The Project Gutenberg eBook ofAnti-Suffrage EssaysThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Anti-Suffrage EssaysEditor: Ernest BernbaumRelease date: March 26, 2011 [eBook #35689]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book wasproduced from scanned images of public domain materialfrom the Google Print project.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTI-SUFFRAGE ESSAYS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Anti-Suffrage EssaysEditor: Ernest BernbaumRelease date: March 26, 2011 [eBook #35689]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book wasproduced from scanned images of public domain materialfrom the Google Print project.)
Title: Anti-Suffrage Essays
Editor: Ernest Bernbaum
Editor: Ernest Bernbaum
Release date: March 26, 2011 [eBook #35689]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book wasproduced from scanned images of public domain materialfrom the Google Print project.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTI-SUFFRAGE ESSAYS ***
Copyright, 1916, byJ. A. HAIENAll Rights Reserved
Gratefully Dedicatedto the 295,939 Massachusetts MenWho, on Election Day, 1915Endorsed the Anti-Suffrage Sentimentsof the Women of Massachusetts
The essays in this little book are by anti-suffrage women who were prominent speakers, writers, and organizers, in the campaign of 1915. They voice sentiments which gained the largest measure of popular support ever accorded in the history of Massachusetts politics.
The largest number of votes any political party polled in Massachusetts before 1915 was 278,976. The anti-suffragists polled 295,939. Since 1896 there has been but one instance in which the voters gained a plurality amounting to 110,000 votes. The anti-suffragists won by 133,447 votes. Alton B. Parker's defeat by Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 is commonly regarded as typifying political annihilation; but the suffragists in 1915 did not poll as many votes as Mr. Parker, and the anti-suffragists polled 38,000 more than President Roosevelt at the height of his popularity. Such outworn words as "overwhelming" and "landslide," which have been regularly used to describe victories not half so great as this, understate theactual extent of the anti-suffrage triumph. The pronounced aversion which Massachusetts showed towards Horace Greeley in the presidential campaign of 1872, and towards William J. Bryan in that of 1896, scarcely exceeded that which she feels towards the suffragists today.
The grounds of this aversion are so numerous that it is difficult to determine which of the many causes of the anti-suffrage victory were the most powerful. In my opinion, however, Massachusetts men defeated woman suffrage chiefly because (1) they discovered that nine women out of ten did not want to vote; (2) they knew that the creation of a large body of stay-at-home voters would result in bad government; and (3) they grew disgusted with the temperament, the notions, and the methods typical of the few women who clamored for the vote.
For at least two generations suffragists have been spending a huge amount of energy and money in spreading their doctrine. Contributions, mainly drawn from a few rich women, have enabled them to send professional speakers into every district of the state, to distribute tons of "literature," to supply the press with a constant stream of "news" written from their point of view, and in general to advertise their claims in the most lavish way. A propaganda so subsidized would have been successful decades ago if sound principles and common sense were on its side. But to their consternation the suffragists found that the vast majority of Massachusetts women turned a deaf ear to theirplausible appeals, and that their strongest opponents were those of their own sex.
Suffragists continued to talk about what "we women" want. But men presently began to see that these women had no right to pretend to represent their sex. Even their own claims as to the number of women supporting them showed that they represented only between 5% and 10% of the women of Massachusetts. At least 90% of the women—either by open opposition, or by a marked indifference to the subject—showed that they did not believe in woman suffrage. It became obvious that no general statement could be more emphatically true than that Massachusetts women did not want to vote.
When this truth was insistently pressed upon the suffragists, they were apt to call the indifferent women "unenlightened." This was felt to be an insult rather than an explanation. The average Massachusetts man does not think his mother, wife, and sister "unenlightened"—certainly not on the suffrage question. She has heard and read the suffrage notions again and again. He knows that if she felt that man was her oppressor, or that the welfare of herself or her family would be increased by her enfranchisement, she would say so. She is a sensible, observant woman, who knows what she wants, does not hesitate to ask for it, and usually gets it. But she was not asking for the ballot. It did not take her long to see through the suffrage fallacy that "only those women would need to vote who want to." She realized that the vote would meanan obligation as well as a privilege, and that she could not honorably accept the privilege without undertaking the obligation. Her life being already crowded with duties that only she could discharge, she would not add to them one that her husband, brother, or son can discharge at least as well.
If any man wondered whether his personal inquiries among the women of his acquaintance gave a sufficiently broad basis for the belief that women did not want to vote, he became convinced of the fact when he learned about the Drury bill of 1913. This bill would have given Massachusetts women a chance to vote "Yes" or "No" on woman suffrage. The proposal resulted in the amazing revelation that the suffragists were afraid to let women vote on the question. They worked against the bill because they knew that an official count would disclose how pitiably small a fraction of women were on their side. They thought that their little group, by noisy publicity, could be made to appear a considerable number. But the men, when they discovered who opposed the Drury bill, were not deceived. They saw that a small minority of women was trying to induce them to coerce the great majority. They awoke to the fact that the suffragist's demand was not that men should grant women an expressed desire, but that men, contemptuously disregarding the evident wishes of women, should force upon them a heavy responsibility.
The nature of that responsibility brings us to what seems to me the second important cause for the suffragedefeat. Men—more than politically inexperienced women,—know that good government depends upon the willingness of the electorate to do its duty vigilantly and regularly. The greatest good of the greatest number of classes (including the women and children in each class) can be secured only when a large proportion of the eligible voters vote. Those voters who are led by bosses, or by selfish interests, go to the polls steadily. Their influence can be offset only when the rest of the electorate goes likewise. The results of elections in which a small proportion of the eligible voters take part, are poor laws and incompetent or corrupt government. The leading political issues—the tariff, trusts, transportation, military and police force, taxation, finance, etc.—bear directly upon the work of men in their trades and business, and under male suffrage a fairly large proportion of the vote is cast. The life-work of women removes them from contact with these political questions, and the nature of most women is not attracted by the contentious spirit in which political warfare is conducted. As long as no more than 10% of the women took an interest in the woman suffrage question itself, no man could reasonably expect them to be otherwise than indifferent to the regular subjects of political conflict. To impose political duties upon the sex against its will was simply to create conditions that encouraged corrupt and feeble government. The soundness of this principle was, furthermore, being demonstrated in woman-suffrage territory, such cities as Seattle andsuch states as Colorado showing that sooner or later a neglectful electorate leads to the downfall of good government.
The third cause for the defeat of woman suffrage was the disgust which the manners, methods, and unethical sentiments of the suffragists aroused. This is not pleasant to dwell upon, but was too important an influence in the campaign to leave unmentioned. The suffragists professed to "occupy higher moral ground," to uplift politics, and to elevate womanhood. The longer one observed their deeds and words, the surer one became that they were not uplifting politics and that they tended to disgrace women in men's eyes. The tone of politics can be improved if the contestants will avoid false assertions and unnecessary personal attacks. The suffragists said and did things which were, like militancy, excusable only on the immoral ground that the end justifies the means.
As an example of their disingenuous statements, the following may serve. The National Woman Suffrage Association circulated a flyer entitled "Twenty Facts About Woman Suffrage." "Fact No. 15," under the heading, "How Women Vote," read: "Arizona, California, Colorado and Washington are the only states in the Union which have eight-hour laws for working women." Any unsuspecting reader would infer just what he was intended to infer—namely, that it was woman suffrage that brought about all these eight-hour laws, and that male suffrage had not brought about any of them. A more nearly truthful headingfor this "fact" would have been "How Men Vote." The credit for passing the eight-hour law in California and in Washington (also in Arizona so far as laundry workers are concerned) belongs to legislatures elected by men alone. False suggestions of this type no doubt gained many proselytes in parlor meetings; but when they were made in the open forum of a public campaign, their untruth was exposed, and the voters grew indignant that women should thus have tried to mislead them. The suffragists only made a bad matter worse by alleging that their anti-suffrage sisters were given to misrepresentations and to every other crime in the political calendar; for men thereupon concluded that if this initial participation in politics had such a demoralizing effect on the women of each side, it was best to keep both parties out of the arena altogether.
The suffragists' tendencies to make bitter personal attacks was repeatedly shown. Not wishing to resurrect some of the venemous charges brought against anti-suffrage women, I take leave to illustrate the baseless characters of such attacks by one made against myself. In the spring of 1915, I gave a series of lectures on the fundamental principles of anti-suffrage. The audiences were gratifyingly large; there was a demand for several repetitions of the lectures; and, apparently, the suffragists felt that something must be done to destroy my pernicious influence. Instead of answering my arguments, the President of the Massachusetts Suffrage Association, Miss Alice Stone Blackwell,wrote an editorial in her "Woman's Journal," saying:
"This young gentleman is a Dane, and he has been very fluent and somewhat contemptuous in giving reasons why American women should not be allowed to vote."
The statement was, as usual, spread broadcast through the suffrage columns of the Massachusetts newspapers; and doubtless my opponents indulged the hope that in the wave of national feeling which was then beginning to rise, anybody thus branded as a foreigner would be badly discredited. As a matter of fact, I was born in Brooklyn, N. Y. (If I had chosen to imitate Miss Blackwell's method of controversy, I might have retorted that my father, who was born in Denmark, but who came to America in 1855, fought as a volunteer officer in the Navy of the United States in the Civil War, at a time when Miss Blackwell's father was engaged in a safer occupation.)
The repellant impression made upon men by the suffragists' misstatements and personal abusiveness was deepened by their support of militancy and feminism. As to the unethical character of the latter, Mrs. Foxcroft's essay in this book presents startling and irrefutable testimony. As to militancy, it may be said that this furnished the most glaring (though not the only) evidence of the evil effect of political activity on women. Much is usually made of the fact that Mrs. Pankhurst and her accomplices in crime destroyed a large amount of valuable property. But thegreatest injury she and her American idolizers did was to lower man's ideal of woman. They tried to make the virago a heroine. They did not succeed; but the more Mrs. Pankhurst's apologists glorified her, the more men were determined not to endorse a party that tempted women to abandon real womanliness for mock masculinity.
Ernest Bernbaum
Cambridge, Mass.February, 1916
N. B.—
To prevent misunderstanding, it should be said that though the following essays represent in general the views of Massachusetts anti-suffragists, the responsibility for the facts and opinions given in the various essays rests with the individual writers alone.
PAGEINTRODUCTION—ERNEST BERNBAUMixWho the Massachusetts Anti-suffragists Are21Mrs. John BalchESSAYISuffrage Fallacies24Mrs. A. J. GeorgeIIThe Ballot and the Woman in Industry31Mrs. Henry Preston WhiteIIIA Business Woman's View of Suffrage38Edith MelvinIVSome Practical Aspects of the Question43Ellen Mudge BurrillVHow Massachusetts Fosters Public Welfare53Monica FoleyVIMassachusetts Compared With Suffrage States62Catherine RobinsonVIIWoman Suffrage and War67Mrs. Charles P. StrongVIIIWoman Suffrage vs. Womanliness77Mrs. Thomas AllenIXAre Suffragists Sincere Reformers81Mrs. Augustin H. ParkerXSuffrage and the School Teacher85Elizabeth JacksonXISuffrage and the Social Worker90Dorothy Godfrey WaymanXIIWoman Suffrage a Menace To Social Reform98Margaret C. RobinsonXIIIThe Anti-suffrage Ideal118Mrs. Herbert LymanXIVThe True Function of the Normal Woman123Mrs. Horace A. DavisXVThe Imperative Demand Upon Women in the Home128Mrs. Charles Burton GulickXVISuffrage and the Sex Problem135Mrs. William Lowell PutnamXVIISuffrage a Step Toward Feminism141Lily Rice FoxcroftImportant Anti-Suffrage Publications153
MRS. JOHN BALCH
Katharine Torbert Balch, wife of John Balch; Treasurer of the Summer Industrial School of Milton; member of the Executive Committee of the Milton Branch of the Civil Service Reform Association; director of the Ely Club of New York City; member of the Executive Committee of the special Preparedness Committee appointed by Governor Walsh; President of the Massachusetts Women's Anti-Suffrage Association.J. A. H.
Katharine Torbert Balch, wife of John Balch; Treasurer of the Summer Industrial School of Milton; member of the Executive Committee of the Milton Branch of the Civil Service Reform Association; director of the Ely Club of New York City; member of the Executive Committee of the special Preparedness Committee appointed by Governor Walsh; President of the Massachusetts Women's Anti-Suffrage Association.
J. A. H.
In reply to oft-repeated calumnies about the membership and affiliations of the Anti-Suffrage Association, I offer a plain statement of facts which can be verified.
36,761 Massachusetts women, twenty-one years of age or over, are to-day registered members of the Massachusetts Women's Anti-Suffrage Association. They are not confined to one section of the state, but arefound distributed among no less than 443 cities, towns, and villages. Each year the organization increases; and each year the members of the 137 state branches draw closer together in their opposition to suffrage and their striving for the true progress of woman and of civilization.
These women are not of only one class or type. An examination of our enrollment reveals among our members not only the very large group of homemakers, but also authors, doctors, lawyers, teachers, librarians, newspaper-writers, stenographers, social service workers, cooks, housemaids, nurses, milliners, insurance agents, restaurant-keepers, clerks, shopkeepers, private secretaries, dressmakers, seamstresses, etc., etc. During the recent campaign, the co-operation, devotion, and self-sacrifice of this body of women was inspiring. From the wage-earner who endured systematic nagging, if not persecution, from suffragists, to the woman of wealth who gave of her vitality to the breaking point, daily came the evidences of immovable faith in the righteousness of their cause.
Many of our leaders are prominent in public welfare activities. The late Mrs. Charles D. Homans, one of the founders of our organization, was an active and important member of the Massachusetts Prison Commission. Mrs. James M. Codman, our beloved ex-President, has served twenty years on the State Board of Charities, was one of the first women overseers of the poor ever elected in this state, and has long been one of the managers of a large private hospital. Miss Mary S.Ames, a former President, is a member of the Executive Council (New England section) of the National Civic Federation, Chairman of the Committee on Practical Training for Girls, a Trustee of the Boston Home for Incurables, one of the managers of the Women's Free Hospital, a director of the Brook House Home for Working Girls, a member of the Easton Agricultural Vocational Training Committee, a Trustee of Unity Church (Easton), and a member of the Advisory Board of the Belgian Relief Committee. Mrs. Henry P. Kidder, of our Executive Board, is President of the Woman's Educational Association. Mrs. Robert S. Bradley, also of our Executive Board, is Chairman of the Sanitation Department of the Women's Municipal League, and has led in the fight for exterminating the typhoid fly. Were I to continue to enumerate the characteristic activities of our anti-suffrage women, I could fill pages with the record of their participation in philanthropy, education, and all good works. The brief notes prefixed to the essays in this book give additional evidence to the same effect.
MRS. A. J. GEORGE
Alice N. George, widow of Dr. Andrew J. George; graduated from Wellesley in 1887; is President of the Brookline Branch of the Ramabai Association; American Representative of the National Trust (English) for the Preservation of Historic Places; a director of the College Club; a member of the Research Committee of the Educational and Industrial Union, of the Welfare Department of the National Civic Federation of the Woman's Trade Union League, of the American Society for Labor Legislation, etc., etc.J. A. H.
Alice N. George, widow of Dr. Andrew J. George; graduated from Wellesley in 1887; is President of the Brookline Branch of the Ramabai Association; American Representative of the National Trust (English) for the Preservation of Historic Places; a director of the College Club; a member of the Research Committee of the Educational and Industrial Union, of the Welfare Department of the National Civic Federation of the Woman's Trade Union League, of the American Society for Labor Legislation, etc., etc.
J. A. H.
Woman suffrage must ultimately fail. It is based upon a fallacy, and no fallacy has ever made a permanent conquest over mankind.
The fallacy of woman suffrage lies in the belief that there is in our social order a definite sex division of interests, and that the security of woman's interests depends upon her possession of the elective franchise.
"The history of mankind," declared the founders of the suffrage movement, "is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man towardwoman, having as the indirect object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her." "Man has endeavored in every way he could," continues this arraignment of the fathers, husbands, and sons of these self-styledMothers of the Revolution, "to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life."
On this false foundation was built the votes-for-women temple. How shall it endure? The sexes do not stand in the position of master and slave, of tyrant and victim. In a healthy state of society there is no rivalry between men and women; they were created different, and in the economy of life have different duties, but their interests are the common interests of humanity. Women are not a class, they are a sex; and the women of every social group are represented in a well-ordered government, automatically and inevitably, by the men of that group. It would be a fatal day for the race when women could obtain their rights only by a victory wrested at the polls from reluctant men. These truths are elementary and self-evident, yet all are negatived by the votes-for-women movement.
That the vote is not an inalienable right is affirmed by Supreme Court decisions, the practice of nations, and the dictates of common sense. No state can enfranchise all its citizens, and since the stability of government rests ultimately upon a relentless enforcement of law, the maintenance of a sound fiscal policy, and such adjustment of the delicate interweaving ofinternational relations as makes for peace and prosperity, it is right that the state should place the responsibility of government upon those who are best equipped to perform its manifold duties.
Woman's citizenship is as real as man's, and no reflection upon her abilities is involved in the assertion that woman is not fitted for government either by nature or by contact in daily experience with affairs akin to government. She is weak along the lines where the lawmaker must be strong. In all departments where the law is to be applied and enforced, woman's nature forbids her entrance. The casting of a ballot is the last step in a long process of political organization; it is the signing of a contract to undertake vast responsibilities, since it is the following of the ballot to its conclusion which makes the body politic sound. Otherwise political power without political responsibility threatens disaster to all.
Thus far we have made a few crude experiments in double suffrage, but nowhere hasequalsuffrage been tried. Equal suffrage implies a fair field with favor to none—a field where woman, stripped of legal and civil advantages, must take her place as man's rival in the struggle for existence; for, in the long run, woman cannot have equal rights and retain special privileges. If the average woman is to be a voter, she must accept jury service and aid in the protection of life and property. When the mob threatens, she must not shield herself behind her equal in government. She must relinquish her rights and exemptions under the lawand in civil life, if she is to take her place as a responsible elector and compete with man as the provider and governor of the race. Such equality would be a brutal and retrogressive view of woman's rights. It is impossible, and here we have the unanswerable answer to woman suffrage theories.
No question of superiority or equality is involved in the opposition to votes for women. The test of woman's worth is her ability to solve the problems and do the work she must face as a woman if the race is not to deteriorate and civilization perish. The woman's suffrage movement is an imitation-of-man movement, and as such merits the condemnation of every normal man and woman.
Doubtless we can live through a good deal of confusion, but it is not on any lines of functional unfitness that life is to be fulfilled. Woman must choose with discrimination those channels of activity wherein "what she most highly values may be won." Are these values in the department of government or in the equally essential departments of education, society, and religion?
The attempt to interpret woman's service to the state in terms of political activity is a false appraisal of the contribution she has always made to the general welfare. All this agitation for the ballot diverts attention from the only source from which permanent relief can come, and fastens it upon the ballot box. It is by physical, intellectual, and moral education that our citizenship is gradually improved, and here woman'sopportunities are supreme. If women are not efficient in their own dominion, then in the name of common sense let them be trained for efficiency in that dominion and not diffuse their energies by dragging them through the devious paths of political activity.
Equal suffrage is clearly impossible; double suffrage, tried under most favorable conditions in sparsely settled western states has made no original contribution to the problem of sound government. On the other side of the ledger we find that the enfranchisement of women has increased taxes, added greatly to the menace of an indifferent electorate, and enlarged the bulk of unenforced and unenforceable laws.
Why does double suffrage, with its train of proved evils and its false appraisal of woman's contribution to the general welfare, come knocking at our doors? Not a natural right; a failure wherever tried; demanded by a small minority in defiance of all principles of true democracy; what excuse is there for it?
The confusion of social and personal rights with political, the substitution of emotionalism for investigation and knowledge, the mania for uplift by legislation, have widely advertised the suffrage propaganda. The reforms for which the founders of the suffrage movement declared women needed the vote have all been accomplished by the votes of men. The vote has been withheld through the indifference and opposition of women, for this is the only woman's movement which has been met by the organized opposition of women.
Suffragists still demand the vote. Why? Perhaps the answer is found in the cry of the younger suffragists: "We ask the vote as a means to an end—that end being a complete social revolution!" When we realize that this social revolution involves the economic, social, and sexual independence of women, we know that Gladstone had the prophet's vision when he called woman suffrage a "revolutionary" doctrine.
Woman suffrage is the political phase of feminism; the whole sweep of the relation of the sexes must be revised if the woman's vote is to mean anything more than two people doing what one does now. Merely to duplicate the present vote is unsound economy. To re-enforce those who clamor for individual rights is to strike at the family as the self-governing unit upon which the state is built.
This is not a question of what some women want or do not want—it is solely a question of how the average woman shall best contribute her part to the general welfare. Anti-suffragists contend that the average woman can serve best by remaining a non-partisan and working for the common good outside the realms of political strife. To prove this contention they point to what women have done without the ballot and what they have failed to do with it.
Anti-suffragists are optimists. They are concerned at the attempt of an organized, aggressive, well financed minority to force its will upon the majority of women through a false interpretation of representative democracy; but they know that a movement so false inits conception, so false in its economy, so false in its reflections upon men and its estimate of women, so utterly unnecessary and unnatural, cannot achieve a permanent success.
MRS. HENRY PRESTON WHITE
Sara C. White, wife of Henry Preston White; educated in the Emma Willard School of Troy, New York; a member of the Auxiliary Board of Directors of the Brookline Day Nursery; member of the Committee on Ventilation of Public Conveyances (Woman's Municipal League); With Miss Mabel Stedman of Brookline, Mrs. White started the model moving-picture show in connection with the Brookline Friendly Society. She is a well-known speaker for the anti-suffrage cause.J. A. H.
Sara C. White, wife of Henry Preston White; educated in the Emma Willard School of Troy, New York; a member of the Auxiliary Board of Directors of the Brookline Day Nursery; member of the Committee on Ventilation of Public Conveyances (Woman's Municipal League); With Miss Mabel Stedman of Brookline, Mrs. White started the model moving-picture show in connection with the Brookline Friendly Society. She is a well-known speaker for the anti-suffrage cause.
J. A. H.
The argument that the woman in industry needs the ballot in order to obtain fair wages and fair working conditions has undoubtedly made many converts to the cause of woman suffrage. The sympathies of the average man, who is ever solicitous for the welfare of women, go out especially to the woman who must compete with men in the work-a-day world. And so, when he is told that there are 8,000,000 such women in this country, and that their lot would be much easier if they could vote, he is apt to think it worth a trialanyway and to give his support, without further consideration, to the "votes for women" movement.
Now, if it were true that there are 8,000,000 women in industry, and that these must have the ballot in order to get fair treatment, it would be a strong argument for woman suffrage—though by no means a conclusive argument, since the fundamental question is the greatest good of the greatest number, and not the greatest good of any class. But it is not true that there are 8,000,000 women in industry, and a single sensible reason has yet to be advanced for the contention that women in industry, even if they numbered 8,000,000, could better their condition by undertaking political methods.
There are in the United States, according to the last census, 8,075,772 females 10 years of age and over engaged in gainful occupations. Of these, over 3,600,000 are employed in domestic and personal service, where wage and working conditions are determined chiefly by women, and in "agricultural pursuits," a classification including every female who sells eggs or butter on the home farm. Approximately 4,000,000 of the remaining gainfully occupied females work in store, factory, and shop, and of these nearly 1,500,000 are under twenty-one.
Thus, instead of 8,000,000 women in industry who are alleged to "need the ballot," we have only about 2,500,000 women of voting age employed in industries that can reasonably be said to come within the category of those properly subject to remedial labor legislation;and of these women a very large percentage are aliens and would not be entitled to use the ballot if woman suffrage were granted. By itself, of course, this fact does not dispose of the argument that the industrial woman needs the ballot, but it does reveal how comparatively few are the women who could possibly try to improve their working conditions by means of the vote, and how hopelessly outnumbered they would be if reduced to the necessity of fighting for their rights at the ballot box.
The premise of the suffrage argument that the woman in industry needs the ballot in order to get fair treatment is the assumption that she now fails to get as fair treatment as is given the industrial man, and that this is due to the fact that she has no vote. This arbitrary assumption is without justification either in fact or reason. Every law placed upon the statute-books of any state for the benefit of the working man is a blanket law and covers men and women engaged in the same industry. All the benefits that have accrued to the working man through legislation are enjoyed equally by his sister in industry. In addition she has the advantage of special protective laws which have been enacted simply because she is a woman—because she is weaker physically than man and because she is a potential mother and must be protected in the interest of the race.
I am not arguing, of course, that the working woman has all the protection she needs, but I am arguing that she is not unfairly treated as compared with her industrial brother, who has the ballot, and that whatever hardships she may now suffer are as likely to be removed without woman suffrage as they are with it. If she is being unfairly treated, I think it will be found that she is so treated in common with all industrial workers—simply because she is a worker and not at all because she is a woman.
And in taking this ground I am by no means forced to depend upon theory; for, after all, the best answer to the dogma that the woman in industry needs the ballot in order to obtain fair wages and fair working conditions is the fact that in states where women have voted anywhere from 4 to 46 years the laws for the working woman are no better than they are in male suffrage states. Indeed, it is pretty generally agreed that the states which have been first and most progressive in enacting laws for the benefit of women and children in industry are states that have refused to give women the vote.
It is quite true, as the suffragists so constantly tell us, that the only states having eight-hour laws for women in industry are woman suffrage states. But it is true, too, that the eight-hour laws of California, Oregon, and Washington, of which so much is heard, are not to be taken at their face value, since they do not cover the canning industry, which is the chief industry in all those states. It is true, also, that what is considered by experts the most advanced step in protective legislation for women in industry, the prohibition of night work, has been taken only in malesuffrage states. In Massachusetts and Nebraska the laws provide for a 54-hour week for women in industry, provide for one day's rest in seven, and prohibit night work. Will any one deny that these laws are infinitely better for women in industry than the boasted eight-hour law of Colorado, under which it is permissible for a woman to work nights and Sundays and 56 hours a week?
Now as to the question of "fair wages." The suffragists tell us that women in industry are entitled to equal pay with men, and that this will follow upon the heels of woman suffrage. Here again we have experience to guide us, and we find upon investigation that in no state has the ratio between men's and women's wages been affected by doubling the electorate. Dr. Helen Sumner, who made a thorough investigation of this point, says in her book entitledEqual Suffrage:"Taking the public employment as a whole, women in Colorado receive considerably less remuneration than men. It is the old story of supply and demand in the commercial world, and suffrage has probably nothing to do with the wages of either men or women. The wages of men and women in all fields of industry are governed by economic conditions."
By tables carefully compiled, Dr. Sumner shows that in Colorado, women in private employment receive an average of only 47 per cent of the average of men's wages, while in the United States as a whole the average for women is 55.3 per cent of the average for men, and in Massachusetts, where woman suffragewas recently defeated by nearly two to one in the largest vote in the state's history, women receive 62 cents for every 100 cents paid to men in wages.
No one can deny, of course, that the wages of women in industry average considerably lower than those of men. But the reasons for this are found entirely outside of politics. The average girl is a transient in industry, going into it as a temporary expedient to tide her over until she attains her natural desire, which is to marry, settle down, and raise a family. She is, therefore, not so good an investment for her employer as the boy who works beside her, who has gone into the business with the idea of making it his life work, and who has a stronger incentive to make himself more valuable.
It must be remembered that employers of labor do not pay for men and women, but for results. Samuel Gompers, an ardent suffragist, says women get less because they ask for less. That is true in part. Women do ask for less. One reason for this is that they look upon the job as something temporary. Another reason is, very frequently, that they are not entirely dependent on their own earnings, but are partly supported in their parents' home. But in the majority of cases, the industrial woman gets less than the industrial man because she is worth less, being not only less experienced, but physically unable to compete with him on a basis of absolute equality.
If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the proof of woman suffrage is in its operation; and, when wefind that it has failed to fulfill its promises where longest tried, it is hard to listen patiently to pleas for its further extension. The vote has never raised the wages or shortened the hours of men. It has never done it and can never do it for women. The industrial woman can gain nothing by it. She will lose much, as will other women.
EDITH MELVIN