History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 4/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION AND HEARINGS OF 1892.
The Twenty-fourth annual woman suffrage convention, held in the Church of Our Father, Washington, D. C, Jan. 17-21, 1892, was preceded by the usual services at three o'clock on Sunday afternoon. The text of the sermon, by the Rev. Mila Tupper, was "Think on these things" and it was devoted to a lofty consideration of "success through the moral power of ideals." Unexpectedly the congressional hearings were set for Monday morning, which called to the Capitol both Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony, president and vice-president of the association. The convention was called to order by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, and Mrs. Caroline McCullough Everhard (O.) was made chairman pro tem. Twenty-six States were represented by seventy-six delegates, the reports showed a year of unprecedented activity and there were requests from every State for speakers and organizers. The treasurer reported receipts for the past year, $3,830.
The executive sessions throughout the convention were spirited and interesting. After some discussion it was decided to carry the work into the Southern States, and also to appropriate money and workers for Kansas, where it was likely that an amendment for full suffrage soon would be submitted. It was voted to accept the space offered at the Columbian Exposition, to furnish and decorate a booth, circulate literature, etc. The motion to have the next meeting in Chicago during the Fair renewed the question of holding alternate conventions in some other city besides Washington, but the measure was defeated.
Mrs. Stanton introduced a resolution in favor of keeping the World's Fair open on Sunday, which was advocated and opposed with great earnestness. The majority of opinion evidently was in favor of opening the gates on Sunday but many felt that the subject was not germane to the purposes of the association, while others were conscientiously opposed to Sunday opening. Finally, in the midst of the controversy Mrs. Stanton withdrew her resolution, saying that she had offered it largely for the sake of discussion. Miss Shaw presented a resolution opposing the sale of intoxicating liquor on the Fair Grounds, saying that she did so as a matter of conscience and in order that it might go on record. It was voted to call an international suffrage meeting at Chicago during the Columbian Exposition. Miss Anthony urged more systematic organization, special efforts with the Legislatures, the securing of a Woman's Day at all Chautauqua Assemblies, county fairs, camp meetings, etc.
At the earnest request of Mrs. Stanton, who had now reached the age of seventy-six, she was permitted to retire from the presidency, and Miss Anthony, aged seventy-two, was elected in her place. The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw was made vice-president-at-large. Lucy Stone, who was now seventy-four, begged to be released as chairman of the executive committee, which was then abolished, the duties being transferred to the business committee consisting of all the officers of the association. Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Stone were made honorary presidents.
This was Mrs. Stanton's last appearance at a national convention after an attendance of forty years, but she never failed to take an active interest in the proceedings and to send her speech to be read by Miss Anthony. This also was the last time Lucy Stone appeared upon the national platform, as she died the next year, and Miss Anthony alone, of this remarkable trio of women, was left to carry forward the great work.
The addresses of this convention were up to the high standard of those which had preceded them during the past years, and no organization in existence, of either men or women, can show a more brilliant record of oratory. As Mrs. Stanton, Lucy Stone and Miss Anthony came on the platform the first evening they were enthusiastically applauded. The mental and physical vigor of Mrs. Stanton was much commented upon as in a rich and resonant voice she read the speech which she had that morning delivered before the Judiciary Committee of the House. It was entitled The Solitude of Self, and is considered by many to be her masterpiece.
Lucy Stone discussed The Outlook with clear vision. She contrasted the woman of the past, her narrow life, her limited education, her inferior position, with the educated, ambitious, independent woman of to-day, and urged that the latter should be equal to her opportunities, lay aside all frivolous things and labor unceasingly to secure for her sex an absolute equality of civil and political rights.
In the half-humorous address of Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.) on The Golden Rule, she said:
I am firmly convinced that our present powerless—I may almost say ignominious—position arises not so much, as many aver, from the lukewarmness of our own sex as from the supreme and absolute indifference of men. With a few honorable exceptions, men do not care one iota whether we vote or not. ....
Now if only men would take to betting on this question of woman suffrage, if we could open it up as a field of speculation, if we could manipulate it by some sort of patent process into stocks or bonds and have it introduced into Wall Street, we should very soon find ourselves emancipated. I keep on hoping that, by some fortuitous chance, fate may eventually execute for us as brilliant a "coup d'etat" as did General Butler for the colored slaves when he made them contraband of war, so that we shall just tumble into freedom as they did very soon thereafter. Until then let us trust in God, keep our powder very dry and our armies well drilled and disciplined.
In an inspiring address on The True Daughters of the Republic, Mme. Clara Neymann (N. Y.) pointed out the splendid material progress of our country under the guidance of men, and urged that women should be the power to lift it up to an equally exalted spiritual plane. The paper of Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) on Wyoming, in which as a Territory women had voted for twenty years and as a State for two years, presented a most convincing array of statistics proving the benefits of equal suffrage.-Ex-Governor John W. Hoyt of Wyoming came to the platform and corroborated these statements, paying a fine tribute to the political influence of women. He was followed by Mrs. Lida A. Meriwether (Tenn.), whose reputation as a humorist was fully sustained in her clever portrayal of Dreams that Go by Contraries. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt (N. Y.) gave a brilliant address on The Mission of a Republic.
In discussing The Value of Organizations for Women, Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon (La.) said:
Financial independence has been gained by many women, who, proud of their own success, never try to benefit others, and fail to comprehend the debt they owe to the brave, unselfish ones who first made demands for them and who never ceased their efforts until one after another the barriers were removed and opportunities secured for thousands which they never could have found themselves. It was this stanch band of pioneers, defying criticism, scorn and hate, who forced open college doors, invaded the law courts and stubbornly contested every inch of ground so persistently held ps fraud or force from the daughters of the great republic. ....
Organized as women now are, they could pour such an overwhelming moral influence into the political life of the country as to become its saving grace; for when women vote they will show good men, who have weakly shrunk from political duty, that they have a moral and clean constituency to stand with them.The platform proceedings of the convention closed with Miss Shaw's splendid delineation of The Injustice of Chivalry.
Every suffrage convention for the last twelve years had been preceded by a handsome reception at the Riggs House. This well-known and commodious hotel had been the convention head-quarters, and it also had been the winter home of Miss Anthony, where she remained as a guest of the proprietor, C. W. Spofford, and his wife, being thus enabled to do a vast amount of congressional and political work, such as never has been done since. The hotel now had passed into other hands and the Washington Post, in speaking of this matter, said: "The delegates feel like lost sheep without Mrs. Spofford's hospitality at the Riggs House, which has always been headquarters for suffragist and all women's conventions. Probably no one but those in the inner circle will ever know just how much Mrs. Spofford has done for the advancement of women in every direction. Whatever was hers was at the disposal of the leaders, and in the absence of so much assistance it is appreciated more nearly at its real worth."
The new club house of Wimodaughsis was opened for a reception to the delegates by the District W. S. A., with Miss An
Honorary President of the National-American Woman Suffrage Association.
thony, Lucy Stone, Mrs. Stanton, Henry B. Blackwell, and Miss Shaw, president of Wimodaughsis, as guests of honor. All made clever little speeches toward the close of the evening, which were supplemented with remarks by Senator Joseph M. Carey (Wy.), Representatives J. A. Pickler (S. D.), Martin N. Johnson (N. D.) and the Rev. Dr. Corey of the Metropolitan church.
The hearing on January 17 was held for the first time before a Judiciary Committee of the House, the majority of which was Democratic.[1] The Washington "Star" said: "The new members of the committee were apparently surprised at receiving such a talk from a woman and there was the most marked attention on the part of every one present. Their surprise was still greater when they found that Mrs. Stanton was not a phenomena] exception, but that every woman there could make an argument which would do credit to the best of public men."
The hearing before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage was held the morning of February 20. Four of the greatest women this nation ever produced addressed this committee, asking for themselves and their sex a privilege which is freely granted without the asking to every man, no matter how humble, how ignorant, how unworthy, who is not included within the category of the insane, the idiotic, the convicted criminal— Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Isabella Beecher Hooker. Mrs. Stanton (N. Y.) gave her address, The Solitude of Self, in place of the old arguments so many times repeated, saying in part:
Secondly, if we consider her as a citizen, as a member of a great nation, she must have the same rights as all other members, according to the fundamental principles of our Government.
Thirdly, viewed as a woman, an equal factor in civilization, her rights and duties are still the same—individual happiness and development.
Fourthly, it is only the incidental relations of life, such as mother, wife, sister, daughter, which may involve some special duties and training. In the usual discussion in regard to woman’s sphere, such men as Herbert Spencer, Frederick Harrison and Grant Allen uniformly subordinate her rights and duties as an individual, as a citizen, as a woman, to the necessities of these incidental relations, some of which a large class of women never assume. In discussing the sphere of man we do not decide his rights as an individual, as a citizen, as a man, by his duties as a father, a husband, a brother or a son, some of which he may never undertake. Moreover he would be better fitted for these very relations, and whatever special work he might choose to do to earn his bread, by the complete development of all his faculties as an individual. Just so with woman. The education which will fit her to discharge the duties in the largest sphere of human usefulness, will best fit her for whatever special work she may be compelled to do.
The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right to choose his own surroundings. The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, her forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition ; from all the crippling influences of fear—is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life. The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty ; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself. ....
To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is ‘like putting out the eyes; to deny the rights of property is like cutting off the hands. To refuse political equality is to rob the ostracized of all self-respect, of credit in the market place, of recompense in the world of work, of a voice in choosing those who make and administer the law, a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment. Shakespeare’s play of Titus and Andronicus contains a terrible satire on woman’s position in the nineteenth century—‘Rude men seized the king’s daughter, cut out her tongue, cut off her hands, and then bade her go call for water and wash her hands.” What a picture of woman’s position! Robbed of her natural rights, handicapped by law and custom at every turn, yet compelled to fight her own battles, and in the emergencies of life to fall back on herself for protection. ....
How the little courtesies of life on the surface of society, deemed so important from man towards woman, fade into utter insignificance in view of the deeper tragedies in which she must play her part alone, where no human aid is possible!
Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one's self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded—a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth, family and position. Conceding then that the responsibilities of life rest equally on man and woman, that their destiny is the same, they need the same preparation for time and eternity. The talk of sheltering woman from the fierce storms of life is the sheerest mockery, for they beat on her from every point of the compass, just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, to conquer. ....
In music women speak again the language of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and are worthy interpreters . of their great thoughts. The poetry and novels of the century are theirs, and they have touched the keynote of reform in religion, politics and social life. They fill the editor's and professor's chair, plead at the bar of justice, walk the wards of the hospital, speak from the pulpit and the platform. Such is the type of womanhood that an enlightened public sentiment welcomes to-day, and such the triumph of the facts of life over the false theories of the past.
Is it, then, consistent to hold the developed woman of this day within the same narrow political limits as the dame with the spinning wheel and knitting needle occupied in the past? No, no! Machinery has taken the labors of woman as well as man on its tireless shoulders; the loom and the spinning wheel are but dreams of the past; the pen, the brush, the easel, the chisel, have taken their places, while the hopes and ambitions of women are essentially changed.
We see reason sufficient in the outer conditions of human beings for individual liberty and development, but when we consider the self-dependence of every human soul, we see the need of courage, judgment and the exercise of every faculty of mind and body, strengthened and developed by use, in woman as well as man. ....With the earnest persuasiveness for which she had been noted nearly half a century, Lucy Stone (Mass.) said:
But the thing I want to say particularly is that we have our immortal Declaration of Independence and the various bills of rights of the different States (George Washington advised us to recur often to first principles), and in these nothing is clearer than the basis of the claim that women should have equal rights with men. A complete government is a perfectly just government. ....
What I desire particularly to impress upon this committee is the gross and grave injustice of holding thirty millions of women absolutely helpless under the Government. The laws touch us at every point. From the time the girl baby is born until the time the aged woman makes her last will and testament, there is not one of her affairs which the law does not control. It says who shall own the property, and what rights the woman shall have; it settles all her affairs, whether she shall buy or sell or will or deed. ....
Persons are elected by men to represent them in Congress and the State Legislatures, and here are these millions of women, with just the same stake in the Government that men have, with a class interest of their own, and with not one solitary word to say or power to help settle any of the things which concern them.
Men know the value of votes and the possession of power, and I look at them and wonder how it is possible for them to be willing that their own mothers, sisters, wives and daughters should be debarred from the possession of like power. We have been going to the Legislature in Massachusetts longer than Mrs. Stanton has been coming here. We asked that when a husband and wife make a contract with each other, as for instance, if the wife loan the husband her money, the contract should be considered valid just as it would be between any other parties—for now in case the husband fails in business, she can not get her money—and the Legislature very kindly gave us leave to withdraw. Then we asked that when a man dies and the wife is left alone, with the whole burden of life on her shoulders, the law might give her more than forty days in which to stay in her home without paying rent. But we could not defeat one of our legislators, and they cared not a cent for our petition and less than a cent for our opinion; and so when we asked for this important measure they gave us leave to withdraw. ....
They respect the wants of the voter, but they care nothing about the wants of those who do not have votes. So, when we asked for protection for wives beaten by their husbands, and that the husband should be made to give a portion of his earnings to support the minor children, again we had leave to withdraw. . . . .
I can think of nothing so helpless and humiliating as the position of a disfranchised person. I do not know whether I am treading on dangerous toes when I say that, after the late war the Government in power wished to punish Jefferson Davis, and it considered that the worst punishment it could inflict upon him was to take away his right to vote. Now, the odium which attached to him from his disfranchisement is just the same as attaches to women from their disfranchisement. The only persons who are not allowed to vote in Massachusetts are the lunatics, idiots, felons and people who can not read and write. In what a category is this to place women, after one hundred years and at the close of this nineteenth century? And yet that is history. In Massachusetts we are trying to get a small concession—the right to vote in the cities and towns in which we live in regard to the taxes we have to pay. In 1792, in Newburyport, Mass., it was not thought necessary to give women education. At that time there were no schools for girls; the public money was not so used, and when one man said he had five daughters, and paid his taxes like other men, and his girls were not allowed to attend school, and that they ought to give the girls a chance, another man said, "Take the public money and educate shes? Never!"
Remember this was one hundred years ago. Some of the fathers urged that the girls should be educated in the public schools, and so the men—God forgive them!—said, "We will let the girls go in the morning between 6 and 8 o'clock, before the boys want the schoolhouse." Just think of the time those girls would have to rise in order. to have a little instruction before the boys got there! This plan did not work well, and the teacher was directed not to teach females any longer. Every descendant of those men now feels ashamed of them; and I think that in one hundred years the children of the men who are now letting us come here, year after year, pleading for suffrage, will feel ashamed. Men would rather lose anything than their votes; they would fight for their right of suffrage, and if anybody attempted to deprive them of it there would be war to the knife and the knife to the hilt. We come here to carry on our bloodless warfare, praying that the privilege granted in the foundation of the Government should be applied to women. ....
What we look forward to is part of the eternal order. It is not possible that thirty millions of women should be held forever as lunatics, fools and criminals. It is not possible, as the years go on, that each person should not at least have the right to look after his or her own interests. As the home is at its best when the father and mother consult together in regard to the family interests, so it is with the Government. I do not think a man can see from a man's point of view all the things that a woman needs, or a woman from her single point of view all the things that a man needs. Now men have brought their best, and also brought their worst, into the Government, and it is all here, but the thing you have not at all is the qualities which women possess, the feminine qualities. It has been said that women are more economical, peaceful and law-abiding than men, and all these qualities are lacking in the Government today. .... But whether this be so or not, it is night that every class should be heard in behalf of its own interest. ....
Now, gentlemen, I hope you will try to make this case your own. It is simple justice and fair play, and it is also a fundamental principle of the Government. Here we are trying to have a complete republic, and yet there are twelve millions of disfranchised adults. I believe that among the great people—and by the people I do not mean men, but men and women, the whole people—nothing creates such disrespect for a fundamental principle as not to apply it. The Government was founded upon the principle that those who obey the laws should make them, and yet it shuts out a full half. As long as this continues to be done, it certainly tends to create disrespect for the principle itself. Do you not see it? Why not reach out a hand to woman and say, "Come and help us make the laws and secure fair play"?
At the close of this argument Miss Anthony said: "We have with us one not so old in our cause as Mrs. Stone—I never call myself old because I shall be young until the crack of doom— and that is Mrs. Hooker, a sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. The world has always made special place for the family of Beechers."
Mrs. Hooker (Conn.) spoke very briefly, saying: 'You all know those old Jewish words in the Decalogue, 'Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee.' If we want to help the republic, if we want to perpetuate the institutions our fathers brought across the water, we must honor the mothers equally with the fathers in the Government. To-day the laws compel our sons the moment they are twenty-one to come to us and say: 'My mother, I owe you much; sometimes [ think all that is good in me has come from you, but to-day you will retire and I will rule. I will no longer listen to your counsel; but I will make the laws for you and my sisters, and you must obey them. Henceforth I am your ruler.' Now, friends, a Government can not last long which teaches its sons disrespect to its mothers. It is in line with our principles that we recognize the mother element in the Government as well as in the family."
Miss Anthony closed the hearing with a strong appeal for a report from the committee which should recommend Congress to submit a Sixteenth Amendment and allow the women of the country to carry their case to the State Legislatures. The committee seemed much impressed by the arguments, but evidently there was no change of opinion.[2]
A hearing was granted February 17 by the House Judiciary Committee, with delegates present from twenty-six States. Addresses were made in part as follows:
The ballot has been for man a means of defending these natural rights. Even now in some localities of the world those rights are still defended by the revolver, as in former days, but in peaceable communities the ballot is the weapon by means of which they are protected. We find, as women citizens, that when we are wronged, when our rights are infringed upon, inasmuch as we have not this weapon with which to defend them, they are not considered, and we are very many times imposed upon. We find that the true liberty of the American people demands that all citizens to whom these rights have been accorded should have that weapon. win'
Mrs. Lida A. Meriwether (Tenn.): "Oh, Cæsar, we who are about to die salute you!" was the gladiators' cry in the arena, standing face to face with death and with the Roman populace. All over this fair city, youth and beauty, freshness and joy, stand with welcoming hands, calling you to all pleasures of ear and eye, of soul and sense. But here, into the inner sanctuary of your deepest, gravest thought, come, year after year, a little band of women over whose heads the snows of many winters and of many sorrows have sifted. Here "we who are about to die salute you." We do not come asking for gifts of profit or preferment for ourselves; for us the day for ban or benison has almost passed. But we ask for greater freedom, for better conditions for the children of our love, whom we shall so soon leave behind. In the short space allowed each petitioner we have not time to ask for much. But in my State the grandmothers of seventy are growing weary of being classed with the grandsons of seven. They fail to find a valid reason why they should be relegated to perpetual legal and political childhood.
Years ago, when the bugle call rang out over this unhappy land, as the men rallied to the standard of their State, we, the wives and mothers, who had no voice in bringing about those cruel conditions, were called to give up our brightest and best for cannons' food. We furnished the provisions, ministered on the battlefield, nursed in the hospital; we, equally with our brothers, regarded "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" only as gifts held in trust to spend and be spent for home and State. And to-day when we see the wayfaring man, who probably hails from a penal institution of the Old World, who honors no home, no country and no political faith, freely enjoying the right to say who shall make and who shall enforce the laws by which we women are governed, we grow weary of being classed as perpetual aliens upon our nation's soil.
The honest, industrious, bread-winning women of Tennessee do not enjoy the knowledge that the pauper of their State is their political superior. Four years ago we saw it practically demonstrated that when a great moral issue was at stake the male pauper could cast his ballot without hindrance from the penal code, but if the widow or the single woman, who earned and owned property and paid her quota of the tax for his support, should attempt to cast a counteracting ballot, her penalty would be fine or imprisonment.
Year after year we have journeyed to the Mecca of the petitioner —the legislative halls. There we have asked protection for our boys from the temptation of the open saloon; we have asked that around our baby girls the wall of protection might be raised at least a little higher than ten years; we have asked for reform schools for boys, where they should not be thrown in daily contact with old and hardened criminals. Year after year we have pleaded for better conditions for the children to whom we have given the might of our love, the strength and labor of our lives; but in not one instance has that prayer been granted. And at last we have found the reason why. A senator in a sister State said to a body of petitioners: "Ladies, you won't get your bill, but your defeat will be a paying investment if it only teaches you that the politician, little or big, is now, always was, and always will be, the drawn image, pocket edition, safety valve and speaking-trumpet of the fellow that voted him in."
Gentlemen, we ask your help to the end that not we, perhaps, but the daughters and granddaughters whom we leave behind, may be counted with "those that voted him in."
Mrs, Jean Brooks Greenleaf (N. Y.): Soon after I came to Washington to make it my home for two years, one clear, bright morning I drove up to this Capitol with a friend. As we ascended the hill on the left we warmly expressed our admiration for the beautiful structure within whose walls we are now standing, and were enthusiastic in our admiration for those who so nobly planned that, with the growth of the nation, there could be a commensurate outstretching of its legislative halls without loss to the dignity of the whole. We drove slowly around the front and commenced the descent on the opposite side, when I called to the driver to stop in order that we might feast our eyes on the inspiring view which lay before us. There rose Washington Monument so simple yet so grand, and I recalled the fact that in its composition it fitly represented the Union of the States. My heart swelled and my eyes overflowed as I thought of the grand idea embodied in this Government, the possibilities of this country's future. The lines of "My country, 'tis of thee," rose to my lips, but they died there.
Whence came my right to speak those words? True I was born here; true I was taught from my earliest youth to repeat the glorious words of Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman and other patriots; but when I grew to womanhood I had to learn the bitter lesson that these words applied only to men; that I simply counted as one in the population; that I must submit to be governed by the laws in the selection of whose makers I had no choice; that my consent to be governed would never be asked; that for my taxation there would be no representation; that, so far as my right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" was concerned, others must judge for me; that I had no voice for myself; that I was a woman without a country, and only on the plane of political equality with the insane, the idiot. the pauper, Indians not taxed, the criminal, and the unnaturalized foreigner.
Honorable gentlemen, women come here annually to ask that these wrongs be righted. To-day we have come again to entreat that, as you have extended this building to meet the needs of the people, you will extend your thought of the people and make it possible that the principle underlying the Government of this country may be embodied in a law which will make the daughters of the land joint heirs with the sons to all the rights and privileges of an enfranchised people. In the name of the women of the State of New York, I ask it.
Miss Alice Stone Blackwell (Mass.): Except where there is some very strong reason to the contrary, it is generally admitted that every man has a right to be consulted in regard to his own concerns. The laws which he has to obey and the taxes he has to pay are things that do most intimately concern him, and the only way of being directly consulted in regard to them, under our form of government, is through the ballot. Is there any very good reason why women should not be free to be consulted in this direct manner? Let us consider a few of the reasons which are generally given against this freedom of women, and see whether they are good.
It is said that women do not need to vote, because they are virtually represented by their husbands, fathers and brothers. The first trouble with this doctrine of virtual representation is that it is not according to numbers. I know a man who had a wife, a widowed mother, four unmarried daughters and five unmarried sisters. According to this theory his vote represented himself and all those eleven women. Yet it counted but one, just the same as the vote of his next-door bachelor neighbor without a female relative in the world.
Then, again, suppose that all the women in one family do not think alike. A member of our Massachusetts Legislature had two daughters. One was a suffragist, the other was so much opposed that she used to burn the Woman's Journal as soon as it came in the house. How was that man to represent both his daughters by his single vote on the suffrage question? Instead of two daughters he might have had three, one a Republican, one a Democrat and the other a Prohibitionist. How could he have represented all of them by his one vote unless he had voted "early and often?"
Again, in order to represent the women of his family a man may have to go without representation himself. There was a case of an old gentleman in Chicago, a Greenbacker, who had three daughters, all of whom were Republicans. When election day approached his three daughters said to him that he was the natural representative of their family—he had always told them so, and they fully agreed with him—and they pointed out to him how very wrong it would be, when that family consisted of three Republicans and only one Greenbacker, with but one ballot to represent the family, that it should be cast for the Greenback candidate. The old gentleman was conscientious and consistent and, although he was a man of strong Greenback convictions, he actually voted the Republican ticket in order to represent his daughters. It was the nearest he could come to representing them under this theory. But did it give that family any accurate or adequate representation? Evidently not. The Greenback candidate was entitled to one vote from that family, and he did not get it; and the Republican candidate was entitled to three ballots, and he got only one. And then, in order to represent his daughters, that chivalrous father had to go without any representation himself. It is evident that the only fair way to get at public sentiment in such a case is for each member of the family to have one vote, and thus represent himself or herself.
Another proof that women are not virtually represented is to be found in the laws as they actually exist. These one-sided laws were not made because men meant to be unjust or unkind to women, but simply because they naturally looked at things mainly from their own point of view. It does not indicate any special depravity on the part of men. I have no doubt that if women alone had made the laws, those laws would be just as one-sided as they are to-day, only in the opposite direction.
It is said that if women are enfranchised, husbands and wives will vote just alike, and you will simply double the vote and have no change in the result. Then, in the next breath, it is said that husbands and wives would vote for opposing candidates, and then there would be matrimonial quarrels. If they vote just alike there will be no harm done, and this good may be done—the women will be broadened by a knowledge of public affairs, and husband and wife will have a subject of mutual interest in which they can sympathize with each other. In cases where husband and wife do not think alike as to who will make the best selectmen, for instance, you will admit that is hardly sufficient to cause them to quarrel; but if they should think differently on very many other points, they would quarrel anyway, so that politics would not make much difference with them.
Then it is said that women do not want to vote, and in proof it is said they do not vote generally for school committeemen where allowed to do so. We all know that the size of the vote cast at any election is just in proportion to the amount of interest that election calls forth. At a Presidential election nearly all the voters turn out; in an ordinary State election only about half; at a municipal election only a small fraction of the men take the trouble to vote. The Troy Press states that at a recent election in Syracuse for a board of education, out of about 3,000 qualified voters only 40 voted.
Then, it is said that this movement is making no progress; that while the movements along other lines are largely succeeding, there has been no advance along this line. Twenty-five years ago, with insignificant exceptions, women could not vote anywhere. To-day they have school suffrage in twenty-three States, full suffrage in Wyoming, municipal suffrage in Kansas, and municipal suffrage for single women and widows in England, Scotland and most of the British provinces. The common sense of the world is slowly but surely working toward the enfranchisement of women.
Mrs. Annie L. Diggs (Kan.): You remember the time when the theoretical objection was often urged that if the suffrage was given to women, men would cease to show them the proper respect. For instance, the weighty argument was made that they would not raise their hats when they met women on the street, and that they would not give up their seats in the cars. But, gentlemen, you should just see how they take off their hats to us in Kansas, and how every man of them gets up and offers us his seat when we come into a street car!
It was also urged that if the ballot were put into the hands of women it would be detrimental to the interests of the home. There is not a man in the State to-day who would venture to go before a Kansas audience and urge that objection. There is not a man there who would be willing to jeopardize his political, social or business interests by casting any kind of obloquy upon the women who have exercised the right of the elective franchise for the last. five years. This is the result of success. We have Municipal Suffrage. One little ounce of fact outweighs whole tons of theory. .... .
The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw (Penn.): Yesterday I noticed in a report of our hearing before the Judiciary Committee of the House the headline, "Appeals to Deaf Ears." And I said, "Has it come to this, that when earnest and sincere women of this great country make an appeal to the heads of the Government it is dubbed an 'Appeal to Deaf Ears'?" Time was when the British Government thought our ancestors had not sufficient merit in their cause to be heard, and when they made an "appeal to deaf ears." But the time came when those ears were unstopped and they heard, and what they heard was the cry of victory by a free people. We may be appealing to deaf ears to-day, but the time is coming when it will not be so. Men will hear and, hearing, they will answer, because ultimately men desire the right. If I were asked what I conscientiously believe the real condition of the hearts of most men to be, I should say they are positively ignorant in regard to the justice of this matter, and if it could be brought properly before them, they would stand on the side of justice and right for women.
Therefore I desire only to say that I know from my travels all over the country, conferring with the intelligent women to bring before them this great principle, that the good work is going on. It may be deafness yesterday and partial hearing to-day, but it will be full hearing to-morrow. To-day we may be blind to the truth; tomorrow we shall see the whole truth. We may not have another centennial before we shall see justice for all human kind.
You know, gentlemen, that this Government exists for only three things, and in those every woman is as much interested as every man. It exists for the administration of justice, for the protection of person and property, and for the development of society. Just as you and all men have persons and property to protect, so we women have. We are because of our nature and because it seems as if the Almighty had intended it should be so, more interested than men in the development of society. Wherever there is any movement for the uplifting of society you will find women in the forefront. There never has been any great movement in this nation when women have not stood side by side with the noblest and truest men.
We do to-day nine-tenths of the philanthropic work, nine-tenths of the church work, and form three-fourths of the church membership. We are the teachers of the young; we are the mothers of the race. If you want the noblest men you must have the noblest mothers. "Eye hath not seen, nor hath ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive" the kind of men and women God had in view when He created man in His own likeness and gave to male and female dominion over the world, to subdue it and to bring out of it the best things.
You who talk of a great Government in which the voice of God is heard must remember that, if "the voice of the people is the voice of God," you never will know what that is until you get the voice of the people, and you will find it has a soprano as well as a bass. You must join the soprano voice of God to the bass voice in order to get the harmony of the Divine voice. Then you will have a law which will enable you to say, "We are a people justly ruled, because in this nation the voice of the people is the voice of God, and the voice of the people has been heard."Mrs. Ellen M. Bolles (R. I.) said in the course of her remarks: "The conditions surrounding women to-day are quite different from what they were in the days of our grandmothers. Women are becoming property earners and owners, as they were not in those former times before they began asking for the ballot. Twenty-five per cent. or more of the women of this country are property owners. Nearly nine-tenths of the laws are made for the protection of property and of those who own it and who earn wages. Now it seems to me that this twenty-five per cent. of the women 'should have a voice in the making of laws for the protection of their property and of their right to earn a living. son
Mrs. Colby thus closed her address on Wyoming: "Having thus shown that the twenty-two years' experience of woman suffrage has been satisfactory to the citizens of Wyoming; that it has conduced to good order in the elections and to the purity of politics; that the educational system is improved and that teachers are paid without regard to sex; that Wyoming stands alone in a decreased proportion of crime and divorce; and that it has elevated the personal character of both sexes—what possible good is there left to speak of as coming to that State from woman suffrage save its position as the vanguard of progress and human freedom. Not the Bartholdi statue in New York harbor, but Wyoming on the crest of the continent, the first true republic, represents Liberty enlightening the world."
Short addresses were made also by Mrs. Caroline McCullough Everhard, Mrs. Mary Jewett Telford, the Rev. Mila F. Tupper, Mrs. Marble, Dr. Frances Dickinson, Miss H. Augusta Howard, Mrs. Saxon, Mrs. Hannah J. Bailey, Mrs. Evaleen L. Mason and Mrs. Olive Pond Amies.[3]
The Post, in an account of the Senate hearing, said: "Miss Anthony called attention to Senator Hoar as the gentleman who had presented the first favorable suffrage report to the Senate in 1879. Everybody shouted "Stand up," and as he retired deeper into his leather chair they continued to cry, "Up, up!" It was a tableau when the Senator found his feet, and at the same time was confronted with a round of applause and a volley of white handkerchiefs waved at him in Chautauqua style. He capped the climax by moving at once a favorable report. Laurel wreaths and bouquets would have been Senator Hoar's portion if they had been available, but the women all assured him afterward of their sincere appreciation. The hearing was held in the ladies' reception room, which was completely filled."
These matchless arguments had no effect upon the Democratic members of the committee, but Senator Warren of Wyoming made a favorable report for himself, Senators Hoar of Massachusetts, Quay of Pennsylvania and Allen of Washington, which concluded by saying: "The majority of the members of this committee, believing that equal suffrage, regardless of sex, should be the legitimate outgrowth of the principles of a republican form of government, and that the right of suffrage should be conferred upon the women of the United States, earnestly recommend the passage of the amendment submitted herewith."
Senators Vance of North Carolina and George of Mississippi filed the same minority report which already had done duty several times, although the former was said to have declared that the speeches of the women surpassed anything he ever had heard, and that their logic, if used in favor of any other measure, could not fail to carry it.
- ↑ David B. Culberson, Tex.; William C. Oates, Ala.; Thomas R. Stockdale, Miss.; Charles J. Boatner, La.; Isaac H. Goodnight, Ky.; John A. Buchanan, Va.; William D. Bynum, Ind.; Alfred C. Chapin, N. Y.; Fernando C. Layton, O.; Simon P. Wolverton, Penn.; Case Broderick, Kan.; James Buchanan, N. J.; George W. Ray, N. Y.; H. Henry Powers, Vt.
- ↑ Zebulon B. Vance, N. C.; John G. Carlisle, Ky.; J. Z. George, Miss.; George F. Hoar, Mass.; John B. Allen, Wash.; Matthew S. Quay, Penn.; Francis E. Warren, Wyo.
- ↑ After the convention had adjourned Miss Sara Winthrop Smith (Conn.) made an argument on Federal Suffrage before the Judiciary Committee of the House. See Chap. I for general statement of position taken by its advocates.