The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

by Unknown

Mrs. Stanton was quick to see and, what is greater, quick to seize the psychological moment, and in that July of 1848 she had not only the inspiration but the determination to grasp the opportunity to set forth a resolution asking "votes for women." How clear was her vision, how perfect her sense of balance! Property rights might be gained, rights of person protected, guardianship of children achieved, but without the ballot she saw all would be insecure. What was given today might be taken away tomorrow unless women themselves possessed the power to make or remake laws. Women are getting the sense of solidarity by being crowded together in the workshop; they are learning the lesson of fellowship. Brought side by side in the college and in the business world, they are beginning to learn that they have a common interest. They know now that they form a class. The anti-suffragist is the isolated woman, she is the belated product of the 18th century. She is not intentionally, viciously selfish, she has merely not developed into 20th century fellowship. She is unrelated to our democratic society of today.... How shallow, in the face of that idea of duty in fulfilling our obligations of citizenship, sound the words of Governor Hughes that "when women want the vote they will get it!" Want it? That is no measure of social need. It was death to the nation to have slavery within its bounds but no one advised waiting until the enslaved negroes wanted to be free before this dire disease should be cured. The State needs the attention of women, their thought, their service, and so it becomes the duty of all who have the best interests of the State at heart to seek to bind women to it in closest bonds of citizenship.

In response to Resolution Eleven that, being held morally responsible, woman had therefore a right to express herself in public on all questions of morals and religion, the Rev. Mrs. Crane began with fine sarcasm: "To women has always unquestionably been allowed the being good. They are called too good to enter the slimy pool of politics. They are complimented often in the spirit of the man who said to his wife: 'Angelina, you get up and make the fire; it will seem so much warmer if laid by your fair hands!' To women is also conceded the right to be religious and unfortunately it often happens that all the religion a man has is in his wife's name. Ruskin said: 'If you don't want the kingdom of heaven to come, don't pray for it but if you do want it to come you must do more than pray for it.' Women must vote as well as pray. Whoever is able to make peace in this distracted world is the one who should be allowed to do it."

A full report of the work among the churches was made at a morning meeting by Mrs. Lucy Hobart Day (Me.), chairman of the committee, which showed that eighteen States had appointed branch committees. These had organized suffrage circles in different churches, encouraged debates among the young people, arranged meetings, distributed literature, obtained hearings before many kinds of religious bodies, secured resolutions and tried to have official recognition of women in the churches. Ministers had been requested to preach sermons in favor and many had done so, twenty-five in San Francisco alone. Mrs. Pauline Steinem (Ohio), chairman of the Committee on Education, reported on its efforts in organizing Mothers' and Parents' Clubs and working through these for suffrage; putting pictures of the pioneers in schools and securing the cooperation of the teachers for brief talks about them; supplying books containing selections from suffrage speeches, poems, etc., to be used in the schools. It was also proposed to see that text books on history and civics are written with a proper appreciation of the work of women.

Part of an afternoon was devoted to a discussion led by Dr. Rosalie Slaughter Morton (N. Y.), delegated representative of Prince Morrow and the American Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. In an eloquent address she described the terrible devastation, especially among women and children, from diseases which until lately had been concealed and never mentioned. She attributed these conditions partly to the fact that boys and girls were left in ignorance and this was often because the mothers were ignorant. The chief cause of the wide prevalence of these diseases was the double standard of morals, the belief that a chaste life for a man is incompatible with health and that the consequences of immorality end with themselves and will not be transmitted. She urged women to unite in the demand for a higher standard of morals among men. Mrs. Gilman spoke strongly on the necessity for more vigorous measures for a quarantine of the infected and health certificates for every marriage and she laid a large share of the cause of immorality at the door of the economic dependence of women. Mrs. Florence Kelley, executive secretary of the National Consumers' League, whose life was being spent in improving the economic position of women, said: "How are we dealing with this monstrous evil? Are we going to wait patiently and rear a whole generation of children and grandchildren and trust to their gradual increase in strength of character?" She told of the mothers who bring up children in the best and wisest manner but the environment outside the home, which they have no power to shape, nullifies all their teaching. "That is a very slow way of dealing with a cancer," she said. "Women have tried for forty years to get the power to have the laws enforced and that is our greatest need today." A principal feature of this important discussion was the strong, analytical address of the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer, in the course of which she said:

The formation of the New York Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis marked an important era. For the first time the physicians as a whole assumed a social duty to promote purity. They had done it as individuals, but this was the first instance of their banding themselves together on a moral as well as a sanitary plane to enlighten the public as to the causes of social disease.... Dr. Prince Morrow should be everlastingly honored by every woman.... I consider no woman guiltless, whether she lives in a suffrage State or not, if she does not hold herself responsible for guarding less fortunate women. Corrupt custom has rent the sacred, seamless robe of womanhood and cast out part of the women, abandoning them to degradation. We must learn to recognize the responsibility of pure women for the fallen women, of the woman whose circumstances have enabled her to stand, for the woman whom adverse conditions have borne down. We should oppose the sacrifice of womanhood, whether of an innocent girl sacrificed with pomp and ceremony in church, or of a poor waif in the street; and the great protection is the ability of young girls to earn their living by congenial labor. All the social purity societies do not equal the trade schools as a preventive....

We must not look at this matter from only one point of view or say that we can do nothing about it until we are armed with the ballot. I am a suffragist but not "high church," I am a suffragist and something else. We ought to have the ballot, we are at a disadvantage in our work while we are deprived of it, but even without it we have great power. We must stamp out the traffic in womanhood, it is a survival of barbarism. Womanhood is a unit; no one woman can be an outcast without dire evil to family life. What caused the doctors to come together in a Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis? It was because the evil done in dark places came back in injury to the family life.... We must make ourselves more terrible than an army with banners to despoilers of womanhood.... Men are no longer to be excused for writing in scarlet on their foreheads their incapacity for self-control. None of us is longer to be excused for cowardice and acquiescence in the sacrifice of womanhood. Not even that woman—vilest of all creatures on the face of the earth I do believe—the procuress, shall be beyond the pale of sympathy, for she is merely the product of the feeling on the part of men that they owe nothing to women or to themselves in the way of purity, and the feeling on the part of women that they have no right to demand of men what men demand of them. If women are going to amount to anything in government, they would better begin to practice here and now and band themselves together with noble men to bring about this reform.

Of equal interest with Pioneers' Evening and in striking contrast with it was the College Evening. One commemorated the first efforts to obtain a college education for women, the other the full fruition of these efforts in the announcement of a National College Women's Equal Suffrage League with branches in fifteen States. Dr. Shaw, possessing three college degrees, opened the session, and the founder of the League, Mrs. Maud Wood Park, a graduate of Radcliffe College, presided. "With the exception of Oberlin and Antioch," she said, "not one college was open to women before the organized movement for woman suffrage began." She gave statistics of the large number now open to them and said: "Such facts as these help us to understand the service which the leaders of the suffrage movement performed for college women and it is fitting that these should make public recognition of their debt. It was with this idea of responsibility for benefits received that the first branch of this League was formed in Massachusetts in 1900. The League realizes that the best way to pay our debt to the noble women who toiled and suffered, who bore ridicule, insult and privation, is for us in our turn to sow the seed of future opportunities for women."

In introducing Dr. Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, dean of the Junior Women's College of the University of Chicago, Mrs. Park said that she had half the letters of the alphabet attached to her name representing degrees. Dr. Breckinridge also paid a tribute of gratitude to the National Suffrage Association and began her address: "My faith has three articles. I believe it is the right and the duty of the wage-earning woman to claim the ballot and to have her claim recognized to participate in the political life of her community. Her status as a worker depends in part upon it and only thus can she protect the interests of her group. I believe it is the right and duty of the wife and mother to claim the ballot, for as a housekeeper and carer of her children she cannot do her work economically and satisfactorily without it. It is easy to see why the wage-earning women and the housekeepers need the ballot; but why should we, who do not belong to either of those groups, want it? Every woman should want it because tasks lie before the public so difficult that they can not be fulfilled without the cooperation of all the trained minds in the community, and these problems can be met only by collective action. We want to get hold of the little device that moves the machinery."

Miss Caroline Lexow, president of the New York branch of the league, a graduate of Barnard College, a part of Columbia University, "charmed the audience with her girlish simplicity and with the tribute she paid to the women who more than half a century ago sowed the seeds which have yielded so rich a harvest for the women of today," to quote from an enthusiastic reporter. Of another young speaker the Buffalo Express said: "To the front of the platform stepped a sweet-faced, bright-eyed, rosy English girl, Miss Ray Costello, a graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge University, who spoke on Equal Suffrage among English University Women. She had captured her audience before she started to describe the energetic work of the college women." "In England as in the United States," Miss Costello said, "the pioneers in the demand for higher education were also pioneers in the demand for votes. When the action of the 'militant' suffragettes brought the question into such prominence that the opponents began to state their objections, the college women were aroused and became more and more active, but as a whole they were in favor of peaceful rather than militant tactics." She told also of the growth of favorable sentiment in the men's colleges.

This was the first appearance at a national suffrage convention of Mrs. Frances Squire Potter, professor of English in the University of Minnesota, and her address on Women and the Vote was one of the ablest ever given before this body which was accustomed to superior addresses. Limited space forbids extended quotation: