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 countries where woman has full suffrage (save in the United States) are all dependencies of royalty. They are: The Isle of Man, Pitcairn's Island, New Zealand, and South Australia. The most important of these, New Zealand, was once a promising colony, but it has been declining for a quarter of a century. The men outnumber the women by forty thousand. The act conferring the parliamentary franchise on both European and Maori women received the royal sanction in 1892. At the session of Parliament that passed the act a tax was put upon incomes and one upon land, so that a desperate civilization seemed to be trying all the experiments at once. Certainly, woman suffrage in New Zealand was not adopted because the Government was so stable, so strong, so democratic, that these conditions must thus find fit expression. [Footnote: The Australasian colonies are taking steps toward the formation of a Federal Union. While this book is in press news comes that the Federal Convention, by a vote of 23 to 12, has refused to allow women to vote for members of the House of Representatives.]

South Australia not only gives women full suffrage, but makes them eligible to a seat in Parliament. The colony is a vast, mountainous, largely unsettled region, with a high proportion of native and Chinese, and, in 1894, had but 73,000 voters, including the women. The Socialistic Labor movement, which has played a large part in Australasian politics, here succeeded in dominating the government. There was an attempt to establish communistic villages with public money, a proposal to divide the public money pro rata, and one to build up a system of state life- insurance; and taxes were to be levied on salaries, and on all incomes above a certain point. It was found that the sixty thousand women who were authorized to vote throughout Australia assisted the socialistic schemes that are hindering progress and that tend to anarchy and not to republicanism. There is a royal Governor, and suffrage is based on household and property qualifications. It is an aristocratic and social combination, not a triumph of democratic ideas or principles. Dr. Jacobi, in her "Common Sense applied to Woman Suffrage," says: "The refusal to extend parliamentary suffrage to women who are possessed of municipal suffrage, does not mean, as Americans are apt to suppose, that women are counted able to judge about the small concerns of a town, but not about imperial issues. It means that women are still not counted able to exercise independent judgment at all, and, therefore, are to remain counted out when this is called for; but that the property to which they happen to belong, and which requires representation, must not be deprived of this on account of an entangling female alliance. This is the very antipodes of the democratic doctrine, perhaps also somewhat excessive, that a man requires representation so much that he must not be deprived of it on account of the accident of not being able to read or write!"

With Dr. Jacobi's interpretation, I will deal later. What I wish now to do is, to call attention to her admission of the fact that woman suffrage in England and in her colonies is not democratic, and to connect it with the other fact that no republic, from that of Greece to our own, has introduced it, although manhood suffrage has been universal in Switzerland for many years, and in France since 1848.

So it would seem that under a monarchical system, with a standing army and a hereditary nobility to support the throne, the royal mandate could be issued by a woman. Any Queen, as well as the one that Alice met in Wonderland, could say, "Off with his head!" But when freedom grew, and the democratic idea began to prevail, and each individual man became a king, and each home a castle, the law given by God and not by man came into exercise, and upon each man was laid the duty of defending liberty and those who were physically unfitted to defend themselves.

Let us turn now to our own country. Technically, at least, women possessed the suffrage in our first settlements. In New England, in the early days, when church-membership as the basis of the franchise excluded three- fourths of the male inhabitants from its exercise, women could vote. Under the old Provincial charters, from 1691 to 1780, they could vote for all elective offices. From 1780 to 1785, under the Articles of Confederation, they could vote for all elective offices except the Governor, the Council, and the Legislature. The comment made upon this by the Suffrage writers is, that "the fact that woman exercised the right of suffrage amid so many restrictions, is very significant of the belief in her right to the ballot-box." My comment is, that the same lesson we have learned in Europe is repeated here with wonderful emphasis. Under the transported aristocracy of churchly power in the state, they shared the undemocratic rule. When freedom broadened a little, and, under a system that still acknowledged allegiance to the British Crown, all property-holders or other "duly qualified" colonists could vote, they still had the voice that England grants to-day, the voice of an estate. When liberty took another step and a league was formed of "firm friendship" in which each Colony was to be independent and yet banded for offensive and defensive aid, the women were retired from the special vote on the result of which lay the actual execution of the law. But this country was not yet a republic, or even a nation. Washington himself said that the state of things under the Articles of Confederation was hardly removed from anarchy. In 1789 a constitution was adopted, which made the American people a nation. Its preamble read: "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Under this Constitution the last vestiges of churchly political rule, and of property-qualification for voting, have gradually disappeared. New Jersey was the last State to repeal her property-qualification laws. In 1709 she made "male freeholders" who held a certain amount of property the only voters. In 1790 her Constitution, through an error in wording, admitted "all inhabitants" with certain property to vote. This was in force until 1807, when an act was passed conferring the suffrage upon "free white male citizens twenty-one years of age worth fifty pounds proclamation money, clear estate," etc. From 1790 to 1807 a good many women, generally from the Society of Friends, took part in elections. After 1807 they attempted to do so, as owners of property. Finally, that qualification for the male voter was done away with, and with it the woman-suffrage agitation disappeared.

State after State, in carrying out the compact of the Federal Republic, had inserted the word "male" into the Constitutions that embodied the American conception of a more vital and enduring freedom.

But there are now four States of the Union where women have full suffrage, a few where they have a measure of municipal suffrage, and many where they have the school suffrage. What bearing do these facts have upon my claim that woman suffrage is undemocratic?

The States where they have full suffrage are Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and Idaho. How far was its introduction into these States the result of advanced legislation in accord with true republicanism? Utah Territory was the first spot in the country in which the measure gained a foothold, and that was not believed by its introducers to be a part of the United States. The Mormons who founded Salt Lake City supposed themselves to be settling on Mexican territory, outside the jurisdiction of American law. Woman suffrage was almost coincident with its beginnings, and it came as a legitimate part of the union of state and church, of communism, of polygamy. The dangers that especially threaten a republican form of government are anarchy, communism, and religious bigotry; and two of these found their fullest expression, in this country, in the Mormon creed and practice. Fealty to Mormonism was disloyalty to the United States Government. Thus, the introduction of woman suffrage within our borders was not only undemocratic, it was anti-democratic.

Woman suffrage was secured in Wyoming by means that bring dishonor upon democracy. Wyoming was organized as a Territory in 1868. Many of its native settlers were from Utah. For its vast, mountainous extent of nearly 98,000 square miles, the census gave a population of only 9,118 persons. Of these the native-born numbered 5,605, foreign-born, 3,513. The males numbered 7,219; the females, 1,899. The "History of Woman Suffrage" records the fact that the measure was secured in the first Territorial legislature through the political trickery of an illiterate and discredited man, who was in the chair. Mr. Bryce, in "The American Commonwealth," alludes in a note to the same fact. Women voted in 1870. In 1871 a bill was passed repealing the suffrage act, but was vetoed by the Governor, on the ground that, having been admitted, it must be given a fair trial. An attempt to pass the repeal over his veto was lost by a single vote. Certainly, the entrance of woman suffrage into Wyoming was not a triumph of democratic progress and principle.

Colorado was admitted into the Union in 1876, and great efforts were made by Suffragists to secure the "Centennial" State. This resulted in a submission of the question to the people, who rejected it by a majority of 7,443 in a total vote of 20,665. From the first of the agitation for the free coinage of silver, Colorado has been enthusiastically in favor of that measure. In 1892 her devotion to it caused all parties to unite on that issue and gave the vote of the State to General Weaver, Populist candidate for President, and to David H. Waite, Populist candidate for Governor. The question of woman suffrage was resubmitted to the people at this election, and the constitutional amendment concerning it was carried by a majority of only 5,000 in a total vote of 200,000. Neither that movement nor its results present triumphant democracy.