Woman Triumphant: The story of her struggles for freedom, education and political rights. / Dedicated to all noble-minded women by an appreciative member of the other sex.

by Rudolf Cronau

WOMAN TRIUMPHANT.

The wonderful spirit displayed by many millions of women during the World War gave foundation to the hope that universal suffrage would be an inevitable result of the war, and that the law-makers of all the belligerent countries would no longer deny this crowning privilege to those mothers, wives, and sisters, who had worked so nobly, suffered so keenly, and endured so patiently through the long years of this cruel catastrophe. In a large number of countries this expectation has been verified. To name them in chronological order, we begin with neutral Denmark, which in 1915 granted to her women full parliamentary suffrage and eligibility. Nine women were elected to Parliament. Iceland extended to her women the same rights, and one woman was sent to Parliament.

The next country was England, for many years the storm center of the suffrage movement. While in all other lands had been steps in evolution, England was the scene of a revolution. Not one with guns, and powder and bloodshed, but nevertheless with all other evidences of war. As Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, graphically described, “there were brave generals and well trained armies, and many a well-fought battle; there have been tactics and strategies, sorties, sieges, and even prisoners of war, many of whom had to be released as they went on a hunger-strike. But in time, by the restless activity of the leaders, every class, including women of the nobility, working girls, housewives and professional women, became engaged in the campaign, and not a man, woman or child in England was permitted to plead ignorance concerning the meaning of woman suffrage. Together, men and women suffragists carried their appeal into the byways and most hidden corners of the kingdom. They employed more original methods, enlisted a larger number of women workers, and grasped the situation in a bolder fashion than had been done elsewhere. In other countries persuasion had been the chief, if not the only, weapon relied upon; in England it was persuasion plus political methods.

“First, the world expressed disgust at the alleged unfeminine conduct of English suffragists. Editorial writers in many lands scourged the suffrage workers of their respective countries over the shoulders of these lively English militants. But time passed; comment ceased; and the world, which had ridiculed, watched the contest in silence, but with never an eye closed. It assumed the attitude of the referee who realizes he is watching a cleverly played game, with the chances hanging in the balance. Then came a laugh. The dispatches flashed the news to the remotest corners of the globe that English Cabinet Ministers were “protected” in the street by bodyguards; the houses of Cabinet Ministers were “protected” by relays of police, and even the great Houses of Parliament were “protected” by a powerful cordon of police. Protected! and from what? The embarrassing attack of unarmed women! In other lands police have protected emperors, czars, kings and presidents from the assaults of hidden foes, whose aim has been to kill. That there has been such need is tragic; and when, in contrast, the vision was presented of the Premier of England hiding behind locked doors, skulking along side streets, and guarded everywhere by officers, lest an encounter with a feminine interrogation point should put him to rout, it proved too much for the ordinary sense of humor.

“Again, the dispatches presented another view. Behold, they said, the magnificent and world-renowned House of Parliament surrounded by police, and every woman approaching that sacred precinct, halted, examined, and perhaps arrested! Behold all this elaborate precaution to save members of Parliament from inopportune tidings that women would have votes; yet, despite it all, the forbidden message is delivered, for over the Houses floats conspicuously and defiantly a huge “Votes for Women” kite. Perhaps England did not know the big world laughed then; but the world did laugh, and more, from that moment it conceded the victory to the suffragists. The only question remaining unanswered, was: ‘How will the Government surrender, and at the same time preserve its dignity and consistency?’”

Surrender came when in January, 1917, the Lower House of Commons adopted a resolution favoring a bill making women eligible as members of Parliament.

The bill was discussed again in October, 1918, and a vote of 274 to 25 on October 24th gave women the right to sit as members of Parliament.

Voting in the general elections on December 14th, 1918, for the first time, the British women enjoyed at last the victory for which they bravely fought. While they did not succeed to elect one of their women candidates for a seat in the Parliament, the election was nevertheless one of the most notable in years. Nearly in all districts the women voters made a satisfactory showing as compared to that of men. In Ireland one woman, Countess Georgina Markievicz, an Irish by birth and the leading female figure in the Sinn Fein movement, was elected to the House of Commons, the first woman ever sent to this body.

Canada likewise granted full suffrage to women. A bill passed the third reading on May 3d and received Royal Assent May 23d, 1918.

In Nova Scotia a bill was passed April 26th, 1919.

In South Africa Parliament accepted a Woman Suffrage Bill on April 1st, 1919, by 44 votes to 42.

When the revolution came in Russia, equal suffrage for women was accepted by the men of all parties without opposition. It has had, as Catherine Breshkovsky, the “Grandmother of the Russian Revolution,” explained, “a profound effect upon the minds of the peasant women. They used to be often beaten by their husbands. Now the idea of freedom and equal rights has taken firmer root among them. Instead of submitting to beatings from her husband the sturdy peasant woman defends herself, and sometimes she even beats him, especially if he is drunk. The fact that during the war the women have had to do every kind of work has also contributed to this sense of independence.”

When in November, 1918, the German Republic was declared, paragraph 31 of the Constitution provided that the representatives of the people be elected by all men as well as women over twenty years, and that women are eligible for all Federal and State Legislatures and municipal bodies. Under this regulation on January 19th, 1919, 36 women were elected to the Federal Parliament, and 22 to State Legislatures. Among the women elected to the Parliament were several of the most prominent leaders of the suffrage movement in Germany: Dr. Gertrud Bäumer, Dr. Käthe Schirmacher, and Dr. Alice Salomon.

In Austria the downfall of the monarchy nullified the law which forbade women to take part in political societies. The 12th of November, 1918, brought to the women universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage and eligibility with the announcement of the republic. Seven women were elected, among them the well-known suffragist Adelheid Popp, who was also elected to the Vienna Municipal Council.

The Government of the Hungarian Republic likewise adopted a suffrage law which gives the vote to all men of 21 and to women of 24 if they can read and write. While this is not equality of the sexes yet, the government gave at the same time evidence of its profound respect for the abilities of women by taking one of the most important steps in the history of woman’s progress. It appointed Miss Rose Bédy Schwimmer, highly respected for her activity and literary works on suffrage and peace, as ambassador extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Switzerland. But the conservative members of the Federal Council of that country refused to accept a woman ambassador, and so Miss Bédy Schwimmer found it advisable to tender her resignation, a month after having accepted her difficult task.

The new republic Czecho-Slovakia as well as the newly reconstituted state of Poland at once conceded full political citizenship to their women. In Czecho-Slovakia eight, and in Poland five women were elected to the Parliaments.

In Sweden full suffrage was accorded to women May 28th, 1919, when a bill was passed by large majorities in both houses of the National Parliament, according to which every subject, man or woman, who has attained his or her twenty-third year, is qualified to vote.

In France the “Union Française pour le Suffrage des Femmes” sent on January 24th, 1919, a proclamation to the Parliament demanding that French women be given the franchise. The proclamation pointed to the fact that the right to vote had been recognized in enemy and allied countries and that therefore France should not be backward. But in spite of this on April 4th two women suffrage amendments to the Electoral Reform Bill were killed in the Chamber of Deputies. The provision making women eligible for election to the Chamber was defeated, 302 votes to 187. The vote against transmission of the right to vote to the next of kin of heads of families, without distinction of sex, was defeated 335 to 134. But on May 20th the Chamber of Deputies adopted a bill granting women the right to vote in all elections for members of the Communal and Departmental Assemblies. The vote was 377 to 97. The measure then went to the Senate.

Switzerland, with the European spread of woman suffrage all around, may be expected to soon respond to the wave of democratic sentiment. On January 22, 1919, the delegates of the Swiss Union of Women’s Clubs adopted a resolution to request the Federal Council to order a radical revision of the Constitution, and grant to women equal political rights with men. On March 17th, the Grand Council of the Canton of Neuchâtel declared for the principle of Woman Suffrage, and likewise instructed the Government to prepare a suffrage bill. If passed this bill will probably be decided by referendum.

The Belgian Chamber of Deputies, by unanimous vote, adopted on April 11th, 1919, an Electoral Reform Bill, under the terms of which the right to vote is limited to widows who have not remarried, to the mothers of soldiers killed in battle and to the mothers of civilians shot by the enemy.

In Holland the first Chamber of the Dutch Parliament adopted on July 12th, 1919, a motion to introduce woman suffrage by a vote of 34 to 5.

In the United States of America the Western States have, as pointed out in a former chapter, never hesitated to acknowledge the rights of women to vote. But the Southern and Eastern States had remained reluctant in granting this privilege. And so the suffragists were compelled to conquer these regions step by step. The women of New York won full suffrage in 1917, those of South Dakota, Michigan and Oklahoma in 1918. Presidential suffrage was secured in 1917 in North Dakota, Nebraska, and Rhode Island, and in 1919 in Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri and Maine.

For many years efforts had also been made by the friends of Woman Suffrage to induce Congress to act on the so-called “Susan Anthony Amendments to the Constitution,” reading as follows:

“Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

“Section 2. The Congress shall have power by appropriate legislation to enforce the provisions of this article.”

In 1914 the Senate again voted these amendments down by 11 votes. Again, in September, 1918, it was rejected by two votes, and again in February, 1919, by one vote. The House voted upon the resolution three times, rejecting it in 1915 by 78 votes, passing it in 1918 by a margin of one vote, and again, on May 21st, 1919, by a vote of 304 to 89. The fight ended on June 4, 1919, when the Senate adopted the resolution by a vote of 56 to 25.

“The credit of having won this victory,” so the “New York American” said in an editorial, “belongs chiefly to the resourceful women of the land who have, for generations, been pushing this issue to the front in spite of stupid opposition and almost as stupid indifference.

“Liberal-minded men, a few in the early days, many more recently, have helped. But, primarily, it is a woman’s victory, and no man will begrudge the acknowledment. Equal partners in the economic and social life of the nation, American women will now be equal sharers in its political life and in the responsibilities which this will involve.

“The joy of triumph will be of brief duration. The period of responsibility will be long and trying. But the women of America will certainly meet it equally with the men, and if they do that the men will have no just basis of complaint. Political rule by men has been full of blunders. Women, too, will blunder, but they will not be likely to make the same kind of blunders that men make. The blunders that men make will tend to be corrected by the superior insight and intuition of women; and probably in time the blunders to which women will be prone will have counteraction by the men. So instead of the blundering being increased by the widened circle of electoral responsibility it is more likely to be lessened, for the cure for the ills of democracy is always more democracy.

“Anyhow, the change is here. It is world-wide. It comes as a resultant of increased freedom and it presages more freedom.”