The laws of England are those of Christianity based upon the theological teaching of man’s superiority over woman; she is his servant, subordinate to him in all things, a condition except where removed by special statute, existing today.[58] Returned missionaries who refer to the wife as waiting upon the husband at table in heathen countries not eating until he is satisfied, as proof of the different customs brought about by christianity, should inform themselves of the condition of the christian wife for nearly a thousand years in what is regarded as the foremost christian country in the world. He will then have learned that circumstances quite contradictory to ecclesiasticism finally permitted the English wife to assume a seat at the table with her husband, a place she was not allowed to take for many hundred years after the introduction of christianity into that island. In every country where christianity exists, women now are, and during all the years of its civil power have been, legislated for as slaves. They have been imprisoned for crimes which if committed by a man were punished by simply branding on the hand; they have been condemned to be buried alive for other crimes which if committed by a man, were atoned for by the payment of a fine. Having first robbed woman of her property and denied her the control of her own earnings, the christian religion allowed her to suffer the most agonizing form of death, a living burial, for lack of that very money of which she had been civilly and ecclesiastically robbed. The law so far controlled family life that for many hundred years it bound to servile labor, all unmarried women between the ages of eleven and forty. The father possessed absolute control over the marital destiny of his daughter.
Instances of wife sale are not uncommon in the United States, and although the price is usually higher than that given for English wives, reaching from three hundred to four thousand dollars, still, as low a sum as five cents has been recorded. A prosperous resident of Black Hills, Dakota, is said to have begun his business start in life through sale of his wife. If a wife is a husband’s property the same as a cow, it is manifestly unjust that legal punishment of any kind should fall upon her because of her master’s action. She is irresponsible. The right of sale logically goes with the right of beating, of taking the wife’s property and holding her earnings, of owning her children and she should be exempt from punishment for her own sale. In a much larger measure we find the same rule of punishing wives for the crimes of husbands, enforced in the United States, in the penalty of disfranchisement of the women of Utah for the polygamy of the men of Utah. And this penalty was extended not alone to the wives of polygamous husbands—themselves possessing but one husband—victims alike of church and state, but the non-Mormon or “Gentile Women” of that territory, were also disfranchised by the XLIX Congress of the United States because of the polygamy of a portion of the Mormon men; all women of that territory were deprived of their vested rights, rights that had been in existence for seventeen years, because of the crimes of men.[59] Against this injustice, the Woman Suffragists of the country protested through means of a committee in a
MEMORIAL.
To the President of the United States:
The National Woman Suffrage Association, through this committee, respectfully present to you a protest against that clause of the anti-polygamy measure passed by congress, which, whether in the Edmunds bill of the senate or the Tucker substitute of the house, disfranchises the non-polygamous women of Utah.
The clause relating to the disfranchisement of women has no bearing on the general merits of the end sought to be attained by the measure, since Mormon men are the majority of the voters of the territory.
The non-polygamous women of Utah have committed no crime. Disfranchisement is reserved by the United States government for arch traitors. Justice forbids that such a penalty should be inflicted on innocent women.
Non-polygamous Mormon women and the Christian women of Utah being thus disfranchised—the former for their opinions and the latter for the opinions of the former—a precedent is established subversive of the fundamental principles of our government, and threatening the security of all citizens.
If congress deems it necessary to disfranchise citizens because of injurious beliefs, discrimination between sexes is manifestly unjust.