BOOK I

The Woman Movement

THE WOMAN MOVEMENT

The Most Brilliant Period

By Anna Howard Shaw

(American contemporary. Former president of the National American Suffrage Association. From a series of articles in “The Metropolitan.”)

The winning of the suffrage states, the work in the states not yet won, the conventions, gatherings and international councils in which women of every nation have come together, have all combined to make this quarter of a century the most brilliant period for women in the history of the world.

Woman’s Awakening

By Mary Ritter Beard

The awakening of women to the low social status of their sex is the most encouraging fact of the century.

Unanimity of Needs

By Katherine Anthony

(Author of “Mothers Who Must Earn,” and “Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia,” from which the following is taken.)

The woman movement of the civilized world wants much the same thing in whatever language its demands are expressed. In more or less unconscious cooperation, the women of the civilized nations have from the first worked for similar ends and common interests. Beyond all superficial differences and incidental forms, the vision of the emancipated woman wears the same features whether she be hailed as _frau_, _fru_, or _woman_. The disfranchisement of a whole sex, a condition which has existed throughout the civilized world until a comparatively recent date, has bred in half the population an unconscious internationalism. The man without a country was a tragic exception; the woman without a country was the accepted rule. The enfranchisement of the women now under way has come too late to inculcate in them the narrow views of citizenship which were once supposed to accompany the gift of the vote. Its effect will rather be to make the unconscious internationalism of the past the conscious internationalism of the future.

Coming Into Her Own

By Fanny Humphrey Gaffny

(American contemporary. President National Council of Women. From a speech delivered at the celebration of Miss Anthony’s 80th birthday.)

The Christian world reckoned by centuries is just coming of age. Therefore women are beginning to put away childish things and to realize the greatness of womanhood.

The Sisterhood of Women

By Coralie Franklin Cook

(From a speech delivered at the 80th birthday celebration of Susan B. Anthony.)

Not until the suffrage movement had awakened woman to her responsibility and power, did she come to appreciate the true significance of Christ’s pity for Magdalene as well as of his love for Mary; not till then was the work of Pundita Ramabai in far away India as sacred as that of Frances Willard at home in America; not till she had suffered under the burden of her own wrongs and abuses did she realize the all-important truth that no woman and no class of women can be degraded and all womankind not suffer thereby.

The Revolt of Women

“Ouida” in Lippincott’s

(See page 113)

The whole human race is involved in the results of the present revolt and reaction amongst women; if turned back upon itself by mockery it will burn and bite on unseen, and find its issue in mad sins, wild frivolity, and all the anarchy of voluptuous abandonment; if rightly met, if rightly guided, it may become the noblest and highest revolution that has ever broken the chains of effete prejudices, and let out human souls from the darkness of ignorance into the light and glory of a day of liberty.

Women’s Qualifications for Suffrage

By Mrs. Russell Sage

(See page 170)

Twenty years ago I did not think that women were qualified for suffrage, but the strides they have made since then in the acquirement of business methods, in the management of their affairs, in the effective interest they have evinced in civic matters, and the way in which they have mastered parliamentary methods, have convinced me that they are eminently fitted to do men’s work in all purely intellectual fields.

A Generation Ago

By Neva R. Deardorf, Ph. D.

(Department Public Health and Charities, Philadelphia. From “Annals of the American Academy.”)

Woman’s place in the crowd of a generation ago was immediately back of her masculine kinsfolk. Here she enjoyed protection from the rough elbowing of the crowd, though in return for this shelter she forfeited her liberty and was expected to devote all of her physical strength and mental energy to pushing some particular masculine protector to the front. Some times her efforts were appreciated, frequently they were taken for granted, since etiquette favored a covert manner of pushing. But the rules of the game have changed. Partners and co-laborers are taking the place of lords and masters. Farmers, professors, clergymen, politicians, in fact, husbands of every calling are coming to see the advantage of having a wife beside, instead of behind, them. They now take pride in a wife who enjoys an outlook on the world which enables her to help far more intelligently and effectively than did the wife of a generation ago.

To Raise the Standards of Life

By Gertrude Barnum

(American newspaper woman. Speaker and writer in the cause of organized labor.)

The attitude of men toward women, economic, social, political, reacts upon man and society. In recognizing this, the man with the scythe is a length ahead of the man with the cap and gown, the cassock or the check book. The awakening to a sense of the economic interdependence and fellowship of men and women, has made the trade unionist the first to recognize the justice and wisdom of “universal suffrage,” and annually in convention the American Federation of Labor declares:

“That the best interests of labor require the admission of women to full citizenship—not only as a matter of justice to them, but also as a necessary step toward insuring and raising the American standards of life for all.”

Legislative Responsibility

By Emily J. Hutchins

(See page 204)

The most obvious effect of the vote is that it puts women upon a plane of political equality with other normal adults.... Universal suffrage stands for a certain recognition of the stake that all human beings, irrespective of sex, have in the general welfare, and destroys a false sense of sex limitations. By virtue of their new standing in the community women assume an equal responsibility with men, for both good and bad legislation.

He Shall See the New Woman

By Mabel Potter Daggett

(From “What the War Means to Woman,” in “Pictorial Review.”)

You see, when her country called her, it was destiny that spoke. Though no nation knew. Governments have only thought they were making women munition workers and women conductors and women bank-tellers and women doctors and women lawyers and women citizens and all the rest. I doubt if there is a statesman anywhere who has learned to unlock a door of opportunity to let the woman movement by, who has realized that he was but the instrument in the hands of a higher power that is re-shaping the world for mighty ends, rough-hewn though they be today from the awful chaos of war.

But there is one who will know. When the man at the front gets back and stands again before the cottage rose-bowered on the English downs, red-roofed in France and Italy, blue-trimmed in Germany, or ikon-blessed in Russia, or white-porched off Main Street in America, he will clasp her to his heart once more. Then he will hold her off, so, at arm’s length and look long into her eyes and deep into her soul. And lo, he shall see there the New Woman. This is not the woman whom he left behind when he marched away to the Great World War. Something profound has happened to her since. It is woman’s coming of age.

The Freedom of the Women

By Louise Collier Wilcox

(In “The Woman’s Journal.”)

When woman knew that on her strength devolved the care of race, She crept into her cave to sleep and told her man to face The prowling outer dangers, and the dark and fearful odds, The thunder, beasts, and lightning, and the wrath of all the gods; For at her heart she carried the future and its cares, And the freedom that she needed was more precious far then theirs.

So she watched her babe’s eyes open, and the little limbs grow straight, And she taught him all the lore she’d learned, and what to love and hate; And she trained the little body, and she led the little soul, Till another woman took him to lead further toward the goal; Then the mother smiled in anguish, though she laughed at age and cares, For the freedom that she wanted was a longer one than theirs.

When the work of life grew harder and men bowed beneath the yoke, Of needs too great to master, and lusts too deep to choke, She worked and slaved and tended, she wrestled with the dearth; She harnessed up herself to beasts, to till the barren earth; And she planted in her garden and she weeded out the tares, For the freedom that she wanted was more beautiful than theirs.

But when she saw man bestial and content with earthly things, She scourged herself in cloisters, and she wept and prayed for wings. Then she nurtured heavenly visions and she held aloft the cross, To show eternal values amid life’s gain and loss. And she pointed to the radiance round the crown the god-man wears, For the freedom that she wanted was a holier one than theirs.

Then she smiled from out her shelter while her men coped with the world; Her strength she made of weakness, and about her heart she curled The tendrils of dependence and his little children’s love; And she showed him what a home was in her gathered treasure trove. All the time her eyes were smiling with the smile the seer wears, For the freedom that she wanted was the freedom of his heirs.

Still her heart grew great and greater, and her eyes she would not blind To the suffering of the victims, to the needs of all mankind. And she knew her safety futile and her children’s stronghold weak, Till the least, last one is sheltered, and there’s none astray to seek. So she looked far down the ages to the good that all man shares, For the freedom that she wanted was a broader one than theirs.

And she knew her man short-sighted, since he had not borne the pain, The slavery, drudgery, darkness, the glory and the stain Of womanhood and motherhood. How could he love the race? As she who bore and nurtured, God’s instrument of grace? So she ceased to coax and wheedle, and commanded as one dares Whose only love of freedom is a higher one than theirs.

...

She stands, now, hand upon the helm, to help him govern life, And she steers her world, his equal, in love, in peace, in strife; She owns her strength and wisdom; and he may read who runs, That she must demand her freedom from his daughters and his sons. Neither beneath nor over, but equal in her place, The freedom that she’ll die for, is the freedom of the race.

A Woman’s Question

By M. Carey Thomas

(A contemporary. President of Bryn Mawr College. From an address at the College Evening of the National American Suffrage Association.)

Woman suffrage is first of all a woman’s question. We cannot remain indifferent. The issues involved are so overwhelmingly important, first of all, to us as women caring as we must for all other women’s welfare, and second, to us as citizens of the modern industrial state. I am sure as the result of repeated experiment that it is only necessary for generous and unprejudiced women to realize the present economic independence of millions of women workers, and the swiftly coming economic independence of millions upon millions more women workers for woman suffrage to seem to them inevitable from that moment.

No one can maintain by serious arguments—that is, by arguments that are not pure and simple distortion of fact—that the ballot will not aid women workers, as it has aided men workers, to obtain fairer conditions and fairer wages. All working men and all men of every class regard the ballot as their greatest protection against the oppression and injustice of other men. It is only necessary to ask ourselves what would be the fate of any political party whose platform contained a plank depriving laboring men of the right to vote.

Because They Cannot Vote

By Meta L. Stern

(See page 250)

Industrial organization and political activity constitute the two powerful arms of the labor movement. Men are free to use both their arms. Women are struggling with one arm tied.

The Plea of the Women

By Katherine Parrott Sorringe

(In “The Woman’s Journal.”)

Standing before you with suppliant hands, Mothers and wives and daughters, we Sue for the justice long denied;— Give us the vote that makes us free!

She who went down to the gates of death, Joyful, to fling the life-doors wide, Mother of statesman, soldier, saint— Set this crown on her patient pride!

She, your comrade, who steadfast stood Shoulder to shoulder, through storm and night, Held up your hands till victory pealed— Grant her this prize of well-fought fight.

Who trips laughing across your life, Light of your love, your soul made fair? Give her this pledge of a father’s faith, Flower o’ freedom to deck her hair!

Mothers and wives and daughters, we, Shall we ask in vain, with suppliant hand? We, who are children of the free! We, who are builders in the land!

A Prisoner in Bow

By Sylvia Pankhurst

(A leader of the Suffragette movement of England. The following, quoted from “The Woman’s Journal,” is an account of one of her imprisonments in the London jails.)

My eight days’ license had expired. The police were massed outside the Bromley Public Hall where I was speaking, waiting to arrest me. Numbers of detectives in plain clothes within were amongst the audience; the people hissed and howled at them and they threatened them with sticks. At the close of the meeting, the people, declaring that I should not be arrested, crowded down the stairs and out in a thick mass with men in the center of them all. The police rushed at us, striving to break our ranks and to force a way through to me.... Policemen were on every side of me. Two of them gripped and bruised my arms, dragging me along. The crowd followed, calling to me.... The policemen dug their fingers into my flesh. One of them took out his truncheon and grasped it tight against my hand and arm. The back of my left hand was bruised from it all next day. Several women rushed up to me and were arrested, and one girl who did not know any of us, or what the trouble was about, called out: “Oh, you should not hurt her,” and was taken into custody. They dragged me into a Cannon Row police station....

So, hatless, and without so much as a brush or comb, I was taken back to gaol to begin my hunger, thirst and sleep strike. When I reached my cell, the same cell in the hospital in which during February and March I had been forcibly fed for five weeks, I began to pace up and down.

A woman officer came to me and said I must not make a noise.... I took a blanket from the bed and spread it on the floor to deaden the sound of my footsteps, lest any of the other women prisoners should hear them and be kept awake.

Then I walked on and on, five short steps across the cell and five short steps back, on and on, and on.... As the hours dragged their slow way I stumbled often over the blanket that wrinkled up and caught in my feet. Often I stooped with dizzy brain to straighten it. The walking, the ceaseless walking, when I was so tired, made me grow sick and faint. I was stumbling, falling to my knees, clutching, as one drowning, at the bed or chair. Sometimes I think I slept an instant or two as I lay, for sleep seemed to be dogging as I walked.

It was cold, cold and colder, as the morning came, as the sombre yellow faded and the gray sky turned to violet—such a strange brilliant violet, almost startling it seemed through those heavy bars. Then the violet died into the bleak white chill of early day.

In the day time I still walked, but sometimes I had to rest in the hard, wooden chair, and then I would be startled to feel my head nod heavily to one side. My legs ached, the soles of my feet were swollen. They burned, and I thought of the women of the past who were made to walk on red hot plough shares for their faith. After the first few days I remembered that tramps rubbed soap on their feet to prevent their getting sore. I rubbed soap on mine and found that it eased them a good deal. Each time I took my stocking off to do this I noticed that my feet had grown more purple. My hands, too, were purple as they hung at my sides. My throat was parched and dry. My lips were cracked. On Wednesday I fainted twice, and afterwards there came and stayed till I was released, a strange pressure in the head, especially in the ears. There was a sharp pain across my chest. That evening I asked to see a doctor from the home office. On Thursday afternoon he came. On Friday there was no more likelihood of my sleeping. I lay on the bed most of the day burning hot, with cold shivers that seemed to pass over me as though a cold wind was blowing on my face. In the afternoon I was released and came back to the little red-roofed house under St. Stephen’s church and the kind hearts of Bow.

Out of the Dark

By Matilda Jocelyn Gage

(From “Woman, Church and State.”)

Although England was Christianized in the fourth century, it was not until the tenth that the Christian wife of a Christian husband acquired the right of eating at table with him.

All Methods Employed

By Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont

(In “Harper’s Bazar.” President of the Political Equality Association of New York, a leading spirit in the Congressional Union, an organization whose tactics have caused it to be called the militant wing of the suffrage movement.)

Woman suffrage is a war on ignorance, prejudice and vice. To attack certain gigantic forces, a people must take any and every line open to them. If the Germans had attacked Warsaw from but one side, that great city would still be under Russian rule. I believe, therefore, that women in fighting for their suffrage should use all lines approaching the enemy. I personally am working along all roads of attack, for I feel that where one method may fail, another may succeed.

Glory in Power

By Mrs. Burke Cockran

(In “Harper’s Bazar.”)

Suffragists are born, not made. There are many women whose brains will never respond to suffrage argument.... And yet I am convinced that these women, when they do receive the vote, will not only use their power judiciously and conscientiously, but will eventually glory in it.

Feminism a Tree

By Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

(Well-known English actress. Author of “What Women Want,”[1] from which the following is taken.)

... Feminism is a tree, and woman suffrage merely one of its many branches. Some of these branches are essential to the life of the tree, others are not. Some grow strong and put forth shoots in their turn, others blossom prematurely, wither young, and drop from the trunk. Meanwhile the tree towers up into the sun with its crown of sturdy growths, and its abortive shoots lie forgotten in the shadow below, leaving hardly a scar upon the great stem to mark their death. Only few people see this tree as a unit. All who do know that woman suffrage is one of its essential growths. But the majority still concentrate their gaze upon one branch or another, whichever seems to them most fair, and the parent tree is lost to sight amid the multiplicity of its offspring’s leaves. Suffrage has rallied to its march thousands of conservative women who are indifferent, or even opposed, to some newer branches of the tree, while those who are absorbed in certain later and eccentric growths are sometimes amusingly contemptuous of the older limbs. They forget that the topmost crown could not flourish if the wide boughs below did not help the tree to breathe. They are sometimes, too, in danger of forgetting that if the great roots of the trees were not anchored deep in the soil of woman’s nature itself, in her motherhood, her strong tenderness, and her service, the whole growth would perish.

[1] Frederick A. Stokes Co.

Woman Has Justified Herself

By Lady Morgan

(English. From “Woman and Her Master,” published in Paris, in a “Collection of Ancient and Modern British Authors,” 1840.)

Notwithstanding her false position, woman has struggled through all disabilities and degradations, has justified the intentions of Nature in her behalf, and demonstrated her claim to share in the moral agency of the world. In all outbursts of mind, in every forward rush of the great march of improvement she has borne a part; permitting herself to be used as an instrument, without hope of reward, and faithfully fulfilling her mission, without expectation of acknowledgment. She has, in various ages, given her secret service to the task-master, without partaking in his triumph, or sharing in his success. Her subtlety has insinuated views which man has shrunk from exposing, and her adroitness found favor for doctrines which he had the genius to conceive, but not the art to divulge. Priestess, prophetess, the oracle of the tripod, the sibyl of the cave, the veiled idol of the temple, the shrouded teacher of the academy, the martyr or missionary of a spiritual truth, the armed champion of a political cause, she has been covertly used for every purpose, by which man, when he has failed to reason his species into truth, has endeavored to fanaticize it into good; whenever mind has triumphed by indirect means over the hearts of the masses.

In all moral impulsions, woman has aided and been adopted; but, her efficient utility accomplished, the temporary part assigned her for temporary purposes performed, she has ever been hurled back into her natural obscurity, and conventional insignificance.... Alluded to, rather as an incident, rather than a principle in the chronicles of nations, her influence, which cannot be denied, has been turned into a reproach; her genius, which could not be concealed, has been treated as a phenomenon, when not considered as a monstrosity!

But where exist the evidences of these merits unacknowledged, of these penalties unrepealed? They are to be found carelessly scattered through all that is known in the written history of mankind, from the first to the last of its indited pages. They may be detected in the habits of the untamed savage, in the traditions of the semi-civilized barbarian! And in those fragments of the antiquity of our antiquity, scattered through undated epochs,—monuments of some great moral debris, which, like the fossil remains of long-imbedded, and unknown species, serve to found a theory or to establish a fact.

Wherever woman has been, there has she left the track of her humanity, to mark her passage—incidentally impressing the seal of her sensibility and wrongs upon every phase of society, and in every region, “from Indus to the Pole.”

The Story of Katie Malloy

By Caroline A. Lowe

(Well-known as a speaker on the Socialist and labor platforms. From a speech before the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Sixty-Second Congress.)

The need of the ballot for the wage-earning woman is a vital one. No plea can be made that we have the protection of the home or are represented by our fathers or brothers....

What of the working girls, who through unemployment are no longer permitted to sell the labor of their hands and are forced to sell their virtue?

I met Katie Malloy under peculiar circumstances. It was because of this that she told me of her terrible struggles during the great garment workers strike in Chicago. She had worked at H——’s for five years and had saved $30. It was soon gone. She hunted for work, applied at the Young Women’s Christian Association and was told that so many hundreds of girls were out of work that they could not possibly do anything for her. She walked the streets day after day without success. For three days she had almost nothing to eat. “Oh,” she said, with the tears streaming down her cheeks, “there is always some place where a man can crowd in and keep decent, but for us girls there is no place, no place but one, and it is thrown open to us day and night. Hundreds of girls—girls that worked by me in the shop—have gone into houses of impurity.”

Has Katie Malloy and the five thousand working girls who are forced into lives of shame each month no need of a voice in a Government that should protect them from this worse than death!

The New Woman

By Dora B. Montefiore

(In “The Progressive Woman.” English Contemporary. Writer and speaker on woman and labor problems.)

Pausing on the century’s threshold, With her face toward the dawn, Stands a tall and radiant presence; In her eyes the light of morn, On her brow the flush of knowledge Won in spite of curse and ban, In her heart the mystic watchword Of the Brotherhood of Man.

She is listening to the heartbeats Of the People in its pain; She is pondering social problems Which appeal to heart and brain. She is daring for the first time Both to think—and then to act; She is flouting social fictions, Changing social lie—for Fact.

Centuries she followed blindfold Where her lord and master led; Lived his faith, embraced his morals; Trod but where he bade her tread. Till one day the light broke round her, And she saw with horror’s gaze, All the filth and mire of passion Choking up the world’s highways.

Saw the infants doomed to suffering, Saw the maidens slaves to lust, Saw the starving mothers barter Souls and bodies for a crust. Saw the workers crushed by sweaters, Heard the cry go up, “How long?” Saw the weak and feeble sink ’neath Competition’s cursed wrong.

For a moment paused she shuddering; Hers in part the guilt, the blame— Untrue to herself and others, Careless to her sister’s shame. Then, she rose—with inward vision Nerving all her powers for good; Feeling one with suffering sisters In a perfect womanhood.

Rising ever ’bove the struggle For this mortal fleeting life; Listening to the God within her Urging Love—forbidding Strife. Love and care for life of others Who with her must fall or rise. This the lesson through the ages Taught to her by Nature Wise.

She had pondered o’er the teaching, She had made its truths her own; Grasped them in their fullest meaning, As “New Woman” she is known. ’Tis her enemies have baptized her But she gladly claims the name; Hers it is to make a glory What was meant to be a shame.

Thinking high thoughts, living simply, Dignified by labor done; Changing the old years of thraldom For new freedom—hardly won. Clear-eyed, selfless, saved through knowledge, With her ideals fixed above, We may greet in the “New Woman” The old perfect Law of Love.

What Is This Government?

By Mrs. Belle Case La Follette

(American contemporary. Wife of the United States Senator, Robert La Follette. The following is from a speech on suffrage, given in Boston.)

What is this government that we women have been taught to think of as something so remote from our interests, so unrelated to the immediate personal preoccupations of our daily lives? There are three great matters in which we are all concerned: religion, education and government. In religion men and women share equally (indeed, men sometimes are content that women should do more than their share). In education it has come to pass that both men and women participate equally, though that was not always so. It is less than two generations that our universities and even our high schools have been open to women upon the same terms as to men.

But government is considered as man’s exclusive province—a limitation that has narrowed the lives of the women, that has robbed the children, and that has reacted most injuriously upon the State. For with what matters does government concern itself? Why, with matters that touch intimately home happiness and home prosperity, with laws and regulations that guard and further human lives.

Woman Has Helped

By Luella Twining

Woman always has figured prominently in every movement and transformation that has changed the conditions of human life.

Our Common Interests

By Lena Morrow Lewis

(American contemporary. Writer. Speaker. Former member of the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party. Editor “The Seattle Call.”)

Every argument in behalf of man suffrage applies with equal force to woman suffrage. Men and women have more in common as members of the same species, belonging to the same human family, than they have differences, because of the incident of sex. To deny woman the ballot because of her sex is virtually to repudiate her right and claim as a human being. That a difference does exist between men and women is on the other hand a strong argument in behalf of woman suffrage. The giving of the ballot to woman will not rob man of his just rights. The admission of woman into the political arena will do away with male supremacy, which is injurious to man, breeds tyranny and results in injustice to woman. Justice to woman does not mean injustice to man. Our common interests as human beings, and our differences as men and women both demand political power and social rights for women the same as for men.

Women

By Zona Gale

(Contemporary American writer and suffragist. In “The American Magazine.”)

They looked from farm house window; Their joyless faces showed Between the curtain and the sill— You saw them from the road. They looked up while they churned and cooked And washed and swept and sewed. Some could die and some just lived, and many a one went mad, But it’s “Mother be up at four o’clock,” the menfolk bade.

They looked from town-house windows, A shadow on the shade Rose-touched by colorful depths of room Where harmonies were made. Within, the women went and came, And delicately played. Some could grow, and some could work, but many of them were dead. “We must be gowned and gay tonight when the men come home,” they said.

They looked from factory windows Where many an iron gin Drew in their days and ground their days On the black wheels within, Drew in their days and wove their days To a web exceeding thin. And they suffered what women have suffered over and over again. And it’s “Double your speed for a living wage, ye mothers and wives of men!”

They looked from brothel windows, And caught the curtain down. A piteous, beckoning hand thrust out, To summon or clod, or clown. They named them true, they named them true, The Women of the Town. Some could live and some just died, and most of them none could know, And it’s “What if the fallen women vote?” from the men who keep them so.

Allegory on Wimmin’s Rights

By Josiah Allen’s Wife (Marietta Holly)

(American contemporary. A philosopher who uses the humorous story to carry her message to the reading public.)

“Wimmin haint no business with the laws of the country,” said Josiah.

“If they haint no business with the law, the law haint no business with them,” said I warmly. “Of the three classes that haint no business with the law—lunatics, idiots and wimmin—the lunatics and idiots have the best time of it,” says I with a great rush of ideas into my brain that almost lifted up the border of my head-dress. “Let a idiot kill a man; ‘What of it?’ says the law. Let a luny steal a sheep; again the law murmurs in a calm and gentle tone, ‘What of it? They haint no business with the law, and the law haint no business with them!’

“But let one of a third class, let a woman steal a sheep, does the law soothe her in those comfortin’ tones? No; it thunders to her in awful accents: ‘You haint no business with the law, but the law has a good deal of business with you, vile female; start for state’s prison! You haint nothin’ at all to do with the law, only to pay all the taxes it tells you to, embrace a license bill that is ruinin’ to your husband, give up your innocent little children to a wicked father if it tells you to, and a few other little things, such as bein’ dragged off to prison by it, chained up for life, and hung, and et cetery.”

“‘Methought I once heard the words,’ sithes the female, ‘True government consists in the consent of the governed. Did I dream them, or did the voice of a luny pour them into my ear?’

“‘Haint I told you,’ frowns the law on her, ‘that that don’t mean wimmin? Have I got to explain again to your weakened female comprehension, the great fundymental truth that wimmin haint included and mingled in the law books and statutes of the country, only in a condemnin’ and punishin’ sense as it were?’

“‘Alas!’ sithes the woman to herself, ‘would that I had the sweet rights of my wild and foolish companions, the idiots and lunys!’

“‘But,’ says she, ‘are the laws always just, that I should obey them thus implicitely?’

“‘Idiots, lunatics! and wimmin! Are they goin’ to speak?’ thunders the law. ‘Can I believe my noble right ear? Can I, bein’ blindfolded, trust my seventeen senses? I’ll have you understand that it haint no woman’s business whether the laws are just or unjust; all you have to do is just to obey ’em. So start off for prison, my young woman.’

“‘But my housework,’ pleads the woman. ‘Woman’s place is the home. It is her duty to remain, at all hazards, within its holy and protectin’ precincts. How can I leave its sacred retirement to moulder in state’s prison?’

“‘Housework!’ and the law fairly yells the words, he is so filled with contempt at the idea. ‘Housework! Jest as if housework is goin’ to stand in the way of the noble administration of the law! I admit the recklessness and immorality of her leavin’ that holy haven long enough to vote; but I guess she can leave her housework long enough to be condemned, and hung, and so forth.’

“‘But I have got a infant,’ says the woman, ‘of tender days. How can I go?’

“‘That is nothin’ to the case,’ says the law in stern tones. ‘The peculiar conditions of motherhood only unfits a female woman from ridin’ to town in a covered carriage once a year, and layin’ her vote on a pole. I’ll have you understand it’s no hinderence to her at all in a cold and naked cell, or in a public court room crowded with men.’

“As the young woman totters along to prison is it any wonder that she sithes to herself—

“‘Would that I were an idiot! Alas is it not possible that I may become even now, a luny? Then I should be respected!’”

For Woman Suffrage

By Jane Addams

(From speech favoring a suffrage amendment to the Constitution, before the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Sixty-Second Congress. Prior to the enfranchisement of the Illinois women.)

As I have been engaged for a number of years in various philanthropic undertakings, perhaps you will permit me, for only a few moments, to speak from experience. A good many women with whom I have been associated have initiated and carried forward philanthropic enterprises, which were later taken over by the city, and thereupon the women have been shut out from the opportunity to do the self-same work which they have done up to that time. In Chicago the women for many years supported school nurses who took care of the children, both made them comfortable and kept them from truancy. When the nurses were taken over by the health department of the city the same women who had given them their support and management were shut out from doing anything more in that direction. And I think Chicago will bear me out when I say that the nurses are not now doing as good work as they did before.

I could also use the illustration of the probation officers in Chicago who are attached to the juvenile court. For a number of years women selected and supported these probation officers. Later, when the same officers, paid the same salary, were taken over by the county and paid from the county funds, the women who had had to do with the initiation and beginning of the probation system, and with the primary and early management of the officers, had no more to do with them. At the present moment the juvenile court in Chicago has fallen behind its former position in the juvenile courts of the world. I think the fair-minded men of Chicago will admit that it was a disaster for the juvenile court when the women were disqualified, by their lack of the franchise, to care for it.

The juvenile court has to do largely with delinquent and dependent children, and I think there is no doubt that on the whole women can deal with such cases better than men, because their natural interests lie in that direction....

The establishment of a sanitarium for the care of tubercular patients in Chicago was begun by some philanthropic women, and later on, when these also were put under the care of the city, these women were shut out, save as they were permitted to do some work through the courtesy of the officials. Sometimes the officials are very courteous to them and glad to have their assistance; sometimes they quite resent the suggestions from them, claiming it is “up to” them to take care of the city affairs, and that women are only interfering when they try to help.

So, it seems fair to say, if women are to keep on with the work which they have done since the beginning of the world—to continue with their humanitarian efforts which are so rapidly being taken over by the Government, and often not properly administered, that the women themselves will have to have the franchise.

The franchise is only a little bit of mechanism which enables the voter to say how much money shall be appropriated from the taxes, of which women pay so large a part. When a woman votes, she votes in an Australian ballot box, very carefully guarded from roughness, and it seems to us only fair to the State activities which are so largely humanitarian that women should have this opportunity.

A Spade’s A Spade

By Ethel R. Peyser

(In “Judge.”)

She’s treated by him like a queen, She’s helped across the streets, She’s given every courtesy That every woman greets; And yet he thinks the vote for her Would signal grave defeats.

She trained and reared his able sons, She helped him make his cash, She advised him in his business, She made him act less rash; And yet he thinks the vote for her Would be “just so much trash.”

She answers all his business notes In a manner quite “parfait,” She does all his stenography And seems to have great sway; And yet he thinks the vote for her Would bring “naught but dismay.”

She knows the whys of stocks and bonds, She knows statistics dull, She keeps him up on markets And knows the price to cull; And yet he thinks the vote for her “Would be an awful mull.”

She’s placed on rate commissions, She takes part in great debates, She is asked for her opinion, She knows causes, bills, and dates; And yet he thinks the vote for her Would cause the fall of States.

She’s the brains of large conventions, She knows well the social trend, She has written books of civics, She has made great forces blend; And yet the vote for such as she He cannot comprehend!

Woman on the Scaffold

By Alice Meynell

(English contemporary. Poet and essayist. From “The Bookman.”)

See the curious history of the political rights of woman under the Revolution. On the scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the fortunes of a party. Political life might be denied her, but that seems a trifle when you consider how generously she was permitted political death. She was to spin and cook for her citizen in the obscurity of her living hours; but to the hour of her death was granted no part in the largest interests, social, national, international. The blood with which she should, according to Robespierre, have blushed to be seen or heard in the tribune was exposed in the public sight unsheltered by her veins.... Women might be, and were, duly silenced when, by the mouth of Olympe de Gougas, they claimed a “right to concur in the choice of representatives for the formation of the laws,” but in her person, too, they were liberally allowed to bear responsibility to the Republic. Olympe de Gougas was guillotined. Robespierre then made her public and complete amends.

A Lady Rebel

By Abigail Adams

(Wife of one president of the United States, and mother of another. A brilliant correspondent, her letters showing her to be a woman unusual in breadth of interest, and general culture. The following extract is from a letter written to her husband in 1774, during the session of the First Continental Congress.)

I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.... If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

“The Gibraltar of Our Cause”

By Susan B. Anthony

(From a speech delivered at the Suffrage Convention held at Syracuse, N.Y. September 8, 1852. Quoted from “Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony.”[2])

The claims we make at these conventions are self-evident truths. The second resolution affirms the right of human beings to their persons and earnings. Is that not self evident? Yet the common law, which regulates the relations of husband and wife, and is modified only in a few instances, gives the “custody” of the wife’s person to the husband, so that he has a right to her, even against herself. It gives him her earnings, no matter with what weariness they have been acquired, or how greatly she may need them for herself or her children. It gives him a right to her personal property, which he may will entirely away from her, also the use of her real estate, and in some of the states married women, insane persons and idiots are ranked together as not fit to make a will, so that she is left with only one right, which she enjoys in common with the pauper, the right of maintenance. Indeed, when she has taken the sacred marriage vows, her legal existence ceases. And what is our position politically? The foreigner, the negro, the drunkard, all are entrusted with the ballot, all are placed by men higher than their own mothers, wives, sisters and daughters!

The woman, who, seeing this, dares not maintain her rights is the one to hang her head and blush. We ask only for justice and equal rights—the right to vote, the right to our own earnings, equality before the law: these are “the Gibraltar of our Cause.”

[2] The Bowen Merrill Co.

A Great Life

By Ida Husted Harper

(Biographer of Susan B. Anthony. From Introduction to the “Life and Works of Susan B. Anthony.”)

Those who follow the story of this life will confirm the assertion that every girl who enjoys a college education; every woman who has the chance of earning an honest living in whatever sphere she chooses; every wife who is protected by law in the possession of her person and property; every mother who is blessed with the custody and control of her own children—owes these sacred privileges to Susan B. Anthony beyond all others.

Suffrage a Means to an End

By Ella S. Stewart

(Contemporary. Ex-President the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association—Former Secretary “National American Suffrage Association.”)

Suffrage is not an end in itself, but a means to an end....

The opposition of the liquor forces is not gauged by the number of women actively engaged in temperance work. That number is still comparatively small. It takes no comfort from the fact that suffrage associations are non-partisan on all questions except suffrage. It would fear and fight off the enfranchisement of women if every temperance organization were to disband today. Therein it unconsciously pays its high tribute to woman and confesses its own lack of moral defense.... The forces of evil fear for woman’s vote.

Man Cannot Represent Woman

By Rev. Antoinette Brown

(The first woman ordained to preach in the United States. The following extract is from a speech delivered at the Suffrage Convention at Syracuse, N. Y., Sept. 8, 1852.)

Man cannot represent woman. They differ in their nature and relations. The law is wholly masculine; it is created and executed by man. The framers of all legal compacts are restricted to the masculine standpoint of observation, to the thoughts, feelings and biases of man. The law then can give us no representation as women, and therefore no impartial justice, even if the law makers were intent upon this, for we can be represented only by our peers.... When woman is tried for crime, her jury, her judges, her advocates, are all men; and yet there may have been temptations and various palliating circumstances connected with her peculiar nature as woman, such as man cannot appreciate. Common justice demands that a part of the law-makers and law-executors should be of her own sex. In questions of marriage and divorce, affecting interests dearer than life, both parties in the contract are entitled to an equal voice.

Universality

By Belle Lindner Israels

(From the Introduction to “The Upholstered Cage.”)

There can be no problem of women anywhere without aspects of universality.

Mankind Our Neighbor

By Mrs. R. R. Cotton

(In “Social Service Review.”)

The day is past when we deluded ourselves with the thought that our responsibilities ceased with the performance of our individual duties. We are jointly responsible for the existing conditions, and only by a joint effort can they be improved. Our neighbor’s welfare is our business, and our neighbor is mankind.

Clearing Up the Muss

By Gertrude Breslau Fuller

(American contemporary. Prominent as a Lyceum speaker on social questions.)

You say politics are too corrupt for women to mix up in? Well, they are pretty bad, there is no doubt about that. You have laid almost everything under heaven onto the women, but this one thing that has been under your own exclusive, masculine domain.

Don’t you know that the principal business of women, all down the ages, has been to go along after the men and clear up the everlasting muss they made? Well, we are still at the same task. Our politics are no more corrupt than our housekeeping would be if we let you run it alone.

Wisdom Comes with Freedom

By Mary Wollstonecraft

(See page 121)

In France or Italy have the women confined themselves to domestic life? Though they have not hitherto had a political existence, yet have they not illicitly had great sway, corrupting themselves and the men with whose passions they played? In short, in whatever light I view the subject, reason and experience convince me that the only method of leading women to fulfill their peculiar duties is to free them from all restraint by allowing them to participate in the inherent rights of mankind.

Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous, as men become more so, for the improvement must be mutual, or the injustice which one-half of the race are obliged to submit to retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of men will become worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet.

Women to Men

By Miriam Allen De Ford

(In “The Woman Voter.”)

We are they that wept at Babylon, And still are they that weep; We have watched the cradles of the world, And hushed its sick to sleep; We have served your folly and desire, And drunk your cruel will; You have smiled on us with far content:— Are you smiling still?

We were slaves most fit for Solomon, That now can call you kin; It was strength of soul and many years That changed us so within; The strength of those you killed with scorn, The years you could not kill; Steep were the stairs to climb and hard:— Are you smiling still?

We have shared your salt of loyalty, And eaten of its bread; We have died with you for Freedom’s sake, And gained it, being dead: You have drawn from out our breasts your life, The life you use so ill: We are they that bore you in the night:— Are you smiling still?

The Call to Social Service

By Elizabeth (Mrs. George) Bass

(American contemporary. Former president of the Woman’s City Club, Chicago. Chairman Chicago-Biennial Board, General Federation of Women’s Clubs. From editorial in “Life and Labor.”)

The call to social service and action has brought the modern club woman along an ever broadening path to the high, wind-swept levels, where she sights limitless opportunity for expression and action; and two things she has come to see clearly, first, that she needs the ballot to do this, her natural work, more effectively; and second, that the Commonwealth needs her.

Submission

By Miriam Teichner

(In “The Woman’s Journal.”)

Submission? They have preached at that so long, As though the head bowed down would right the wrong; As though the folded hands, the coward heart, Were saintly signs of souls sublimely strong; As though the man who acts the waiting part And but submits, had little wings a-start. But may I never reach that anguished plight, Where I at last grow weary of the fight!

Submission? “Wrong of course, must ever be Because it ever was. ’Tis not for me To seek a change; to strike the maiden blow. ’Tis best to bow the head and not to see; ’Tis best to dream, that we need never know The truth—to turn our eyes away from woe.” Perhaps. But, ah! I pray for keener sight. And—may I not grow weary of the fight!

The Price of Liberty

By Mary Gray Peck

(In “Life and Labor.” Chairman Committee on Drama, General Federation of Women’s Clubs.)

“I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”

Patrick Henry, when he said that, was not asking that liberty come as a free gift. No race or class ever has attained it so cheaply. Fifty years after the battle of Gettysburg, the negro is still fighting for the liberty which the bloodiest war in history could not confer on him. He must get it for himself.

Women have been fighting longer than that for freedom.

It is the glory of the women’s labor movement that working women struck the first blow for women’s liberty in this country.

For a hundred years, working women have made straight the way for all women to follow. It was the women in the mills and the shops and factories who made it possible sixty years ago for women to enter the schools and the professions.

Today, in the ultimate analysis, it is the women in the mills of commerce who gave women the ballot in the suffrage states. It is they who are paying the price. _Their strikes are all hunger strikes; not a hunger for bread alone, but a hunger for life and the liberty of soul._

Not till these strikes end in victory, not till the last burning-factory martyr has rendered up her life as a sacrifice necessary to the destruction of the system which thrives on factory fires, can we count the price which working women have paid to make all women free.

“No people can long endure half slave and half free.”

If the working women had consented to be slaves, there would have been no woman movement. More than that—without the woman’s trade unions there could be no organized labor movement. Theirs is the strategic point in the conflict in which the whole world is lining up. Around them will rage the fiercest fight; but the stars in their courses fight for them.

Woman’s Right

By Olive Schreiner

(South African novelist. Contemporary. Author of “An African Farm,” “Three Dreams in a Desert,” “Woman and Labor,” etc. The following is from “Woman and Labor.”[3])

Thrown into strict logical form, our demand is this: We do not ask that the wheels of time should reverse themselves, or the stream of life flow backward. We do not ask that our ancient spinning wheels be again resuscitated and placed in our hands; we do not demand that our old grindstones and hoes be returned to us, or that man should again betake himself entirely to his province of war and the chase, leaving to us all domestic and civil labor. We do not even demand that society shall immediately so reconstruct itself that every woman may again be a child bearer (deep and overmastering as lies the hunger for motherhood in every virile woman’s heart!); neither do we demand that the children we bear shall again be put exclusively into our hands to train. This, we know, cannot be. The past material conditions of life have gone forever; no will of man can recall them. But _this_ is our demand: We demand that, in that strange new world that is arising alike upon the man and the woman, where nothing is as it was, and all things are assuming new shapes and relations, that in this new world we also shall have our share of honored and socially useful human toil, our full half of the labor of the Children of Woman. We demand nothing more than this, and will take nothing less. _This is our WOMAN’S RIGHT!_

[3] Frederick A. Stokes Co.

From “The Convert”

By Elizabeth Robins

(English contemporary. Actress, playwright, novelist. Author of “Way Stations,” “The Convert,” etc. The following is from a suffrage speech by one of her characters, Miss Claxton, in “The Convert.”)

What, women don’t want it? Are you worrying about a handful who think because they have been trained to like subservience everybody else ought to like subservience, too?... The women who are made to work over hours—they want the vote. To compel them to work over hours is illegal. But who troubles to see that laws are fairly interpreted for the unrepresented.... I know a factory where a notice went up yesterday to say that the women employed there will be required to work 12 hours a day for the next few weeks.... Much of woman’s employment is absolutely unrestricted except that they may not be worked on Sunday. And while all this is going on, comfortable gentility sit in arm chairs and write alarmist articles on the falling birth-rate and the horrible amount of infant mortality. Here and there we find a man who realizes that the main concern of the State should be its children, and that you can’t get worthy citizens when the mothers are sickly and enslaved. The question of statecraft rightly considered always reaches back to the mother. That State is most prosperous that most considers her. No State that forgets her can survive. The future is rooted in the real being of women. If you rob the women, your children and your child’s children pay. Men haven’t realized it—your boasted logic has never yet reached so far. Of all the community the women who give the next generation birth, and who form its character, during the most impressionable years of its life—of all the community, these mothers now, or mothers to be, ought to be set free from the monstrous burden that lies upon the shoulders of millions of women.

Rights, Privileges and Capacities

By Catherine Waugh McCulloch

(American contemporary. Former President Illinois Woman Suffrage Association, and practicing attorney. The following is from a pamphlet, “Illinois Laws Concerning Women,” issued by the I. W. S. A.)

We read that no person shall be denied any political rights, privileges, or powers on account of religion. The word sex should have been added. People may change their religion, but never their sex. Rights, privileges and capacities ought never to depend on color of eyes or hair, cast of features, sex or any other accident for which a person is not to be blamed and which a person can never overcome. Any other qualification demanded of a voter may be acquired by one’s own exertion, or the lapse of time. Property may be earned, minority out-grown, education secured, sanity regained, alienage removed, imprisonment outlived. But no industry, no age, no brilliancy, no morality, can change sex. Sex should be made less a disgrace instead of more of a disgrace than poverty, minority, alienage, insanity and criminality.

The Working Woman’s Awakening

By Theresa Malkiel

(In “The Progressive Woman.” American contemporary. Socialist. Speaker and writer on woman, child and labor problems.)

Unconsciously, with closed eyes, driven, perhaps, by the herd instinct that makes her follow the others, the working woman is rising at last from her long slumber....

The solution of the problem of existence is pressing upon her more and more. Even the mantle of marriage does no longer save her from it. The patient sufferer cannot and will not see her children destitute and hungry. She wants some of the celestial promises to be realized here on earth. Hence this general unrest of womanhood the world over.

Woman’s Weak Dependency

By Gertrude Atherton

(American contemporary. Said by the London critics to be the most brilliant of American women novelists. The following is from “Julia France and Her Times.”)

No wonder so few women had left an impression on history. How could any brain, even if endowed with true genius, reach the highest order of development while the character remained placid in its willing dependence upon the reigning sex? And man had despised woman through the ages, even when most enslaved by her, knowing that on him depended her very existence. He had the physical strength to wring her neck, and the legal backing to treat her as partner or servant, whichever he found convenient.

A Pageant of Great Women

By Cicily Hamilton

A dramatic poem of power and beauty. Woman contends with prejudice in an argument before the throne of Justice, calling a pageant of the world’s great women to justify her claims. She wins her freedom and speaks to man as follows:

I have no quarrel with you, but I stand For the clear right to hold my life my own: The clear, clean right. To mould it as I will,— Not as you will, with or apart from you To make of it a thing of brain and blood, Of tangible substance and of turbulent thought— No thin, gray shadow of the life of man! Your love, perchance, may set a crown on it; But I may crown myself in other ways— (As you have done, who are in one flesh with me). I have no quarrel with you; but, henceforth This you must know: The world is mine as yours— The pulsing strength and passion and hurt of it: The work I set my hand to, woman’s work, Because I set my hand to it.

The Prayer of the Modern Woman

By Josephine Conger

(Published in various Suffrage Journals.)

(See page 177)

Unbind our hands. We do not ask for favor in this fight Of human souls for human needs. We ask for naught but right, That we may throw the burden from our backs, and from our brains The thrall of servitude. We are so weary of the pains That crush our hearts and cramp our wills, reducing all desires To childish whims, while great hopes lie like smould’ring fires Within our brains, or burst distorted from some weak, unguarded point, Leaving ruin and anguish in their track. With woman bound, the whole world’s out of joint, For women are the mothers of the race. We cannot boast Of natural rights, of liberty, while mothers of the host Must know they’re classed in common law with idiots and slaves, Must stand aside with criminals, with imbeciles and knaves. The sturdy sons nursed at their breast cannot be wholly free, For what the mother is, the child will in a measure be. You are not granting Favor when you give us equal power; The shame is, you’ve withheld from us so long our dower Of earth’s inheritance. We do not beg for alms, for charity. We do not want our rights doled out; we want full liberty To grow, to be, to do our part, as Nature meant we should. We want a perfect sister-, as well as brother-hood.

By Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw

(Chairman of the New York City Suffrage Party. In “Harper’s Bazar.”)

The getting of votes has been to us like the saving of souls.

By Julia Wedgewood

(English writer. From an essay, “Female Suffrage, Considered Chiefly with Regard to Its Indirect Results.”)

Of course, if women are either exactly like men, or simply men minus something or other, they could add no light to that already possessed by a male constituency, but I know of no one who seriously believes either of these things.