Alice Ranney Allen, wife of Thomas Allen; member of the Woman's Municipal League, in which she was the organizer of the Department of Streets and Alleys; member of the Woman's Education Association; reader of the Committee on Selection of Fiction for Libraries; Chairman of Boston Committee on the work of District Nursing in the mountains of North Carolina; a well-known speaker against woman suffrage.J. A. H.
Alice Ranney Allen, wife of Thomas Allen; member of the Woman's Municipal League, in which she was the organizer of the Department of Streets and Alleys; member of the Woman's Education Association; reader of the Committee on Selection of Fiction for Libraries; Chairman of Boston Committee on the work of District Nursing in the mountains of North Carolina; a well-known speaker against woman suffrage.
J. A. H.
To me the chief reason why political duties should not be imposed on women is the effect that this preliminary dip into politics, this struggle for votes-for-women, is having on the women themselves. It is surely not making them any more lovely, or pleasant in their lives. They grow bitter, aggressive, and antagonistic, liking the excitement of campaigning and finding their natural, proper duties "flat, stale, and unprofitable."
Speaking from platforms and being constantly in the public eye, does not improve women. We anti-suffragists have taken part in a political campaign tokeep ourselves out of politics for the rest of our lives, and to keep our daughters out of politics, but we know that in a proper division of duty we have better work to do along civic, sanitary, and philanthropic lines, and in our homes, than to be, as our Western sisters are, out campaigning for candidates, and engaged in struggles for political supremacy.
Anyone may gauge the bitterness of the recent campaign if he remembers the abuse heaped on the anti-suffragists by the President of the National Suffrage Association; and we must judge every movement by its leaders. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, at a hearing before the Senate Committee at Washington, said:
"We are not afraid of the body of women who are going up and down the land opposing suffrage. They are just enough in number so that by holding out their skirts they can make a screen for the men operating dens of vice and iniquity and prostitution to hide behind."
In an interview printed in the New York Sun, Dr. Shaw referred to the anti-suffrage leaders as "vultures looking for carrion."
As important a person as Dean Thomas, of Bryn Mawr College, in an appeal for funds for the National American Woman Suffrage Association in February, 1913, said:
"The ballot for women is the greatest of all the modern reforms. We urge those who are today contributing to other causes towithdraworcurtailtheircontributions until the ballot for woman is secured." This seems to us anti-suffragists extremely narrow, as we know that woman suffrage is not a reform, but an experiment in legislation only.
In a public resolution passed by the New England Women's Suffrage Association at its forty-seventh annual meeting, the anti-suffragists were referred to as using "pole-cat" tactics—why, we do not know. These are only a few of the many evidences of the bitterness of feeling in this political campaign.
The whole ideal of womanhood seems to be changing. The wife of an editor of our most important New England magazine said to me:
"What use is it for you to oppose the suffrage movement, when it is only the first step in this larger movement for the emancipation of women that is sweeping over the world?" And I said: "Then we will do our best to stop the first step," for I remembered the doctrines of the suffrage leaders preached from their platforms. Mrs. Ida Husted Harper has said: "There is not a single forward step of woman that has not been blocked by the words 'wifehood' and 'motherhood'."
Dean Thomas, in an address to women at Mount Holyoke College, is quoted in Mr. Martin's book,The Unrest of Women, as saying: "Women may have spent half a lifetime in fitting themselves for a scholar's work, and then may be asked to choose between it and marriage. No one can estimate the number of women who remain unmarried in revolt before such a horrible alternative."
Dr. Stanton Coit is reported as saying from a suffrage platform: "Wifehood has all the characteristics of slavery—work without wage; no specified hours; no right to change employers."
We find constantly the evil influence that this first step of suffrage is having on the young women of our day; and, to me, the gist of the whole matter seems summed up in a paragraph from a pamphlet written by Mr. Joseph Pyle:
"With Christianity there came into the world a new example and a new thought. To woman's whole nature appealed that life of self-sacrifice, of love, and of willing service that has created a new Heaven and a new earth. From the foot of the Cross there arose and went out into the world a womanhood that did not demand, or claim, or threaten, or arrogate; a womanhood renouncing, yielding, loving, and, therefore, conquering. For twenty centuries that has been the law of woman's life. It is sneered at and rejected today by the clamorous, but it has made of woman what we now find her. You see it in your mothers, your daughters, your wives. Do you wish to have that ideal changed? Woman has become to man not only a companion, but an inspiration. Out of the crucible of the centuries has come what we not only love but adore; before which, in certain hours, we bow with a reverence that links us unconsciously with the Divine. It is Christian civilization that is in the balance."
MRS. AUGUSTINE H. PARKER
Caroline M. Parker, wife of Augustin H. Parker; was educated in the Boston schools; is a member of the Dover Grange; Vice-President of the Unitarian Alliance of Dover; for five years President of the Vincent Club.J. A. H.
Caroline M. Parker, wife of Augustin H. Parker; was educated in the Boston schools; is a member of the Dover Grange; Vice-President of the Unitarian Alliance of Dover; for five years President of the Vincent Club.
J. A. H.
If the energy and vast sums of money squandered to promote suffrage in this country had been expended to bring about the reforms which the suffragists claim will be at once brought about by their votes, the reforms would all have been accomplished long ago. But do the suffragist leaders care a jot about the reforms? We hear of a Seattle woman who, now that she can vote in her own city, leaves home and husband to come East and agitate for suffrage. Little does she care that her husband sues for divorce on the ground of desertion. It is the excitement of agitation that she craves—the duties and responsibilities of the ballot are of no interest whatsoever to her.
A mayor in a city near Boston appointed a suffragist on the city planning board. Did she eagerly grasp thechance to plan the city so that it should be a joy and a blessing to its inhabitants for all time? Not at all. She said that the mayor did not consult her, that she had not even known there was a city planning board, and that she would not think of serving on it in any case.
Through the Civic Federation, the Municipal Leagues, and the Women's Clubs, an enormous amount of work for the good of all has been undertaken; but the suffrage members of these associations far from welcoming all public spirited workers, attempt to make the belief in woman suffrage the test of a worker's value, and introduce party politics and petty strife into these great, non-partisan bodies of women, thereby impairing their services to the Commonwealth to such an extent that the eyes of many women have been opened to what the state of affairs would be if all women were in politics. It is not too much to say that many women, hitherto indifferent on the suffrage question, have been aroused by such interested and partisan methods into joining the anti-suffrage cause.
There is more work waiting to be done than there are workers to do it. Ministers are constantly asking from the pulpit for workers. There are more offices open to women now than there are women to fill them, but they are the offices that mean hard work and no notoriety, and these are not what most of the feminist-suffrage leaders are looking for. These feminists tell you constantly how badly the men manage the country; the idea being how much better the women wouldgovern it. But would they? The anti-suffragists think that, on the whole, the men are doing well, and that a government ought to be in the hands of those who have the power to enforce the laws they make. To have responsibility without power is to be in a very uncomfortable and ignominious position. To the observer it seems that the professional suffrage agitator isnotout for service or the good of her town, state, and country, but for her own good. This is so obvious that her self-assertion is not convincing. It is through service and not by self-assertion that true women contribute their best work to their country.
Because they are unconvinced by the feminist's protestations, few women care to be represented by other women. Approximately half the stock of the Pennsylvania Railroad is owned by women. They could elect several women directors if they wished to do so, but the board is composed entirely of men. Women do not as a rule, employ other women to take care of their business affairs.
We anti-suffragists ask to be left free from the useless turmoil of partisan politics so that we may employ what time and strength we have in the service of those who need them most. We do not care to waste them in the petty personal struggles of the political arena—we can well afford to let the men fight the battles and crowd the polling booths because we in our own places and to the full extent of our power, have an equally valuable contribution to make to the welfare of the nation.
The help of all good women is now at the service of the men who have the nations' welfare at heart, nor are they hampered by the interference of the less good as they must be when the vote of the best might be nullified by the vote of the worst.
We beg the men not to be deceived by the noise and clatter of a few paid professional agitators, supported by misguided enthusiasts whose hearts are larger than their heads; and we ask the men to help us to uphold the womanhood of woman with all its responsibilities, its ideals, and its spiritual endowment.
ELIZABETH JACKSON
Elizabeth Jackson graduated from the Bridgewater High School in 1908, from the Bridgewater State Normal School in 1910, from Radcliffe College A. B. (Summa cum laude) 1913, A. M. 1914; is a candidate for the degree of Ph. D.; treasurer of Radcliffe Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa 1914-16; President of the Radcliffe Graduates' Club, 1915-16.J. A. H.
Elizabeth Jackson graduated from the Bridgewater High School in 1908, from the Bridgewater State Normal School in 1910, from Radcliffe College A. B. (Summa cum laude) 1913, A. M. 1914; is a candidate for the degree of Ph. D.; treasurer of Radcliffe Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa 1914-16; President of the Radcliffe Graduates' Club, 1915-16.
J. A. H.
An essential weakness in the suffrage argument is the failure to distinguish between government and culture, the functions and the instruments of each. Government is an organization for compelling one portion of the community to do the will of another portion. In a democracy, the minority is forced to obey the majority. The fundamental idea is compulsion, a thing not lovely in theory and frequently unlovely in practice. The golden haze that surrounds the dream of ideal democracy is dissipated by contact with any given city ward. The machinery of government is a matter of stress and strain; of selfishness, cruelty, and hate, at the worst; at best, of conflicting interest,mutual incomprehension, and maddening friction. When we refer to good government, we may mean either of two things. We may perhaps describe a community where the majority is notably successful in imposing its will on the minority so that laws are strictly enforced and scrupulously obeyed. In my experience, this is not the sense in which the suffragist uses the phrase. Woman suffrage is not advertised as a means of producing a more tractable minority. On the contrary, as Mr. Taft has pointed out, the suffrage movement is a conspicuous instance of one great menace of the age, the unwillingness of minorities to abide by the best judgment of the state as a whole. Again, the campaign orator does not assure the Maine audience that under equal suffrage statewide prohibition, instituted by male voters, will become a fact instead of a joke; no speaker in our home town has informed us that woman's vote will wipe out the saloons that defy the "no" of the March meeting. Rather, as I understand it, the "good government" which the suffragist promises to inaugurate consists of improved legislation along certain specific lines. That is to say, she promises not that the laws will be better enforced, but that they will be different. A community's predilection for good laws or bad, however, depends not on government but on civilization. Public opinion is moulded by innumerable forces, of which the home, the church, the newspaper, and the public school are merely illustrations. In most if not all of these, women already play a conspicuous part; through them theywield an incalculable power. The confusion, unconscious or otherwise, of these forces of culture and the forces of government, is one of the prime fallacies of the suffrage position.
To make the true state of the case more clear, take a single institution, the public school, with its various bearings on the question of woman suffrage. Pass over the school committee vote which only about two per cent of Massachusetts women regularly use, and consider merely the power which the very nature of our school system puts in women's hands. All the children in our primary grades, and all but an infinitesimal fraction of those in the grammar grades, are taught by women. The preponderance of woman teachers is nearly as great in the high schools where, except in a few cities, men are employed for administration and discipline and only secondarily for instruction. That is to say, women and not men are shaping the minds of future voters during the formative and decisive years. From women rather than men, our children learn the elements of good citizenship,—respect for public property, obedience to law, and the power of independent thought.
The degree to which the lesson is learned, depends upon two things; namely, the quality of the teacher and the extent of her influence. Accordingly, two questions arise. Would woman suffrage give us better teachers? Would it increase the power which they already hold? One may get some light on the first point by studying the placing of normal school graduats. The connection between the schools and politics is already lamentably close. Many districts, with administrations predominantly of one party or religious sect choose first teachers of that sect, good or bad, and sisters and daughters of voters of that party; then enough women to complete the necessary number. Suppose that the teacher, instead of being the daughter of the voter, holds the vote herself. The evil would become universal. There is no indication that a woman's salary and position under such circumstances be more directly conditioned upon her abilities as a teacher. The chances are that woman suffrage would tend to make the school more truly the servant of the party in power than of the general good. Moreover, a vote can be used as a commodity of exchange; and the woman-voter who amid the fluctuations of city politics would protect her position by a shrewd use of her ballot would hardly be the best school mistress of American youth.
The effect of suffrage upon the teacher's influence in the schoolroom would not be beneficial. Her treatment of some subjects, like grammar, nature study, and raffia work, would of course remain unchanged. It has, however, been said by suffragists that her discussion of civic problems would be more intelligent. Would her judgments be cooler because she is in the thick of the fight, and her statements more convincing because she is in direct conflict with the fathers and mothers of half her class? It is of the utmost importance that the child shall look upon the teacher as impartial. He may consider her in some respects hisnatural enemy, but he must none the less regard her as one of the immutable things of the universe. For this reason public commotions over school affairs, however well intentioned, injure the institutions they design to benefit. Anything which tends to increase the possibility of opposition between the teacher and the child's family, and makes the child's attitude partisan is a menace. Suffrage in this field as in so many others, offers no compensation for the increased friction and unrest.
DOROTHY GODFREY WAYMAN.
Dorothy Godfrey Wayman, wife of C. S. Wayman; was educated at Bryn Mawr and at the School for Social Workers in Boston; has done organized charity and settlement work in Fitchburg and Boston; was for one year state organizer of the Massachusetts Womans' Anti-Suffrage Association; is a member of Massachusetts Civic League.J. A. H.
Dorothy Godfrey Wayman, wife of C. S. Wayman; was educated at Bryn Mawr and at the School for Social Workers in Boston; has done organized charity and settlement work in Fitchburg and Boston; was for one year state organizer of the Massachusetts Womans' Anti-Suffrage Association; is a member of Massachusetts Civic League.
J. A. H.
Among people who have what has been called "the sheep type of mentality," it is frequently asserted that since Miss Jane Addams, Miss Julia Lathrop, Dr. Katherine Davis, and other "servants of humanity" are suffragists, it follows that all women should become suffragists. Such people do not, however, carry this line of thought to its logical conclusion; for even they do not consider themselves bound to become Progressives because that is Miss Addams's political party, nor to become members of her church.
Thisargumentum ad hominemhas great weight in the suffrage propaganda, and it is high time that it should be considered less superficially. Having beena social worker myself in a large city, I have been much interested in the history and career of such workers, and find therein one of the most positive anti-suffrage arguments.
It is a striking fact that the very women whom suffragists use as personal exhibits accomplished the social work that won them fame, under male suffrage. Conversely, in the long list of women's names honored for their social service, not one of national reputation earned that reputation in a woman suffrage state.
The National Institute of Social Science awards a gold medal for distinction in social service. Men like William H. Taft and Charles W. Eliot have been thus decorated. Miss Jane Addams, Miss Lillian D. Wald of the Henry Street Nurses' Settlement in New York, Miss Mabel Boardman of the National Red Cross, and Miss Anne Morgan of New York are the women who have been presented with this medal in past years.
On February 25, 1915, the National Institute of Social Sciences conferred this medal for distinction in social service upon Miss Louisa Schuyler of New York City. In a long life of useful citizenship, though unblessed by the ballot, Miss Schuyler has contrived to inaugurate several undertakings and lived to see them grow, till from radical innovations, they have become the groundwork of much of our modern charity. Miss Schuyler discovered the shocking conditions prevailing in almshouses fifty years ago, and organized a series of volunteer visiting committees which eventuallybecame the N. Y. State Charities' Aid Association, with headquarters in New York City. Miss Schuyler was the organizing genius of the Bellevue Visiting Committee, which from visiting the poorhouses of Westchester County, progressed to the establishment of the first training school for nurses in this country. Trained nurses have come to be such a necessity today, that I imagine few suffragists realize that they are indebted to one woman's initiative for the ministrations of skilled hands that so often may mean the difference between life and death. Today there are 1100 training schools for nurses, whose existence can be traced to the ideas of a woman living and working in a male suffrage state. Another feat, more political in its aspects, accomplished by Miss Schuyler was the inauguration of the system now in force of State care for the insane, and of the removal of insane persons and children from the physically and morally degrading atmosphere of the almshouse where they were formerly cared for. In 1908, Miss Schuyler grappled with another of our great modern problems and organized the first committee in this country, composed of physicians and laymen, for the prevention of blindness. What a long way behind the world would be today if Miss Schuyler had done as Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, and devoted her great organizing genius to suffrage propaganda!
Miss Jane Addams' achievements in Chicago at Hull House, are too widely known to require any enumeration, but I would emphasize the fact that her workwas done while Illinois was still a male suffrage state. InTwenty Years at Hull House, which was published in 1910, three years before women attained partial enfranchisement in Illinois, Miss Addams gives her estimate of the field of a settlement in social work for a community: "It seems impossible to set any bounds to the moral capabilities which might unfold under ideal civic and educational conditions. But, in order to obtain these conditions, the Settlement recognizes the need of cooperation, both with the radical and the conservative, and from the very nature of the case, the Settlement cannot limit its friends to any one political party or economic school." Since these words were written, Miss Addams has allied herself definitely with a political party, at great loss of personal prestige, but that does not alter the truth of her written opinion. The end of every public spirited woman is identical with that of the Settlement, "to obtain ideal civic and educational conditions" for her community; and "the very nature of the case," as Miss Addams says, demands that they be not obliged to limit their friends to any one political party, but remain free from political affiliations in order that their disinterestedness may not be cavilled at.
Miss Lillian D. Wald's work as a district nurse at the Henry Street tenement she chose to occupy on graduating from her training course as a nurse showed the way to the efficient Visiting Nurses' Associations that are being organized today all over the country, and also to the public recognition of the value of instruction in health which is finding expression in the staffs of nurses maintained in many cities by the Board of Health and School Departments whose services are free to the people. This humanitarian work manifestly had no connection with the ballot.
Miss Kate Barnard, the "Girl Commissioner of Charities" in Oklahoma, is a striking figure of our day. The neighboring state of Kansas is a woman suffrage state, yet Miss Barnard seems to prefer residence in the male suffrage state of Oklahoma and has done great things there. When Oklahoma was admitted to statehood, it was Miss Barnard who wrote the child labor, prison reform, and other humanitarian measures into the State constitution; and she was made State Commissioner of Charities, which position she holds today. Miss Barnard, too, recognizes the power for evil of partisan politics. She is at present waging a bitter fight for the property rights of the Indian wards of her state, and writing in theSurvey, says: "I want the people of the U.S. to stand by me until the hand ofpartisan politicsis wrested from the control of Indian affairs in Oklahoma and in the nation."
In 1912, when the Children's Bureau was established at Washington, we might have expected that one of the women constituents of the petticoated West would be placed at its head. Instead, President Taft appointed Miss Julia C. Lathrop, a resident of Hull House in Chicago, and a former member of the Illinois State Board of Charities, where she was credited with the enlargement of the Illinois State charitable institutionsand their thorough reorganization, though, of course, obliged to work without the ballot. Time has proved the wisdom of Mr. Taft's appointment and also borne witness to the peculiar advantage enjoyed by women in politics, provided they are not shackled with the ballot.
One of the thought-inspiring books of 1914 was also a splendid argument for the anti-suffragists. It wasBeauty for Ashes, Mrs. Albion Fellowes Bacon's account of the securing of the Indiana Model Housing Act, which was accomplished through the initiative and leadership of this one woman, mother, and home-maker, with no political prestige, with no previous reputation built by long publicity, without the all-powerful ballot.
Mrs. Bacon was supported by the Federated Woman's Clubs of her State, and enlisted the aid of earnest men and women citizens throughout the State. Her bill was bitterly contested by the worst class of landlords, but after three sessions of the Legislature, at which Mrs. Bacon was obliged to appear in person and explain her bill, it was passed. She says of that day: "The women, the homes of Indiana, were honored that day by the men of the Legislature, and we had won a law for the 101 cities of our State. No wonder the women applauded as some of the men who gave their reasons, added 'and because the women wanted it'." Her conclusion is: "Most strongly have I desired to show how much can be done by women's organizations by simply demanding right legislation, and toshow their equally important part of helping to enforce legislation after they get it."
Speaking of her own work, she says: "Having no hand in the management of political affairs, I may leave to the various political parties the care of reaping the thorns in each other's fields. It has been my pleasand task to gather only the grapes.... I have encountered more figs than thistles, and fewer thistles than what seems to be a sort of cacti, that, I firmly believe, might be Burbankized for human good. Would that they might be, and that we might include in the conservation of vital resources those great powers for good that are now so wasted by constant warring for political supremacy."
That last sentence forms a scathing indictment of the shortsightedness of suffrage policy. It is pitiful to think of the energy and ability which today is diverted from channels of human helpfulness to this sensational struggle for a mistaken cause. It is not to be thought of that we can permit woman's energy to be permanently dissipated in political warfare or handicapped by party vicissitudes.
These examples of achievements by women of our own day, in our own country, should convince the clear thinker that woman's contribution to community organization and progress is best accomplished as a non-partisan. The stories of Miss Schuyler and Mrs. Bacon prove that whenever a woman has a righteous cause or a sane ideal, she will be successful in its realization without the ballot. The three women cited abovewhose work most depended on legislation for its accomplishment, Miss Addams, Miss Barnard and Mrs. Bacon, have all in their penned words lauded the power of non-partisanship.
And, borrowing from Miss Barnard, the anti-suffragist may say to the woman who seeks to enfranchise her sister, thus destroying the power of that great, womanly contribution towards the solving of the vexed questions of the day made by the disinterested, because disfranchised citizenness: "Stand by me till the hand of partisan politics is wrested from the control of society's charities, till prisons, almshouses, children's homes, public hospitals, are administered for the public good rather than private profit; till decent housing, progressive education, adequate recreation, pure food, living wages have been made a matter of public, rather than political, concern." Let us not dissipate our energies in internecine warfare, nor yet seek to perpetuate the drawbacks of our partisan system of government by enfranchising the women who now stand outside politics.
MARGARET C. ROBINSON
Margaret Casson Robinson, wife of Professor Benjamin L. Robinson of Harvard University; President of the Public Interests League of Massachusetts; President of the Jaffrey Village Improvement Society; Vice-President of the Cambridge Hospital League; Vice-President of the Friends of Poland; member of the Executive Board of the Cambridge Anti-Tuberculosis Association; Editor of the "Anti-Suffrage Notes," and a frequent contributor to the press.J. A. H.
Margaret Casson Robinson, wife of Professor Benjamin L. Robinson of Harvard University; President of the Public Interests League of Massachusetts; President of the Jaffrey Village Improvement Society; Vice-President of the Cambridge Hospital League; Vice-President of the Friends of Poland; member of the Executive Board of the Cambridge Anti-Tuberculosis Association; Editor of the "Anti-Suffrage Notes," and a frequent contributor to the press.
J. A. H.
The truth of our anti-suffrage doctrine that woman suffrage will destroy the present non-partisan power of women and give us nothing worth having in its place is constantly confirmed by the current happenings in suffrage states. We have now, in the eastern and middle states, a body of non-political women workers of incomparable value, and one is amazed at the wrong-headedness which would deprive society of their influence. Under present conditions the intelligent woman interested in public affairs brings the full force of her influence to bear upon legislation; her influence isa moral influence—it is direct and can be used with men of all political parties. The possession of this unprejudiced, unrestricted power is something which anti-suffragists value so highly that the threat of the suffragists to destroy it is a very serious grievance.
It is surprising that social workers and club women in larger numbers are not awake to this danger; but, as has well been said, deciding wisely on this question is not a matter of intelligence but of information; and it is easier to accept suffrage theories and themisinformation which suffrage orators generously supply as to how suffragewillwork than to study the happenings in suffrage states and learn for oneself how itdoeswork.
Social workers and club women know their present strength and how many good laws they have helped to put on the statute books. What they seemingly do not realize is how quickly this power will be gone when they divide into political parties. Many of them are apparently too ignorant of politics to understand thatas votersit is only those men for whom they will vote that they can influence.
A despatch from Topeka, Kansas, describing the recent campaign in that state says that three years ago the Kansas Federation of Women's Clubs lined up solidly for suffrage, and won it—and that they have not been lined up solidly for anything since! Instead of throwing their influence as a unit for good legislation, as women's clubs are wont to do in male suffrage states, these women are divided into Republicans,Democrats, Progressives, and Socialists, and the friction among them is greater than ever before.
At the time Jane Addams joined the Progressive party it was very striking that such ardent suffragists as Ida Husted Harper and Edward Devine, editor of "The Survey," should have protested publicly in the strongest terms against her action. They realized perfectly that political partisanship narrows a woman's sphere of influence, and that Miss Addams as a member of the Progressive party could exercise much less influence upon Democrats and Republicans. She had before been able to reach men of all parties, but now her field had suddenly become immensely restricted in its scope. And while Mrs. Harper and Mr. Devine were perfectly willing, even eager, that other women should enter politics and ally themselves with political parties, Miss Addams was too valuable to the causes they had at heart, namely, suffrage and social service, for them to view with equanimity such a narrowing of her field of influence.
In an article on the "Legislative Influence of Unenfranchised Women," by Mary R. Beard, which appeared in the "Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science," for November, 1914, Mrs. Beard, although an ardent suffragist, admits that women without the vote have been a strong influence toward good legislation. She says:
"National as well as state legislation has been affected by women, if the testimony of men like Harvey W. Wiley is accepted. In his campaign for pure foodlaws, he stated repeatedly that his strongest support came from women's organizations. That support was not passive and moral, merely expressed to him privately, but these women inundated congress with letters, telegrams, petitions, pleading for the passage of the laws in question. These communications were presented to congress by their recipients who often urged as their reason for supporting pure food laws the appeals of women whose interests in food should not be ignored.
"The Consumers' League of New York helped the national food committee to defeat a mischievous amendment to the Gould bill, which requires that all package goods should be labelled as to the amount of their contents.
"Mrs. Albion Fellowes Bacon, of Indiana, practically single-handed, secured the first tenement house laws of value for Evansville and Indianapolis. She did this before the National Housing Association, of which she is now a director, was formed. The recent improvements in the Indiana housing legislation are due apparently to her continued leadership and to the public opinion which she has helped to create. In her case it was personal initiative and moral persuasion.
"Another example of personal influence on legislation exerted by women is that of Frances Perkins, of New York, in her fight for the fifty-hour bill for the women workers of her state. Unlike Mrs. Bacon, Miss Perkins represented a society—the Consumers' League—which asked for this measure, and she was supportedin her demand by the Women's Trade Union League and other organizations. The measure would have been defeated, as is widely known and acknowledged in New York, had it not been for the personal sagacity and watchfulness of Miss Perkins.
"The social service committee of the 'American Club Woman' states that in the first year of its existence it has done important and effective work. It was largely responsible for the passage of an ordinance by city councils regulating dance halls.
"Similar activities, both positive and negative, can be discovered in the records of practically every woman's association not organized for purely literary purposes."
We all know that this is true. Mrs. Beard also says:
"The woman's influence lies not in physical force, but in the occasional subservience of the mind of man to the actual presence of a moral force."
The influence of this moral force is so strong and has come to be so well recognized that certain types of politicians and commercial interests rebel against it. They wish to destroy it, and as the best means to that end they advocate—woman suffrage! That is not at all in line with what one is told at suffrage meetings. We are told that women need the ballot in order that they may improve the conditions in the home, that they may help the working girl, and put through good legislation. But the rank and file of suffragists are being deceived in these matters, for suffrage works,and will work directly the other way. The New York World has committed a great indiscretion and has let this cat out of the bag. The World recently came out for suffrage and gave its reasons. One of them is that a few women, representing perhaps ten per cent of the sex, have under present conditions too much influence. These women, the World says, "have maintained at times a reign of terror over legislative bodies, in consequence of which half the country is now bedeviled by some form or other of harem government, and legislators are forever making ridiculous concessions to women agitators." These "women agitators" are, of course, the club women, social workers, and others interested in social welfare. In order to make it unnecessary for legislators to make "ridiculous concessions" to this type of woman, the World advocates—what? Giving the vote to all women! It has certainly hit upon the most effective expedient, and it is because the vote will do exactly what the World claims for it, that anti-suffragists are so opposed to it. The World says that most of the reasons urged in favor of suffrage are fantastic and unreal, that women are not purer and more noble than men, and that they are not so wise as men in general affairs. It admits that they will not purify politics—indeed, that they will confuse and disorganize government, without reforming it; but nevertheless it believes in woman suffrage because it will destroy the power of the ten per cent of women whose influence is now so strong!
The question for intelligent women to decide iswhether or not theywantthis influence destroyed. If they wish to give up the moral influence which a body of women, educated, public-spirited, non-partisan, can wield—an influence so strong that legislators feel obliged to make what the World calls "ridiculous concessions" to it—if in its stead they wish to depend on political influence gained through the ballot, which can be applied only to one party, which can be entirely offset by the votes of women who are ignorant, boss-controlled, and whose votes are purchasable—if they prefer that, they will get their wish if woman suffrage wins. That is exactly how it is working out in the suffrage states. In Wyoming the politicians were clever enough to foresee this. Woman suffrage was granted by one of the most corrupt legislatures Wyoming ever had. These men knew that at that time good women were few in that sparsely settled State, and they knew they could "manage the others."
Nevada is offering us a most perfect example of the good woman's loss of influence by entering politics. The easy divorce laws of that state, in force until three years ago, were a national scandal. This was realized by certain women of the state, who in consequence brought their moral influence to bear upon the legislature for the repeal of these laws. Their efforts were successful and the laws were repealed. Woman suffrage was granted in Nevada last fall, and one of the very first acts of the legislature was to re-enact the easy divorce laws! These women again protested, but with no success. They were now voters, and the legislature knew perfectly well that plenty of women's votes could be secured to offset those of the protesting women. The moral influence of this minority of Nevada women who cared for social betterment was gone since the vote had been given to all women.
In her admirable anti-suffrage address before the Maine legislature at the recent hearing on suffrage, Mrs. J. F. A. Merrill said:
"What do men do when they want to bring about a reform?
"They do as the men of Portland did a short time ago, when a number of citizens became convinced that the moral conditions in Portland were not what they should be. And what did they do? Did they vote about it? Did they form party organizations? No; they resorted as nearly as they could, to what is known as 'women's methods,' and formed a non-partisan citizen's committee, just as detached as possible from politics. And why did they resort to women's methods? Simply because they had all had the vote since coming of age, and they all knew how useless it is as a means of accomplishing reform work.
"Gentlemen, in every community there are a handful of women who can be relied upon to carry on church and philanthropic and reform work; but we all know that the vast majority are indifferent, and that they neither help nor hinder. And then there is a third class, of women—the wrongminded. They do not hinder reform work now, because they cannot.
"But, gentlemen, when you give the ballot to allwomen your handful of earnest women in each community, who are willing to give their time and thought to reform work, will have only their handful of ballots to cast for reform measures; your great mass of indifferent women will be indifferent still, and will omit to cast their ballots, and your very considerable number of wrongminded women will have had a weapon put into their hands which they will not omit to use against your reform measures, because it is of importance to them to see to it that their way of life is not interfered with.
"So for the sake of reform which women have done in the past, and ought to be able to do in the future, we beg of you not to tie their hands and hamper them by giving suffrage to women!"
That is the matter in a nutshell—and proofs of the correctness of this statement are constantly multiplying. In an attempt to prove that woman suffrage will not lead women to neglect their homes, a writer signing herself "Annie Laurie" says in the San Francisco Examiner:
"I've been in Denver when a good man was being maligned and almost robbed by political enemies, and he needed the vote of every good woman in town to keep the good work he had done from being stultified. And do you think you could get a single woman out to vote for that man if she wanted to go to a 'tea' or to stay at home and knit socks for the new baby? You could not."
This is just what anti-suffragists maintain—thatthe great body of home-making women will not vote.
The Woman Citizen, a suffrage publication of California, in its July issue, bears testimony on this question as follows:
"There are today many women in California and other States of the union who, being enfranchised, are too indifferent to vote. We are loath to believe that these women—thousands of them in the United States—are aware of the wrong they are doing. We do not think they know they are shirking a fundamental duty of citizenship. Too many ballots are cast in the cause of dishonesty and corruption. Honest and law-abiding citizens must exert their united strength at the polls to uphold honesty and good government. There are too many women today who are priviliged to vote, yet refrain from doing so either because they do not believe a woman should go to the polls, or because for some inexcusable reason they have neglected to register. They regard their franchise as an invitation to a bridge party, something they can accept or reject as their fancy dictates."
There is no lack of testimony that the wrongminded women do vote. On November 4, the day after election, the San Francisco Examiner said: "McDonough Brothers had several automobiles busy all day long hauling Barbary coast dance hall girls and the inmates of houses on Commercial street to the different booths, and always the women were supplied with marked sample ballots."
They were outvoting the women reformers!
What is the result? What is happening to moral conditions in San Francisco since women vote? The American Social Hygiene Association pointed out last spring that there had been anincreasein the number of questionable dance halls, and the "Survey" of April 10 stated that danger signals were being flashed all over the country to young people bound for the exposition, as there was much unemployment, and the city's moral condition gave cause for anxiety.
A later report, by Bascom Johnson, counsel of the Social Hygiene Association, who was sent to San Francisco for further investigation, appears in full in the September issue of "Social Hygiene." It is far more serious than previous reports. Within the exposition are several concessions, maintained despite protests specifically against them, which are deplorably vicious. In the city itself conditions are appalling, the policemen being there apparently to prevent anything from interfering with the orderly and profitable traffic in vice.
Summing up his report, Mr. Johnston says, "in spite of announcements of officials to the contrary, San Francisco remains one of the few large cities of this country where prostitution is frankly and openly tolerated. The natural and inevitable result has been that San Francisco has become the Mecca of the underworld, and that for every such addition to her population the problem is rendered that much more difficult."
These are the conditions in a city where womenvote! Mr. Johnson says that the Y. W. C. A., the W. C. T. U. and other organizations of the kind have tried to improve these conditions, but have failed, as they received "little or no support from the city officials." This fact is directly in opposition to the suffrage theory that women must have the vote in order that city and state officials shall pay heed to their wishes. If California were still under male suffrage—if the thousands of dissolute women in San Francisco who will vote as the party in power dictates did not have the vote—the moral influence of the ladies of the Y. W. C. A. and the W. C. T. U. would be much more likely to be a factor in the situation. If these ladies vote at all, their vote is divided between the Democrats, Republicans, Progressives, and Socialists, and is therefore of much less importance than the big vote which can be controlled. Dr. Helen Sumner, sent by the suffragists to study conditions in Denver several years ago, states that "the vote of these women to whom the police protection is essential is regarded as one of the perquisites of the party in power."
With these facts in mind it is very clear that the statement constantly made by suffragists that after women are enfranchised they need not vote if they do not want to, is shallow and unprincipled, and the woman who makes it proves herself an unsafe person to be enfranchised. The stay-at-home vote is a great and serious menace.
Voting differs from the higher education and other so-called "woman's rights." They are privileges only.Whether a girl goes to college or does not go to college is a personal matter, and her decision works no danger to other girls or to the community. The college is there, and she can go or not, as her taste and circumstances decide. But voting is a totally different matter. Enfranchisement confers a privilege and an obligation, the obligation being inseparable from the privilege. Since the shirking of this obligation means a serious menace to the community, the unwillingness of a large majority of women to accept the obligation is a factor of the utmost importance in the situation.
The San Francisco Chronicle says: "Results show that in this state women refuse to accept the obligation which at their request, or upon their apparent acquiescence, has been imposed upon them, or to discharge the resulting duties. The question, then, for the people of other states to decide is the light of experience of the western States is whether it is in the public interest to impose on women imperative duties which the great majority of them refuse to discharge after they have been imposed upon them."
Another danger connected with woman suffrage is this—the character of the women chosen for the positions of responsibility will change.
The Woman's Journal of March 20, 1915, speaking of Mayor Harrison, of Chicago, says: "If he had occasion to appoint a welfare worker for women and children, he did not appoint a woman who had experience for the work and could do it well, but picked out a woman who would be a cog in his political machine."Naturally! It is when women are outside politics that they are appointed on their merits. When they have the vote those are naturally chosen who are cogs in the political machine.
The suffragists never tire of quoting Julia Lathrop. As she holds an important position as head of the Federal Children's Bureau, they consider her views on suffrage, since her views coincide with theirs, as most valuable and important. Whatisimportant is the fact that if Miss Lathrop were allied with a political party she would not be holding the position which is supposed to give her views such weight. It was only because she was a woman and a non-partisan that she retained her position at the change of administration, when the Republicans went out and the Democrats came in. Everymanat the head of a similar bureau lost his job!
Miss Jane Addams, in a suffrage speech in Boston, claimed that by means of the ballot women in Chicago have accomplished several important reforms. These were:
1. Covered markets had been secured where food might be kept clean.
2. A court for boys of 17 and under 25 had been established.
3. Public wash-houses have been established.
4. The garbage dumps have been abolished.
The record of accomplishments of Chicago women voters as presented by Miss Addams is not impressive,for the reforms she cites have been accomplished in other cities without votes for women.
What the women accomplished in Chicagobeforethey got the vote makes a much more impressive showing. It is to them, says the Chicago Tribune, that Chicago owes the kindergarten in the public school, the juvenile court and detention home, the small park and playground movement, the vacation school, the school extension, the establishment of a forestry department of the city government, the city welfare exhibit, the development of the Saturday half-holiday, the establishment of public comfort stations, the work of the Legal Aid Society, and the reformation of the Illinois Industrial School. This is a long and brilliant list of women's achievements, not to be matched by the voting women of any state. Chicago women were working together when these things were accomplished—now they are fighting each other in rival political parties.
Henry M. Hyde, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, which has long supported the woman suffrage movement, wrote over his own signature his impressions of last spring's election in Chicago, and the part women played in it. He says:
"The first mayoralty campaign in which women voters participated failed to develop the refining and elevating influence which the sex was expected to exert. When one sees a woman of dignified presence and cultivated appearance greeted with torrents of hisses and insults from the frenzied lips of both menand women; when one sees her finally driven from the platform with no chance of speaking a word, one is tempted to retire to some quiet spot for a moment and meditate on what it all means.
"When one watches a venerable lady trying to quell the tumult by waving a flag and almost dancing to the same rhythm, while 1,200 shrieking men and women order her to 'sit down and chase herself,' one remembers his own grandmother, and makes a feeble effort to blush. One is almost tempted to pick that discarded and discredited old relic once known as masculine chivalry out of the scrap heap, and see how many people would recognize it."
These references are to a woman's political mass meeting, which was described in a Chicago despatch to the Boston Herald as follows:
"A demonstration approaching a riot marked the women's political meeting here today, and was ended only when the managers of the theatre where the meeting was held dropped the steel curtain and a spectator sent in a riot call for the police."
Does this sort of thing tend to increase woman's influence in uplifting and benefiting her community?
A suffrage writer said recently that the son who grows up to find his mother a voter will have a broadened respect for womanhood. With these scenes in Chicago in mind, do you think he will? Suppose she has just voted for Bath-House John, the notorious candidate who got a majority of the women's votes in his ward, or in favor of saloons, as thousands of womenhave done—will he have added respect for her? This same writer says: "It might be a new and stimulating experience for a man to have to explain to his wife just why he was voting on the side of a corrupt boss, in favor of the liquor traffic, or against the suppression of child labor." But if she had just done those things herself—and in Chicago the women voted just as the men did—why should the experience be a stimulating one?
Jane Addams, while on her foreign mission of "Peace—with suffrage" said in London, on May 12, 1915:
"I am a strong supporter of woman suffrage, and, although I hope to see the women of England enfranchised, I see around me endless opportunities for social work which could be usefully performed while the vote is being won."
The interesting point about this is that English women have for many years had the vote on all matters pertaining to housing, care of the poor, sanitation, education, liquor regulations, police, care of the insane, care of children, etc. Probably Miss Addams does not know this. They have failed completely to do with the vote what even Miss Addams, confirmed and prejudiced suffragist that she is, admits that they could do perfectly well without the vote. This is certainly a striking admission on her part.
Why have they failed so lamentably? Mrs. Pethick Lawrence tells us. She says:
"I never saw so many women working for social betterment as I have seen in the American cities I havevisited.In England women have turned their attention to politics and have accomplished nothing like so much in civic reform."
Anti-suffragists ask women not to turn their attention to politics and neglect civic reform; not to make this appalling mistake, which will set back the social progress of our cities for many years; not to make powerless, through woman suffrage, as the New York World wants to do, the women who are now working for social betterment.
The suffragists apparently do not care what evils follow, provided they get their way.
The Rev. Anna Shaw, president of the National Suffrage Association, says:
"I believe in woman suffrage whether all women vote or no women vote; whether all women vote right or all women vote wrong; whether all women will love their husbands after they vote or forsake them; whether they will neglect their children or never have any children."
In introducing this astounding statement, Dr. Shaw declared: "I believe I speak for the thousands of women belonging to the national association."
Perhaps she does. At least no one of them has been heard to deny it; but fortunately she does not speak for the 24,000,000 women of voting age in the United States who are not members of the National Suffrage association. Many of these do care for public welfare, for social well-being, and for human happiness, all of which would be destroyed if all women voted wrong,if they deserted their husbands, and neglected their children. Anti-suffragists protest against having political power put into the hands of women with no higher ideals than those of Dr. Shaw and her followers. They neither wish to be ruled by such women nor do they wish to have to wage an eternal fight not to be ruled by them, and one thing or the other will be necessary if the ballot is forced upon women. In California the men are begging the home-making type of women to come out and fight the political women, whom they already recognize as a danger and a nuisance.
Men who believe in fair play will refuse to force political life upon all the women of their states because a small fraction think they want it. Those who care for the political welfare of their states will decline to adopt this innovation, which assuredly cannot stand the tests of rational criticism and of experience. If they value in the slightest degree the assistance which educated, public-spirited women are able to give in securing enlightened legislation, they will certainly not favor votes for women; for what woman suffrage does is to take the power out of the hands of these women, who without the vote exert a strong moral influence toward good legislation, and put the power gained through an increase in the electorate into the hands of the bosses who can control the largest woman's vote.
"Practical politicians" are learning this lesson rapidly. The New York Commercial calls attention to the fact that in our cities the female vote is more easilymanipulated than the male. This fact does not escape the bosses, and they are rapidly coming into line for woman suffrage. While woman suffrage was largely an untried theory suffragists could maintain with some plausibility that woman's vote would be cast for moral and humane legislation, and would purify politics; but with the actual conditions in Chicago, San Francisco, Reno, Denver, and Seattle what they are, this theory no longer holds water, and it is becoming increasingly evident that the way to do away with the moral influence of women in public life is to give the vote to all women.
MRS. HERBERT LYMAN