Woman and the Republic / A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates

by Helen Kendrick Johnson

The statement is further made by Suffragists that "though woman needs protection of one man against his whole sex, in pioneer life, in threading her way through a lonely forest, on the highway, or in the streets of a metropolis on a dark night, she sometimes needs, too, the protection of all men against this one. But even if she could be sure, as she is not, of the ever-present, all-protecting power of one strong arm, that would be weak indeed compared with the subtle, all-pervading influence of just and equal laws for all women. Hence woman's need of the ballot, that she may hold in her own right hand the weapon of self-protection and defence." The possession of the ballot has not been able to secure for men "the subtle and all-pervading influence of just and equal laws," and despite his holding the ballot in his own hand, man has had to hold also a more apparent weapon if he visit a striker's camp or meddle with an anarchist riot. Something more tangible than protective influence is needed to make the public streets of this city safe for women in broad daylight. Again, they say that "Wisdom would suggest division of labor in peace as well as in war." Wisdom would have no chance to make such a suggestion, if women attempted to do the same work as do men, in the same way. There is true division of labor now, in peace as well as in war.

Suffragists mention as a final indignity the extension of the suffrage to the negro. Their protest only serves to suggest another forcible illustration of the fact that law and the enforcement of law may be different things. The suffrage is not extended to the negro. The Congress of the United States voted that it should be so extended; and while the Government stood behind his vote with its military power, the negro voted. But no one pretends that he has done so, to any practical extent, since that time. Unarmed, the negro finds that he cannot enforce his own vote against the will of white men armed to the teeth. The "all-pervading influence of just and equal laws" cannot enforce it for him. Would the women be any better off, if the men chose that they should not exercise the vote? Who would enforce it?

This fact and argument show how little arbitration has to do with the practical decision concerning suffrage. Suffrage writers and speakers harp upon the thought that arbitration will take the place of force. That method of settling disputes cannot come too quickly, but it has not come yet. It has no real bearing on the organization of the state as resting upon the civil and military service of its citizens. England consented to arbitrate with the powerful United States, but refused to arbitrate with defenceless Nicaragua in a far less important matter. Congress has seriously considered exterminating the remnant of the beautiful herd of seals that once played in our Northern Pacific waters, because British subjects have continued, in violation of the Arbitration treaty, to kill the animals with cruelty. Behind arbitration, as behind all law and order, military power must always stand and must sometimes be used. One more proof that the vote is not the real power, but only its insignia, lies in the fact that legislation has not been able to put an end to strikes and riots. Laws that forbid them are passed with all due form; but when they come, as come they do, the reading of the riot act is suspended and the regiments are ordered to Chicago, or Buffalo, or Brooklyn, or Homestead, or Cripple Creek, or Cleveland, or the Indian country. The force of those bodies was not "brutal," it was physical power obeying mental; and unless mental power can command physical, there is no way in which mental power can enforce its decrees in government. There are now facing us tremendous moral issues, which presage tremendous struggles; and a very notable example of the dangers that would attend woman suffrage is suggested by them. If women had the power to create a numerical majority when there was a majority of the law's natural and only defenders against them, they might soon precipitate a crisis that would lead to bloodshed, which they would be powerless either to prevent or to allay. Would the majority of men submit to the minority of men associated with non-combatants? American history furnishes no reason for supposing that they would. The Dorr War in Rhode Island is a case in point, in local matters. I am neither an alarmist nor a believer in war as a panacea; but if we discuss this subject at all, we must discuss it with facts and not fancies in our minds.

Dr. Jacobi again says, in her book: "It may be said, for it has been said, that the objection to seeing a vote of seven hundred men overcome by a coalition of three hundred men with eight hundred women, lies in the fact that the defeated minority knows, if it had a free hand and was allowed to use fisticuffs, it could pound into a jelly a majority composed so largely of women. It would feel, therefore, sullen, restive, and justly indignant, that it should be prohibited from using this power and obliged to submit to a merely nominal force and supremacy."

The objection to seeing seven hundred men defeated by a coalition of three hundred men with eight hundred women, lies in the fact that the defeated minority knows that it has a free hand, and that nothing less than eight hundred men could prevent it from using its physical power, were it so inclined. Only a force and supremacy that was real, and not nominal, could make it to submit. The rhetorical trick of belittling the matter by speaking of it as "fisticuffs" will not pass in this discussion. When the South Carolina negroes on election day looked into the rifle-barrels of the Red-shirt clubs, it was no matter of fisticuffs. When every statesman in our country was eagerly seeking a peaceful solution of the Hayes-Tilden dispute, it was not fisticuffs that they feared. When the Dostie convention was broken up and its leaders murdered in New Orleans, it was not by means of fisticuffs. When the Chicago anarchists threw their bomb into the ranks of the policemen in Haymarket Square, they were not playing at fisticuffs. When the rail way strikers in Pittsburg stopped the trains, "killed" the locomotives, and burned the freight, there was no fisticuffs about it. And when a Southern minority refused to abide by the result of the election of 1860, and the Northern majority shouldered muskets and went down and compelled them to, not the most flippant writer would have thought of calling it fisticuffs. All these are simply readily recalled instances of the necessity for power in the enforcement of law.

She goes on to say: "But is it only in such a hypothetical case that a minority would know it could, if allowed to resort to physical force, shiver to fragments the majority? The burly brakemen in railroad strikes would, probably, in a fair hand-to-hand encounter, be much bested over all the stockholders of the road,—weakened, not only because they included women in their midst, but also by sedentary habits and predominately indoor occupations. Why do they not try this way of settling their difficulties? Why do not the classes in England, who still remain entirely disfranchised, and with whom rests so much physical strength, drop their fists into the balance as Brennus did his sword, and cut short the futile, womanish discussion? The answer is ready in every one's mouth. It is not that it cannot be done, but that, on the whole, people are all agreed that it is best it should not be done. It is not that physical force is respected less, but that mental force is respected more."

I reply that both these things have been attempted over and over again, and the agreement of all the wise and good people that it is best that it should not be done cannot prevent it. Behind the burly brakemen who have seized the train, and the stockholders to whom it lawfully belongs, there lies a power greater than all the brakemen and stockholders together. We call it the power of law. It is, in fact, the power of a sovereign people, who, having made that law, are able to enforce it against the breakers of it. It is necessary, in the discussion of this point, to have clearly in mind the difference between sovereign power and delegated power. When a member of a stock company attends the annual meeting and casts one vote for every share that he holds, he is exercising delegated power. The sovereign people, acting through their representatives in the legislature, have delegated to the company the power to regulate its affairs in this way, and guaranteed to each shareholder this privilege. Should a combination of some of the shareholders attempt to prevent one from exercising it, he would appeal to the court, and behind the court stands the power of the people, many times larger than any stock company that exists. On the other hand, when men go to the polls on election day, they exercise, not delegated, but sovereign, power. There is no greater power, above and beyond themselves, to regulate their actions. The enfranchised classes in England do drop their fists into the balance, and, as a result, we have seen the extensions of suffrage that marked the years 1832 and 1848, and the reason some classes are still unfranchised is, that the monarchy that wills their unfranchisement has, as yet, more power at command than those who would enfranchise them. Mental and moral force is more respected with every rolling year, because those who respect it have been able to obtain control of the physical power that can force its decrees upon those who do not respect it.

The third count in the indictment is: "Having deprived her of the first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides." As, in securing the exact number of grievances mentioned by the Fathers, the Mothers were compelled to string out their distresses somewhat, I will quote the next count in the indictment, and consider these two together. "After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognized her only when her property could be made profitable to it."

The many-sided oppression, and the deprivation as a married woman, belong in other chapters. The remaining portions of the two counts may be summed up under the familiar cry: "No taxation without representation." What did that just accusation mean when our fathers uttered it in regard to English tyranny? Did they mean that their property was taxed, and they had no redress? The phrase originated with Patrick Henry, who read to the Virginia House of Burgesses the decision gleaned from a study of "Coke upon Lyttleton," that "Englishmen living in America had all the rights of Englishmen living in England, the chief of which was, that they could only be taxed by their own representatives," and on that was founded the resolution adopted by them that the colonies could not be lawfully taxed in a body in which they were not represented; for the colonies, as well as individuals, had no vote in Parliament. They meant that their property could not be so taxed, and they meant far more. The more that they meant was embodied by Jefferson in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, when he said: "Can any one reason be assigned why a hundred and sixty thousand electors in the island of Great Britain should give law to four million in the States of America?" John Hancock meant that and more when he said: "Burn Boston and make John Hancock a beggar, if the public good requires it." He was offering his taxed property to defend the liberties of the four millions against the hundred and sixty thousand electors. The refusal of the majority to be ruled longer by the minority was the main motive of determination not to submit. But at that time all voting was connected with a tax on property, and so was the suffrage established by these men. And under those property-tax laws women who held property could vote. It was when taxation ceased to go with representation, that the women ceased to vote. There is now no connection between taxation of property and representation. When people were allowed votes in proportion to the amount of property they held, and could vote in different counties and States, there was a connection, and that law gave the rich man more voting power than the poor man. But all aristocratic qualification was done away with, and the government came to rely solely on the strength of individual men for its defence, instead of upon men and women with money enough to raise soldiery. There is a money tax levied on the property of men and women alike; and in return for the payment of this tax the property of both men and women is made secure against unlawful injury. In order to make it secure, the state lays, upon men alone, a service tax, and with that tax goes representation, or the vote. This service tax does not fall upon woman, and it cannot be demanded of her; so it is not true that "Man has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it." He has, in return for the money tax, so guarded her property through the service tax on men that it is of profit to her, which without that guard it could not be.

The tax on property is collected from that of minors and unnaturalized citizens, resident or non-resident, and to all these classes, as well as to non-voting women, is given the right of petition and legal redress of whatever sort. The men do not have "equal rights" in regard to public control of their taxable property, if equal rights means that each man shall be able to say what shall be done to, or with, or about, the property on which he pays taxes. The penniless voter can have as much to say as to whether a railroad shall cross the lands of a millionaire as the millionaire himself. At every town election the minority are unheeded, so far as the vote goes, and women with property interests would be no better off if they secured votes in the only way they can be secured—one voice, one vote.