In the fourth and fifth counts of the Declaration of Sentiments, the Suffragists say: "Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides." "He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead."
The following four counts all refer to a married woman's civil deadness; and I will give them in order, and then consider the five counts together:
"He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns." "He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband." "In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master—the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement." "He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be proper causes, and, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women—the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands."
That the women did not find themselves, as might be supposed from their charges, living under the edicts of the Middle Ages, is proved by their hunt through statute-books for such of the eighteen grievances as relate to laws. They also say that "while they had felt the insults incident to sex, in many ways, as every proud thinking woman must, yet they had not in their own experience endured the coarser forms of tyranny resulting from unjust laws; but had souls large enough to feel the wrongs of others." Until they knew what those wrongs were, it would seem they could hardly have felt for them intelligently. It would seem, too, that the great body of American women were also unaware that they had been, and were still being, legally and morally robbed, enslaved, and murdered. In fact, Suffrage speakers have been compelled to account for their unconcern by considering it the result of long subjection, and at the same time have had to claim that these stupid beings were fit to rule with and over men.
While the counts contain concrete statements, the closing clause—"the law in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands"—sets forth an abstract idea in justification of which they furnish no proof. In the counts as they stood in the Declaration of Sentiments, the general laws were not accused of doing any injustice, personal or civil, to an unmarried woman, except in reference to the one matter of withholding the vote, which they claimed was wrong because she had an inalienable right to the ballot and was subject to tax. Not a personal law did they ask to have changed for her protection. They recognized the fact that, unless she was married, a woman in the United States stood upon a legal equality with man. The hue and cry in regard to a married woman was, that she was not treated as iffemme sole. Thefemme solecould make contracts and wills, sue and be sued, and do all and sundry in her own name that her brother could do. With a married woman the situation was different. Will any one contend that in the past the married woman has been held in less honor than the unmarried? Can it be thought for a moment that the law-makers expressed their contempt for wives and mothers, and their respect for daughters and sisters who were unmarried? Tradition and fact, poetry and prose, romance and reality, all go to prove that the reverential feeling of the world has gathered about the wife and the mother. The men who made those laws turned for their ideals of abstract justice to their mothers' faith and teaching; and it seems most incongruous to assume, as do the Suffrage arguments, that, while all the laws relating to women were tyrannical at some point, those in regard to married women were the ones wherein men embodied their most cruel and revengeful feeling. It also appears to be a gratuitous assumption that whatever was different in the legal treatment of men and women came from man's belief in his own supremacy, especially toward the wife into whose hands he had committed the keeping of his home and his honor.
In 1881, after more than thirty years of agitation of the subject, the Suffrage leaders said: "The condition of married women under the laws of all countries has been essentially that of slaves, until modified in some respects, within the last quarter of a century, in the United States." And again they said: "The change from the old common law of England, in regard to the civil rights of women, from 1848 to the advance legislation in most of the Northern States in 1880, marks an era both in the status of woman as a citizen and in our American system of jurisprudence. When the State of New York gave married women certain rights of property, the individual existence of the wife was recognized, and the old idea that husband and wife are one, and that one the husband, received its death-blow. From that hour the statutes of the several States have been steadily diverging from the old English codes. Most of the Western States copied the advance legislation of New York, and some are now even more liberal."
This sentence contains another of the constantly recurring instances of the methods by which the Suffrage mind jumps to unwarranted conclusions. When the State of New York gave married women certain property rights, it recognized their legal existence in a new way, but not their individual existence—that had been recognized by every act of law and custom, from the registry of their birth to that of their marriage or their death. Socially and civilly, every woman in the United States had had opportunity to make her individuality felt, and if there was any difference in advantage in respect of this, it was supposed to lie with the married woman. So true is this, that Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Mott had to hunt for oppressive laws, and most of the women of this land have no real sense of the great and liberal change in laws concerning married women since 1848. I am no more approving of or admiring the old English common law, or the canon law, concerning women, than I am approving of or admiring the law that came to light recently in the Transvaal and would have allowed the torture of Jameson and his men, who, as a matter of fact, were allowed to go almost unpunished. The law of the Dutch Government in Africa belonged to the Middle Ages; their conduct belonged to to-day. I only believe that at the time when it was possible for one man to frame for another man such laws of physical and mental torment as every code reveals, their laws for women were the best they could devise, and were those which led to the freedom of the women of to-day. A law of England still favors only the first-born son, and he only because he is the firstborn. What wonder that girls have been denied succession; and what an evidence of man's desire to show favor and not the "insult incident to sex," that he has placed woman on thrones upon which he has had to sustain her by main force.
There is no need that I should darken my pages with the English laws concerning married women. The Suffrage leaders have spread them abroad; Blackstone says they were intended for woman's protection and benefit, and adds the remark, "So great a favorite is the female sex with the laws of England." If I quoted them, I should be constrained to quote barbarous laws concerning men of the same era, and to note the lack of all laws concerning the brute creation; for neither of these matters is touched by Suffrage writers. Dr. Jacobi is willing to say that "in the eye of the law, the married white woman in the North was as devoid of personality as the African slave in the South," and she also says: "By another error of interpretation, certain laws which remain on the statute-book, or which have been recently added, have been considered so peculiarly favorable to women, that they are thought to prove a legislative tendency to grant special immunities to women so long as they consent to remain unfranchised." Does she mean to say that the lawmakers have asked the women if they would consent to remain unfranchised? I thought that leaving them unfranchised without asking their consent was, in Suffrage eyes, the very front of the offending. The laws that remain on the statute-book, and those that have been recently added, go to prove to my mind that the old laws were meant to be generous as well as just; second, that the trend of legislationispeculiarly favorable to woman; and, thirdly, that those laws which between man and man might be looked upon as offsets to suffrage equality, between man and woman could not be so considered. They were, therefore, proper immunities for persons whose consent was not asked through the vote because, in the nature of the difference between the sexes, a prime requisite for compliance was lacking. Dr. Jacobi goes on to say: "The fear has been expressed that these 'immunities' and 'privileges' would be forfeited were the franchise conferred. And this fear has actually been advanced as an argument—as the basis of protest against equal suffrage." Either the law is tyrannical to women, or it is not. If Suffrage leaders are actually talking of its privileges and immunities to women, and trying to explain them away, we may leave the burden of proof to them. But as to the gist of her remark in regard to the connection between legal privileges and equal suffrage: Fear of losing the legal immunities that are granted to both married and unmarried women on account of their attitude as wards of the State when they are not able to assume the first duty implied in giving up the wardship—that of physical defence to themselves and others—is a most legitimate fear, and is a sound reason for protest against equal suffrage. Wrapped up with the legal privileges of women are those of their children—the rights of minors. For boys, special privileges cease at the age of twenty-one. For girls, they do not. Legal equality would set the boy and the girl on the same level at once. The law of equality could know no such thing as "exemption" for the unmarried woman, or "dower right" or "maintenance" for the married woman that would not be equally binding on both husband and wife. In Germany, rich American women are maintaining their land-poor husbands under legal stress, "in the style to which they have been accustomed," because the law of Germany is "equal" in respect to property maintenance of husband and wife. In Ohio, where Suffrage agitation has been persistent, the legislature in 1894 passed an act "enabling a husband, as well as a wife, to sue and obtain alimony pending divorce proceedings."
We began by talking of legal disabilities, and, led by the Suffragists themselves, are already discussing legal immunities.
The editors of the "History" say: "The laws affecting woman's civil rights have been greatly improved during the past thirty years, but the political demand has made but questionable progress, though it must be counted as the chief influence in modifying the laws. The selfishness of man was readily enlisted in securing woman's civil rights, while the same element in his character antagonized her demand for political equality." If it was his selfishness that procured woman civil rights and privileges, was it his unselfishness that formerly denied them? The fact that the States that granted them first, and most fully, are the ones where Suffrage has made least progress, suggests the injustice of the charge.
But a question of real interest is, must the political demand made by women be counted as the chief influence in modifying the laws?
In 1836, Judge Hertell presented, in the New York Legislature, a bill to secure property rights to married women, which had been drawn up under the supervision of the Hon. John Savage, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the Hon. John C. Spencer, one of the revisers of the statutes. In its behalf Ernestine Rose and Paulina Wright Davis circulated a petition, to which they gained only five signatures among their own sex.
Ernestine Rose was a Polish Jewess who had renounced all faith with her own. She was an extreme communist, and before coming here to labor for Liberalism and Woman Suffrage, she had presided over a body called "An Association of all Classes of all Nations, without distinction of sect, sex, party condition, or color." Paulina Wright Davis, gifted though she was, was a radical of an extreme type. How much the character of the advocates had to do with their failure, it is impossible to say, but it appears to be another proof of the evil influence of Suffrage action upon woman's progress that so good a work should have been in hands so unfitted for it. The bill did not become a law. Mrs. Rose records that she continued to send petitions with increased numbers of signatures until 1848-49; that from 1837 to 1848 she addressed the New York Legislature five times, and a good many times after the latter date. That she was not recognized as an aid to legislation seems evident from the testimony that follows.
In the previous chapter I have quoted the editors of the "History" as saying that the first thing that led them to demand political rights was the discussion, in several of the State legislatures, of these property questions in regard to married women. Another proof that they did not inspire the early laws is seen in the following extracts from a letter from the Hon. George Geddes, written to Mrs. Gage, in 1880, and answering her question as to who was responsible for the Married-Woman's Property- Rights bill, which was passed in 1848. He said:
"I have very distinct recollections of the whole history of this very radical measure. Judge Fine, of St. Lawrence, was its originator, and he gave me his reasons for introducing the bill. He said that he married a lady who had some property of her own, which he had, all his life, tried to keep distinct from his, that she might have the benefit of her own, in the event of any disaster happening to him in pecuniary matters. He had found much difficulty, growing out of the old laws, in this effort to protect his wife's interests…. I, too, had special reasons for desiring this change in the law. I had a young daughter, who, in the then condition of my health, was quite likely to be left in tender years without a father, and I very much desired to protect her in the little property I might be able to leave…. I believe this law originated with Judge Fine, without any outside prompting. On the third day of the session he gave notice of his intention to introduce it, and only one petition was presented in favor of the bill, and that came from Syracuse, and was due to the action of my personal friends…. We all felt that the laws regulating married women's, as well as married men's, rights demanded careful revision and adaptation to our times and to our civilization…. In reply to your inquiries in regard to debates that preceded the action of 1848, I must say I know of none, and I am quite sure that in our long discussions no allusion was made to anything of the kind."
It would thus appear that neither Mrs. Gage, nor Mrs. Stanton, nor Miss Anthony knew the names of the proposer and defenders of the bill that opened the way in New York for all the liberal legislation that has followed, and thirty years after its passage they inquired whether any debates had preceded it. Certainly, then, their own had not. It is also evident how much "selfishness" prompted the bill.
In a pamphlet published by the New York Woman-Suffrage Association to report their proceedings during the Constitutional Convention of 1894, it is recorded that Mr. F. B. Church, of Alleghany, presented an appeal from his county asking for the suffrage. In the course of his remarks he said: "Sir, beginning in 1848, the male citizens of the State of New York, not at the clamor of the women, as I understand it, but actuated by a sense of justice, began to remove the disabilities under which women labored at that time. Gradually, from that time on, the barriers had been stricken away, until, in 1891, I believe, the last impediments were removed."
In 1844, Rhode Island had passed property laws for married women. In 1848- 9 Connecticut and Texas, as well as New York, did so, apparently uninfluenced by anything except their "sense of justice." In 1850-'52 Alabama and Maine passed such laws. In 1853 New Hampshire, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Iowa changed their laws in this respect. They moved forward in this reform, as did the other States, before there was even a beginning of Suffrage agitation in them.
In 1847, Mrs. C. J. II. Nichols, who afterward became a Suffrage worker, addressed to the voters of Vermont a series of editorials setting forth the property disabilities of women. In October of that year, Hon. Larkin Mead, moved, he said, by her presentation, introduced a bill into the Senate, which, becoming a law, secured to the wife real estate owned by her at marriage, or acquired by gift, devise, or inheritance during marriage, with the rents, issues, and profits, as against any debts of the husband; but to make a sale or conveyance of either her realty or its use valid, it must be the joint act of husband and wife. She might by last will and testament dispose of her lands, tenements, hereditaments, and any interest therein descendable to her heirs, as if "sole." Mrs. Nichols says that in 1852 she drew up a petition signed by more than two hundred business men and tax-paying widows, asking the Legislature to make women voters in school matters. Mrs. Nichols's report is clear, sound, definite, and she seems to have been of real service, and to have won what she sought. She says, "Up to 1850 I had not taken position for suffrage, although I had shown the absurdity of regarding it as unwomanly." She appears to have done a great deal of clever as well as earnest and spirited talking in the West, after she had "taken position for suffrage," and she reports that, when she removed to Kansas, her claims were for "equal educational rights and privileges in all the schools and institutions of learning fostered or controlled by the State." "An equal right in all matters pertaining to the organization and conduct of the common schools." "Recognition of the mother's equal right with the father to the control and custody of their mutual offspring." "Protection in person, property, and earnings for married women and widows, the same as for men." The first three were fully granted, the fourth was changed as to "personal service." In her pleading for "political rights," she was associated with John O. Wattles, and the amendment they proposed was defeated in the Legislature.
Petitions for "Woman's Right" and changes of the laws were circulated in Massachusetts as early as 1848. In 1849, a year after the first Suffrage Convention, Ohio, Maine, Indiana, and Missouri, had passed laws giving to married women the right to their own earnings. A "Memorial" was sent by the Suffrage Association to the Ohio Constitutional Convention in 1850, from which I take the following: "We believe the whole theory of the common law in relation to woman is unjust and degrading." (Then follows political injustice.) "We would especially call your attention to the legal condition of married women." (Then follow general statements and quotations from the common law.) The attention of the memorialists was called by the proper authorities to the fact that the statute laws of Ohio had radically changed the general matters charged. In answering comment, Mrs. Coe said: "The committee were perfectly aware of the existence of the statutes mentioned, but did not see fit to incorporate them in the petition, not only on account of their great length, but because they do not at all invalidate the position which the petition affects to establish—the inequality of the sexes before the law; because if the wife departs from the conditions of the statutes, and thus comes under the common law, they are against her." She then adds: "There are other laws which might be mentioned, which really give woman an apparent advantage over man; yet, having no relevancy to the subject in the petition, we did not see fit to introduce them."
The ignorance displayed here is phenomenal. Common law is operative only in the absence of statute law. The Ohio statute (as with all statutes) superseded the common law; and if the woman "departs from the condition of the statute," she suffers the penalty prescribed therein, without reference to her previous position before the law.
One of the earliest demands made by the Suffrage Association was for a law that should allow of absolute divorce for drunkenness; and this was soon followed by demands for divorce for other causes. In presenting a petition to the New York Legislature, pressing these measures, Mrs. Stanton addressed the Assembly, and from her remarks I take the following words: "Allow me to call the attention of that party now so much interested in the slave of the Carolinas to the similarity in his condition and that of the mothers, wives, and daughters of the Empire State. The negro has no name. He is Cuffy Douglas, or Cuffy Brooks, just whose Cuffy he may chance to be. The woman has no name. She is Mrs. Richard Roe, or Mrs. John Doe, just whose Mrs. she may chance to be. Cuffy has no right to his earnings; he cannot buy or sell, nor make contracts, nor lay up anything that he can call his own. Mrs. Roe has no right to her earnings; she can neither buy, sell, nor make contracts, nor lay up anything that she can call her own. Cuffy has no right to his children; they may be bound out to cancel a father's debts of honor. The white unborn child, even by the last will of the father, may be placed under the guardianship of a stranger, a foreigner. Cuffy has no legal right to existence; he is subject to restraint and moderate chastisement. Mrs. Roe has no legal existence; she has not the best right to her person. The husband has the power to restrain and administer moderate chastisement. The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The negro's skin and the woman's sex are bothprima facieevidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man. The few social privileges which the man gives the woman, he makes up to the negro in civil rights. The woman may sit at the same table and eat with the white man; the free negro may hold property and vote."
It is difficult for our thought to reach the low level from which this comparison is made. It ignores all the moral and spiritual conceptions that gave rise to and hallow marriage. But looking upon marriage as a mere financial compact, and taking the laws even as they then were, a few things may be said. "Cuffy has no name that he can call his own." Elizabeth Cady Stanton has her own baptismal name, the name of her honored father, and that of her honored husband, and the opportunity to make those names more her own by personal achievement than any one's else. Her mother, her father, her husband, and her son are as dependent upon her for preserving the character and distinctiveness of that name, as she is upon them. Why Lucy Stone should have put inconvenience and indignity upon both herself and her husband for the sake of continuing to wear her father's name instead of assuming her husband's, I never could understand. She did not share the name she gave her child. And there is another distinction between the nameless Cuffy and the trebly-named Saxon woman. The husband's name was not thrust upon her. By uttering the simple monosyllable "No," she could decline to wear it. It was only as she consented to be mistress of a husband's heart and home that she passed from the condition offemme soleand acquired a title and an additional name. "Cuffy has no right to his earnings." This would be of less consequence to Cuffy if he had a right to his master's earnings. When a right to another's earnings goes along with the mutual relation toward a home of master and mistress, the difference between Cuffy and Mrs. Roe is unspeakable. "Cuffy cannot buy or sell, make contracts, nor lay up anything that he can call his own." If Cuffy had the right to prevent his master from buying, selling, making contracts, or laying up anything that he could call his own until Cuffy's wants had been provided for in the most ample manner, the world would have felt less moved over Cuffy's wrongs. "Cuffy has no right to his children." Mrs. Roe has a right to compel Mr. Roe to bestow his name upon her children, and to support the boys until they are twenty-one, and the girls forever. "Cuffy has no legal right to existence." Mrs. Roe has so much legal right to existence that she stands toward the State and toward her husband in the relation of a preferred creditor. The State cannot call upon her for its most arduous duties, which must however be performed in her behalf. Her husband cannot dispose of real property without her signature. If he dies solvent, nothing can prevent her taking a fair share of his estate, and he may give her the whole; but if he dies bankrupt, neither his will, nor the State, nor anything else, can make her pay one dollar of his debts. "Cuffy is subject to restraint and moderate chastisement." "The husband has the power to restrain and administer moderate chastisement." The public horsewhipping of a husband by his wife is a rare sight, but when it occurs the law is far more ready to overlook the breach of order than it is to permit the slightest attempt at assault and battery upon the wife. As the remaining statements have no reference to the laws, I may excuse myself from telling how strangely beneath the dignity of truth they seem to me. That they were urged in connection with a bill asking for divorce for drunkenness suggests that such a plea was made an entering wedge for the radical divorce measures that have been advocated in Suffrage conventions. Any State would, at that time, grant legal separation for a wife from a drunken husband, and would compel the husband to support the wife to the extent of his means.
This matter of easier divorce has been pressed steadily from the beginning, but with very little of the result that the Suffragists desired.
In the Convention of the National Council of Women, which met in Washington, D. C., in February, 1895, the Suffrage Associations were largely represented. Their committee on divorce reform consisted of Ellen Battelle Dietrick, Chairman, and Mary A. Livermore and Fanny B. Ames. Their report was, in part, as follows: "In accordance with the instructions of the Executive Committee of the Council, your chairman sent forty-eight letters to the Governors of States and Territories, asking each to call the attention of his legislature to the situation concerning divorce laws, and requesting the appointment of a committee to consider the matter, said committee to consist of an equal number of men and women."
Here it is the same old story. Theirs is not an intelligent presentment of changes desired, but simply a continued urging of women for personal share in the making of the laws. In commenting upon the refusal of the Governor of Iowa, among others, the Committee says: "And yet Iowa is one of the States which has recently formed a commission of men to consider making Iowa divorce laws uniform with those of all other States." The laws that make it possible for a woman divorced in one State to be looked upon in another State as still bound, were not petitioned against.
Uniformity in the divorce laws of the United States is one of the great legislative reforms that are moving slowly but surely; and with that, it appears, the Suffrage appeal has nothing to do. The Committee closed its report by saying: "We might as well face the fact that the official servants of the United States cherish frank contempt for woman's opinions and wishes, and that, too, in regard to a matter which concerns the welfare of women far more vitally than it does the welfare of men. The one thing we should deprecate is having men make any new laws or fresh provisions for women's protection."
In the spring of 1854 Miss Anthony and Ernestine Rose presented a petition to the New York Legislature, and the Albany "Argus," of March 4, published a résumé of their appeal. The demands were: That husband and wife should be tenants in common of property, without survivorship, but with a partition on the death of one; that a wife should be competent to discharge trusts and powers the same as a single woman; that the statute in respect to a married woman's property be changed so that her property could descend as though she had been unmarried; that married women should be entitled to execute letters testamentary, and of administration; that married women should have power to make contracts and transact business as though unmarried; that they should be entitled to their own earnings, subject to their proportional liability for support of children; that post-nuptial acquisitions should belong equally to husband and wife; that married women should stand on the same footing as single women, as parties or witnesses in legal proceedings; that they should be sole guardians of the minor children; that the homestead should be inviolable and inalienable for widows and children; that the laws in relation to divorce should be revised, and drunkenness made cause for absolute divorce; that better care should be taken of single women's property, that their rights might not be lost through ignorance; that the preference of males in the descent of real estate should be abolished; that women should exercise the right of suffrage, and be eligible to all offices, occupations, and professions, and to act as jurors; that courts of conciliation should be organized as peacemakers; that a law should be enacted extending the masculine designation in all statutes of the State to females.
I cannot fully understand Miss Anthony's position; but in some notable particulars, not her laws but better ones are in force. When Miss Anthony wrote to inquire who was responsible for repealing an act of 1860 for which she had worked with her well-known zeal, Judge Charles J. Folger replied, in part: "I think—with deference I say it—that you are not strictly accurate in calling the legislation of 1862 a repealing one. In but one thing did it repeal, in the sense of taking away right or power or privilege or freedom that the Act of 1860 gave. On the contrary, in some respects it gave more or greater."
Miss Anthony says, in comment on Judge Folger's letter: "Mr. Folger makes mistakes in regard to the effect of these bills; quite forgetting that the wife has never had an equal right to the joint earnings of the copartnership, as no valuation has ever been placed on her labor in the household, to which she gives all her time, thought, and strength. A law securing to the wife the absolute right to half the joint earnings, and, at the death of the husband, the same control of property and children that he has when she dies, might make some show of justice; but it is a provision not yet on the statute-books of any civilized nation."
If it were to be placed on the statute-book, would not one have to be placed beside it making the wife equally responsible for the support of the husband? The law can only take cognizance of the earnings of that member of the firm who transacts business with the outside world. How the proceeds of mutual labor shall be best made their own is for each husband and wife to settle; it cannot be matter of legislation. It is interesting to think what an increase of domesticity there would be if a business partnership, such as Miss Anthony suggests, were demanded by the statutes. The law, which now lays the whole support on the husband and father, whether the wife and daughter work in the home or not, would make it obligatory for the home partner to give all her time, thought, and strength to labor in the household, in order to bring in her bill for services.
The real test of the working of woman suffrage is to be found in the answer to the question whether better laws have been framed as a consequence?
There has been no advance in legislation in Utah or Wyoming through the action or votes of women. The authorities whom I have consulted do not know of any legislation in Colorado which, can be traced directly to the presence of women in the legislature. Exception may possibly be made in regard to the Age-of-Consent bill, which, in common with nearly all the States, Colorado passed in favor of raising the age. That bill was introduced by a woman member, and was strongly advocated by the others, and it called forth an unwise discussion and a repulsive scene in the House. A great many women have been elected to county offices, in that State, especially those connected with the schools, and those of Clerk and Treasurer. In answer to a question, my correspondent adds: "I do not know of any great improvements of any kind or description in our county affairs that have been made in the past four years."
In Wyoming, where women have voted so many years, less restraint is imposed on liquor-selling than in most of the other States. Divorce is granted for any one of eleven causes, after a residence of but six months. The age of consent was only fourteen years as late as 1890. Gambling is legal; not only do the laws mention many games with cards as lawful, but a statute declares: "No town, city, or municipal corporation in this Territory shall hereafter have power to prohibit, suppress or regulate any gaming-house or game, licensed as provided for in this chapter." "Excusable homicide" is also defined by statute. It is allowable "when committed by accident or misfortune, in the heat of passion or sufficient provocation, or upon a sudden combat; provided that no undue advantage is taken, nor any dangerous weapon used, and that the killing is not done in a cruel or unusual manner." The laws could hardly have been worse before women voted.
It is matter of surprise to find how generally in Western towns and States in which woman has voted or held office, "Woman has degraded politics, and politics has degraded woman." This is not, to my mind, proof that American women are degenerating, but it suggests that the women who have sought political life are not representative.
Another legal demand very early made by the Suffrage leaders was that for the entrance of women into men's colleges. So far as the State could control this by law, it has done so. Every educational institution that receives State support, from the primary school to the State University, is now open to women. Cornell University, opened in October, 1868, was aided by a State gift of a million acres, and opened its doors to women in April, 1872. In the West, the State Universities would have been closed for lack of pupils, during the war, if women had not attended them.
The New York State Suffrage Association includes in its report of the doings at the Constitutional Convention a report of its legislative work for the twenty-two years of its existence. Of the many petitions presented during those years, but three relate to anything but Suffrage in some form, and these did not originate with the New York Suffrage Association. One of these three related to the bill to secure police matrons in New York City. Work was begun in 1882 and ended in success in 1891, there being strong opposition to it. The act to provide woman physicians for prisons, and one making mother and father joint guardians of children, passed in 1888 and 1892. Three of the Suffrage bills refer to school matters, one of which was successful and two were lost. Five relate to municipal suffrage, all of which were defeated. The remaining sixteen bills were all for full suffrage, were all urged by many speakers, and were all defeated. I give, in closing, Mr. Francis M. Scott's summary of the laws of New York State that relate especially to women and are in force to-day. Much special legislation urged by Suffrage petitions has not been enacted at all, and much has been passed in a different form. Suffragists say that the change of laws constitutes no reason for opposing suffrage, but to my mind it constitutes a most excellent one. What has been done by petition proves the power to do more by the same means, and the fact that much of the best legislation has been against the demand of the Suffragists or in precedence of it, proves that the rights of women are in hands that are capable of meeting fresh interests as they arise.
Every profession and business is open to women to exactly the same extent as to men, and already women have found a place in law, medicine, architecture, journalism, and other professions.
Single women always could engage in commercial and mercantile pursuits without hindrance or restriction.
Notwithstanding her marriage, a woman now holds and enjoys her separate property, however acquired, freed from any interference or control on the part of her husband, and from all liability for his debts.
She may sell, assign, and transfer her real and personal property, and carry on any trade or business and perform any labor and services on her own sole and separate account, and her earnings are her own sole and separate property.
She may sue and be sued, as if she were unmarried, and may maintain an action in her own name for injury to her person or character (including actions for slander or libel), and the proceeds of any such action are her sole and separate property.
She may contract to the same extent, with like effect in the same form as if she were unmarried, and she and her separate estate are liable thereon.
A widow is endowed of the third part of all the real estate whereof her husband is seized of an estate of inheritance at any time during the marriage. This interest, termed during the lifetime of her husbandinchoate, attaches at the instant of marriage to all real estate the husband then owns, and after marriage to all real estate he acquires. Having once attached, it cannot be divested by any act of the husband, or any of his creditors. The wife alone can release it, and she forfeits it only in case of a divorce dissolving the marriage for her misconduct.
The husband cannot either sell or devise his real estate, except subject to this dower right of his wife. The husband's estate by courtesy in his wife's real estate is by no means so broad or so well secured as is the wife's right of dower. It does not attach at all until the birth of a living child, and the wife may absolutely defeat it at any time without any consent on the part of her husband, either by conveying her real estate during her lifetime, or by devising it by her will. It is no longer necessary for the husband to join with the wife in conveying her property.
A husband is liable for necessaries purchased by his wife, and also for money given to the wife by a third person in order to enable her to purchase necessaries, and he is bound to support her and her children without regard to the extent of her individual and separate estate. No similar obligation to furnish necessaries to a husband is imposed upon a wife. The legal definition of necessaries is very broad, being "such things as are actually required for the wife's support commensurate with the husband's means, her wonted living as his spouse, and her station in the community."
In case of a divorce, whether partial or absolute, obtained by the wife, the husband is required to payalimonyfor her support during the rest of her life, even if she should re-marry. A wife from whom a husband obtains a divorce cannot be required to contribute in any way to his support.
Although the law has opened wide the door for all women to engage in business, it still discriminates in their favor in many particulars. No woman can be arrested in a civil action, or held by an execution against the body, except in cases in which it is shown that she has committed "a wilful injury to person, character, or property," or has been guilty of such an evasion of duty as is equivalent to a contempt of court. Thus a woman engaged in business cannot be arrested in an action for a debt fraudulently contracted.
All women judgment debtors, whether married or single, enjoy certain exemptions from the sale of their property under execution, which, in the case of men, extend only to a householder; that is, a man who has, and provides for, a household or family.
Every married woman is the joint guardian of her children with her husband, with equal powers, rights, and duties in regard to them with her husband. It is only the survivor, be it father or mother, who possesses the right to appoint a guardian by deed or by will. She has now equal rights with the father over her children.
As matter of practice, the courts when called upon to award the custody of minor children in cases of separation, determine the question with reference solely to the interests of the child, with a strong leaning in the mother's favor.
A husband's creditors have no claim upon the proceeds of a policy of insurance upon his life for the benefit of his wife, unless the annual premiums paid by him shall have exceeded five hundred dollars. The proceeds of such a policy are exempt from execution for any debt owed by the wife.
The statutes contain a large number of special provisions for the benefit of female employees in factories and mercantile houses. In the city of New York, if any man fails to pay the wages due a female employee up to fifty dollars, not only is none of his property exempt from execution, but he is liable to be imprisoned upon a body execution, and kept in close confinement without the privilege of bail. A similar rule is applicable in Brooklyn.
No woman can be called upon to perform military duty.
No woman can be required to serve upon any jury.
No woman can be called upon by the sheriff or any peace officer to assist in quelling a disturbance or making an arrest.
The fifth count in the Suffrage Declaration of Sentiments reads as follows: "He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow she receives but scanty remuneration."
The women who wrote that in 1848, in common with the majority of American women, were presumably being well provided for in their own homes, by men whose boast it was that their wives and daughters did not need or care to seek employment elsewhere. It is true that at that time, because of this supposed advantage, as married women they could not have engaged in separate business that would involve the making of contracts or distinct bargain and sale. To the world the husband was the wife's financial manager. But at that time the wife could enter any of the employments as a paid clerk or worker. This count seems more surprising in view of the fact that, writing only three years later, to a Suffrage convention that met in Akron, Ohio, Mrs. Stanton said: "The trades and professions are all open to us; let us quietly enter and make ourselves, if not rich and famous, at least independent and respectable." Two years later still, Colonel Thomas W. Higginson wrote to another Suffrage convention that met in Akron, Ohio: "We complain of the industrial disadvantages of women, and indicate at the same time their capacities for a greater variety of pursuits. Why not obtain a statement on as large a scale as possible, first of what women are doing now, commercially and mechanically, throughout the Union, and secondly, of the embarrassments which they meet, the inequality of their wages, and all the other peculiarities of their position." This would have been most valuable and interesting, and it would seem that something of the kind should have preceded the sweeping accusation made in the Declaration; but there appears in their "History" no evidence of its having been done. In 1859 Caroline H. Ball said, in addressing a Suffrage convention: "I honor women who act. That is the reason that I greet so gladly girls like Harriet Hosmer, Louisa Landor, and Margaret Foley. Whatever they do, or do not do, for Art, they do a great deal for the cause of labor. I do not believe any one in this room has an idea of the avenues that are open to women already." Then follows a list of the trades then pursued by women in Great Britain. Of the United States she said: "Of factory operatives in 1845 there were 55,828 men and 75,710 women. Women are glue-makers, glove-makers, workers in gold and silver leaf, hair- weavers, hat and cap-makers, hose-weavers, workers in India-rubber, paper- hangers, physicians, picklers and preservers, saddlers and harness-makers, shoe-makers, soda-room keepers, snuff and cigar-makers, stock and suspender-makers, truss-makers, typers and stereotypers, umbrella-makers, upholsterers, card-makers, photographers, house and sign-painters, fruit- hawkers, button-makers, tobacco-packers, paper-box makers, embroiderers, and fur-sewers." She added: "In New Haven seven women work with seventy men in a clock factory (at half wages)." And in summing up she said: "The great evils that lie at the foundation of depressed wages are that want of respect for labor which prevents ladies from engaging in it, and that want of respect for women which prevents men from valuing properly the work they do. Make women equal with men before the law, and wages will adjust themselves."
Women are equal with men legally and wages have not adjusted themselves, and the law has had no control over the feelings and opinions of men and women. Those who were large-minded enough to respect labor asked no warrant from legislation, and those who were small-minded enough to undervalue woman's work because it was woman's, do so still despite the statutes, and would if women voted at every election. Men were equal with each other before the law, but that did not compel the respect of foolish men, nor did their wages adjust themselves to equality on that account. If there were more men working in a trade in a given place than the demand for their products required, the wage would fall, and so it must with women. But reasons entered into the market value of woman's work that did not enter into that of men. Mrs. Dall mentions but one trade in which the wages were lower for women, and there they competed with men. Those seven women working with the seventy men in New Haven were not expected to be called upon to support a family by their earnings. If they were girls, in the natural course of things they were expected to leave the work whenever they were ready to marry. If one of them married one of the seventy men, the firm of employers would lose her services entirely; but the man who married her would be depended upon to work more steadily than before, and he would also have more incentive to do better work in order to command still higher wages. The long cry of Suffrage has not been able to bring about "equal pay for equal work," even where legislation to that effect has been introduced into Trades Unions and State laws. This has still rested, and must rest, with the employer, and his action must be governed by quality and demand and supply. The attempt to secure "equal wages" among men has resulted in bringing down the wages of all to the point of the poorer workers. The general laws of trade, like those of government, are based on principles of universal equity, and however strenuously temporary deviations may be pressed, they return at last to the natural position. This is not saying that there is not great injustice toward labor by capital, and toward capital by labor, but that the foundation principles tend to govern the mutual relations, and forcing that is contrary to these cannot be permanently successful. If the work of women for any reason is unequal, the wages will be, and the mere fact that some particular women work for some particular time the same number of hours, and as well as do the men in the same establishments, does not do away with the fact that women's work in general is not as steady as men's, and is not expected to meet the same emergency of family support. No one can believe more fully than I in equal wages for work that is really equal; but it seems to me that private contract, and not public action, must regulate the matter of special wage.
Government reports show that the average age of the working-girl in this country is but twenty-two years, and that after twenty the number falls off rapidly. Unskilled labor must forever take the place of that which is withdrawn, which is another and most valid reason for lower wages. That lower wages are the result of natural causes, and not of unnatural feeling, is shown in many ways. Woman teachers at the West, where teachers were needed, received as good pay as did men. In New York I heard Superintendent Jasper, I think it was, say: "I am in favor of equal pay for equal work, for the two sexes; but we cannot give it here. We can get twice as many good women teachers as men teachers, and when we need men we must pay at a higher rate." This does not extend to the highest grade of teachers, superintendents, and professors in colleges, where men compete with one another. There the compensation is the same for equal work. In the highest forms of work women compete on equal terms. In literature women are paid, for books or articles, the same prices that men receive. In art this is true. It is the picture or statue or musical ability that counts. Singers receive as much for the soprano as for the tenor voice. Actresses are paid according to "drawing" power, and woman dancers and acrobats, alas! command the highest price.
There is, among others, this fundamental difference between the business life of men and women. For men who pursue occupations outside the home, there are women to manage that home. For women who pursue occupations outside the home, there are, not men, but other women, to manage the home. The final domestic care of the world must come upon women. The final attention to social life must come upon women. In behalf of the women who are constrained, or who choose, to sacrifice their share in this part of the world's necessary work, some other women must do double duty. That this rule has seeming exceptions does not make it less the universal rule.
Nothing, not even "industrial emancipation," is gotten for nothing.
When the count cited above from the Suffrage indictment was written, the factory system had been established in this country twenty-six years. From the Revolution down to 1822, the women of the land had been busy in the homes making the household and personal wear. Sixteen years after the introduction of machinery into Lowell, Mass., 12,507 operatives were at work there, the majority of whom were women, American women and girls. New York State also had its mills. "Fanny Forester" (afterward Mrs. Judson) worked in a mill near her home in that State. She went there, as did hosts of New England girls, Lucy Larcom and Harriet Robinson among the number, to relieve the home, but especially to gain the means of education, for themselves and for their brothers and sisters. The towns afforded better libraries, and there were evening classes that they could attend, things not to be had in the farming districts. In 1850, in twenty-five States, the factory census reported 32,295 men and 62,661 women workers. In 1860 there were 46,859 men and 75,169 women. Hosiery machinery at this time was giving employment to three times as many women as men. But the emigrant, and not the American man, had been the means of turning out the native woman worker; it was the foreign-born woman who worked for "unequal pay." In 1846, the sewing-machine had been invented. Previous to that time, 61,500 women were employed making boys' clothing by hand for the market, which was twice the number of men so employed, while the woman tailor was as familiar a figure as the dress-maker in every village, where she went from house to house.
In 1861 came our Civil War, with its awful sacrifice of young men. With that also came the heavy money loss, and consequent inability of many men, even where life and limb had been spared, to support their families in the homes. That great conflict, with its stern necessities, its lessons of mutual helpfulness, its military discipline, which taught the value of organization, did more than could ten thousand conventions, even had they been working with knowledge and system, to instruct women in love for work for others. It nerved them to labor for self-support and for the support of those who were now dependent upon them' because the strong arm had fallen and the willing heart had ceased to beat. Before the year 1861 had closed, there were a million women in this country earning their daily bread by honorable labor. As time went on, and the slaughter continued, and the nation's debt piled up, and prices became almost fabulous, more and more women asked through blinding tears, "What can I do?" Every trade was thrown open to women, and the laws had placed the married woman where she could compete on equal terms with her unmarried sister, even though she still had the advantage of a husband's support.
A great pother has lately been made by Suffrage workers in New York because a bill was proposed prohibiting married women from teaching in the public schools. This has been the unwritten law in many places for years. The practice was adopted to offset the maintenance of married women. Teachers should receive more pay, but so should poets and artists, and we all hope the time will come when brain work will have more tangible market value.
The sewing-machine had thrown women out of employment, as with it one woman could do the work of many. The number of work-seekers was enlarged by the influx, from the desolated South, of women whose entire living had been swept away. This army of uneducated workers from all sections were compelled not only to compete with men but with themselves as well. They sought, and could seek, only the lighter employments. Suffragists had their wish in regard to man's relinquishment of the "profitable employments," but not in the way they intended. The women for whose sake those profitable employments had been "monopolized" were now not only allowed by law but compelled by circumstance to toil from sun to sun at the best they could find to do; their frailer organizations were forced to bear "the double curse of work and pain." A nobler army of martyrs never turned their sorrows into blessings by the spirit in which they met them, than the American women who put their shoulders to the wheels of business that were moving in a hundred ways.
In 1843 a humble beginning at industrial education for girls had been made by the Female Guardian Society. In 1854 Peter Cooper established the Cooper Union with its generous facilities for women in industry and the arts. The Young Women's Christian Association was founded in Normal, Illinois, in 1872, and its work in the industrial branch spread, before many years, to every city and town in the land. Men originated for women the first "Woman's Protective Union." In twenty-five years it had reported legal suits won for 12,000 women, and $41,000 collected. In 1869 the great organization of the Knights of Labor was founded, and in its body of rules was one "to secure for both sexes equal pay for equal work." Failure proves that labor cannot, any more than paper, be coined into money by the mere fiat of a government or an organization.
But the great impulse to industrial education came through the Centennial Exposition held at Philadelphia in 1876. While the land was filled with the hum of preparation, as their contribution to that indication of peaceful progress, the Suffrage Associations were rolling up another petition in which to set forth their wrongs. After General Hawley, manager of the Exposition, had courteously refused to receive it in a public meeting, it was "pressed upon the Nation's heart" by delegates who pushed their way into Independence Hall. Outside that historic building, under the broiling sun, with Matilda Joslyn Gage to hold an umbrella over her, Miss Anthony read aloud a "Declaration of Independence" that re-echoed the sentiments of their first Declaration. It began by saying: "While the nation is buoyant with patriotism, and all hearts are attuned to praise, it is with sorrow we come to strike the one discordant note"—a typical and prophetic sentence.
From 1876 girls, as well as boys, received manual training in the public schools, and when that proved impracticable, the way was found to open industrial schools that should include classes for girls. Every State, and almost every city and town of any size, had them. It was not long ere multitudes of societies and organizations furnished means for women's education in business and mechanic arts. The growth of the philanthropy of self-help is one of the wonders of the past twenty-five years, and women, without the ballot, have largely assisted in developing it.
John Graham Brooks, in a lecture delivered in New York in the winter of 1895-6, on "Some Economic Aspects of the Woman Question," said: "Woman who used to do her work in the house now does it in the factory, and the same work, doing her work under absolutely new and different conditions, a change so great that it closes finally one argument that I hear again and again by those opposed to woman suffrage—namely, that the place for woman is in the home."
One condition under which she works that is not "absolutely new and different" is that of sex. Whatever as a woman she could not do in the home she cannot do abroad as a working-woman. She is in business as a business woman, not as a business man. Economic equality in such things as she can do is as unlike to a similarity in work which ignores sex conditions as a business corporation is to the government under whose laws it exists and by which its rights are defended. But even the external conditions are not so changed as might at first appear. The statistical proof of the youth of the majority of workers, the comparatively small number out of the whole population who go into business, and the fact that the domestic work for these very workers must be done by women, all show this.
The United States Census of 1890 shows that not quite four million women are "engaged in gainful occupations." Of these more than one and a half million are in domestic service, and nearly half a million in professional service, mainly as teachers. The most striking gain has been made in the lighter forms of profitable labor—by stenographers, typewriters, telegraph and telephone operators, cashiers, bookkeepers, etc. In 1870 there were 19,828 of these; in 1890, there were 228,421. The invention of the type-writing machine appears to be the ballot that has mainly produced this result. Carrol D. Wright says that in twenty cities examined in the United States he found, among 17,000 working-women, that 15,887 were single, 1,038 were widows, and 745 were married. This tells the same story. The mass of these women, like the mass of men, are working, not for public influence or station, but for the owning and holding of a home. The latest effort in self-help for the working class is the wise one of building them good homes. The best renting property has been found to be that which gives privacy and those distinctions that mark the family.
The latest report of the New York Bureau of Statistics of Labor shows that of 8,040 persons who registered for employment in New York city, 6,458 were men, and 1,582 were women. Of these, the foreign-born numbered 4,804, of whom 3,674 were men and 1,140 were women. The native-born numbered 3,234, of whom 2,796 were men, and 442 were women. The list included every trade and profession, from that of day laborer to that of clergyman, from that of school teacher to that of domestic servant, and showed that in the city where more women are employed than in any other place, the proportion of women to men was less than one fifth, and of native American to foreign-born women two fifths.
Mr. Brooks would favor suffrage because "in this new career there are reasons for every whit of protection." He mentions, as proof of woman's changed attitude as an industrial unit, that the Supreme Courts of Illinois and California have decided against special legislation for women. They did so on the ground that "they were now earning their livelihood under men's conditions, and should not have special legislation in business relations." If Mr. Brooks thinks that women wish the ballot to restore the special legislation, he does not know the Suffrage demand for equality. In England, when the laws were under discussion that forbid the employment of women more than a certain number of hours, and of children under certain ages, the Woman Suffrage leaders protested against the former as an infringement of personal rights and the ability to make contracts. But the special legislation for business women goes on, because, after all, the State knows that they are business women, and not business men, and the Suffrage quarrel in regard to privilegeversusright goes on also.
Before the Committee of the Constitutional Convention, Mrs. Ecob, of Albany, said: "You speak of chivalry. We scorn the word! What has your chivalry done for the weaker sex? Women are the unpaid laborers of the world—outcasts in government." Mrs. Hood, of Brooklyn, on the same occasion said: "Who dares insult our American manhood by declaring that men will be less courteous to mother, wife, and sister, because they are political equals? Woman's equality in the industrial world has to-day produced a nobler, better chivalry than was ever conceived by the knights of old."
These two Suffrage leaders will have to settle between themselves the question which they have placed in dispute. It serves to point the moral of dilemma that attends an attempted adjustment of unnatural claims. Meantime government is caring for the weak, and chivalry is doing justice. The Labor Law that went into effect in this State on September 1st provided that children be classified so that those under fourteen years should not be employed in mercantile pursuits. Children between the ages of twelve and fourteen will be permitted to work in vacation, if they can show that they have attended school through the year. The girls between fourteen and twenty-one are not to be allowed to work more than ten hours a day. Their employment before 7 A.M. and after 10 P.M. is forbidden. Women and children are not allowed to work in basements, without permits from the Health Board as to the condition of the basement. Seats are to be provided for woman employees, forty-five minutes given them for luncheon, and proper lunch and toilet rooms to be secured. Penalties, ranging from a fine of $20 for the first offence to imprisonment, are prescribed for violation of the law. In his last report, published in January 1897, the New York Commissioner of Labor considers the low wages and petty wrongs of working women and girls in New York City. He advises the formation of unions among themselves for their better protection.
Mr. Brooks does not agree with those who claim that possession of the ballot would raise wages. Mrs. Ames and Dr. Jacobi think it would only raise them through the indirect influence of the greater respect in which the worker would be held. This is safe ground again, because it is debatable; but the domestic servants of those who hold the former opinion might give them an object-lesson. Unfranchised as the servants are, they have only to make a threat of leaving to secure better wages.
Harriette A. Keyser, who was the special Suffrage champion of the working- woman before the Committee of the Constitutional Convention, gave not one fact or figure to show that the working-woman, where she had the ballot, had already been helped by it, or that it was likely to help her, or how and why it might help her. Among the generalities she uttered was the following; "But the greatest value of the working-woman, to my mind, is that without her economic value this present demand for equal suffrage could never be made. Indeed, the suffrage of the world is due to her. Do I mean by this that every working-woman in the country sees her own value so clearly that she demands enfranchisement? I could not say this with truth. I make this statement irrespective of what any individual working-woman may think. It is based upon what she is. As through the last half century the contention for equal rights has continued, the working-woman has been the great object-lesson. It was not from women of leisure, having all the rights they want, that inspiration has been received. It has been caught from the patient worker, healing the sick, writing the book, painting the picture, teaching the children, tilling the soil, working in the factory, serving in the household. Every stroke of these workers has been a protest against a disfranchised individuality." Miss Keyser has mentioned most of the classes in this country, for, so far as my experience goes, there is no such thing as a leisure class, in the sense of an idle class, of women. Women are almost universally industrious, and it is a mistake to suppose that their early industry in the house was not as much appreciated and counted in the general fund of work as their more public activity now. It is well for Miss Keyser to make her estimate of the Suffrage value of the working-woman one that shall have no reference to the expressed views of the working-woman herself; because the working-woman seems almost universally not only unconscious of but indifferent to her attitude as a great object-lesson in favor of the ballot. But here is something new. Suffragists have first claimed that there could be no working-woman unless there was a ballot in woman's hand; then they claimed that, although there was a working-woman despite the fact that she had not been enfranchised, she was made by the agitation for the ballot; and now comes Miss Keyser to say that, not only is the working-woman not due to the ballot, or to ballot-seeking, but "the suffrage of the world is due to her," for "without her economic value this present demand for equal suffrage could never have been made!" Tar baby ain't sayin' nuthin'.
Dr. Jacobi, in "Common Sense," says: "Whatever may be the personal privileges of their lot, whatever the legal protection accorded to their earnings, the public status of such a class remains strictly that of aliens. At the present moment this vast and constantly growing army of women industrials constitutes an alien class. The privation for that class of political right to defend its interests is only masked, but not compensated, by its numerous inter-relations with those who have rights." So they are conceded to have personal privileges, and legal protection for earnings. The alienism is then purely political, and works no hardship but what Suffragists conceive to be in the mental attitude of the worker.
Foreign capitalists who own land or plant in the United States are unfranchised. We have large numbers of men working in trades and professions who never have been naturalized, but we do not dream that all these constitute an alien class of industrials. No distinction is made in business opportunity between the voter and non-voter. Neither is any social distinction made regarding worker or employer on account of the relations of either to the ballot. Market value is not measured by suffrage, except in dishonorable transactions, and the women "with ballots in their hands" are not the Government's preferred creditors. The men in the District of Columbia are not conscious of lower wages and industrial ostracism. Again, Dr. Jacobi says: "The share of women in political rights and life—imperfect and deferred during the predominance of militarism— has become natural, has become inevitable, with the advent of industrialism, in which they so largely share."
Industrialism has no more power to change the basis of government than the abolition movement had when certain advocates of it shouted that it was "sinful to vote or hold office, because the government was founded upon physical force and maintained itself by muskets." Industrialism is bringing into this country some of the gravest problems it has ever met. The sympathy of the people is on the side of labor that uses honorable means; but Cleveland and Leadville are among the places that suggest afresh the fact that industrialism must be kept in order for its own sake, for the sake of general peace, and for the sake of its increasing ranks of "alien" women who look to it for "every whit of protection," save that which their own self-respect and that of public opinion can win them.
Again, Dr. Jacobi says: "Notwithstanding the repression of women's civil rights, and their absolute exclusion from even the dream of a political sphere, the women of France engage more freely than anywhere else in business and industry." There is a moral here deeper than can be read at a glance. The first thought suggested is, that industrial success for woman is not in the least dependent upon the vote. The second is, that industrial progress does not command the vote. The third is, that American freedom has worked in the opposite direction from French unstable republicanism. And the fourth is, that industrious France stands appalled at the lack of increase of its population. There are many forces that sap its national life, but perhaps the most conspicuous is the socialistic and anarchistic tendency of its labor organizations. The woman-suffrage idea was first openly proclaimed during the French Revolution. In 1851 the annual Suffrage Convention in this country was called by Paulina Wright Davis, to meet in Worcester, Mass. Ernestine Rose read to the convention two letters addressed to that body through her, written by Jeanne Deroine and Pauline Roland, from a Paris prison. During the revolutionary movements of 1848, these women had played conspicuous roles. One of them had attempted to nominate the mayor in her native city, the other to be a candidate for the Legislative Assembly. They wrote: "Sisters of America! Your socialist sisters of France are united with you in the vindication of the right of woman to civil and political equality. We have, moreover, the profound conviction that only by the power of association based on solidarity—by the union of the working-classes of both sexes in organized labor, can be acquired, completely and pacifically, the civil and political equality of woman, and the social right for all."
I know the feud, and the grounds for it, between socialism and anarchy. But both are enemies of the social order, and both are favorers of woman suffrage. How "pacifically" the labor movement that originated in France in 1848, and spread throughout Europe, was likely to proceed, we may judge by its constant outbreaks kindred to the recent bomb-throwing in Paris. In the German Working-man's Union, Hasenclever, for many years the leading socialist in the German Reichstag, said: "The Woman Question would be taken by the developed, or, more correctly speaking, the communistic state, under its own control, for in this state" (which was to consist of men and women with equal vote) "when the community bears the obligation of maintaining the children, and no private capital exists, the woman need no longer be chained to one man. The bond between the sexes will be merely a moral one, and if the characters do not harmonize could be dissolved." The "Social Democrat" of Copenhagen has for mottoes: "All men and women over twenty-one should vote." "There should be institutions for the proper bringing up of children." All the communistic and anarchistic labor organizations in Germany, France, Switzerland, Denmark, and England proclaim woman suffrage as a prime factor, and the disruption of the family as its corollary.
There are many who remember the visit to this country of the socialist, Dr. Aveling, and his (so-called) wife, the daughter of Karl Marx. His legal wife had been left in England. Miss Marx said, in reply to the question of a Chicago lady, that love was the only recognized marriage in Socialism, consequently no bonds of any kind would be required. Divorces would be impossible; for when love ceased, separation would naturally ensue.
At a meeting of the Woman's Council held in Washington, in 1888, Mrs. Stanton said: "I have often said to men of the present day that the next generation of women will not stand arguing with you as patiently as we have for half a century. The organizations of labor all over the country are holding out their hands to women. The time is not far distant when, if men do not do justice to women, the women will strike hands with labor, with socialists, with anarchists, and you will have the scenes of the Revolution of France acted over again in this republic."
Mrs. Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in her lecture in this country two years ago on "The Economic Emancipation of Woman," said that she rejoiced in every co-operative working-woman's dwelling, because it was a blow aimed at the isolated home, and she has just repeated in New York her proposition for the institutional care of children. Alice Hyneman Rhine, in her article on "Woman's Work in America," says of socialistic labor, "It aims to benefit woman by recognizing her as a perfect equal of man, politically and socially; by fixing woman's means of support by the state so as to render her independent of man." "Freedom," a radical socialistic newspaper published in Chicago, where Emma Goldman and her ilk have revealed the true inwardness of such movements, recommends as the first step "equal rights for all, without distinction of race or sex," and the abolition of "class rule." Our most radical socialistic Labor National Convention in New York, this year, had four woman delegates.
The Knights of Labor who first put "equal pay for equal work" into their platform, appeared in their late convention, under the lead of Sovereign, who declared that Gov. Altgeld "was one of the finest types of American manhood to-day." They seem to be drifting toward that phase of Socialism to which Alice Hyneman Rhine referred. There are no greater tyrants than some of the Labor organizations, and one evidence of this is the fact that they prevent the colored man from doing any work outside of a few of the least noble occupations.
With such edged tools as these are our American women playing when they demand, in the name of democracy, in the name of the family, in the name of the working-woman, that the word "sex" shall be inserted in the United States Constitution, and the word "male" be stricken from every State constitution that now contains it.