For Woman SuffrageBy Jane Addams(From speech favoring a suffrage amendment to the Constitution, before the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Sixty-Second Congress. Prior to the enfranchisement of the Illinois women.)
By Jane Addams
(From speech favoring a suffrage amendment to the Constitution, before the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Sixty-Second Congress. Prior to the enfranchisement of the Illinois women.)
As I have been engaged for a number of years in various philanthropic undertakings, perhaps you will permit me, for only a few moments, to speak from experience. A good many women with whom I have been associated have initiated and carried forward philanthropic enterprises, which were later taken over by the city, and thereupon the women have been shut out from the opportunity to do the self-same work which they have done up to that time. In Chicago the women for many years supported school nurses who took care of the children, both made them comfortable and kept them from truancy. When the nurses were taken over by the health department of the city the same women who had given them their support and management were shut out from doing anything more in that direction. And I think Chicago will bear me out when I say that the nurses are not now doing as good work as they did before.
I could also use the illustration of the probation officers in Chicago who are attached to the juvenile court. For a number of years women selected and supported these probation officers. Later, when the same officers, paid the same salary, were taken over by the county and paid from the county funds, the women who had had to do with the initiation and beginning of the probation system, and with the primary and early management of the officers, hadno more to do with them. At the present moment the juvenile court in Chicago has fallen behind its former position in the juvenile courts of the world. I think the fair-minded men of Chicago will admit that it was a disaster for the juvenile court when the women were disqualified, by their lack of the franchise, to care for it.
The juvenile court has to do largely with delinquent and dependent children, and I think there is no doubt that on the whole women can deal with such cases better than men, because their natural interests lie in that direction....
The establishment of a sanitarium for the care of tubercular patients in Chicago was begun by some philanthropic women, and later on, when these also were put under the care of the city, these women were shut out, save as they were permitted to do some work through the courtesy of the officials. Sometimes the officials are very courteous to them and glad to have their assistance; sometimes they quite resent the suggestions from them, claiming it is “up to” them to take care of the city affairs, and that women are only interfering when they try to help.
So, it seems fair to say, if women are to keep on with the work which they have done since the beginning of the world—to continue with their humanitarian efforts which are so rapidly being taken over by the Government, and often not properly administered, that the women themselves will have to have the franchise.
The franchise is only a little bit of mechanism which enables the voter to say how much money shallbe appropriated from the taxes, of which women pay so large a part. When a woman votes, she votes in an Australian ballot box, very carefully guarded from roughness, and it seems to us only fair to the State activities which are so largely humanitarian that women should have this opportunity.