The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

by Unknown

It was quite as much for the industrial opportunity as for maintaining personal liberty that Lincoln insisted on the necessity of enfranchising the negroes. Such prominent economists as the Webbs of England, Carroll D. Wright and Richard T. Ely of our own country state that woman's lack of the ballot is one of the determining causes in placing her in the ranks of the cheap laborer with all its attending evils. So placed she becomes a menace in industry and drags down the wages of the men. At the last convention of the American Federation of Labor this necessity of the ballot for the working woman was recognized when the resolution was adopted stating that woman would never come into the full wage scale until she came into her full rights of citizenship.... To the large body of women in our city who have to shift for themselves as completely as men do Municipal suffrage would mean a higher rating industrially, a fairer compensation for their labor and more possible living conditions.

Mrs. Kelley, who, as executive secretary of the National Consumers' League for years and before that as State Factory Inspector of Illinois, had an unsurpassed knowledge of the conditions that affect women and children, gave a scathing review of the failure of Congress to enact protective laws and of the reactionary decisions of Supreme Courts. "Do we ask what this has to do with Municipal suffrage?" she inquired and answered:

If we are not to be given power to help determine our own laws by electing men to Congress in the larger field of the republic; and if, one by one, the States are to repeal or annul the legislation that once gave some slender protection to women and youth, there remains at least the city. It should be our immediate demand that in all matters of the life of a city we shall have a word. The greatest numbers of working people are in the cities. If our boards of health, our school boards, our street-cleaning departments, our water boards—if all these local bodies which have most to do with the health of working people, as with the health of other people, in the great centers of population—can be given the additional stimulus which comes from the lively interest of women, (both those who support themselves and those who have more leisure), then a very large proportion of the working women can have more adequate care for life and health and the children will have education beyond that which we have as yet achieved.

Does any one here believe that if the women had power to make themselves felt in the administration of school affairs we should have 80,000 children on half-time in New York City? Truly, if the mothers of these school children, as well as their fathers, spoke in the elections, the interest in the schools would be quite a different one. Does any one believe that if the women of this community could make themselves felt more effectively than by "persuasion," if they could make their will felt, we should have such a smoky sky as characterizes Chicago? Does any one believe that we should have to boil all the water before we dared to drink it? It would make a vast difference if women in American cities could enforce their will and conscience by the ballot instead of by the indefinitely slow work of persuasion.

The first evening was devoted to a more extended welcome and to the president's address. On behalf of the city Dr. Howard S. Taylor represented Mayor Edward F. Dunne and in an eloquent speech he reviewed the various epochs in the country's history. "Take, for instance," he said, "the first chapter, when the old Liberty Bell clanged out to the world the doctrine that 'all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and to secure these rights governments are established among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.' There is no casuistry, however dextrous, that can take woman out of that charter." He referred to pioneer days and the heavy part borne by women and said: "But when the foundations had been established and the pioneer fathers got down to writing the constitutions they left the pioneer mothers out." He spoke of the time in the '50's when "the Government invited the people from all over the world to come and help us settle our political, social and commercial questions but did not invite American mothers, sisters, wives and daughters." "Then came the Civil War," he said, "and the large part taken in it by women and when the war was over the Government made the great army of emancipated slaves citizens and gave the men the ballot but forgot the patriotic white women of the country." "I know," he said in conclusion, "that if the women of Chicago and Illinois were enfranchised the corruption of the city council and the Legislature would be much less than it is. We should have a higher state of morals among public men and better laws on the statute books."

When the speaker finished Dr. Shaw observed: "We ought to thank Mayor Dunne for substituting a man like Dr. Taylor for himself." This brought Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch to her feet to say: "Mayor Dunne would have made just as good a suffrage speech as Dr. Taylor." "I did not intend any reflection on the Mayor," answered Dr. Shaw with a quiet smile, "but I think he showed excellent judgment."

The Chicago Woman's Club of over a thousand members, a recognized force in the great city, sent its greetings through its president, Mrs. Gertrude E. Blackwelder. Mrs. Minnie E. Watkins, as president of the State Federation of Women's Clubs, gave a welcome in the name of its membership of 294 clubs and told of the increasing growth of suffrage sentiment among them. "Through the work of our Industrial, Civil Service and Legislative Committees," she said, "we have learned our need of the ballot." The Rev. Charles R. Henderson, Professor of Sociology, an earnest suffragist, welcomed the convention, saying in part:

As I am to represent the University of Chicago, it will not do for me to make a speech on either side. No one person can represent the sentiments of four hundred men, who all the time are in an attitude of friendly hostility to anything that comes up. I think, however, there is one point of sympathy with us who are engaged in the work of investigation, trying to get beyond the frontier of present knowledge of all the sciences. It is this: As soon as anything comes to be in the possession of the majority, it loses interest for us; as long as there is something to do, we are interested in it. When the effort for woman suffrage is a thing of the past, then the people will take care of it. Our duty is to make the public sentiment and let some one else put it into legal form....

They say that women cannot manage the great questions of government. That has yet to be submitted to the final scientific test of experiment. As a matter of fact, today the one highest, finest, noblest task of society, if not of government, is the task of education and the inculcation of religion and of ideals; and in this land, which in most respects leads all lands, woman has the first word in this matter, as hers is the strongest and the wisest word, and her influence, her thought and her character lead upward and on. I need not, in this presence, argue the question.