Woman in Modern Society Part 7

Nor can it be possible for people to enter political life fully prepared for its duties. Even when a young man approaches a business career we do not ask that he shall possess a knowledge of the business before beginning. If he has general preparation, and a desire to learn, he is admitted to share in its responsibilities, and then learns as he goes along. It is the same in political life; few young men at twenty-one or foreigners at the time of naturalization, have the knowledge indicated in the preceding pages. If they have general preparation and a desire to learn, we admit them to partic.i.p.ation, and they learn through doing.

Years ago, while discussing education with an English statesman, he asked whom I considered the leaders of education in his country. Knowing his Tory instincts, I replied, "Bradlaugh, Annie Besant, William T.

Stead, John Burns and Keir Hardie." He laughed contemptuously: "Why those people," he said, "are merely educating themselves in public." The statement was true and far-reaching; that is what we are all doing in our modern democracies; and that is at the same time our weakness and our glory.

VIII

Woman's Relation to Political Life

In discussing woman's right to vote it is well to remember that the right to rule, which is implicit in the right to vote, has always been limited by conditions of birth, residence, wealth, morality or intelligence. Universal manhood suffrage has never yet been achieved, and probably never will be. Under the best Greek conditions, it was only the free-born citizen, residing in his native city state, who voted. In both Greece and Rome, the suffrage was limited to cla.s.ses defined by social position, wealth or military service. In our modern democracies there have always been limitations of birth, which might be overcome by naturalization; of residence, which could be overcome by living for a certain time in a locality; of wealth, which was supposed to insure a stake in the communal well-being; and of morals and intelligence, which at least shut out criminals, the insane and the imbeciles.

Thus the right to vote is not the same thing as the right to live; and even in a commonwealth founded on ideal justice only those having a stake in the community life, and possessing normal intelligence and morality, will be allowed to rule. In a word, equal suffrage is possible, while universal man or woman suffrage is not.

All through our colonial period women had a large influence in determining community questions, and in Ma.s.sachusetts, under the old Providence Charter, they voted for all elective officers for nearly a hundred years. Here and there women--like Margaret Brent, of Maryland; Abigail Adams, of Ma.s.sachusetts; or Mrs. Corbin, of Virginia--put forward their right to partic.i.p.ate in the public life around them. But, in 1776, women were not voting, and the Federal Const.i.tution left the matter of determining electoral rights to the several States. They all decided for male suffrage.

The initial impulse to secure suffrage for American women came from Europe. After the Revolution, Frances Wright, a young Scotchwoman, came to America to lecture and write, claiming equal political rights with men. In 1836, Ernestine L. Rose came from Poland and also advocated equal political rights. All the teachings of the American Revolution had favored the idea of human equality; and, as has been pointed out, when, with established peace after the War of 1812, women engaged in anti-slavery, temperance and allied movements, they were driven by the logic of events to demand the suffrage.

In 1848, the women of the country began to organize. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Martha C. Wright called together at Seneca Falls, New York, the first convention in America to further equal suffrage. No permanent organization was founded, but in 1850 a convention was held in Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts, and in 1852 a Woman's Rights Convention was called in Syracuse, New York, with delegates present from eight States and Canada. Miss Susan B. Anthony had meantime joined the movement; and from this time on conventions and appeals became common.

The Civil War distracted attention from all social and political issues but one. The Equal Rights a.s.sociation turned its attention mainly to the rights of negroes; and in 1869 the National Woman's Suffrage a.s.sociation was organized to work exclusively for woman's rights. Backed by such women as Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe, and aided by men like Henry Ward Beecher, the a.s.sociation became a national power. In 1890, the two organizations were united under the name of The National American Woman's Suffrage a.s.sociation. This organization still leads the movement in America.[45]

[45] _The History of Woman Suffrage_, by ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, SUSAN B. ANTHONY, and IDA HUSTED HARPER, 4 vols. Rochester, N.Y.

In 1902, an international meeting was called in Washington; and in 1904 the International Suffrage Alliance was formed in Berlin with Mrs.

Carrie Chapman Catt as president. Thirteen nations are now affiliated with the Alliance; and the women of the world are highly organized to further equal suffrage.

Two generations of women have given themselves to this movement, and a third still faces it. To the first group belong those leaders we have already named: Emma Willard, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Julia Ward Howe, Susan B. Anthony and their a.s.sociates. It was their problem to secure woman's control of her own body and property, some share in the direction of her children, and some opportunity to train her own mind and earn an independent living. These women bore the heat and burden of a conflict in which all the blind prejudices of a fixed regime were strongly ma.s.sed, presenting few promising points of attack. It is small wonder that some of these leaders gained a reputation for being hard, dogmatic, aggressive, and sometimes careless of popular sensibilities.

The first generation of reformers in any field must be made of stern stuff; and their beneficiaries are apt to forget the conditions that justified means no longer necessary.

The lives of these women could not be expected to fully ill.u.s.trate the type of life they hoped to see their sisters living when opportunity was finally won. Only women who partic.i.p.ated in this struggle could fully appreciate the splendid devotion of these lives to the service of a group many of whom, being personally comfortable, were insensible to the needs of less fortunate women; and were sometimes even willing to fight back any advanced ideas which might disturb their own comfort. The feeling within this group of leaders, and the failure of oncoming generations of American women to recognize the debt of obligation they owe to its efforts, was ill.u.s.trated by an incident that came up in connection with the Third International Congress of Women which met in London in 1899. The session was opened in Westminster Town Hall, with seven hundred delegates present, representing the most thoughtful women of the world. Lady Aberdeen was in the chair, and Mrs. Creighton, wife of the late Bishop of London, was reading a paper. In the midst of deep attention, a door at the rear of the platform was gently opened, and Miss Susan B. Anthony stepped onto the stage. She had just arrived from America. Her strong figure was bent with the weight of years; her face was squared by the conflict and partial ostracism she had met; but her glance had lost none of its stern kindliness, and her bearing none of its indomitable courage. As she appeared, this most representative audience of women in the world sprang to its feet and burst into wild cheering. In vain did Lady Aberdeen rap for order and beg the audience to let Mrs. Creighton proceed. Not until Miss Anthony came to the front and urged the women to sit down was quiet restored. These women knew the price of a life which their champion had paid for their opportunities.

A few months after this the school children of the prosperous city of Rochester, N.Y., where Miss Anthony had been a leading citizen for many years, were asked to write school compositions in which they named the person they would most wish to be like. Over three thousand girls, in the elementary grades, wrote these papers, but not one chose Miss Anthony. This first generation of women reformers could not establish the type of womanhood for the modern world; they had not the leisure, nor the freedom, nor could they see all that lay in the future. But all the more, because their lives were hard, should they be held in grateful remembrance.

To the second generation of leaders belong women like Alice Freeman Palmer, Mary Sheldon Barnes and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. They came on the scene when the first campaign had been won; they could command their own bodies and property; college doors were swinging open where they could secure the training that should fit them for the struggle to win educational, industrial, social and political opportunity for all their sisters. They were still looked upon as blue-stockings and queer; they had often to serve as the b.u.t.t of ridicule; but they had education, income, a certain degree of leisure, and a social recognition which, if grudging in some quarters, was all the more generous in others.

With the rapid development of higher education, these women found themselves a.s.sociated with large groups of independent women who could create a society of their own in advanced centers of population. There was still much to be done in securing opportunity for women; but they could go on establishing the type of life that free women were to live.

Their problems were, however, even more complex than those which confronted their predecessors. What line of education should women pursue? What lines of work could they best undertake? How could they combine an independent professional or industrial career with the life of a home and the responsibilities of a mother? How far must older social restraints be modified in the interest of intellectual and industrial freedom? It was a time for constructive statesmanship, rather than for revolution; and each woman knew she was under criticism, and that her success or failure was vastly more than her own personal concern. In her all free women were being judged.

To the third generation belongs the host of women who are to-day filling our college halls, managing the women's clubs, teaching the state schools, and competing with men in every industrial calling. Theirs is the task of completing woman's social and political emanc.i.p.ation, and of educating them to meet their newfound liberties. It is possible that this present generation has a keener sense of rights than of duties; and the young women of to-day must be led to realize that the delicate adjustments still to be worked out require devotion equal to that of the earlier generations, if the toll of wasted life is not to be excessive.

What now is the relation of women to the range of political activity described in the last chapter? Have they need of the protection which government gives? Are they able to form political judgments? Have they knowledge of the working of political machinery; or, lacking it, are they prepared to obtain it? Are they able to make a wise selection of people to represent them in political action? Have they need of the training which partic.i.p.ation in political life gives? Have they the preliminary preparation to take up that training to advantage, and can they undertake these duties without serious loss of qualities desirable in women?

Women certainly have need of protection; each has a life dear to her, and honor which is dearer to her than life. In this respect she has a greater need than men. Most women, also, have property of some kind, and we are increasingly recognizing their right to control this for themselves; hence they need property protection the same as men. We do not need to think of Mrs. Sage, Mrs. Harriman, Miss Gould or Mrs.

Green, in this connection, for in every community we now have many women who are immediately responsible for large property interests which new legislation might affect most seriously.

In matters of inst.i.tutional regulation by government, women are at least as vitally interested as men. In all that touches the family, marriage, or divorce, women have more at stake than men; and there are as many wives as husbands involved. The schools are also nearer to women than to men; more girls than boys attend them; more women are teachers; and more women than men are interested parents of school children. The church is also more vital to women to-day than to men. On the side of industries, it is clear that our 8,000,000 independent wage-earning women have a desperate stake in all governmental action touching the regulation of working conditions. In whatever concerns general sanitation, safe water, and pure foods, all are equally interested who must breathe and eat to live. Surely the need of women for political protection is quite as great as that of men.

In the matter of forming political judgments, not even the wisest men are beyond improvement. International affairs, monetary systems, the best way of raising taxes, and similar problems, often divide the male electorate pretty evenly into rival parties. Since both cannot be right, a great deal of poor political thinking must be done by the present body of voters. Meantime, women are showing their ability to deal intelligently with all sorts of subjects in our educational inst.i.tutions, in business and in social life. Their judgments command respect in every other field; and it is hard to see why they could not apply their powers to political questions.

We must remember, too, that during these last years the field of political life has been rapidly broadening, through the awakening of social consciousness among the people. To concern one's self with politics now is to be interested in good market facilities, in rapid transit for cities, in recreation centers for children, in honest labelling of food products, in reformation of criminals, in preventing marriage among the unfit, and in a hundred similar matters. Here women will doubtless bring us a strong addition to our political efficiency.

They have long been considered the natural directors of social life and, in spite of being disfranchised, they mainly handle such matters at present. Now that these subjects are being brought into the political field, women should follow them there, as they have followed their industries from the homes into the factories. There is no reason to believe that their judgments will be less sound than those of their brothers and husbands.

Of course, women's knowledge of means and methods is much less than that of men in their own cla.s.s. Not only have they not partic.i.p.ated in political life, but they have been steadily warned away from that particular tree of knowledge. Yet the present generation of women has gone through the same preliminary education in schools with its brothers; and many women in high schools and colleges have made a more extended study of political inst.i.tutionalism. Still more important, more than a million women have been educating themselves for some years in this direction through voluntary a.s.sociations of some kind; while in most States they have had some political practice through limited suffrage, and in a few States full experience.

In selecting representatives to carry out their will, women have certain obvious defects of temperament and training. Having been brought up for generations to judge men only as providers of sustenance and fathers of children, they must at first find it difficult to consider candidates impersonally. Still, their general morality and their standards of right are probably superior to those of men, and they are more intolerant of faults, and they find it harder to compromise on matters of character than do men. One can hardly believe that 1,700 women could be found among the respectable, church-going, American-born residents in any county of America, who would sell their votes, year after year, as that number of men voters has recently confessed to doing in Adams County, Ohio. In fact, Judge Blair says: "There was one cla.s.s of the population which rebelled against the practice. It was the womanhood of Adams County, which had never become reconciled to the custom, and whose continual hostility has resulted finally, I hope, in its abolishment."[46]

[46] Seventeen Hundred Rural Vote-Sellers, by A.Z. Blair, _McClure's Magazine_, November, 1911.

Of the need of women for the training which partic.i.p.ation in political life gives there can be no doubt. Their lives have always been directly dependent upon other individuals, and they are p.r.o.ne to think in small details. Any training which extends the horizon of their interests and enables them to deal more largely with these details will fit them better for living in a world where industrial, business and social changes are so rapidly merging details in larger wholes. Experience in selecting candidates for public office would also do much to broaden women's judgments of life, and would help to break down the pettiness which sometimes characterizes their personal relations.

In the case of women, the community has a double reason for desiring that they shall develop political judgments and become acquainted with political methods. It is not only that they may share in the general intelligence and carry their fair part of the political burdens; but they have become the teachers, both in homes and schools, of the oncoming generation of male voters. We no longer live in small communities where children can see the simple processes of government operating around them, but in a complex civilization where it must all be interpreted to them, and mainly by women. Many boys who complete our elementary schools never work a day under the direction of a man. In the homes, busy fathers increasingly turn over the training of children to their wives. How can these women train safe citizens for the future if they do not understand the processes involved well enough to use them themselves?

Meantime the old arguments against woman suffrage are too outworn to need serious attention. In the past decades our civilization has become so complex, with so many groups carrying on differentiated functions, that even if we had not the millions of educated, property-owning, wage-earning, voting women that now fill our public life, the old arguments would still be obsolete. The issues of life are no longer primarily military, and but a fraction of men voters is capable of meeting modern requirements as policemen and soldiers; in time of crisis, all men would be called into the reserves; but in such periods women have always fought in the breach, from Carthage to Paris. Still, in modern warfare, those who guard the rear and furnish supplies are as necessary as those who go to the front.

It has also long been recognized that women who rear finest sons and daughters must sometimes turn away from the cradle to refresh their lives with the touch of other interests. It has also been demonstrated a thousand times over that women do not incite the lawless element to riot about the polls; but that, instead, their presence tends to remove the polling-place from the saloon and make it safer for men to go there on election-day. The plea that women would introduce a new element of s.e.x into politics, thereby confounding its real issues, is certainly not well grounded. s.e.x has always played a great part in politics, as it has in all the vital affairs of life. In the open compet.i.tions of education, business or politics, s.e.x ceases to be as significant as it is in the drawing-room.

Nor do thoughtful people imagine to-day that if women partic.i.p.ated in political life they would suddenly bring about a reign of universal peace and righteousness. It has taken many centuries for men to learn to play the game of politics indifferently well as they do. The first effect of woman's partic.i.p.ation would probably be to lower the efficiency of the electorate in some directions; but they are starting much farther along than men began, and they would learn more rapidly than men have learned.

It is often claimed that women do not want to vote; and, of course, there are many who do not care to a.s.sume such arduous and often difficult duties, if they can avoid it. The same holds true of many intelligent, but selfish men who desire the advantages of good government without its burdens. All such must be urged to do their duty to the state. Those who have vision and a large sense of duty can be trusted to do their fair part in caring for the public welfare. Those who wish to enjoy the benefits of peace and settled government, partic.i.p.ating in the advantages of education, engaging in business, and having their persons and property protected, without sharing the burdens of government, should be forced to play their part.

If a woman should board a street-car to-day and, when asked for her fare, should hide her face with womanly modesty and declare that she did not wish to be involved in such public matters, but preferred that the man swinging on the strap before her should pay, she would be informed that all who use the cars must pay for their maintenance. Women in America now have more than their share of education and leisure. If they do not wish to pay their fair proportion of service, they should withdraw from the high schools and colleges, from literature and music, from offices and factories, and not crowd into places where they are unwilling to play the game. The woman who leads the movement against equal suffrage in England has made a fortune in the open market as a writer, protected by the national copyrights; she maintains a house where she is protected in person and property by the city of London, the organization and administration of which calls for the constant attention of all intelligent citizens; and yet she urges women to take what they can get, but to refrain from doing their fair share of the city and national housekeeping, lest they lose their feminine charm.

Surely those who profit by government should give their share of service.

It is idle to claim that equal suffrage will make no change in women. It will certainly accentuate the changes already made by higher education and by a freer business life. Some loss there must inevitably be in any such far-reaching change. We lost something of chivalry and of the spirit of _n.o.blesse oblige_ in the transition from feudalism to democracy. In transferring causes of personal difference from the dueling field to the courts of law, we lost a degree of poetic feeling and tragic exaltation, of personal initiative and physical courage. So when women pa.s.sed from slavery to serfdom we lost something of male dominance and of female submission. We shall lose something in the present transition; but one must be content to lose Louis XIV and Versailles if one thereby finds modern France; one must be satisfied to lose an inst.i.tution which gave us the tragically pathetic death of Alexander Hamilton, if it increases human justice and saves fathers to their families. We must even be content to lose the languishing and weeping lady of chivalry, and the coquetting, crocheting and confiding maiden of the eighteenth century if we gain in return fair minded comrades in daily living, devoted partners in family life, and strong, intelligent mothers for the coming generations. The s.e.x instinct needs no fostering; it has led us to our best developments in civilization; and its work has only begun.

So far we have taken the popular position, and have discussed this matter as though it were still in the period of debate. The fact is, it long ago pa.s.sed from the field of theory; it is now a condition. In six of our States, women have now full partic.i.p.ation in managing public affairs. In Wyoming, since 1869; in Colorado, since 1893; in Idaho, since 1896; in Washington, beginning in 1910; and in California, since 1911, women have been sharing the vote with men. In twenty-nine States they have school suffrage, and in many places munic.i.p.al suffrage.[47] In newer parts of the world, like New Zealand and Australia, women have complete suffrage, while in old countries, like Norway, Sweden and Finland, they have essentially all the rights of men. In England, there are 1,141 women on Boards of Guardians and 615 on Educational Committees; and they are demanding full partic.i.p.ation in all political life. In Canada they have school and munic.i.p.al suffrage. It is no longer a time for argument; it is time for adjustment.

[47] BERTHA REMBAUGH, _The Political Status of Women in the United States_, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1912, gives complete information to date.

Meantime the results of woman's full partic.i.p.ation in political life, even where they have had the suffrage for some years, are difficult to determine, because of the fact already pointed out that political life in a modern democracy is so closely bound up with all the other life about it. It is quite as difficult to estimate these effects as it would be to estimate the effects of housekeeping or of woman's special costume. And yet some results are clear enough to have a large bearing on the extension of woman's suffrage in new localities.

In 1906, the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League engaged Miss Helen Sumner to make a careful study of the actual working of equal suffrage in the State of Colorado. Miss Sumner, aided by several a.s.sistants, spent nearly two years in the investigation. She gathered and carefully a.n.a.lyzed written answers to an extended set of questions from 1,200 representative men and women of Colorado, some opposing and some favoring equal suffrage; and she and her a.s.sistants interviewed many more. They also made a general study of industrial conditions and of legislation for the State as a whole, and a detailed study of election records and newspaper files for representative cities and counties. Her report is a masterpiece of patient research and scientific exposition.[48]

[48] HELEN L. SUMNER, _Equal Suffrage. The Results of an Investigation Made in Colorado for the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League of New York State._ New York: Harper & Bros., 1909.

Equal suffrage goes back to 1893 in Colorado; and while the influence of women has been in no way revolutionary, this report shows that, on the whole, political conditions have improved and woman's intelligence and her general public spirit have increased with no appreciable loss in distinctive feminine charm. One cannot help feeling as one reads this report that it is what a disinterested observer would have to say about the effect of woman's larger educational or industrial life since 1870.

In all democracies it is difficult to bring voters to the polls unless, as in some Swiss cantons, they are fined for absence. In Colorado, Miss Sumner shows that women cast about forty per cent. of the total vote in the earlier years of their enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, though they were in a minority of the total population.[49] In the work of the primaries they were in a much smaller minority, except when some special problem or candidate appealed to them. The more intelligent the community, the larger the woman's vote; and it is largest of all in the best residence districts of Denver, the capital city. The vote of American born women is larger than that of foreigners; and while the prost.i.tutes of Denver have been voted in the interests of the party in power, public opinion is steadily making this more difficult. In Idaho, all residents of the red light district have been disfranchised by statute; and practically they do not vote.

[49] Mr. LAWRENCE LEWIS, in the _Outlook_, for January 27, 1906, a.n.a.lyzes the election returns for parts of Pueblo City and vicinity, and he finds from 25 to 46 per cent. of the vote was cast by women, and the proportion of women increased with the intelligence and _morale_ of the precinct.

There is no appreciable tendency on the part of women to form a new party, nor to favor their own s.e.x. They are more inclined than men to scratch the ticket and, as ill.u.s.trated in the case of Judge Lindsey, they sometimes rally efficiently around an independent candidate, especially on a moral issue. On the whole, women vote with their husbands, just as sons vote with their fathers; but the strength of the family vote, as compared with the vote of unsettled people, is certainly desirable.

Since the beginning of equal suffrage, Colorado has fully held her own with other States in advanced legislation, especially in social and educational lines. Women have suffered no insult at the polls, and on the whole polling-places have improved; but how far this is due to women's presence no one can say. Women have occasionally held legislative and executive offices; but they have especially distinguished themselves as State and county superintendents of schools.