To-day, matters lie somewhat differently. Since then, conditions have changed mightily,—the position of woman along with them. Whether married or unmarried, more than ever before woman now has a deep interest in social and political conditions. It can not be a matter of indifference to her whether the Government chains every year to the army hundreds of thousands of vigorous, healthy men; whether a policy is in force that favors wars, or does not; whether the necessaries of life are made dearer by taxes, that promote, besides, the adulteration of food, and are all the harder upon a family in the measure of its size, at a time, at that, in which the means of life are most stingily measured for the large majority. Moreover, woman pays direct and indirect taxes out of her support and her income. Again, the system of education is of highest interest to her: it goes far towards determining the position of her sex: as a mother, she has a double interest therein.
Furthermore, as has been shown, there are to-day millions of women, in hundreds of pursuits, all of them with a lively personal interest in the manner that our laws are shaped. Questions concerning the hours of work; night, Sunday and child-labor; payment of wages and notice of discharge; safety appliances in factory and shop; etc.—all are political questions that concern them as well as the men. Workingmen know little or nothing about conditions in many branches of industry, where women are mainly, or exclusively, engaged. Employers have all the interest in the world to hush up evils that they are responsible for. Factory inspection frequently does not extend to branches of industry in which women are exclusively employed: such as it is, it is utterly inadequate: and yet these are the very branches in which protective measures frequently are most needed. It suffices to mention the workshops in which seamstresses, dressmakers, milliners, etc., are crowded together in our larger cities. From thence, hardly a complaint issues; thither no investigation has as yet penetrated. Finally, as a trader, woman is also interested in laws on commerce and tariffs. There can, accordingly, be no doubt that woman has an interest and a right to demand a hand in the shaping of things by legislation, as well as man. Her participation in public life would impart a strong stimulus thereto, and open manifold new vistas.
Such demands, however, are met with the curt rebuff: "Women know nothing of politics, and most of them don't want to, either; neither do they know how to use the ballot." True, and not true. True enough, until now, very few women, in Germany at least, have ventured to demand political equality also. The first woman, who, as a writer, came out in its favor in Germany was, as far as we know, Frau Hedwig Dohm. More recently, it is mainly the Socialist working-women, who are vigorously agitating for the idea; and their number is ever larger.
Nothing is proved with the argument that women have, until now, shown little interest in the political movement. The fact that, hitherto, women have troubled themselves little about politics, is no proof that they should continue in the same path. The same reasons, advanced to-day against female suffrage, were advanced during the first half of the sixties in Germany against manhood suffrage. Even as late as 1863, the author of this book himself was of those who opposed manhood suffrage; four years later he owed to it his election to the Reichstag. Thousands of others went through the same mill: from Sauls they became Pauls. Many are the men, who either do not care or do not know how to use their important political rights. And yet that fact was no reason to withhold the suffrage from them, and can be none to now deprive them of it. At the Reichstag elections in Germany, 25 to 30 per cent. of the qualified voters do not vote at all. These non-voters are recruited from all classes: among them are scientists and laborers. Moreover, of the 70 to 75 per cent. of those who participate in the election, the majority, according to our judgment, vote in a way that they would not, if they realized their true interests. That as yet they have not realized them comes from defective political training, a training, however, that these 70 to 75 per cent. possess in a higher degree than the 25 to 30 per cent., who stay away altogether. Among the latter, those must be excepted who remain away from the hustings because they cannot, without danger, vote according to their convictions.
Political education is not gained by keeping the masses from public affairs; it is gained by admitting them to the exercise of political rights. Practice makes perfect. The ruling classes have hitherto found their account in keeping the large majority of the people in political childhood. Hence it has ever been the task of a class-conscious minority to battle with energy and enthusiasm for the collective interest of society, and to shake up and drag the large inert mass after them. Thus has it been in all great Movements: it is neither astonishing nor discouraging that the experience made with the Movement of the working class is repeated in the Movement for the emancipation of woman. Previous successes prove that pains, labor and sacrifices are rewarded; the future brings triumph.
The moment woman acquires equal rights with man, the sense of her duties will be quickened. Called upon to cast her ballot, she will ask, What for? Whom for? Immediately, emulation in many directions will set in between man and woman that, so far from injuring, will materially improve their mutual relations. The less posted woman will naturally turn to the better posted man. Interchange of ideas and mutual instruction follows,—a condition of things until now found most rarely between husband and wife: it will impart a fresh charm to life. The unhappy differences in education and view-points between the two sexes,—differences, that so frequently lead to dissensions between husband and wife, that place the husband at variance with his many-sided duties, and that injure the well-being of all, will be wiped out. Instead of a clog, the husband will gain a supporter in a compatible wife; whenever prevented by other duties from personal participation, she will spur her husband to fulfil his own. She will find it legitimate that a fraction of his earnings be spent in a newspaper, for agitational purposes, because the paper serves to educate and entertain her also, and because she realizes the necessity of the sacrifice, a sacrifice that helps to conquer that which she, her husband and her children lack,—an existence worthy of human beings.
Thus, the joining of hands by husband and wife for the common weal, so closely connected with the weal of the individual, will exert a most ennobling influence. The very reverse is called into life of that which is claimed by near-sighted people, or by the foes of a commonwealth based upon the equality of all. Nor would it end there. The relation between the two sexes would be beautiful in the measure that the social institutions will liberate husband and wife from material cares and from excessive work. Practice and education will, here as in all other cases, give further aid. If I go not in the water, I shall never learn to swim; if I study no foreign language and do not practice it, I shall never learn to speak it. Everyone finds that natural; and yet many fail to realize that the same holds good in the affairs of government and society. Are our women unfitter than the far lower negroes, to whom full political equality was conceded in North America? And shall a highly intellectual woman be vested with lesser rights than the rudest, least cultured man,—an ignorant day-laborer of the backwoods of Pomerania, or an ultramontane canalman, for instance, and all because accident let these come into the world as men? The son has greater rights than his mother, from whom, perchance, he derives his best qualities, the very qualities that alone make him what he is. Truly wonderful!
Moreover, we in Germany would no longer be running the risk of being the first to take the leap in the dark and the unknown. The United States, England and other countries have opened the way. In the State of Wyoming in the United States, woman suffrage has been tested since 1869. On November 12, 1872, writing from Laramie City, Wyo., on the subject, Judge Kingman says in the Chicago "Women's Journal":
"Three years ago to-day women obtained the right of electing and of being elected to office in our Territory, in the same manner as the other electors. During this period they have voted and have been voted for; they have exercised the functions of jurors and arbiters; they have taken part in large numbers at our elections, and although I believe that some among us oppose the admission of women from motives of principle, no one, I think, can refuse to recognize that their influence on the elections has been an elevating one. It caused them to be conducted in a more peaceable and orderly manner, and at the same time enabled our courts of justice to discover and punish various kinds of crime that had until then remained unpunished.
"For instance, when the Territory was first organized, there was scarcely a man who did not carry a revolver and make use of it in the slightest dispute. I cannot remember a single case in which a jury composed of men brought in a verdict of guilty against one of those who had shot with a revolver, but when two or three women were among them, they have invariably attended to the instructions of the Court."