H. That women should be consulted on new legislation affecting marital relations. No such legislation is needed. The marriage status of a couple is not to be regulated by law; it is controlled by social usage, by religion and by sentiment. The only really important legal provision is one dictated by nature and by custom, namely that the husband must support the family. This requirement necessarily involves the right of the husband to seek and select his own vocation, and to choose the style and place of family residence. None of these arrangements can be materially modified without breaking up the family and the state. That to destroy the family and the state is the tendency of the feminist movement no thinking man can doubt.
Some of the suffragist agitators, pretending to be moved by a sentimental tenderness for the feelings of mothers, demand that the law be changed so as to give the guardianship of children to the mother in case of separation of parents. The law as it stands rightly provides that the interests of the child in each particular case, and not the whims or desires of the parents, are to be considered as paramount in settling that matter. This is man-made law, and is much more humane and just than anything the suffragists have ever suggested.
J. That women have special capacity for municipal government because it resembles housekeeping. This argument is an unfortunate one for the suffragists, for if there is one art in which most of them are notoriously inefficient it is in housekeeping. But municipal government is a matter of administrative detail; of business methods combined with highly developed specialized, practical science, and not at all like housekeeping. As President Lowell says, “The City Government is essentially an administrative, not a legislative concern.” It is not, therefore, a fit subject for political twaddle and sentimental vaporings such as the suffragists revel in. Nor should city officials be elected by the people under any system of suffrage. They should be appointive and not elective officials; carefully chosen experts; competent to deal with matters of public health, protection against fire, liquor regulation, water supply, disposal of sewage, cleaning and maintenance of streets and bridges, wires and pipes in streets, public lighting, ferries, rapid transit, erection and maintenance of public buildings, wharves and docks, public education, treatment of disease, pauperism and crime, besides the levying assessment and collection of taxes and the financing of thousands and even millions of dollars yearly. Yet suffragists talk of “housekeeping” in cities as if it were a matter of dusting the parlor furniture and laying the table for dinner. How many of them are capable of planning for the water supply, and the disposal of the sewage of a great city, for instance? Here are matters which require to be dealt with by men of practical knowledge and force of character, and who have the wisdom derived from actual experience in finance, engineering, sanitation, medicine, surgery, pedagogics and law. To say that women as a class are equal or any way near equal to men in knowledge of these subjects or capacity to deal with them is absurd.
K. That many women have property of their own. The point of this argument lies in the question, why not a property qualification for women as well as for men? The answer is, that as already stated in this volume, the vote is not given to the property but to the property plus the human owner, with his added endowment of experience acquired in its acquisition and care. It is proposed to limit the franchise to this class of men, as on the whole best fitted to exercise it for the benefit of the state. In the case of women, the mere possession of property does not, as in the case of men, carry with it a general presumption of business experience and ability. The class of women who own property are, no doubt, better voting material than the propertyless women; but, as a class, they have had far less business and political training than the propertied men. The great majority of propertied women are so merely by inheritance; and are but little more informed in business matters than their servants. Their tastes and predilections do not as a rule extend beyond dress, society, music and household matters. Not having themselves accumulated property, they do not understand property or business rights, and their temperaments and circumstances forbid that they shall ever understand them. Women passengers at sea have property and precious lives to be protected, yet they are never allowed even in danger to interfere in the management of the ship. Nor do individual or exceptional cases matter. Legislation must be made to fit classes, not individuals, and therefore references to George Eliot and Mme. Curie are unconvincing. Alexander Hamilton at eighteen was probably better qualified to vote than many actual voters, but that was no reason for changing the law so as to allow youths to vote. A whole class of incompetents must not be let in merely to get a few intelligent votes. The mere fact that so many women are willing that this should be done, proclaims a condition of egotistic stupidity and a lack of patriotism which is appalling. Propertied women should be content to let the propertied men vote for them for a reason similar to that which requires any one of them to give way to a physician’s orders in the case of a sick child.
CHAPTER XXIX
WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN PRACTICE
In the year 1918 women were first granted complete suffrage by the great State of New York. The result has not been such as to surprise any thinking man, but it must have astonished the many credulous ones who expected political progress and reform from the fair hands of women, for it has been merely to strengthen the power of the bosses and political rings everywhere throughout the state. In New York City, where the dominant political machine is the Tammany Democratic organization, the Tammany vote which in 1917 under manhood suffrage was 314,000 sprang in 1918 to 547,000 and the Tammany majority was increased by over 100,000, reaching the high figure of 258,000. Fools build houses and wise men live in them. The female suffrage edifice, so toilfully erected day by day for the past fifty years by the feverish and ambitious hands of shrill-voiced lady agitators, is now occupied by the Tammany Ring, composed of hard-headed and experienced men. When they vacate the premises it will be to give place to a rival machine. True, it is, that women are now received into the political party fold; but as servants, not as masters. There is a female organization attachment, but it is strictly of the old orthodox Tammany brand; the vociferous new women are sent to the rear, their voices must not be too loud, there is no place in party ranks for skirted faddists, nor for women who want to lead in a “cause” or “movement.” Silence and discipline are the rules in machine organizations. Tammany and the New York Republican organization have had published a list of female associate leaders for each assembly district, about thirty-five in all. The names of great female uplifters, the leaders, as they foolishly thought themselves, are absent from these rolls, where may be read the names of those whose husbands and brothers will carefully transmit to them the orders from headquarters. Thus ends the pipe dream of the suffragette “leaders” that they would some day walk in, and take possession of the comfortable seats of the mighty. The arrogant conceit of a bunch of foolish women, who imagined themselves to be all-conquering, has received its quietus, and let us be grateful accordingly. Far better submit to the plunderings of the old rings, than to suffer from the antics and Bolshevism of the socialist suffragette combination.
Passing New York, where the evil results of woman suffrage are only just beginning to show themselves, let us look at Colorado, where it was adopted in 1892. In 1908 Helen Sumner went to that State to investigate the results of fifteen years of female voting. She was favorable to the cause and her inquisition was backed by women. The results were published by her in a book where she plainly endeavors to be impartial, notwithstanding her evident suffragette affiliations. In the hope of learning something of the moral effect of the franchise, she made thousands of inquiries, without eliciting anything favorable, except that voting made women take more interest in politics than before. Miss Sumner considered this an advantage and she puts it thus:
“Thousands vote; and to every one of these thousands the ballot means a little broadening in the outlook, a little glimpse of wider interest than pots and kettles, trivial scandal and bridge whist.” ... “A closer companionship and understanding between men and women.”
And so the government of the country must be entrusted to people whose chief interests in life are pots and kettles, scandal, and bridge whist. “Poor things,” muses Miss Sumner, “they are so lonesome, and they take no interest in cooking; let them vote, it will divert their minds.” Apparently she has no pity for the poor men folk, who must pay in high taxes and indigestion the price of this diversion. But why stop at this point; the merely going to vote will only give a woman a temporary jolt, scarcely equal to matching a ribbon at the store; why not give her something more exciting; why not pass a law permitting all women to practise medicine or to drive a locomotive, or to shoe horses? Only a comparatively few would suffer, and it would give the dear women “a little glimpse of wider interest.” Or to be fair to both sexes, why not let schoolboys vote; they too might like interesting “glimpses”; and they would thus become accustomed to talk politics with mamma and sister; never mind the harm to the country, it is big and long suffering. Now, when we consider that Miss Sumner is probably a very superior woman, and that as this extract shows, she has no idea whatever of the significance or dignity of the franchise, we may judge how far her less developed sisters are from being qualified for the exercise of the vote.