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

How could "the class of men now elected" help resigning, if women enough chose to put up a woman and give her a majority of votes,—provided, as Suffragists say, that the vote secures the office and retains it by a mere mandate? But it is not one office, or set of offices, which we have to consider. It is the entrance upon political life, permanently, of a large body of women. What that means to the social life that "would not miss them," we well know. There could be no domestic ties; no hindering child. The time would be short before this unnatural position would breed a race of Aspasias—without the intellect that ruled "the ruler of the land, when Athens was the land of fame."

The "History" says: "An honest fear is sometimes expressed 'that women would degrade politics, and politics would degrade women,'" and the writers answer: "As the influence of woman has been uniformly elevating in new civilizations, in missionary work in heathen lands, in schools, colleges, literature, and general society, it is fair to suppose that politics would prove no exception." We do not need to depend upon forecast or inference. The influence of women upon politics, and the influence of politics upon women, have already been degrading. This is true of political intrigue in the old world, and of the "Female Lobby" in Washington. It is astonishing to what an extent it is true in our new country, with our fresh and sweet traditions.

In 1851, Mrs. Stanton, writing to a convention at Akron, Ohio, said: "The great work before us is the education of those just coming on the stage of action. Begin with the girls of to-day, and in twenty years we can revolutionize this nation. Teach the girl to go alone by night and day, if need be, on the lonely highway, or through the busy streets of the crowded metropolis. Better for her to suffer occasional insults, or die outright, than live the life of a coward, or never move without a protector…. Teach her that it is no part of life to cater to the prejudices of those around her. Make her independent of public sentiment, by showing her how worthless and rotten a thing it is…. Think you, women thus educated would long remain the weak, dependent beings we now find them? They would soon settle for themselves this whole question of Woman's Rights."

Fifty years of such teaching has had its effect. The fine bloom has too often been brushed from our girls' delicacy of thought. They can strut through the street in the daytime wearing a shirt-front, a cravat, a choker, a vest, and a man's hat, and carrying a cane. A few can flaunt themselves in bloomers and knickerbockers, and ride astride a bicycle. They ape men in everything except courtesy to women. But the result is not what was expected. These customs have introduced the chaperone, and have put an end to simple freedom between boys and girls. The Puritan maiden in her modesty could let John Alden speak for himself, because the John who could summon courage to speak of love to such a girl would not dare to breathe impurity. When the young woman requires a social spy, the young man is apt to forget that her innocent dignity is her own best guardian. With the passing of the "lady," American women may fail to remember that a gentlewoman need pretend to no aristocracy but that of the noblesse oblige of her own femininity. In the paragraph quoted above, women are spoken of as those who are "uniformly elevating" and as "weak and dependent" to a contemptuous degree. They cannot be both at once, and it seems to me that in fact they are neither. Woman is not an angel nor a demon, not a conqueror nor a slave. But the seed from which any of these conflicting natures may develop lies in more fertile soil, within her impassioned and impressible soil, than in man's. The Suffrage movement will leave her much better or worse than it found her. The phrase "the new woman," with the instinctive explanation that she "is as refined, or as good a wife, mother, sister, daughter, housekeeper," as the old, is ominous.

Suffrage writers seem to hold two views in regard to sex. One is, that it is so pervasive that it cannot be affected by any line of conduct. The other is, that, so far as mind is concerned, it is purely a fanciful barrier, and the less there appears of external distinction the better will this be realized. The Suffrage "History" says: "Sex pervades all matter. Whatever it is, it requires no special watchfulness on our part to see that it is maintained." At the same time the dictum "There is no sex in mind," has been a Suffrage war-cry. It seems to me that both views are unscientific and dangerous to social morals. Sex integrity is pervasive of the whole nature only when men and women are true to the ideal of the essential distinctions in each. The true environment of woman is womanliness; not to fit her nature to the utmost that womanliness can mean to the world, is to fail of womanly attainment. But making herself a distorted woman cannot make her even an imperfect man. The mere act of going to the polls is not unwomanly; it might be as proper as going to the post-office; but attempting to encroach upon duty that is laid upon man in her behalf is neither womanly nor manly.

In demanding equality, Suffragists assume that there is not and has not been equality. In asserting that "there is no sex in mind," they really have had to maintain that there is one sex in mind, and that the masculine, to which woman must conform. If man wanted clinching arguments to prove his superiority, could he find another to match this one which suffrage has furnished him? The quaint wit of the Yankee put it neatly when he gave the toast, "Woman—once our superior, now our equal!" Man has said: "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." He has also said, with Martin: "Whatever may be the customs and laws of a country, the women of it decide the morals." The civilization of no nation has risen higher than the carrying out of the religious ideals of its best womanhood. If man has the outward framing of church and state, woman has the framing of the character of man. There is no schism in the body of human duties as the Lord established them. The issues have become more distinctly and openly moral issues; and in so far as woman can make it consist with that inner life of the home and the child, which alone can make the family and fix the state on any sure foundation, she is welcomed by man to meet the common foe. Such new avenues to wealth and distinction as she can enter with womanly dignity and grace will open to her as fast as man can make them places where she can walk with security and comfort to herself and advantage to them both. And they will open no faster.

The woman Suffragist has had to wage as bitter a warfare against physical science as against religion. Eliza Burt Gamble, in her volume which discusses "The Evolution of Woman," takes up the cudgels against both the Bible and man's scientific classification of woman, or rather his failure to classify her properly at all. She says: "When we bear in mind the past experience of the human race, it is not perhaps surprising that, during an era of physical force and the predominance of the animal instincts in man, the doctrine of male superiority should have become firmly grounded. But with the dawn of scientific investigation it might have been hoped that the prejudices resulting from a lower condition of human society would disappear. When, however, we turn to the most advanced scientific writers of the present century, we find that the prejudices which throughout thousands of years have been gathering strength are by no means eradicated. Mr. Darwin, whenever he had occasion to touch on the mental capacities of women, or, more particularly, the relative capacities of the sexes, manifested the same spirit which characterizes an earlier age."

Herbert Spencer, in his essay on "Justice," says that he once favored woman suffrage "from the point of view of a general principle of individual rights." Later he finds that this cannot be maintained, because he "discovers mental and emotional differences between the sexes which disqualify women from the burden of government and the exercise of its functions." He also considers it absurd for women to claim the vote and military exemption in the name of equality.

Science has told us of the active, as well as the passive, part that the mother plays in the growth of the embryo, and at the same time has told us that the sex of that embryo is determined by the nourishing power of the mother. The commonplace statistics of the census come in with their verifying word, and we find that in rude times and hard conditions more boys are born. Gentle conditions and abundance are favorable to the birth of girls. Here is the same story we have learned so often. Man the protector, woman the protected. Woman the inspiring force, man the organizing and physical power.

So the Bible, Science, and Republican government, according to Suffragist and Anti-suffragist, have planted themselves squarely on the sex issue. It is solid standing-ground, and neither apparent irrelevancy nor real antagonism will dislodge the argument.