 'male' should be stricken from every State const.i.tution;" and "That every effort to educate woman, until you accord to her her rights, and arouse her conscience by the weight of her responsibilities, is futile, and a waste of labor."

The State in which these sentiments were uttered abounded in fine schools for girls, among which were Mount Holyoke and Wheaton seminaries.

A rapid survey of some of the educational conditions that led to the state of things existing when Suffrage a.s.sociations were formed, will be in place. Learning seemed incompatible with worship early in the Christian era. The faith that worked by love was "to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness." That great battle between the felt and the comprehended, which in this era we have named the conflict between science and religion, was decided in the mind of the apostle to the Gentiles when he wrote: "We know in part, and we prophesy in part; when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away." He recalled the accusation, "Thou art beside thyself, much learning hath made thee mad," and he hastened to a.s.sure the unlettered fishermen and the simple and devout women who were followers of Christ, that "all knowledge" was naught if they had not love; that even faith was vain if it led to the rejection of the diviner wisdom that a little child could understand.

The great learning of Augustine and the Fathers brought into the Church pagan speculations of G.o.d and morality, as well as pagan knowledge in art, science, and literature. The Church became corrupted, and a great outcry was made against the learning itself, which was falsely supposed to be the cause of the degeneration of faith. Symonds says that during the Dark Ages that followed upon this first battle between faith and sight, the meaning of Latin words derived from the Greek was lost; that Homer and Virgil were believed to be contemporaries, and "Orestes Tragedia" was supposed to be the name of an author. Milman says that "at the Council of Florence in 1438, the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople, being ignorant, the one of Greek, and the other of Latin, discoursed through an interpreter." It was near the time of the Reformation that a German monk announced in his convent that "a new language, called Greek, had been invented, and a book had been written in it, called the New Testament."

"Beware of it," he added, "It is full of daggers and poison."

But the tradition of the love that book revealed had crept into the heart of the world, and now awoke. Through what struggles the "spirit of all truth" promised by Christ was leading, and would lead the world, the history of civilization can tell. Women shared in some degree the outward benefits of the Revival of Learning. They became in not a few instances Doctors of Law and professors of the great universities that sprang up, as well as teachers, transcribers, and illuminators in the great nunneries. I could give a long and honorable list of names of woman writers and artists, in many lands, from Mediaeval to modern times; and one of the interesting things revealed by such a record would be the number who were working with, or were directly inspired and helped by, a father or a brother. The Court contained some women who, like Lady Jane Grey, upheld the model of purity while acquiring the learning that naturally accompanied wealth. But elegant letters had again become the a.s.sociate of moral and religious corruption in the courts, and the "ignorance of preaching" arose to combat it, in Cromwell, the Roundheads, the Dissenters, the Covenanters.

Yet sound learning was not to die that Christian truth might live. Of the band of Pilgrims and Puritans that came first to our sh.o.r.es, about one in thirty was college-bred. While subordinating book-knowledge to piety, they had learned scarcely less the dangers of ignorance. Their first college was founded because of "the dread of having an illiterate ministry to the churches when our ministers shall lie in dust." Charles Francis Adams says, in regard to the establishment of Harvard College: "The records of Harvard University show that, of all the presiding officers during the century and a half of colonial days, but two were laymen, and not ministers of the prevailing denomination." He further says that "of all who in early times availed themselves of such advantages as this inst.i.tution could offer, nearly half the number did so for the sake of devoting themselves to the gospel. The prevailing notion of the purpose of education was attended with one remarkable consequence--the cultivation of the female mind was regarded with utter indifference."

It was attended with still another remarkable consequence, the effect of which is felt up to this hour. Only men who were fitted for a profession were given a college education. It is well within my memory when it began to be seriously said: "A college education is good for a boy, whether he intends to follow a profession or not; it will make him a better business man, or even a better farmer." The country girl is now, as a rule, better educated than her brother. It also happened in those earlier days, that the artist and the musician were expected to attain knowledge by intuition, save in technical branches.

The minister was, almost of necessity, like a magistrate in these semi- religious colonies. The fact of the breaking up into various sects, which we sometimes incline to look upon with regret as defeating Christian unity, really saved the essentials of that unity by preventing the clerical magistrate from establishing a church resting upon state authority. It was obligatory that the civil rulers should be learned, even at the expense of those who carried on the business and the home.

During the first two hundred years of our existence it would have been almost absurd to expect that women would be extensively educated outside the home. The country was poor, and struggling with new conditions, and great financial crises swept over it. There were wars and rumors of wars.

Until after 1812-15 American independence was not an a.s.sured fact.

Whatever may be said of the present, woman's place in America then was in the home, and n.o.bly did she fill that place. That she had not been wholly uninstructed in even elegant learning, is evidenced by the share she took in literature and in the discussion of religious and public matters, and in such personal records as that of Elder Faunce, who eulogized Alice Southworth Bradford for "her exertions in promoting the literary improvement and the deportment of the rising generation." Dame schools were early established for girls, and here were often found the sons of the farmer and the mechanic. These were established in Ma.s.sachusetts in 1635. Late in 1700, girls were admitted through the summer to "Latin schools" where boys were taught in winter, and in 1789 women began to be a.s.sociated with men as teachers. In 1771 Connecticut founded a system of free schools in which boys and girls were taught. In 1794 the Moravians founded a school for girls at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Here were educated the sisters of Peter Cooper, the mother of President Arthur, and many women who became exponents of culture.

New England began before this to have fine private schools for girls, but no great step was taken until Miss Hart (afterward Mrs. Willard) had become so successful with her academy teaching in her native town of Berlin, Connecticut, and in Hartford, that three States simultaneously invited her to establish schools within their borders. She went to Ma.s.sachusetts, but afterward, at the solicitation of Governor Clinton, of New York, she removed her school to Troy, in 1821. It was a new departure, and there was ignorant prejudice to overcome. Governor Clinton, in an appeal to the legislature for aid, said: "I trust you will not be deterred by commonplace ridicule from extending your munificence to this meritorious inst.i.tution." They were not deterred. An act was pa.s.sed for the incorporation of the proposed inst.i.tute, and another which gave to female academies a share of the literary fund. The citizens of Troy contributed liberally, and the success of an effort in woman's high education was a.s.sured.

As early as 1697 the Penn Charter School was founded, and it has lived until to-day. Provision was made "at the cost of the people called Quakers," for "all children and servants, male and female, the rich to be instructed at reasonable rates, the poor to be maintained and schooled for nothing." They also provided for "instruction for both s.e.xes in reading, writing, work, languages, arts and sciences." The boys and girls have been taught separately, the girls' school being much behind the boys', neither Latin nor other ancient language forming a part of their curriculum.