Topics of the Time
THE PENNSYLVANIA ASSOCIATION FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE DISAVOWS VIOLENCE
IN the April CENTURY, in an editorial article, “The Silent Suffragists of America,” we called upon the official organizations in the United States advocating woman suffrage to abandon their passive and tolerant attitude toward the methods of the English militants, a plea which we had also made in the number for November last.[23]We have received letters of approval of this article from representative women on each side of the suffrage question. It is a matter of sincere gratification to us to publish at the first opportunity the letter which follows from Miss Eleanor Cuyler Patterson of Chestnut Hill (Philadelphia):
I have read with interest the temperate and wise opinion printed in “Topics of the Time” in the April number of THECENTURYMAGAZINE. It gives me great pleasure to send you the resolution on this subject passed by the executive committee of the Pennsylvania Association for Woman Suffrage on March 7, 1913.“Although we do not pass judgment on the methods of other organizations,we disclaim all connection with militant organizations, and do not indorse or intend to use militant methods, but shall continue to employ educational methods as in the past.”
I have read with interest the temperate and wise opinion printed in “Topics of the Time” in the April number of THECENTURYMAGAZINE. It gives me great pleasure to send you the resolution on this subject passed by the executive committee of the Pennsylvania Association for Woman Suffrage on March 7, 1913.
“Although we do not pass judgment on the methods of other organizations,we disclaim all connection with militant organizations, and do not indorse or intend to use militant methods, but shall continue to employ educational methods as in the past.”
Here at last we have from an official suffrage organization in America a sober-minded expression of opinion on this burning subject. It ought to be the beginning of a sincere effort to rescue the whole woman movement from the shallow thinking and super-emotionalism that are likely to wreck it.
That this sort of protest is much needed is shown from the following passage from a letter to “The New York Times” from a leading advocate of the suffrage, Mrs. Eunice Dana Brannan, which is the first public expression of what we must regard as a very unfortunate, not to say shocking, frame of mind on the part of many refined and well-educated American women:
The suffragists in America are agreed in their belief that militant action isnot called for. Injustice to women is not so evident nor so general as in England, and the attitude of the majority of American men is certainly fairer and more honestly chivalrous.But, in spite of these amiable differences, it is quite possible that if the Eastern States continue to deny enfranchisement to their women, while the Western States continue to grant it, the women thus discriminated against would find the political anomaly of their position so impossible to bear that even militancy would seem to them justifiable.
The suffragists in America are agreed in their belief that militant action isnot called for. Injustice to women is not so evident nor so general as in England, and the attitude of the majority of American men is certainly fairer and more honestly chivalrous.But, in spite of these amiable differences, it is quite possible that if the Eastern States continue to deny enfranchisement to their women, while the Western States continue to grant it, the women thus discriminated against would find the political anomaly of their position so impossible to bear that even militancy would seem to them justifiable.
The words we have italicized are deplorably significant. They mean, for instance, that the immunity of New York City from similar outrages is to be dependent only upon the granting of the suffrage by the State. “Militant action is not called for”—yet, but will be called for if the voters of the East, however conscientiously, shall deny the suffrage to women!
In striking contrast is this extract from an open letter, printed in “The New York Times” of April 14, from Mrs. Helen Magill White (Mrs. Andrew D. White) of Ithaca, New York, addressed “To the Treasurer of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.” After recording her friendly attitude toward the movement, Mrs. White closes her letter with these downright words:
I never until lately admitted to myself the possibility of ouressentialinferiority—such that, in matters of government, we couldwithout outrage be classed with children, with idiots and insane, and with criminals.But now that I see our own kinswomen across the sea sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind—sowing seeds of lawlessness which we may see in our own day, I greatly fear, blossoming in an anarchism more terrible than anything yet known to history—and when I see our own women protesting feebly or not at all, and even, to some extent, encouraging, I have not a cent to contribute nor a word of sympathy for any association of women which does not publicly and earnestly protest against such a line of procedure. It resembles the kicking and biting of spoiled children, the raving and gibbering of insane and idiots—and the unbridled license of the most abandoned criminals. All these classes think solely of what they want, and self-constitute themselves arbiters of what they should have. What it may cost other human beings, innocent though they be, for them to grasp at the objects of their desire by whatever means may come to hand, does not touch their minds; and so it would seem to be with those women of England; and so, also, with those of our own women who condone their offenses—who would condone such actionin any cause.
I never until lately admitted to myself the possibility of ouressentialinferiority—such that, in matters of government, we couldwithout outrage be classed with children, with idiots and insane, and with criminals.
But now that I see our own kinswomen across the sea sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind—sowing seeds of lawlessness which we may see in our own day, I greatly fear, blossoming in an anarchism more terrible than anything yet known to history—and when I see our own women protesting feebly or not at all, and even, to some extent, encouraging, I have not a cent to contribute nor a word of sympathy for any association of women which does not publicly and earnestly protest against such a line of procedure. It resembles the kicking and biting of spoiled children, the raving and gibbering of insane and idiots—and the unbridled license of the most abandoned criminals. All these classes think solely of what they want, and self-constitute themselves arbiters of what they should have. What it may cost other human beings, innocent though they be, for them to grasp at the objects of their desire by whatever means may come to hand, does not touch their minds; and so it would seem to be with those women of England; and so, also, with those of our own women who condone their offenses—who would condone such actionin any cause.
Mrs. White here indicates both the responsibility of sincere, educated, and thoughtful suffragists and an effective method whereby they may hold the official organizations to their duty. Not a dollar should be subscribed to their work until they have pledged themselves that no part of their funds shall go to the support of lawlessness, and have made as definite a disclaimer of sympathy and intention as the Pennsylvania society, the action of which, at this time, is a patriotic public service of the highest order.
We have nothing but respect for the women of America who are earnestly convinced that the extension of the suffrage gives promise of a brighter day for humanity, and we take this opportunity to record our abhorrence not only of violence by women but of such interference with peaceable parades as disgraced the city of Washington on the third of March. In these days of turbulence of action and of thought, there is no securer anchorage to the mind than Chatham’s saying, “Where law ends, tyranny begins.”