That so many signed is not strange, because the non-suffrage side is the popular one at present. Years hence, when it shall be customary for women to vote, it is questionable whether the lady who drew up that document would have many supporters.
If "we are not inferior to men," we must have as clear opinions and as good judgment as they. To say, then, that we are not capable of judging of political questions, is untrue. To say that we are not interested in such things is absurd, for who can be more anxious for good laws and good law-makers than women, who, for the most part, have sons and daughters in this whirlpool of temptation, called social and business life. If we are too ignorant to have an opinion, the fault lies at our own door.
These ladies reason upon the premises that the duties imposed upon us as we find them in this nineteenth century, are the duties, conditions, and relations established of God. Two things we do certainly find in the Bible with regard to this matter; that women are to bear children, and men to earn bread. The first duty we believe has been confined entirely to the female sex, but the male sex have not kept the other in all cases. If anybody has belonged for any considerable time to a benevolent institution, he has ascertained that women sometimes are obliged to earn bread and bear children also. A century or two ago, when women seldom thought of writing books, or being physicians or lawyers, professors or teachers, or doing anything but housework, probably they thought, as the ladies of Lorain county do to-day, they were in the blessed noonday of woman's enlightenment and happiness. Their husbands, very likely, needed something of the same companionship as the men of the present, but it was unpopular for girls to attend school. If these ladies, after careful study and thought, believe that woman suffrage will work evil in the land, they ought to say that, rather than base it upon lack of time. The enfranchisement of 15,000,000 women will be a balance of power for good or evil that will need looking after. As for our representing men at the fireside, I think it a great deal pleasanter that they be there in person. Nothing is more blessed than the home circle, and here I think if husbands were not so often represented by their wives, while they are absent evening after evening on "important business," the condition of things would be improved. If the ladies aforesaid cannot vote without the highest interests of their families being sacrificed, they ought to be allowed to remain in peace. I am glad they made this protest, not only because this is a country where honest views ought to be expressed, but because agitation pushes forward reform. I am glad that nearly half of our representatives were in favor of submitting this question to the women of the State, and that our interests were so ably defended by a talented representative from our own district. I do not think, however, by submitting it to the women, they would get a correct expression upon the subject. A good many would vote for suffrage, a few against it, and thousands would be afraid to vote. If it is granted, I do not suppose all women will vote immediately. Many prejudices will first have to give way. If women vote what they wish to vote, and there is no disorderly conduct at the polls in consequence, and no general disorder in the body politic, I do not see any objection to the voting being continued from year to year.
When women like Miss Jones of our city, now in California, take a few more professorships in a university over half-a-hundred competitors, write a few more libraries, show themselves capable of solving great questions, become ornaments to their professions, it will seem more absurd for them not to be enfranchised than it does now for them to be so.
Hon. J. M. Ashley, of Toledo, in a speech on the floor of congress, June 1, 1868, said:
I want citizenship and suffrage to be synonymous. To put the question beyond the power of States to withhold it, I propose the amendment to article fourteen, now submitted. A large number of Republicans who concede that the qualifications of an elector ought to be the same in every State, and that it is more properly a national than a State question, do not believe congress has the power under our present constitution to enact a law conferring suffrage in the States, nevertheless they are ready and willing to vote for such an amendment to the constitution as shall make citizenship and suffrage uniform throughout the nation. For this purpose I have added to the proposed amendment for the election of president a section on suffrage, to which I invite special attention.
This is the third or fourth time I have brought forward a proposition on suffrage substantially like the one just presented to the House. I do so again because I believe the question of citizenship suffrage one which ought to be met and settled now. Important and all-absorbing as many questions are which now press themselves upon our consideration, to me no one is so vitally important as this. Tariffs, taxation, and finance ought not to be permitted to supersede a question affecting the peace and personal security of every citizen, and, I may add, the peace and security of the nation. No party can be justified in withholding the ballot from any citizen of mature years, native or foreign born, except such as are non compos or are guilty of infamous crimes; nor can they justly confer this great privilege upon one class of citizens to the exclusion of another class.
The Revolution of March 19, 1868, said:
Notwithstanding the most determined hostility to the demands of the age for female physicians, institutions for their educational preparation for professional responsibilities are rapidly increasing. The ball first began to move in the United States,[290] and now a female medical college is in successful operation in London, where the favored monopolizers of physic and surgery were resolved to keep out all new ideas in their line by acts of parliament. But the ice-walls of opposition have melted away, and even in Russia a woman has graduated with high medical honors.
The following statistics from Thomas Wentworth Higginson settle many popular objections to a collegiate education for women:
Graduates of Antioch College.—In a paper read before the Social Science Association in the spring of 1874 I pointed out the presumption to be, that if a desire for knowledge was implanted in the minds of women, they had also as a class the physical capacity to gratify it; and that therefore the burden of proof lay on those who opposed such education, on physiological grounds, to collect facts in support of their position. In criticising Dr. Clarke's book, "Sex in Education," I called attention to the fact that he has made no attempt to do this, but has merely given a few detached cases, whose scientific value is impaired by the absence of all proof whether they stand for few or many. We need many facts and a cautious induction; not merely a few facts and a sweeping induction. I am now glad to put on record a tabular view[291] of the graduates of Antioch, with special reference to their physical health and condition; the facts being collected and mainly arranged by Professor J. B. Weston of Antioch—who has been connected with that institution from its foundation—with the aid of Mrs. Weston and Rev. Olympia Brown, both graduates of the college. For the present form of the table, however, I alone am responsible.
It appears that of the 41 graduates, ranging from the year 1857 to 1873, no fewer than 36 are now living. Of these the health of 11 is reported as "very good"; 19 "good"; making 30 in all; 1 is reported as "fair"; 1 "uncertain"; 1 "not good," and 3 "unknown." Of the 41 graduates, 30 are reported as married and 11 are single, five of these last having graduated within three years. Of the 30 married, 24 have children, numbering 48 or 49 in all. Of the 6 childless, 3 are reported as very recently married; one died a few months after marriage, and the facts in the other cases are not given. Thirty-four of the forty-one have taught since graduated, and I agree with Professor Weston that teaching is as severe a draft on the constitution as study. Taking these facts as a whole, I do not see how the most earnest advocate of higher education could ask for a more encouraging exhibit; and I submit the case without argument, so far as this pioneer experiment at coëducation is concerned. If any man seriously believes that his non-collegiate relatives are in better physical condition than this table shows, I advise him to question forty-one of them and tabulate the statistics obtained.
In the following editorial in the Woman's Journal Mr. Higginson pursues the opposition still more closely, and answers their frivolous objections:
I am surprised to find that Professor W.S. Tyler of Amherst College, in his paper on "The Higher Education of Woman," in Scribner's Monthly for February, repeats the unfair statements of President Eliot of Harvard, in regard to Oberlin College. The fallacy and incorrectness of those statements were pointed out on the spot by several, and were afterwards thoroughly shown by President Fairchild of Oberlin; yet Professor Tyler repeats them all. He asserts that there has been a great falling off in the number of students in that college; he entirely ignores the important fact of the great multiplication of colleges which admit women; and he implies, if he does not assert, that the separate ladies' course at Oberlin has risen as a substitute for the regular college course. His words are these, the italics being my own:
In Oberlin, where the experiment has been tried under the most favorable circumstances, it has proved a failure so far as the regular college course is concerned. The number of young women in that course, instead of increasing with the prosperity of the institution, has diminished, so that it now averages only two or three to a class. The rest pursue a different curriculum, live in a separate dormitory, and study by themselves in a course of their own, reciting, indeed, with the young men, and by way of reciprocity and in true womanly compassion, allowing some of them to sit at their table in the dining-hall, but yet constituting substantially a female seminary, or, if you please, a woman's college in the university.—Scribner, February, page 457.
Now, it was distinctly stated by President Fairchild last summer, that this "different curriculum" was the course originally marked out for women, and that the regular college course was an after-thought. This disposes of the latter part of Professor Tyler's statement. I revert, therefore, to his main statement, that "the number of young women in the collegiate course has diminished, so that it now averages only two or three to a class." Any reader would suppose his meaning to be that taking one year with another, and comparing later years with the early years of Oberlin, there has been a diminution of women. What is the fact? The Oberlin College triennial catalogue of 1872 lies before me, and I have taken the pains to count and tabulate the women graduated in different years, during the thirty-two years after 1841, when they began to be graduated there. Dividing them into decennial periods, I find the numbers to be as follows: 1841-1850, thirty-two women were graduated; 1851-1860, seventeen women were graduated; 1861-1870, forty women were graduated. From this it appears that during the third decennial period there was not only no diminution, but actually a higher average than before. During the first period the classes averaged 3.2 women; during the second period 1.7 women, and during the third period 4 women. Or if, to complete the exhibit, we take in the two odd classes at the end, and make the third period consist of twelve classes, the average will still be 3.8, and will be larger than either of the previous periods. Or if, disregarding the even distribution of periods, we take simply the last ten years, the average will be 3.1. Moreover, during the first period there was one class (1842) which contained no women at all; and during the second period there were three such classes (1852-3, 7); while during the third period every class has had at least one woman.
It certainly would not have been at all strange if there had been a great falling off in the number of graduates of Oberlin. At the outset it had the field to itself. Now the census gives fifty-five "colleges" for women, besides seventy-seven which admit both sexes. Many of these are inferior to Oberlin, no doubt, but some rose rapidly to a prestige far beyond this pioneer institution. With Cornell University on the one side, and the University of Michigan on the other—to say nothing of minor institutions—the wonder is that Oberlin could have held its own at all. Yet the largest class of women it ever graduated (thirteen) was so late as 1865, and if the classes since then "average but two or three," so did the classes for several years before that date. Professor Tyler knows very well that classes fluctuate in every college, and that a decennial period is the least by which the working of any system can be tested. Tried by this test, the alleged diminution assumes a very different aspect. If, however, there were a great decline at Oberlin, it would simply show a transfer of students to other colleges, since neither Professor Tyler nor President Eliot will deny that the total statistics of colleges show a rapid increase in the number of women.
Moreover, I confess that my confidence in Professor Tyler's sense of accuracy is greatly impaired by these assertions about Oberlin, and also by his statement, which I must call reckless, at least, in regard to the inferiority in truth, purity and virtue of those women who seek the suffrage. He asserts (page 456) that "women—women generally—the truest, purest and best of the sex—do not wish for the right of suffrage." Now, if the women who oppose suffrage are truest, purest and best, the women who advocate it must plainly be inferior at all these points; and that is an assertion which not only these women themselves, but their brothers, husbands and sons are certainly entitled to resent. Mr. Tyler has a perfect right to argue for his own views, for or against suffrage, but he has no right to copy the Oriental imprecation, and say to his opponents, "May the grave of your mother be defiled!." He claims that he holds official relations to one "woman's college," one "female seminary" and one "young ladies' institute." Will it conduce to the moral training of those who enter those institutions that their officers set them the example of impugning the purity and virtue of those who differ in opinion from themselves?
But supposing Professor Tyler not to be bound by the usual bonds of courtesy or of justice, he is at least bound by the consistency of his own position. Thus, he goes out of his way to compliment Mrs. Somerville and Miss Mitchell. Both these ladies are identified with the claim for suffrage. He lauds "Uncle Tom's Cabin," but Mrs. Stowe has written almost as ably for the enfranchisement of woman as for the freedom of the blacks. He praises the "sacramental host of authoresses," who, he says, "will move on with ever-growing power, overthrowing oppression, restraining vice and crime, reforming morals and manners, purifying public sentiment, revolutionizing business, society and government, till every yoke is broken and all nations are won to the truth." But it has been again and again shown that the authoresses of America are, with but two or three exceptions, in favor of woman suffrage, and, therefore, instead of being "sacramental," do not even belong to Professor Tyler's class of "wisest, truest and best." He thus selects for compliment on one page the very women whom he has traduced on another. His own witnesses testify against him. It is a pity that such phrases of discourtesy and unfairness should disfigure an essay which in many respects says good words for women, recommends that they should study Greek, and says, in closing, that their elevation "is at once the measure and the means of the elevation of mankind."