The interesting point about this is that English women have for many years had the vote on all matters pertaining to housing, care of the poor, sanitation, education, liquor regulations, police, care of the insane, care of children, etc. Probably Miss Addams does not know this. They have failed completely to do with the vote what even Miss Addams, confirmed and prejudiced suffragist that she is, admits that they could do perfectly well without the vote. This is certainly a striking admission on her part.
Why have they failed so lamentably? Mrs. Pethick Lawrence tells us. She says:
"I never saw so many women working for social betterment as I have seen in the American cities I have visited. In England women have turned their attention to politics and have accomplished nothing like so much in civic reform."
Anti-suffragists ask women not to turn their attention to politics and neglect civic reform; not to make this appalling mistake, which will set back the social progress of our cities for many years; not to make powerless, through woman suffrage, as the New York World wants to do, the women who are now working for social betterment.
The suffragists apparently do not care what evils follow, provided they get their way.
The Rev. Anna Shaw, president of the National Suffrage Association, says:
"I believe in woman suffrage whether all women vote or no women vote; whether all women vote right or all women vote wrong; whether all women will love their husbands after they vote or forsake them; whether they will neglect their children or never have any children."
In introducing this astounding statement, Dr. Shaw declared: "I believe I speak for the thousands of women belonging to the national association."
Perhaps she does. At least no one of them has been heard to deny it; but fortunately she does not speak for the 24,000,000 women of voting age in the United States who are not members of the National Suffrage association. Many of these do care for public welfare, for social well-being, and for human happiness, all of which would be destroyed if all women voted wrong, if they deserted their husbands, and neglected their children. Anti-suffragists protest against having political power put into the hands of women with no higher ideals than those of Dr. Shaw and her followers. They neither wish to be ruled by such women nor do they wish to have to wage an eternal fight not to be ruled by them, and one thing or the other will be necessary if the ballot is forced upon women. In California the men are begging the home-making type of women to come out and fight the political women, whom they already recognize as a danger and a nuisance.
Men who believe in fair play will refuse to force political life upon all the women of their states because a small fraction think they want it. Those who care for the political welfare of their states will decline to adopt this innovation, which assuredly cannot stand the tests of rational criticism and of experience. If they value in the slightest degree the assistance which educated, public-spirited women are able to give in securing enlightened legislation, they will certainly not favor votes for women; for what woman suffrage does is to take the power out of the hands of these women, who without the vote exert a strong moral influence toward good legislation, and put the power gained through an increase in the electorate into the hands of the bosses who can control the largest woman's vote.