An Autobiography

by Catherine Helen Spence

My intended visit to Paris was cancelled through the death a short time before of the only friend I wished to meet there, the Baroness Blaze-de-Bury, and I went straight through to Bale. I made a detour to Zurich, where I hoped to see people interested in proportional representation who could speak English. An interesting fellow-worker in the cause was Herr Karl Burkli, to whom I suggested the idea of lecturing with ballots. The oldest advocate of proportional representation on the Continent, M. Ernest Naville, I met at Geneva. In that tiny republic in the heart of Europe, which is the home of experimental legislation, I found effective voting already established in four cantons, and the effect in these cantons had been so good (said Ernest Naville) "that it is only a matter of time to see all the Swiss cantons and the Swiss Federation adopt it." In Zurich Herr Burkli was delighted that they had introduced progressive taxation into the canton, but the effect had been to drive away the wealthy people who came in search of quiet and healthy residence. Progressive taxation has not by any means proved the unmixed blessing which so many of its advocates claim it to be. In New Zealand, we are told, on the best authority, that land monopoly and land jobbery were never so rampant in the Dominion as since the introduction of the progressive land tax. One wondered how the three million Swiss people lived on their little territory, so much occupied by barren mountain, and lakes which supply only a few fish. My Zurich friends told me that it was by their unremitting industry and exceptional thrift, but others said that the foreign visitors who go to the recreation ground of Europe circulate so much money that instead of the prayer "Give us this day our daily bread" the Swiss people ask, "Send us this day one foreigner."

In Italy I saw the most intense culture in the world—no pleasure grounds or deer parks for the wealthy. The whole country looked like a garden with trellised vines and laden trees. Italian wine was grown, principally for home consumption, and that was immense. Prohibitionists would speak to deaf ears there. Wine was not a luxury, but a necessity of life. It made the poor fare of dry bread and polenta (maize porridge) go down more pleasantly. It was the greater abundance of fruit and wine that caused the Italian poorer classes to look healthier than the German. In Germany, which taxed itself to give cheap beet sugar to the British consumer, the people paid 6d. a lb. for the little they could afford to use; and in Italy it was nearly 8d.—a source of revenue to the Governments, but prohibitive to the poor. There were no sweet shops in Italy. England only could afford such luxuries. I visited at Siena a home for deaf mutes, and found that each child had wine at two of its daily meals—about a pint a day. It was the light-red wine of the country, with little alcohol in it; but those who warn us against looking on the wine when it is red will be shocked to hear of these little ones drinking it like milk. Those, however, who live in Italy say that not once a year do they see any one drunk in the streets.

I reached South Australia on December 12, 1894, after an absence of 20 months. I found the women's suffrage movement wavering in the balance. It had apparently come with a rush—as unexpected as it was welcome to those whose strenuous exertions at last seemed likely to be crowned with success. Though sympathetic to the cause, I had always been regarded as a weakkneed sister by the real workers. I had failed to see the advantage of having a vote that might leave me after an election a disfranchised voter, instead of an unenfranchised woman. People talk of citizens being disfranchised for the Legislative Council when they really mean that they are unenfranchised. You can scarcely be disfranchised if you have never been enfranchised; and I have regarded the enfranchisement of the people on the roll as more important for the time being than adding new names to the rolls. This would only tend to increase the disproportion between the representative and the represented. But I rejoiced when the Women's Suffrage Bill was carried, for I believe that women have thought more and accepted the responsibilities of voting to a greater extent than was ever expected of them. During the week I was accorded a welcome home in the old Academy of Music, Rundle street, where I listened with embarrassment to the avalanche of eulogium that overwhelmed me. "What a good thing it is, Miss Spence, that you have only one idea," a gentleman once said to me on my country tour. He wished thus to express his feeling concerning my singleness of purpose towards effective voting. But at this welcome home I felt that others realized what I had often said myself. It is really because I have so many ideas for making life better, wiser, and pleasanter all of which effective voting will aid—that I seem so absorbed in the one reform. My opinions on other matters I give for what they are worth—for discussion, for acceptance or rejection. My opinions on equitable representation I hold absolutely, subject to criticism of methods but impregnable as to principle.

CHAPTER XIX.

PROGRESS OF EFFECTIVE VOTING.

My journalistic work after my return was neither so regular nor so profitable as before I left Adelaide. The bank failures had affected me rather badly, and financially my outlook was anything but rosy in the year 1895. There was, however, plenty of public work open to me, and, in addition to the many lectures I gave in various parts of the State on effective voting, I became a member of the Hospital Commission, appointed that year by the Kingston Government to enquire into the trouble at the Adelaide Hospital. That same year saw a decided step taken in connection with effective voting, and in July a league was formed, which has been in existence ever since. I was appointed the first President, my brother John became secretary pro tem, and Mr. A. W. Piper the first treasurer. I felt at last that the reform was taking definite shape, and looked hopefully to its future. The following year was especially interesting to the women of South Australia, and, indeed, to suffragists all over the world, for at the general election of 1896 women, for the first time in Australia, had the right to vote. New Zealand had preceded us with this reform, but the first election in this State found many women voters fairly well equipped to accept their responsibilities as citizens of the State. But in the full realization by the majority of women of their whole duties of citizenship I have been distinctly disappointed. Not that they have been on the whole less patriotic and less zealous than men voters; but, like their brothers, they have allowed their interest in public affairs to stop short at the act of voting, as if the right to vote were the beginning and the end of political life. There has been too great a tendency on the part of women to allow reform work—particularly women's branches of it—to be done by a few disinterested and public-spirited women. Not only is the home the centre of woman's sphere, as it should be, but in too many cases it is permitted to be its limitation. The larger social life has been ignored, and women have consequently failed to have the effect on public life of which their political privilege is capable.

At the close of a second lecturing tour through the State, during which I visited and spoke at most of the village settlements, I received an invitation from the Women's Land Reform League to attend a social gathering at the residence of Miss Sutherland, Clark street, Norwood. The occasion was my seventy-first birthday, and my friends had chosen that day (October 31, 1896) to mark their appreciation of my public services. There were about 30 of the members present, all interesting by reason of their zealous care for the welfare of the State. Their President (Mrs. C. Proud) presented me, on behalf of the members, with a lady's handbag, ornamented with a silver plate, bearing my name, the date of the presentation, and the name of the cause for which I stood. From that day the little bag has been the inseparable companion of all my wanderings, and a constant reminder of the many kind friends who, with me, had realized that "love of country is one of the loftiest virtues which the Almighty has planted in the human heart." That association was the first in South Australia to place effective voting on its platform.

My long comradeship with Mrs. A. H. Young began before the close of the year. A disfranchised voter at her first election, she was driven farther afield than the present inadequate system of voting to look for a just electoral method. She found it in effective voting, and from that time devoted herself to the cause. Early in 1897 Mrs. Young was appointed the first honorary secretary of the league. January of the same year found us stirred to action by the success of Sir Edward Braddon's first Bill for proportional representation in Tasmania. Though limited in its application to the two chief cities of the island State, the experiment was wholly successful. We had our first large public meeting in the Co-operative Hall in January, and carried a resolution protesting against the use of the block vote for the Federal Convention elections. A deputation to the acting Premier (Mr.—afterwards Sir Frederick—Holder) was arranged for the next morning. But we were disappointed in the result of our mission, for Mr. Holder pointed out that the Enabling Act distinctly provided for every elector having 10 votes, and effective voting meant a single transferable vote. I had written and telegraphed to the Hon. C. C. Kingston when the Enabling Act was being drafted to beg him to consider effective voting as the basis of election; but he did not see it then, nor did he ever see it. In spite, however, of the short sightedness of party leaders, events began to move quickly.

Our disappointment over the maintenance of the block vote for the election of 10 delegates to the Federal Convention led to my brother John's suggestion that I should become a candidate. Startling as the suggestion was, so many of my friends supported it that I agreed to do so. I maintained that the fundamental necessity of a democratic Constitution such as we hoped would evolve from the combined efforts of the ablest men in the Australian States was a just system of representation and it was as the advocate of effective voting that I took my stand. My personal observation in the United States and Canada had impressed me with the dangers inseparable from the election of Federal Legislatures by local majorities—sometimes by minorities—where money and influence could be employed, particularly where a line in a tariff spelt a fortune to a section of the people, in the manipulation of the floating vote. Parties may boast of their voting strength and their compactness, but their voting strength under the present system of voting is only as strong as its weakest link, discordant or discontented minorities, will permit it to be. The stronger a party is in the Legislature the more is expected from it by every little section of voters to whom it owes its victory at the polls. The impelling force of responsibility which makes all Governments "go slow" creates the greatest discontent among impatient followers of the rank and file, and where a few votes may turn the scale at any general election a Government is often compelled to choose between yielding to the demands of its more clamorous followers at the expense of the general taxpayer or submitting to a Ministerial defeat.