The Woman Citizen, a suffrage publication of California, in its July issue, bears testimony on this question as follows:
"There are today many women in California and other States of the union who, being enfranchised, are too indifferent to vote. We are loath to believe that these women—thousands of them in the United States—are aware of the wrong they are doing. We do not think they know they are shirking a fundamental duty of citizenship. Too many ballots are cast in the cause of dishonesty and corruption. Honest and law-abiding citizens must exert their united strength at the polls to uphold honesty and good government. There are too many women today who are priviliged to vote, yet refrain from doing so either because they do not believe a woman should go to the polls, or because for some inexcusable reason they have neglected to register. They regard their franchise as an invitation to a bridge party, something they can accept or reject as their fancy dictates."
There is no lack of testimony that the wrongminded women do vote. On November 4, the day after election, the San Francisco Examiner said: "McDonough Brothers had several automobiles busy all day long hauling Barbary coast dance hall girls and the inmates of houses on Commercial street to the different booths, and always the women were supplied with marked sample ballots."
They were outvoting the women reformers!
What is the result? What is happening to moral conditions in San Francisco since women vote? The American Social Hygiene Association pointed out last spring that there had been an increase in the number of questionable dance halls, and the "Survey" of April 10 stated that danger signals were being flashed all over the country to young people bound for the exposition, as there was much unemployment, and the city's moral condition gave cause for anxiety.
A later report, by Bascom Johnson, counsel of the Social Hygiene Association, who was sent to San Francisco for further investigation, appears in full in the September issue of "Social Hygiene." It is far more serious than previous reports. Within the exposition are several concessions, maintained despite protests specifically against them, which are deplorably vicious. In the city itself conditions are appalling, the policemen being there apparently to prevent anything from interfering with the orderly and profitable traffic in vice.
Summing up his report, Mr. Johnston says, "in spite of announcements of officials to the contrary, San Francisco remains one of the few large cities of this country where prostitution is frankly and openly tolerated. The natural and inevitable result has been that San Francisco has become the Mecca of the underworld, and that for every such addition to her population the problem is rendered that much more difficult."
These are the conditions in a city where women vote! Mr. Johnson says that the Y. W. C. A., the W. C. T. U. and other organizations of the kind have tried to improve these conditions, but have failed, as they received "little or no support from the city officials." This fact is directly in opposition to the suffrage theory that women must have the vote in order that city and state officials shall pay heed to their wishes. If California were still under male suffrage—if the thousands of dissolute women in San Francisco who will vote as the party in power dictates did not have the vote—the moral influence of the ladies of the Y. W. C. A. and the W. C. T. U. would be much more likely to be a factor in the situation. If these ladies vote at all, their vote is divided between the Democrats, Republicans, Progressives, and Socialists, and is therefore of much less importance than the big vote which can be controlled. Dr. Helen Sumner, sent by the suffragists to study conditions in Denver several years ago, states that "the vote of these women to whom the police protection is essential is regarded as one of the perquisites of the party in power."
With these facts in mind it is very clear that the statement constantly made by suffragists that after women are enfranchised they need not vote if they do not want to, is shallow and unprincipled, and the woman who makes it proves herself an unsafe person to be enfranchised. The stay-at-home vote is a great and serious menace.
Voting differs from the higher education and other so-called "woman's rights." They are privileges only. Whether a girl goes to college or does not go to college is a personal matter, and her decision works no danger to other girls or to the community. The college is there, and she can go or not, as her taste and circumstances decide. But voting is a totally different matter. Enfranchisement confers a privilege and an obligation, the obligation being inseparable from the privilege. Since the shirking of this obligation means a serious menace to the community, the unwillingness of a large majority of women to accept the obligation is a factor of the utmost importance in the situation.