"Therefore, I think in appealing to you ungrudgingly to open your own feelings and bear your own part in a political crisis like this, we are making no inappropriate demand, but are beseeching you to fulfil the duties which belong to you, which so far from involving any departure from your character as women, are associated with the fulfilment of that character and the performance of those duties, the neglect of which would in future years be a source of pain and mortification, and the accomplishment of which would serve to gild your future years with sweet remembrances and to warrant you in hoping that each in your own place and sphere has raised your voice for justice, and has striven to mitigate the sorrows and misfortunes of mankind."
In less ornate language Mr. Asquith, in January 1910, thanked the women of Fife for the aid they had given him and his cause during the election, and said that "their healthy influence on the masculine members of the community had had not a little to do with keeping things in a satisfactory condition."
The organised political work of women has grown since 1884, and has become so valuable that none of the parties can afford to do without it or to alienate it. Short of the vote itself this is one of the most important political weapons which can possibly have been put into our hands. At the outset, while the women's political societies were still young, and were hardly conscious of their power, the women's suffrage movement benefited greatly by their existence. If the Women's Liberal Federation had existed in 1884, the 104 Liberals who voted against Mr. Woodall's amendment would have probably decided that honesty was the best policy. In 1892 Sir Albert Rollit introduced a Women's Suffrage Bill, as nearly as possible on the lines of the Conciliation Bill of 1910-11. Before the second reading great efforts were made by the Liberal party machine to secure a crushing defeat for this Bill on its second reading: a confidential circular was sent out to all Liberal candidates in the Home Counties advising them not to allow Liberal women to speak on their platforms lest they should advocate "female suffrage." In addition to this, Mr. Gladstone was induced to write a letter addressed to Mr. Samuel Smith, M.P., against the Bill, in which he departed from his previous view that the political work done by women would be quite consistent with womanly character and duties, and would "gild their future years with sweet remembrances." He now said that voting would, he feared, "trespass upon their delicacy, their purity, their refinement, the elevation of their whole nature."
In addition to all this a whip was sent out signed by twenty members of Parliament, ten from each side of the House, earnestly beseeching members to be in their places when Sir Albert Rollit's Bill came on and to vote against the second reading. But when the division came, notwithstanding all the unusual efforts that had been made, it was only defeated by 23. A general election was known to be not very far off, and members who were expecting zealous and efficient support from women in their constituencies did not care to alienate it by denying to women the smallest and most elementary of political privileges. In surprising numbers (as compared with 1884) they stood to their guns, and though they did not save the Bill, the balance against it was so small that it was an earnest of future victory. This division in 1892 was the last time a Women's Suffrage Bill was defeated on a straight issue in the House of Commons. Mr. Faithfull Begg's Bill in 1897 was carried on second reading by 228 votes to 157. After this date direct frontal attacks on the principle of women's suffrage were avoided in the House of Commons. The anti-suffragists in Parliament used every possible trick and stratagem to prevent the subject being discussed and divided on in the House. In this they were greatly helped by Mr. Labouchere, to whom it was a congenial task to shelve the women's suffrage question. On one occasion he and his little group of supporters talked for hours about a Bill dealing with "verminous persons," because it stood before a Suffrage Bill, and he thus succeeded in preventing our Bill from coming before the House.
CHAPTER IV
WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE IN GREATER BRITAIN
"Wake up, Mother Country."—Speech by King George V. when Prince of Wales.
The debate on Sir Albert Rollit's Bill in 1892 brought out a full display of oratorical power from all quarters of the House, both for and against women's suffrage. Mr. James Bryce, Mr. Asquith, and Sir Henry James (afterwards Lord James) spoke against the Bill. Mr. Balfour, Mr. (now Lord) Courtney, and Mr. Wyndham supported it. When Mr. Bryce spoke he used the timid argument that women's suffrage was an untried experiment. "It is a very bold experiment," he said; "our colonies are democratic in the highest degree; why do they not try it?" and again, "This is an experiment so large and bold that it ought to be tried by some other country first." Mr. Asquith, in the course of his speech, said much the same thing: "We have no experience to guide us one way or the other." Mr. Goldwin Smith, an extra-Parliamentary opponent of women's suffrage, pointed, in an article, to its solitary example in the State of Wyoming, where it had been adopted in 1869, and asked why, if suffrage had been a success in Wyoming, its example had not been followed by other states immediately abutting on its borders.
Now it has frequently been noticed that when this line of argument is adopted it seems to be a sort of "mascot" for women's suffrage. When Mr. Bryce inquired in 1892 "why our great democratic colonies had not tried women's suffrage," his speech was followed in 1893 by the adoption of women's suffrage in New Zealand and in South Australia. When Mr. Goldwin Smith asked why the States which were in nearest neighbourhood to Wyoming had not followed her example, three States in this position, namely Colorado in 1893, Utah in 1895, and Idaho in 1896, very rapidly did so. When Sir F. S. Powell, in 1907, said in the House of Commons that no country in Europe had ever ventured on the dangerous experiment of enfranchising its women, women's suffrage was granted in Finland the same year, and in Norway the year following. When Mrs. Humphry Ward wrote in 1908 that our cause in the United States was "in process of defeat and extinction," this was followed by the most important suffrage victories ever won in America—the States of Washington in 1910, and California in 1911.
The question arises why so well informed and careful a political controversialist as Mr. James Bryce spoke as he did in 1892 of the fact that none of our great democratic colonies had adopted women's suffrage, in evident ignorance of the fact that two at any rate were on the point of doing so. The answer is probably to be found in the attitude of the anti-suffrage press. No body of political controversialists are so badly served by their own press as the anti-suffragists. The anti-suffrage press appears to act on the assumption that if they say nothing about a political event it is the same as if it had not happened. Therefore, while they give prominence to any circumstances which they imagine likely to be injurious to suffrage, they either say nothing about those facts which indicate its growing force and volume, or record them in such a manner that they escape the observation of the general reader. The result is that only the suffragists, who are in constant communication with their comrades in various parts of the world and also have their own papers, are kept duly informed, not only of what has happened, but of what is likely to happen. Mr. Bryce cannot have known of the imminence of the success of women's suffrage in New Zealand and South Australia in 1892. Mrs. Humphry Ward did not know in February 1909 that women's suffrage had actually been carried in Victoria, and had received the royal assent in 1908. She could have known very little of the real strength of the suffrage movement in the United States, when she said it was virtually dead, just at the moment when it was about to give the most unmistakable proofs of energy and vigour. For all this ignorance the anti-suffrage press of London is mainly responsible. "Things are what they are and their consequences will be what they will be," whether the newspapers print them or not, and to leave the controversialists on your own side in ignorance of facts of capital importance is a strange way of showing political allegiance.[19]