The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

by Unknown

Miss Laura J. Graddick, representing a labor union in the District of Columbia, said during an able and earnest address:

They say that politics is too corrupt for woman to enter the field as a voter but does she not live under a Government dominated by politics? Shame on the manhood of our country that our government housekeeping is so administered that woman can not come in contact with it and escape contamination.... If our Government is built on moral law it should be clean enough for a woman to have a voice in it. We assure you there are no better house-cleaners than women and the above statement certainly indicates the need of women in politics. There is no great cry on the part of men because of the contaminating influences which woman meets in the business and industrial world. They are not keeping her out of the various vocations of life because of the evil which she might encounter. Are not sweat-shop conditions and overwork and underpaid work evils far more destructive to the physical, mental and moral welfare of women than any condition in which suffrage might place them? Because of the great economic and political changes of the last century the working woman of to-day is entitled to the same rights accorded the working man in the political world. These changes have taken her from the home and brought her into business and industrial life, where she has become more and more man's equal and competitor, leaving behind those conditions which so long made her dependent upon him. This has not been of her choosing. Men, in their pursuit of wealth, have taken the work formerly done in the home, from the spinning and weaving even down to the baking and laundering, and massed it in great factories and shops. Instead of woman taking man's work, it is the reverse and he has appropriated to himself what was long supposed to be hers. Woman finds that what was formerly with her a work of love is now done under new conditions and strange environments.

This experience in the outside world is educating her, for she is studying conditions. She sees that she is forced to compete with those who have full political rights while she herself is a political nonentity. She finds that she must contend with and protect herself against conditions which are more often political than economic, thus forcing upon her the conviction that she too is entitled to be a voter. She sees that politics, business and industrial life generally are so united that one affects the other and that since she is a factor in two she should be granted the rights and privileges of the third. Think of the number of women wage-earners in this country who are without political representation, there being no men in the family, and at present laws all made without a woman's point of view!... The working woman does not ask for the ballot as a panacea for all her ills. She knows that it carries with it responsibilities but all that it is to man it will be and even more to woman. Let her remain man's inferior politically and unjust discriminations against her as a wage-earner will continue, but let her become his equal politically and she will then be in a position to demand equal pay for equal work.

In a speech of deep feeling Miss Laura Clay, president of the Kentucky Suffrage Association, said in part: "Gentlemen, when I hear our women making the pleas that they have made, brought up, as I have been, to believe that the manhood of the United States is the grandest in the world, I ask, 'Shall we not find any members of Congress except those who say, 'Can you not get some one else to protect you? Go to your States, go anywhere but do not come to us?' It has been said to me when I have spoken for childhood, 'You have no child?' And I have answered: 'No, I have no child, but just as surely as men in the order of nature are the protectors of womanhood, so surely in the order of nature women are the protectors of childhood. I would dishonor my womanhood to say that I will not do what I can for a child because I have none and I hope the time will never come when women must be ashamed of men because they are not willing to sacrifice something to take this action for women.' Think of it! Must we crawl on our knees to ask you for that which we feel we have a right to demand? You should see that every protection which every lifting hand that it is possible for manhood to offer to womanhood should be extended and your position gives you a great opportunity. I urge that, as far as your official power extends, you will show that the manhood of the United States responds to the pleas of the womanhood of the United States."

The closing address of Mrs. Kelley and the many questions it called for from the committee with her answers filled nearly twelve pages of the printed report of the hearing. A small part only can find space here.

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, it is sixty years last month since my father, Judge William D. Kelley, became a member of the House of Representatives and in those days it took a great deal of courage for a man to do what he did year after year—introduce this resolution which you are considering to-day. He did it partly, I think, out of chivalrous regard for Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and the few brave women who fifty years ago patiently came before your predecessors; but very much more he introduced that resolution because he believed it was essentially just. He saw in those days the beginnings of the industrial change in the midst of which we now live and they appalled him. He saw how difficult it had been for his widowed mother to get an education for himself and his sisters, and how infinitely difficult life was for the whole great class of women, not only widows but those who by the circumstances of our changing industries had been forced out into the industrial market. He believed they ought to have the same power to protect their own interests as had been given to the American workingman and which he helped give to the negro....

Women now do not count in our communities at all in proportion to the responsibilities which they carry. One of the gentlemen has asked: "What is the relation of all this labor talk to the ballot?" I will give you some examples: I was for four years the head of the factory inspectors of Illinois. During that time we had an eight-hour law enacted for the protection of women and children employed in manufacturing industries. The Supreme Court held that it was contrary to the constitutions of the State and of the United States for women to be deprived of the right to work twenty-four hours whenever it suited the convenience of the employers. The court said—and it took 9,000 words to say it—that women could not be deprived of working unlimited hours, because they were citizens, although it said the term "citizenship" was limited; the Court said they could not be allowed to work underground in mines; they could not be allowed to work out their taxes on the roads, as farmers do; they could not be called to the militia; they could not vote except for school committees and once in four years for the trustees of the State University, but, with those minor deductions, they were citizens and could not be deprived of the freedom of contract.

The Supreme Court of the United States has proclaimed that the Judges of Illinois guessed wrong on that occasion, that it is not contrary to the Constitution of the United States to limit the working hours of women but that it is the obvious duty of every Legislature to do this in the interest of public health and morals. A year ago, largely through the efforts of Mrs. Robins, the Legislature tried it again and passed this time a ten-hour law for women. A Judge was found who held that it was a legitimate object for an injunction and he enjoined my successor, the present factory inspector, and the prosecuting attorney from enforcing this law. To-day under that injunction the women are again free to work twenty-four hours, as they do one day in the week quite regularly in the laundries in Chicago, and to work sixteen hours a day as they do in the stores during the Christmas rush, and as they do in the box factories and candy factories. Yet the women of Illinois have not had one word to say as to the personnel of these courts which decide what is a matter of life and death for every woman who is rushed into her grave by work in the laundries and other sweat shops of that State.

Mrs. Kelley gave some tragic instances of occurrences during her eight years in Hull House with Miss Jane Addams, where the working of women overtime caused death and permanent invalidism, and continued:

During the fifteen years since that Illinois court so decided, the miners who work underground in sixteen States, from Missouri to Nevada and from Montana to Texas and Arizona, have been able to change the constitutions of their States so that they work but eight hours a day. They are voters, they have power, they have intelligence and organization; they obtained from the Supreme Court of the United States the famous decision of Holden vs. Hardy, in which it held that it is not only the right but the duty of the State to restrict the hours of those who work underground. In Illinois the women must have unlimited hours because they are not voting citizens....