The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI

by Unknown

If the women of England have time enough to solicit votes for the men of their party and intelligence enough to train men to vote; if they do not neglect their homes and families when their political parties direct them to act as catspaws to pull the political chestnuts out of the fire and to put them into the Conservative and Liberal baskets, the world wants to know how these political parties are going to escape from the logic of the situation when these same women ask some of the chestnuts for themselves. Again, this nation was presided over for sixty years by a woman, and she was accounted worthy to present an annual Parliamentary Address in which she pointed out the duty of the members of Parliament. Now the outside world wants to know how that Parliament can consistently say that other British women are not even worthy to cast a vote to elect that body. There is still another reason why the world is watching England. The British Colonies have enfranchised women; how is the Home Government to explain the phenomenon of women, enfranchised in Australia, then disfranchised in England; enfranchised in New Zealand and disfranchised when they return to the mother country?

She called attention to the forming of the Anti-Suffrage Association by women in Great Britain and said: "They are sending in a petition to Parliament. It is well known that people by nature are opposed to new things; before education people are anti-suffragists. If a petition opposed to woman suffrage should be presented to the Hottentots, the Afghanistans, the tribes of Thibet or to the interior of Turkey, every individual would sign it and the longest petition 'opposed to the further extension of rights to women' yet known could be secured there. A petition for suffrage, however, carries a very different meaning; every name represents a convert, a victory, an education of the understanding, an answer to an appeal for justice. A woman suffrage petition is a gain; an anti-suffrage petition merely shows how much more must be gained. One is positive, the other negative. Wait a little and you will find that England, and other countries as well, will perceive the real truth, that the anti-suffrage women are the most inconsistent products of all the ages."

The flaying did not stop here but Mrs. Catt called attention to the fact that this convention celebrated the birthday of Mary Wollstonecraft, referred to the position of women in her time and said:

There have been women who have crucified their very souls and the lineal ancestors of the present-day "antis" with withering scorn and criticism opposed every step. Yet some of those modern anti-suffragists possess a college degree, an opportunity which other women won for them in the face of universal ridicule; they own property which is theirs today as the effect of laws which other women labored for a quarter of a century to secure; they stand upon public platforms where free speech for women was won for them by other women amid the jeers of howling mobs; they use the right of organization which was established as the result of many a heartache and many a brave endeavor when the world condemned it as a threat against all moral order. They accept with satisfaction every political right which has been accorded by their Government; they even accept public office. They take all as their birthright; and yet, endowed with this power of education, of property, of organization, of free speech, of partial political rights, they turn upon the last logical effort in the movement which has given them so much and with supreme self-satisfaction say: "Thus far shalt thou come and no farther." It takes no logic to perceive the inconsistency of such a position....

The changed position of women in the world of labor was sketched; the old divisions were obliterated; a great army of women were now competing with men in the open market and there were found not only women but little children. Everywhere was cruel injustice to women, barred out from the higher places, working for half the pay of men in others, and discriminated against even by the labor unions. "They are utterly at the mercy of selfish employers, of hard economic conditions and unfair legislation," she said. "The only logical conclusion is to give votes to working women that they may defend their own wages, hours and conditions. We have worked to gain the suffrage because the principle is just. We must work for it now because this great army of wage-earning women are crying to us for help, immediate help.... You and I must know no sleep or rest or hesitation so long as a single civilized land has failed to recognize equal rights for men and women, in the workshop and the factory, at the ballot box and in the Parliament, in the home and in the church."

Here as at all meetings of the Alliance one of the most valuable features was the reports from the various countries, reaching almost from "the Arctic Circle to the equator," of the progress in the movement for suffrage, juster laws for women, better industrial conditions. Printed in fifty-seven pages of the Minutes they formed a storehouse of information nowhere else to be found. As the struggle of the "militants" in Great Britain was attracting world-wide attention to the exclusion of the many years of persistent work by the original association in educating not only women themselves but also public opinion to see the necessity for woman suffrage, the report of its president, Mrs. Fawcett, had a special interest:

The year which has just closed is the most strenuous and active we have ever known since women's suffrage has been before the country. The number of societies which combine to form the National Union has more than doubled. The membership in several societies has more than doubled and in others has largely increased; in one important society it has been multiplied by five. The number of meetings held throughout the year in connection with the National Union alone has been unprecedented, an average of at least four a day. The experience gained at bye-elections confirms the Union in their view that by far the most effective work can be done by acting strictly on non-party lines and supporting that candidate whose record and declarations on the subject of suffrage are the most satisfactory....

At the beginning of last November Mrs. Garrett Anderson, M.D., was elected Mayor of Aldeburgh; Miss Dove, M.A., the head mistress of Wycombe Abbey School, came within two votes of being chosen Mayor of the borough of High Wycombe. Several women at the same time were elected as borough councillors, among whom we may mention our colleague, Miss Margaret Ashton, the president of the Manchester and North of England Society for Women's Suffrage. A large Conservative and Unionist Association for women's suffrage has been formed. Its president is Lady Knightley of Fawsley and among its vice-presidents are the Duchess of Sutherland, the Countess of Meath, Viscountess Middleton, Lady Robert Cecil, Miss Alice Balfour, etc.

In December a weighty and closely reasoned statement of the case for women's suffrage was presented to the Prime Minister by the Registered Medical Women of the United Kingdom. The committee were able to inform Mr. Asquith that out of 553 all but 15 support the extension of the Parliamentary franchise to women. The case for women's suffrage was argued before the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords in November last with great ability by Miss Chrystal Macmillan, M.A., B.Sc. The case was raised on the plea of women graduates of the Scottish Universities that they were entitled to vote in the election for the members of Parliament representing the universities. The word used in the Scottish University Act was "persons"—all "persons" having passed such and such degrees and fulfilled such and such conditions were entitled to vote in such elections. The case had been heard before two Scottish Courts and adverse decisions had been given. The House of Lords was appealed to as the highest Court and it confirmed the decisions of the lower courts that the word "persons" does not include women when it refers to privileges granted by the State.

Mrs. Fawcett spoke of the work of the Union year after year for the suffrage bill in Parliament; of the enrollment during the present year of over 300 men eminent in literature, science, the arts, law, public offices, churches, education, commerce, etc.; of its great procession and the demonstration in Albert Hall. She said of the other organization, which was yet in its early stages of aggressiveness: "Opinions greatly differ in suffrage circles as to the effect produced on the cause by what are known as 'militant' tactics. It is difficult for one who is completely identified with constitutional methods to judge aright the total result of unconstitutional forms of agitation. That the 'militants' have been courageous and self-sacraficing no one denies. That they have provoked discussion and aroused attention is equally obvious and from these our cause always stands to gain. On the other hand many of us feel a profound conviction, which experience only strengthens, that women are adopting a mistaken course in appealing to violence. Our business as women asking for justice is not to rely upon physical force but in the eternal principles of right and justice. Law abiding methods alienate no one while methods of violence and disorder create anti-suffragists by the hundreds."

To this convention, as to the one of the preceding year in Amsterdam, Mrs. Pankhurst refused to send any representatives of the Women's Social and Political Union. A mass meeting under its auspices was held in Albert Hall one evening and many of the delegates accepted an official invitation to attend.

At an afternoon session ten minute addresses were made by Mrs. Betsy Kjelsberg of Norway on Six Years' Experience in Municipal Work; by Mrs. Madge Donohoe for Australia, The Latest Victory; by Dr. phil. Gulli Petrini of Sweden, Suffrage Work on Both Sides of the Polar Circle; by Mrs. Rutgers-Hoitsema, A Curious Football Game in Holland; others by Mrs. Zeneide Mirovitch, Russia; Miss Theo. Daugaard, Denmark; Mlle. Daugotte, Belgium; Mme. Auberlet, France; Mrs. Saul Solomon, South Africa. The Dutch Men's League for Women Suffrage was represented by E. J. van Straaten, LL.D. and F. F. W. Kehrer-Gorinchens; the British by Herbert Jacobs and Dr. C. W. Drysdale. Mrs. Anna M. Haslam, fraternal delegate from the Irish Women's Suffrage Association, and her husband, Thomas J., the oldest delegates, were most cordially received. The Bohemian delegate, Marie Tumova, could not be present because making a campaign for election to the Diet.