Why Democratic Women Want the Ballot

by Eliza Calvert Obenchain

The National Bulletin.
Governments Derive Their Just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.
Vol. 2. Washington, D.C., December, 1892. No. 1
Published monthly at the office of The Woman's Tribune, Washington, D.C.
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The National Bulletin is to supply Woman Suffrage Societies with information and argument at a low price. Each month something of interest will be presented which should have a wide distribution.

Why Democratic Women Want the Ballot.

As a woman, and a Kentucky woman, I must say at the outset that it seems to me an impertinence for any man to require me to give a reason for wanting the ballot.

Men everywhere, and in Kentucky especially, pride themselves on their chivalry, their absolute devotion to woman. Now when a woman makes a request of a man, it is not chivalric to demand the reason for that request, whether it be for a new spring bonnet or the right to vote. It is not chivalric in the first place to allow her to ask for what she wants. Real chivalry would lead men to anticipate the wants of woman, and spare her proud, gentle spirit the pain, the humiliation of having to ask for what she wants.

"That comes too late which comes for the asking," says Seneca, and I have often wondered how a man could have evolved such a thought, for it is the perfect expression of that exquisite womanly dignity which, realizing its right to homage from men, is outraged by having to beg for that which should come without asking.

"Your wish is my law." "To anticipate your wish is my highest pleasure." -- such is the language of chivalry. And so, when we women ask for the ballot, instead of gruffly demanding "Why do you want it?" chivalric man should say, "The ballot, my dear Madam? A thousand apologies for not having offered it to you before. If I had dreamed you wanted it, it might have been yours long ago. I doubt if it is a good thing for you to have, but your will is my law, so here it is." This would be proper conduct on the part of that chivalry whose theory is that woman is a "queen" and a "goddess" and man her loyal subject and abject worshipper.

However, as things are not as they should be in this "naughty world;" since women have not only to ask but give a reason for asking and get generally a curt refusal for all their pains, it becomes them to descend from their "thrones" and "shrines," and meekly give thanks for merely the opportunity to ask and explain why they ask.

Such an opportunity is mine in attempting to explain why Democratic women want the ballot, or rather why Democratic women ought to have the ballot; for I regret to say that, in the South at least, few women who hold to the principles of this party have any desire to vote, and this fact is a matter of congratulation with the party itself.

A Kentucky editor commenting on the women delegates to the Minneapolis convention, said "Heaven be thankful that Democracy when it puts on its war-paint and feathers leaves the squaws and papooses at home." These felicitous words were certainly not dictated by the spirit of chivalry, let me say in passing, and a Kentucky woman hardly feels complimented at being called a "squaw."

According to my observation the women who want to vote are found mostly in the People's Party, or the Prohibition Party, or any other party that champions some moral or social reform. This means that women, as a rule, do not want to vote unless there is some palpable advantage to be gained by it. Expediency is the keynote of all woman's protests against disfranchisement. There is one all sufficient, all-embracing reason why women should vote, but in the extremity of their need, women have seldom been bold enough to urge this. They have taken refuge behind a score of minor reasons, and their appeals are more to the pity than to the reason of men.

I want prohibition, but that is not why I want to vote; I want a reduction of the tariff, but that is not why I want to vote; I want municipal reforms, but that is not why I want to vote; I want property rights, but that is not why I want to vote.

If every reform advocated by every party could be carried into effect tomorrow, I would still be a woman suffragist. There are two vantage grounds for a woman who wants to vote; one is on the shifting sands of expediency, the other on the solid rock of eternal justice. I choose the latter; and standing here, I can always find a reason for the faith that is in me.

The Democratic Party prides itself on being the party of broad, liberal principles, the sole representative of Jefferson Democracy, consequently in giving a reason why a woman of that party wants to vote we must give one that is broad and comprehensive enough to suit the men who advocate "The largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of others."

I am not optimist enough to hope that the millenium will come as soon as women can vote. Indeed I fear that even with the help of woman's votes it will be long, long before we bring to pass the reforms we so much desire. Nevertheless I want the ballot, because, as a citizen of a "representative government," and a republic that guarantees "universal suffrage," and as a member of a party that believes in "the largest individual liberty," the right to vote is my right of which I am defrauded.

This is my sole reason: I want this thing because it is my own.

Do these words seem absurd coming from an obscure woman whose life is bounded by the four walls of home and whose days are filled with the homely duties of wifehood and motherhood?

Taxation without representation was the wrong that moved our forefathers to a bloody war. Doubtless, in those troubled days there were some coward souls who preached peace and forbearance to the freedom-loving ones to whom Justice was so dear that they were ready to die in her cause. Why did they not drink their tea and be at peace with England. Was not the taxed tea of England cheaper than the un-taxed tea of any other country. What mattered a principle so long as they got their tea?

The blood of men who fought in that Revolution flows in my veins, and when I hear men and women say "Why should you want to vote? What difference can it make to you personally, whether you are allowed to exercise your right of suffrage or not?" the spirit of my ancestors rises in me, and I can scarcely curb the indignant words that rush to my lips.

Have women no sense of right and wrong, no love for freedom, no patriotism, no self-respect that they are expected to roll injustice as a sweet morsel under their tongues?

Two years ago I heard from the lips of a lovely Southern woman a few words that I shall never forget. She was a typical Southerner, exquisitely dressed, fair of face, gentle and refined in voice and manner. We were speaking of the progressiveness of the women of the New South, and finally our conversation drifted to the ballot. "I don't know that I am very anxious to vote," she said in her soft, musical tones, "but I don't exactly like being told that I cannot." This is the utterance of self-respecting womanhood, that will have right because it is right, that hates wrong because it is wrong, and chafes under even the shadow of a despotism:

"The largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of others ensures the highest type of American citizenship and the best government." Therefore it matters not whether the majority of women want the ballot or not, they should have in this matter the same "individual liberty" that men have. If an honest man by any chance comes into possession of property belonging to another he does not wait for the owner to ask him for it; he goes straight-way and restores it. It matters not whether women ever use this privilege, or not, it should be theirs just as it is mans. It is useless to tell me that I have enough rights without this, and that if I had it I would not put it to a good use. As well might the thief with his hands in the coffers of some wealthy man excuse his robberty by urging that the man he was robbing had enough money without that which he was about to take, and that if he did not take it the lawful owner would probably put it to some bad use.

In "Looking Backward," Bellamy says "It seems to me that women were more than any other class the victims of your civilization. There is something which even at this distance of time, penetrates one with pathos in the spectacle of their undeveloped lives, stunted at marriage, their narrow horizon bounded so often, physically, by the four walls of home, and morally by a petty creed of personal interests. * * * From the great sorrows, as well as the petty frets of life, they had no refuge in the breezy outdoor world of human affairs, nor any interest save those of the family. Such an existence would have softened men's brains or driven them mad."

Is not this a perfect picture of the average woman's life today? And what has been the consequence to herself and to man?

In the language of Shylock women may say "If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"

Wronged of her educational rights, her social rights, her political rights, condemned to be a "keeper at home," "a hewer of wood and a drawer of water," she has revenged herself on man by her stupidity, by her childishness, by her frivolity, by her weakness of body, her weakness of mind, by the thousand and one frailties springing from a case of "arrested development."

The varied objections to woman suffrage when sifted and analyzed revolve themselves into this, "Women must not vote because they are women."

On the contrary, if I were asked to give a second reason, it would be "Women ought to vote because they are women," that is, human beings, part and parcel of that "whole creation" which "groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now."

Once more paraphrasing Shakespeare we may say: "I am a woman. Hath not a woman eyes? Hath not a woman hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heated by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter as a man is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? and if you wrong us shall we not revenge?"

To hear the opponents of woman suffrage talk one would think woman some strange, unclassified creature, some rare excotic, foreign to this world, and utterly unable to exist under its stern laws.

A certain Kentuckian was some years ago appointed to a Federal office in Wyoming. Writing home to a Kentucky paper he tried to show that woman suffrage was a failure. The only point he made was that women had not purified politics there inasmuch as a large per cent of a candidate's prospective salary was already mortgaged for campaign expenses: The writer did not assert that any of this money went into the pockets of the women voters, so I fail to see how his statement had any bearing upon woman suffrage. I think he must have realized this, for, facts failing him, he fell back upon metaphor and exclaimed poetically, "Would you purify a cesspool by throwing a rose into it?" "Why of course not," exclaim the opponents of woman suffrage. "A cesspool cannot be purified by throwing a rose in it, therefore women ought not to vote."

This, you will observe, is the sort of thing that passes for logic with the anti-suffragists whether they be "most learned judges" or ignorant clowns. But suppose we drop metaphor and come down to plain speech.

Women are not roses.
Politics is not a cesspool.
Politics is the science of good government.
Women are citizens of the country and subject to its government.
Therefore women ought to vote.

I defy any logician to take this syllogism and show me a shadow of falsity in either its premises or its conclusion. The Rose and Cesspool style of argument is not the one I learned when I studied logic and somehow it is not at all convincing to my feminine mind.

In the course of his graduating oration I once hear a young man say: "Why should any woman want to vote in Kentucky, where every woman is a queen?"

"Every woman a queen!" There may have been some in that audience who were weak enough to feel flattered by such gallant words, but as for me, I had a vision of the "queens" who had gone from house to house begging their loyal subjects to consent to a petition that prayed the legislature of Kentucky to grant to married women the right to own and dispose of their own property. I saw the "queens" who had laid down youth, health, and beauty at the feet of their kings, who by reason of "Care and sorrow and child-birth pain" were but pale shadows of their former selves. I saw the wives of faithless husbands, the daughters of faithless fathers, the sisters of faithless brothers, and my soul sickened at the sound of such hollow flattery.

Whenever I hear men calling women queens and goddesses I smile to think how utterly dumbfounded they would be if we should arrogate to ourselves the prerogatives of royalty. A man was once talking to his minister about "woman's sphere." "Don't you think, Brother B.," he said, "that God created woman to be company for man?" "Company!" snapped out a quickwitted little woman who was sitting by. "Then why don't you treat us like company? Who ever heard of putting company to cooking and scrubbing and patching old clothes?" If we are queens, why don't you treat us like queens?

The language of mediæval romance is not applicable to women of the nineteenth century. Women nowadays are not leaning from their casements, waving adieux to plumed knights. They are not sitting at castle windows listening to a troubadour's serenade and waiting to be crowned "Queens of Love and Beauty." The "doughty deeds" that please "my lady" of the nineteenth century are a lance-thrust against prejudices that hinder woman's free development, or a tournament against the injustice that robs her of the rights of humanity, and the crown she craves is the crown of a perfected womanhood won by the exercise of every talent that God has given her.

It is idiotically maintained by some that if women have justice they must relinquish chivalry. "Give me the luxuries of life and I will dispense with its necessaries," said a witty Frenchman. Give women justice and they can dispense with chivalry. The chivalry of mediæval days was a disgusting sham, and much of our nineteenth century chivalry is open to the same objection. The chivalry that leads a man to give a woman a seat in a street car, but at the same time does not prevent him from looking on with apathetic indifference while she is defrauded of her property rights, is not the sort of chivalry that a self-respecting woman values.

"The profession of woman is a hard one," said Victor Hugo. Everywhere she is the life-giver, and as if maternity were not enough, the heaviest drudgery of domestic life falls to her share even in the most civilized countries. I once heard a good Methodist minister say with emphasis "There is not a comfort that man enjoys that women do not have to suffer for." In return for all this vicarious and unavoidable suffering so patiently endured by women, it would seem that men, from the depths of their tender chivalry, would have said long ago: "If there is anything in this wide universe that you covet, O, Woman: name it and it is yours, if my effort can obtain it for you. Go where you will, do as you please. "The Queen can do no wrong.' The right to perfect liberty is yours by reason of your humanity, and if it were not, you have earned it by reason of your womanhood."

This is the "Chivalry of the Nineteenth Century," and it is the only utterance on the woman question that can consistently come from the lips of the political party that advocates "The largest individiual liberty consistent with the rights of others."

In conclusion let me present two wise sayings for the benefit of all anti-suffragists:

"What is justice?" says Artistotle, "To render to every man his own."

We call this "The land of the free," but "How can a people be free that has not learned to be just?" -- A Kentucky Woman.

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"The one Divine work -- the one ordered sacrifice -- is to do justice, and it is the last we are inclined to do." -- Ruskin.

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