The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

by Unknown

One of the greatest problems facing this republic has been turned over to women teachers—that of coping with the foreign born and their children. Who can estimate the value of this great constructive work, the creation of American citizens out of the varied materials that are landed on our shores? And who can estimate the quickening force and the gain in appreciation and respect for law and order, if the mothers and the teachers of these children were considered worthy of the principles which they are asked to inculcate? Thousands of these women teachers are college graduates with fine training and all are women of more than average intelligence. They are not only bread winners but very often they are the heads of families which they have inherited. They are caring for and educating younger brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, and providing for aged fathers and mothers. It has been said that the men of each class will protect the women of each class. Witness the men teachers of New York City, who in 1900 secured a State law that gave to themselves salaries from 30 per cent. to 100 per cent. higher than to women doing the same grade of work. A woman teacher in the elementary schools must work nine years in order to receive the salary that the man teacher begins with. She may and often does supervise men, because of having passed a difficult examination, and receive $800 a year less than the men whom she supervises. A woman principal receives $1,000 less than a man principal in the same grade of work, having the very same qualifications. Governor Hughes has characterized these discriminations against women as "glaring and gross inequalities," but in spite of the efforts of 15,000 women teachers for the last four years the inequalities still continue. It is rather easy to see the value of the ballot to the men teachers of the city of New York....

As citizens under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, we claim the honored and inherited right to petition our Government or either branch thereof for a redress of grievances that very plainly exist because of the present legal status of women in 41 States of the Union. We ask that our petition, which is signed by hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens, shall receive serious and courteous attention. We well know that when a petition of such great consequence to millions of citizens is not so considered the foundation of republican government is attacked and weakened where it should be supported and strengthened.

Dr. Shaw: I present now Dr. Anna E. Blount, a physician from Chicago, who will speak in behalf of the medical practitioners.

Dr. Blount. In my city there are 500 women doctors; in my State there are 750; in the United States in 1900 there were 7,399. These women doctors know the womanhood of the country perhaps more intimately than any other class of women know it. I have talked with many of them and I have yet to find one who does not believe in woman suffrage. The Woman's Medical Club in Chicago has joined the suffrage association. Why do we want the ballot? Partly our reasons are personal to our own profession and partly they are the same that move the whole mass of mankind to ask for suffrage today. Some of our personal reasons are these: As women we are excluded from most of the well-paid positions for physicians. We know that the dependent womanhood of the country needs our care; from time to time we hear grewsome tales from the insane asylums and the pauper institutions of wrongs done the women because there is no woman doctor there to protect them. Little children in my own State have gone through a life of degradation owing to the fact that there was no woman doctor in charge of them in the public institutions. The best paid positions are political jobs and no woman can get one. Another reason why, as physicians, we want the ballot is that at present we need police protection. We need a city that is well lighted and safe for women, as we are obliged to go out at all hours of the night. A few years ago the hunters of women became unusually active and several respectable women were in the early hours of the evening hunted to their death and murdered. We were told at that time by the commissioner of police that it would be well for all the respectable women of the city to remain indoors after 8 o'clock in the evening unless they were escorted by a gentleman! Imagine when the telephone rings for a woman doctor to attend some critical case that she shall be required either to get a male escort or remain at home! This is also true of nurses and many others....

I do not think that men can grow to be the best men when they are in constant association with a subject class. I ask you gentlemen of the United States Senate, for the sake of womanhood, but most of all for the sake of manhood, to report this resolution out of the committee, and to ask the Senate of the United States to give the women of this country, so far as in its power, the right of suffrage.

Dr. Shaw: "I present a lawyer, Mrs. Ellen Spencer Mussey, but she will speak in the capacity of a college woman." After giving her experience in trying to secure better laws for women in the District of Columbia, Mrs. Mussey told of her visits to Norway and Sweden, where as attorney for a legation she had every opportunity to attend the Parliaments, meet the statesmen and leading women and hear their universal testimony in favor of the experiment in woman suffrage. In closing she stated that as chairman of the legislative committee of the General Federation of Women's Clubs she had received reports from hundreds of them regretting their lack of power to obtain legislation and their need of representation on boards of education and of public institutions. Dr. Shaw then introduced Miss Minnie J. Reynolds of New Jersey, formerly of Colorado, who had supervised the petition of the writers.

Miss Reynolds. This attempt to canvass the writers of the United States is absurdly inadequate and fragmentary. It was the unpaid work of women, each of whom had her own occupation in life, in such spare time as they could get during the year. These writers represent only twenty-one States. Others, including such great States as New York, Michigan and Wisconsin, sent in huge rolls of names without a classification. I am speaking for 1,870 writers. The first name is that of William Dean Howells, the "dean of American letters," perhaps more truly representative of American literature than any other living person. The second name is that of John Bigelow, ex-ambassador to France, ex-secretary-of-state of New York, and author of some twenty scholarly books. On this list are the names of men and women known to every reader of American literature and to every reader of the periodical press. The petition blanks were sent to them by mail and if they did not wish to sign they had only to drop them in the waste-basket. A number of publicists have signed, among them Melville E. Stone, head of the Associated Press, and six of his editors; S. S. and T. C. McClure, publishers of the McClure's Magazine; the editors of Everybody's, the Independent, the Public, Philistine, Delineator, Designer, New Idea, Harper's Bazar, La Follette's Magazine, the Springfield Republican: editors of Current Literature, Philadelphia Record, Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, New York Herald, New York Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Baltimore American, Minneapolis News, Cincinnati Post and numerous other newspapers over the country. These publications reach millions of readers.

There are on this list the names of many persons who, although authors or magazine writers, are still more distinguished in other lines of work, as William James and George Herbert Palmer of Harvard; Graham Taylor and Shailer Matthews of the University of Chicago; Simon N. Patten of the University of Pennsylvania; and other professors from the universities of Harvard, Chicago, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Cornell and Columbia, and from Oberlin, Vassar and Wellesley. The great families of Hawthorne, Chanler and Beecher are represented by living descendants who are carrying on the literary traditions which must ever be associated with those names. The late Richard Watson Gilder, editor of the Century, published a tribute to Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi after her death. In this he said in substance that the American women who had most conspicuously united rare intelligence with rare goodness were Josephine Shaw Lowell, founder of the New York Charity Organization; Alice Freeman Palmer, president of Wellesley College, and Dr. Jacobi. Mr. Gilder was an anti-suffragist. The three women whom he thus placed at the pinnacle of American womanhood were all strong suffragists.

The women whose names are on this list represent brains and character; they represent that element of American womanhood which is winning its own way successfully in the great world of competition and strenuous endeavor; influencing the minds and molding the public opinion of the country through their books and through the press. There may be those among you, gentlemen, who are opposed to suffrage, but I am sure there is not one who would not be glad to know that his daughter was a woman of this type if it so happened that he was obliged to leave her unprovided for. There is one girl, Jean Webster, who made $4,000 on one book the year she left college. There is one woman, Mary Johnston, who was paid $20,000 in advance royalties on one book before a word of it was printed. A number of distinguished writers had signed the general petition before the writers' blank had reached them, among them Mark Twain, Booth Tarkington, Ernest Thompson Seton, Julia Ward Howe, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Mary Wilkins Freeman and Ellen Glasgow.

Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, former corresponding secretary of the National Suffrage Association, in speaking of the petition told of one containing 10,000 names which had been gathered in Indiana years ago and presented to the Legislature by Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, often referred to as the mother pictured in "Ben Hur." It was treated with the utmost contempt, one member saying, "These 10,000 women have about as much influence as that many mice." This experience sent that eloquent woman to the suffrage platform for the rest of her life. Mrs. Avery urged the committee to give a favorable report on this great petition as the first step toward making the influence of the thousands of women who had signed it of more value than that of so many mice. [For the address of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, see Appendix for this chapter.]