The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

by Unknown

One of the most popular speakers was Mrs. Elizabeth M. Gilmer, known far and wide as "Dorothy Dix," whose home was in New Orleans. Her address, quaintly entitled The Woman with the Broom, filled more than four columns of the Woman's Journal and an adequate idea of its wise philosophy illuminated with the sparkling wit for which she was renowned cannot be conveyed by quotations. "A few years ago," she said, "a famous poet roused the compassion of the world by portraying the tragedy of hopeless toil by the Man with the Hoe. He might have found nearer home a better illustration of the work that is never done, that has no inspiration to lighten it and looks for no appreciation to glorify it, in the Woman with a Broom." "She is understudy to a perpetual motion machine," was one of her epigrams. She referred to the many successful business and professional women at the convention and said:

But I am not here to speak for the wage-earning woman, she can speak for herself. My plea is not for justice for her but for the domestic woman—the woman who is the mainstay of the world, who is back of every great enterprise and who makes possible the achievements of men—the woman behind the broom, who is the hardest-worked and worst-paid laborer on the face of the earth....

Of the housekeeper we demand a universal genius. We don't expect that our doctor shall be a good lawyer or our lawyer understand medicine; we don't expect a preacher to know about stocks or a stockbroker to have a soul; but we think the woman who is at the head of a family is a rank failure unless she is a pretty good doctor and trained nurse and dressmaker and financier. She must be able to settle disputes among the children with the inflexible impartiality of a Supreme Justice; she must be a Spurgeon in expounding the Bible to simple souls and leading them to heaven; she must be a greater surgeon than Dr. Lorenz, for she must know how to kiss a hurt and make it well; she must be a Russell Sage in petticoats, who can make $1 do the work of $2, and when she gets through combining all of these nerve-wrecking professions we don't think that she has done a thing but enjoy herself. It is only when something happens to the housekeeper we realize that she is the kingpin who holds the universe together.

"Every injustice is the prolific mother of wrongs," said Mrs. Gilmer, "and the fact that the woman with the broom is neither sufficiently appreciated nor decently paid brings its own train of evils. It is at the bottom of the distaste girls have for domestic pursuits and the frantic mania of women for seeking some kind of a 'career.'" She thus concluded:

Always, always it is the frantic cry for financial independence, the demand of the worker for her wage; the futile, bitter protest of the woman with the broom against the injustice of taking her work without pay. Men will say that in supporting their wives, in furnishing them with houses and food and clothes, they are giving the women as much money as they could ever hope to earn by any other profession. I grant it; but between the independent wage-earner and the one who is given his keep for his services is the difference between the free-born and the chattel.... The present state of affairs brings about a disastrous condition in the woman's world of labor, so that the woman wage-earner must not only compete with the man worker but with the domestic woman who has her home and clothes supplied her and who does things on the side in order to get a little money that she may spend as she pleases.... When men grow just enough to abandon the idea that keeping house and doing the family sewing and rearing children is a "snap" and not a profession; when they grow broad enough to realize that the woman with the broom is a laborer just as much worthy of her hire as a typewriter, we shall have fewer women yearning to go out into the world and earn a few dollars of spending money.

Edwin Merrick, the son of a Chief Justice of Louisiana and Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick, its pioneer suffragist, began his address on A Political Anomaly by referring to the distinguished women he had been privileged to meet in his home. He spoke of the constitution drawn up on the Mayflower to give equal liberty to all without the slightest conception of what true liberty really meant, and of the larger conception of it which was imbedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. "But," he said, "while the words were there, slavery still existed and the people of the Union were slowly led to see the handwriting on the wall and slavery had to go. Had the great leader of his day, Abraham Lincoln, been preserved to help shape the destinies of this country, what followed would not have happened." He then spoke of the crime of enfranchising "a horde of ignorant negro men when at that time there were nearly 4,000,000 intelligent white women keenly alive to the interests of their country to whom the ballot was denied." He sketched the steady degeneration of national and State politics and exposed the conditions in Louisiana. He showed how the reforms that had been accomplished had been largely aided by women and concluded:

If we concede that women have any moral strength, and it has been conceded from the time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, I now ask the question: Is there any one place in the universe where moral strength and moral character are more needed than in modern politics under a republican form of government? In some of our western States we have already seen what the women can do and the day will come when they will vote with us just as they read with us, talk with us, ride with us and consult with us. The most important object of our Government is education. The most important part of education is the education of the young. The most important factor in education of the young is woman's influence, and when it comes to saying who shall decide upon the proper laws for the education of children, the women of Louisiana or the intelligent wiseacres who have in this State emasculated civil service, massacred the Australian ballot and assaulted with intent to kill each and every measure which looks to the improvement of the State, we give our answer in no uncertain terms.

Miss Mary N. Chase, president of the New Hampshire Suffrage Association, made an earnest plea for the enfranchisement of women, "the natural guardians and protectors of the home. It will strengthen their minds and broaden their intellects and render them more fit for its government," she said, "and until women join with men in exercising the sacred right of the franchise we cannot hope for the dawn of the kingdom of God on the earth." A letter was read from Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch urging that for a year the organization should be used nationally and locally to pursue and punish political corruption. "The women in our association," she said, "are trained to political action; we have had long experience in self-control; defeat has taught us its lessons of poise; devotion to a great principle has given us a faith almost religious in its optimism." The men were taking no concerted action to protect the republic against this menace, she thought, and the task seemed to be left to the women.

The formal address of Dr. Shaw on The Modern Democratic Ideal made a profound impression but no record of it exists except in newspaper clippings. She began by saying: "It is impossible to discuss the woman question without discussing also the man question. What is fundamental to one is fundamental to the other. It is argued by some that on account of the difference in characteristics between men and women it is the man who ought to govern. They are mistaken. It is now recognized that the best and noblest men and women are those in whom the different characteristics of each sex are most harmoniously blended. The modern democratic ideal illustrates this fact. It is greatly different from the ancient democratic ideal, as neither Plato nor Aristotle nor Dante had a place in their ideals for the common people, but when the French Revolution startled the world with the idea of human rights, of natural rights common to all, there sprang into life the conception of the same ideal among the men of our own country." Dr. Shaw traced the progress of democratic ideals in this country from the early days of the republic when property and not manhood constituted the prerequisite for representation. She spoke in glowing terms of the pure democracy of Thomas Jefferson, who extended its privileges to the great masses of the people. "This ideal has been growing," she said, "it will never stop growing, developing, widening and changing and it must ultimately extend to women citizens the same rights in the government that men have. This is the 20th century idea of democracy."

The address of Miss Belle Kearney, Mississippi's famous orator, was a leading feature of the last evening's program—The South and Woman Suffrage. It began with a comprehensive review of the part the South had had in the development of the nation from its earliest days. "During the seventy-one years reaching from Washington's administration to that of Lincoln," she said, "the United States was practically under the domination of southern thought and leadership." She showed the record southern leaders had made in the wars; she traced the progress of slavery, which began alike in the North and South but proved unnecessary in the former, and told of the enormous struggle for white supremacy which had been placed on the South by the enfranchisement of the negro. "The present suffrage laws in the southern States are only temporary measures for protection," she said. "The enfranchisement of women will have to be effected and an educational and property qualification for the ballot be made to apply without discrimination to both sexes and both races." The address closed as follows: