All who wish to have the right to participate in a discussion on woman’s suffrage must first study these two books of testimonials. A mere knowledge of these facts will cause much insipid discussion to cease in public meetings.
From the French consul in Dantzig, Count Jouffroy d’Abbans, one familiar with Australian conditions, I learned the following isolated facts concerning woman’s suffrage. It has a salutary influence throughout. Women show a lively interest in political and municipal questions; for the sake of their political rights they neglect their “specifically feminine” duties so little that they come to the parliamentary sessions with knitting, embroidery, and sewing. They also engage in these feminine activities while attending the night sessions. On election days there is certainly often a cold dinner or supper. But that occurs on washing days, too, and no one has yet wished to deny women the privilege of doing the washing. It is safe to say that the Australian woman’s rights movement will not fail because of this obstacle.
GREAT BRITAIN
| Total population: | 41,605,220. |
| Women: | 21,441,911. |
| Men: | 20,163,309. |
| English Federation of Women’s Clubs. Woman’s Suffrage League. |
“England is the storm center of our movement,” declared the President of the International Woman’s Suffrage Alliance in the Amsterdam Congress. This was the conviction of the Congress, which therefore resolved to hold the next International Woman’s Suffrage Congress in London (in April, 1909). The fact is undisputed that the English suffragettes—whether one favors or opposes their actions—have made Great Britain the center of the modern woman’s rights movement. England is a European country, an old country with rigid traditions, which, nevertheless, are the freest political traditions that we have in Europe to-day. For fifty years the English women have struggled for the right to vote. In spite of the fact that their country has neither Salic Law nor continental militarism (two of the greatest obstacles to all woman’s rights movements), the English women have not as yet attained their ends. This is an indication of the tenacity of the prejudices against women in the countries of older civilizations.
The opposition offered to the political emancipation of women in England is all the more remarkable since the English women were able to exercise the right to vote on an equality with men in national elections till 1832, and in municipal elections till 1835.[32] To that time we find the same conditions prevailing in England as prevailed in the nine American commonwealths previous to 1783. This parity of circumstances is explained by the English principle of representation: no taxation without representation. In 1832 and 1835, however, the English women, who as taxpayers were qualified to vote, had the right to vote in national and municipal affairs taken from them; for the word “persons” the expression “male persons” was substituted in the election law. When this disfranchisement took place none of those concerned cried out against it. For two hundred years the women had made no use worth mentioning of the right to vote. But a part of the women, especially those of the liberal and cultured circles, saw the significance of this retrograde step.
The political struggles of general concern during the following period (such as the antislavery movement and the anticorn-law movement) furnished these women an opportunity to educate themselves in political affairs, and, like the American women of that time, they in many cases learned their political ABC by means of the same questions. Such men as Cobden, Pease, Biggs, Knight, and others were the advance guard of the political women in England. The earliest pamphlet on women’s suffrage preserved to us appeared in 1847. It is a small leaflet and says among other things, “As long as both sexes and all parties are not given a just representation, good government is impossible” (which is a paraphrase of the American principle—every just government derives its powers from the consent of the governed). The contrary view had been stated in the Encyclopædia Britannica as early as 1842 by the father of John Stuart Mill: “It is self-evident that all persons whose interests are identical with those of a different class are excluded from political representation without injury.” Certainly from such an arrangement the “representatives” will suffer no injury. That select group of intellectual women who trained themselves politically during the antislavery movement and the struggle for free trade consisted of the mothers, the sisters, and daughters of liberal politicians and academically trained men. Many of these women were themselves students and teachers. No antagonism ever existed in England between the woman’s suffrage movement and the movement favoring the education of woman.
Such were the conditions in 1866. A new election law was to be introduced in Parliament; a new class of men was to be granted the right of suffrage by the lowering of the property qualification. The women decided to present a petition to the House of Commons requesting the right to vote in national elections. The women had decided to act thus publicly because of the presence of John Stuart Mill in the House of Commons, and because of an utterance of Disraeli’s, “In a country in which a woman can be ruler, peer, church trustee, owner of estates, and guardian of the poor, I do not see in the name of what principle the right to vote can be withheld from her.” Four petitions (one signed by 1499 women, one by 1605 taxpaying women, and two more signed by 3559 and 3000 men and women) were sent to the House of Commons; and on May 20, 1867, John Stuart Mill, after he had presented the petitions, moved that the right to vote be given to the qualified women taxpayers. His motion was rejected by a vote of 196 to 73. Thereupon there were formed for systematic propaganda, woman’s suffrage societies in London, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, and Bristol; these cities are still the center of the movement. The new election law gave women a further advantage—the expression male person was replaced with the generic word “man.”[33] Since an Act of Parliament (13 and 14 Vict., c. 21) declares that in all laws the masculine expression also includes the feminine, unless the contrary is expressly stated, the friends of woman’s suffrage believed they could interpret this expression in favor of women. The attempt to do this was now made. A number of qualified women demanded that they be registered with the voters; they were determined to have recourse to the law if the government commission refused to register their votes. At this time the first public meeting of women in England was held in the famous “Free Trade Hall” in Manchester. But the courts and the Supreme Court interpreted the law against the women,—“they are disqualified neither intellectually nor morally, but legally.” Then a methodical propaganda by means of public meetings was begun; the first victory was won as early as 1869,—the women taxpayers were given the right to vote in municipal affairs in England, Scotland, and Wales.
Between 1870 and 1884, the political organization of the women was strengthened; the women of the aristocracy (Lady Amberly, Lady Anne Gore-Langton, and others) were won over to the cause of woman’s suffrage. A “Central Committee for Woman’s Suffrage” was formed, and a number of excellent women speakers (Biggs, Maclaren, Becker, Fawcett, Craigen, Kingsley, Tod, and others) spoke throughout the country. A further success was achieved when the Parliament of the Isle of Man[34] (House of Keys) gave qualified women the right to vote.