INTRODUCTION

A voice in the Government under which one lives is absolutely necessary to personal liberty and the right of a whole people to a voice in their Government is the first requisite for a free country. There must be government by a constitution made with the consent and help of the people which guarantees this right. It is only within the last century and a half that a constitutional form of government has been secured by any countries and in the most of those where it now exists, not excepting the United States, it was won through war and bloodshed. Largely for this reason its principal advantage was monopolized by men, who made and carried on war, and who held that such government must be maintained by physical force and only those should have a voice in it who could fight for it if necessary. There were many other reasons why those who had thus secured their right to a vote should use their new power to withhold it from women, which was done in every country. Women then had to begin their own contest for what by the law of justice was theirs as much as men's when government by constitution was established.

Their struggle lasted for nearly three-quarters of a century in the United States and half a century in Great Britain, the two largest constitutional governments, and a shorter time in other countries, but it was a peaceful revolution. Not a drop of blood was spilled and toward the end of it, when in Great Britain the only "militancy" occurred, its leaders gave the strictest orders that human life must be held sacred. Although at the last the women of Central Europe were enfranchised as the result of war it was not of their making and their part in it was not on the battlefield. This was the most unequal contest that ever was waged, for one side had to fight without weapons. It was held against women that they were not educated, but the doors of all institutions of learning were closed against them; that they were not taxpayers, although money-earning occupations were barred to them and if married they were not allowed to own property. They were kept in subjection by authority of the Scriptures and were not permitted to expound them from the woman's point of view, and they were prevented from pleading their cause on the public platform. When they had largely overcome these handicaps they found themselves facing a political fight without political power.

The long story of the early period of this contest will be found in the preceding volumes of this History and it is one without parallel. No class of men ever strove seventy or even fifty years for the suffrage. In every other reform which had to be won through legislative bodies those who were working for it had the power of the vote over these bodies. In the Introduction to Volume IV is an extended review of the helpless position of woman when in 1848 the first demand for equality of rights was made and her gradual emergence from its bondage. No sudden revolution could have gained it but only the slow processes of evolution. The founding of the public school system with its high schools, from which girls could not be excluded, solved the question of their education and inevitably led to the opening of the colleges. In the causes of temperance and anti-slavery women made their way to the platform and remained to speak for their own. During the Civil War they entered by thousands the places vacated by men and retained them partly from necessity and partly from choice.

One step led to another; business opportunities increased; women accumulated property; Legislatures were compelled to revise the laws and the church was obliged to liberalize its interpretation of the Scriptures. Women began to organize; their missionary and charity societies prepared the way to clubs for self-improvement; these in turn broadened into civic organizations whose public work carried them to city councils and State Legislatures, where they found themselves in the midst of politics and wholly without influence. Thus they were led into the movement for the suffrage. It was only a few of the clear thinkers, the far seeing, who realized at the beginning that the principal cause of women's inferior position and helplessness lay in their disfranchisement and until they could be made to see it they were a dead weight on the movement. Men fully understood the power that the vote would place in the hands of women, with a lessening of their own, and in the mass they did not intend to concede it.

The pioneers in the movement for the rights of women, of which the suffrage was only one, contested every inch of ground and little by little the old prejudice weakened, public sentiment was educated, barriers were broken down and women pressed forward. At the opening of the present century, while they had not obtained entire equality of rights, their status had been completely transformed in most respects and they were prepared to get what was lacking. None of these gains, however, had required the permission of the masses of men but only of selected groups, boards of trustees, committees, legislators. It was when women found that with all their rights they were at tremendous disadvantage without political influence and asked for the suffrage that they learned the difficulty of changing constitutions. They found that either National or State constitutions had to be amended and in the latter case the consent of a majority of all men was necessary. In Volume VI the attempt to obtain the vote through State action is described in 48 chapters and their reading is recommended to those who insisted that this was the way women should be enfranchised. Fifty-six strenuous campaigns were conducted, with their heavy demands on time, strength and money, and as a result 13 States gave suffrage to women! Wyoming and Utah entered the Union with it in their constitutions. Compare this result with the proclamation of the adoption of a Federal Amendment, which in a moment and a sentence conferred the complete franchise on the women of all the other States.

The leaders recognized this advantage and the National Suffrage Association was formed for the express purpose of securing a Federal Amendment in 1869, as soon as it was learned through the enfranchisement of negro men that this method was possible. A short experience with Congress convinced them that there would have to be some demonstration of woman suffrage in the States before they could hope for Federal action and therefore they carried on the work along both lines. The question had to be presented purely as one of abstract justice without appeal to the special interests of any party, but from 1890 to 1896 woman suffrage had been placed in the constitutions of four States and there was hope that it was now on the way to general success. From this time, however, such idealism in politics as may have existed in the United States gradually disappeared. The Republican party was in complete control of the Government at Washington and was largely dominated by the great financial interests of the country, and this was also practically the situation in the majority of the States. The campaign fund controlled the elections and the largest contributors to this fund were the corporations, which had secured immense power, and the liquor interests, which had become a dominant force in State and national politics, without regard to party. Both of these supreme influences were implacably opposed to suffrage for women; the corporations because it would vastly increase the votes of the working classes, the liquor interests because they were fully aware of the hostility of women to their business and everything connected with it.

This was the situation faced by those who were striving for the enfranchisement of women. Congress was stone deaf to their pleadings and arguments and from 1894 to 1913 its committees utterly ignored the question. When a Legislature was persuaded to submit an amendment to the State constitution to the decision of the voters it met the big campaign fund of the employers of labor and the thoroughly organized forces of the liquor interests, which appealed not only to the many lines of business connected with the traffic but to the people who for personal reasons favored the saloons and their collateral branches of gambling, wine rooms, etc. They were a valuable adjunct to both political parties. The suffragists met these powerful opponents without money and without votes. A reading of the State chapters will demonstrate these facts. From 1896 for fourteen years not one State enfranchised its women.