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

I have considered this question mainly from the view-point of the wife and mother; but the home relations are vastly broader. In regard to their whole scope, some of the Suffrage leaders have uttered this dictum: "The isolated household is responsible for a large share of woman's ignorance and degradation." If this declaration does not mean that the Suffrage movement aims to tear down the individual home, it means nothing. The world must judge which system is responsible for the larger share of woman's ignorance and degradation.

CHAPTER XII.

CONCLUSION.

In the opening of this volume I have given it as my opinion that the movement to obtain the elective franchise for woman is not in harmony with those through which woman and government have made progress. I have spoken of the marvellous forward impulse that has marked the passage of the last half-century, and have mentioned the growth of religious liberty, the founding of foreign and home missions, the extinction of slavery, the temperance movement, the settlement of the West, the opening of the professions and trades to women, the progress of mechanical invention, the sudden advance of science, the civil war, and the natural play of free conditions, as among the causes of this impulse. I have pointed out the fact that the Suffrage movement has nearly reached its semi-centennial year, and has made a record by which its relation to these progressive forces can be judged, and I have appealed from the repetition of its claims to the verdict of its accomplishment.

In the second chapter I have considered the growth of republican forms the world over, and endeavored to show that the dogma of Woman Suffrage is fundamentally at war with true democratic principles, and that, practically, woman suffrage has been allied with despotism, monarchy, and ecclesiastical oppression on the one hand, and with the powers of license and misrule that assail republican government on the other.

In the third chapter I attempt to prove this further by a study of the origin of the Suffrage movement, and by its relation to the Government of the United States. I try to refute the two propositions which it has put forth as solid resting-ground for woman's claim to the elective franchise in this land—"Taxation without representation is tyranny," and "There is no just government without the consent of the governed." I have also set forth the difference between municipal and constitutional suffrage, and shown that the extension of school suffrage, so far from being a stepping- stone to full suffrage, affords another evidence that such full suffrage is unprogressive and undemocratic. It is held that regulated, universal manhood suffrage is the natural and only safe basis of government.

In the fourth chapter I consider the early relation of the Suffrage movement to the causes of anti-slavery and temperance. I also discuss the attitude of the Suffrage leaders during the civil war, and indicate that the Suffrage movement was not patriotic, and was a hindrance to emancipation and reform.

The fifth chapter treats of the connection of the Suffrage movement with the change that has taken place in the laws, and it contains a synopsis of the present laws of New York regarding women. From this study it appears that the Suffrage movement did not originate the change in the laws; that many changes most vigorously urged by its associations never have been enacted; and that change of laws has not been so much sought as a voice upon change of laws—the fact being, that the vote per se has been urged as the panacea for all woman's wrongs.

The sixth chapter deals with Woman Suffrage and the trades. It shows that this movement was not instrumental in opening the trades to women; that the conditions of industrial life are not changed in such essentials as would involve a change of sex relation to Government; and that, so far from altering the basis of government, industrialism has introduced new problems of such grave import that security in the enforcement of law is doubly necessary. It shows, furthermore, that socialistic labor has been naturally the friend of Woman Suffrage, while the safer and sounder organizations have extended sympathetic help to woman.

The seventh chapter discusses the connection of Woman Suffrage with the professions. It aims to show that here, too, suffrage has not been necessary to gain, for women who were fitted to hold it, an honorable place; and, in regard to the places they have not yet entered, it is held that the impulse must come from within. It is argued that, in the professions, as in the trades, Suffrage effort has hindered more than it has helped, and that in the West its practical working is the most damaging thing that has attended woman's real progress.