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

That no inequality should be possible when this idea should really rest upon the most primitive, rudimentary and yet continuing and controlling attribute, instead of upon complex contradictions in regard to the distribution of sovereign human power, God, speaking through the ideal which the moral man had grasped, said: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh."

Man is not the hereditary sovereign in a republic. He is an actual, present, continuing sovereign, and he is that only so long as he obeys the law of his being and constitutes himself, by reason of his manhood strength, the defence of the republic's laws for all. In woman suffrage democracy has met a most dangerous foe. It has been asked "If it would be best for man to make over half his sovereignty to woman?" I cannot imagine how he could do this, whatever might be his wish. Sovereignty in a republic is only divisible among those who are equals as to sovereign power; and any effort to divide with those who lack the essential attribute must result in despotism or anarchy. Men are as subject to the restrictions and requirements of sex as are women, and when they try an experiment contrary to those conditions, the end must be destruction of government itself.

Prof. Goldwin Smith says: "One of the features of a revolutionary era is the prevalence of a feeble facility of abdication. The holders of power, however natural and legitimate it may be, are too ready to resign it on the first demand…. The nerves of authority are shaken by the failure of conviction."

This is true, and it is what makes the present situation portentous. From the very tenderheartedness of the men of our time comes the danger to the women of this nation. So far from desiring to hold the slightest restriction over the women of the Republic, they may rush into an attempt at abdication of a sovereignty that did not originate in their will but in their environment, in order to prove the sincerity of their desire that woman should not even appear to be compelled to obey.

This movement is a feature of the revolutionary era that seems suddenly to have extended to the men with whose theories it belongs. Not at once, nor everywhere equally, but finally and completely would this change come. Man, as well as woman, must "consent to be governed" by the laws of being. If man really could "share his sovereignty," there might be some show of reason in the Suffrage claim that he should do so. But unless he can abdicate the very essentials of his sex condition, he cannot abdicate his sovereignty. His laws are dead letters whenever more men than those who passed them and approve them choose that they shall be dead. He would have no material outside the men in this country, with which to execute the wishes of the woman voters whom it is proposed to introduce to make laws which they know they cannot themselves enforce.

And this leads us right round again to consider the "disabilities foisted upon sex conditions." The first thing demanded of a voter is that, in the ordinary state of things, he should be able to vote. A body of citizens is asking that a sex be admitted to franchise when it is known to all that a large part of that sex would at every election find it physically impossible, or improper, to go to the polls. Suffragists say: "No women need vote who do not wish to; but they have no right to hinder us." Is this the Individualism of Democracy? It is the Individualism of Anarchy. It is not the rule of the majority. It is class rule with a vengeance; and as for "consenting to be governed," there never was a man or a government that so coolly assumed to govern without their consent such a body, as do the Suffragists. The disabilities "foisted upon sex" would be felt first of all by the wives and mothers who are most interested in the laws.

The next duty of citizenship is jury service. The leaders said: "We demand, in criminal cases, that most sacred of all rights, trial by jury of our own peers." In regard to jury duty Suffragists are not agreed; which fact alone shows that that service would be felt to be an impairment of sex conditions. So impossible has jury duty been found, even in small communities, that in Wyoming the jury service of women ceased with the first judge who admitted them to serve at all; and in Colorado but one or two women have ever served. The judges there do not allow them to be called. It was found to be expensive, and not promotive of the ends of justice. Whether this is held to be man's cruel withholding of woman's rights or not, it shows that either the sex condition or the co- extensiveness of woman's work with man's must be impaired. Dr. Jacobi says in regard to jury service: "The numerous cases for exemption now admitted for men would be certainly paralleled for women, but they would not always be identical. Men are now more often excused for business; women would be excused on the plea of ill-health. Of course the special plea of family cares with young children would rule out thousands of women during a number of years of their lives."

Who would establish the "special plea" for so large a proportion of the voting population? No law of justice on which a solid government can rest could do it; and that it would be asked, and needed, shows that sex conditions would interfere with voting conditions. A criminal case often lasts weeks, even months, during which time the jury are kept together and alone, locked up at night, and walked out by day. This second duty cannot be, and is not, performed; not because many women would not make good jurors, not because they should not try delicate cases, and might not serve well at certain times, and in special ways, but because jury duty, like military service, cannot take account of sex conditions when they are the rule and not the exception.

Office-holding is the next necessary concomitant of the ballot. Of course it can be said at once: "Why, multitudes of men never hold office, why should women?" It may be answered that multitudes of men do hold office, that no American would think of extending the ballot without expecting that, as an accompaniment, the duty, or the privilege, of office-holding should follow.

Not only is it true that if more than half the population were added to the voting list multitudes among them would attempt to rush into office, but it was mainly for office that a majority of those who have been pressing the demand cared for the vote. The authors of the "History" say: "As to offices, it is not be supposed that the class of men now elected will resign to women their chances, and, if they should to any extent, the necessary number of women to fill the offices would make no apparent change in our social circles. If, for example, the Senate of the United States should be entirely composed of women, but two in each State would be withdrawn from the pursuit of domestic happiness."