enfranchised in Washington Territory nature has continued in her wonted courses. The sun rises and sets; there is seed-time and harvest; seasons come and go. The population has increased with the usual regularity and rapidity. Marriages have been quite as frequent, and divorces have been no more so. Women have not lost their influence for good upon society, but men have been elevated and refined. If we are to believe the testimony which comes from lawyers, physicians, ministers of the gospel, merchants, mechanics, farmers, and laboring men, the united testimony of the entire people of the Territory, the results of woman suffrage there have been all that could be desired by its friends. Some of the results in that Territory have been seen in making the polls quiet and orderly, in awaking a new interest in educational questions and in questions of moral reform, in securing the passage of beneficial laws and the proper enforcement of them; and, as I have said before, in elevating men, and that without injury to the women.
Mr. EUSTIS. Will the Senator allow me to ask him a question?
Mr. DOLPH. The Senator can ask me a question, if he chooses.
Mr. EUSTIS. If it be right and proper to confer the right of suffrage on women, I ask the Senator whether he does not think that women ought to be required to serve on juries?
Mr. DOLPH. I can answer that very readily. It does not necessarily follow that because a woman is permitted to vote and thus have a voice in making the laws by which she is to be governed and by which her property rights are to be determined, she must perform such duty as service upon a jury. But I will inform the Senator that in Washington Territory she does serve upon juries, and with great satisfaction to the judges of the courts and to all parties who desire to see an honest and efficient administration of law.
Mr. EUSTIS. I was aware of the fact that women are required to serve on juries in Washington Territory because they are allowed to vote. I understand that under all State laws those duties are considered correlative. Now, I ask the Senator whether he thinks it is a decent spectacle to take a mother away from her nursing infant and lock her up all night to sit on a jury?
Mr. DOLPH. I intended to say before I reached this point of being interrogated that I not only do not believe that there is a single argument against woman suffrage that is tenable, and I may be prejudiced in the matter, but that there is not a single one that is really worthy of any serious consideration. The Senator from Louisiana is a lawyer, and he knows very well that under such circumstances, a mother with a nursing infant, that fact being made known to the court would be excused; that would be a sufficient excuse. He knows himself, and he has seen it done a hundred times, that for trivial excuses compared to that men have been excused from service on a jury.
Mr. EUSTIS. I will ask the Senator whether he knows that under the laws of Washington Territory that is a legal excuse from serving on a jury?
Mr. DOLPH. I am not prepared to state that it is; but there is no question in the world but that any judge, that fact being made known, would excuse a woman from attendance upon a jury. No special authority would be required. I will state further that I have not learned that there has been any serious objection on the part of any woman summoned for jury service in that Territory to perform that duty. I have not learned that it has worked to the disadvantage of any family in the Territory; but I do know that the judges of the courts have taken especial pains to commend the women who have been called to serve upon juries for the manner in which they have discharged their duty.
I wish to say further that there is no connection whatever between jury service and the right of suffrage. The question as to who shall perform jury service, the question as to who shall perform military service, the question as to who shall perform civil official duty in a government is certainly a matter to be regulated by the community itself; but the question of the right to participate in the formation of a government which controls the life and the property and the destinies of its citizens, I contend is a question of right that goes back of these mere regulations for the protection of property and the punishment of offenses under the laws. It is a matter of right which it is tyranny to refuse to any citizen demanding it.
Now, Mr. President, I shall close by saying: God speed the day when not only in all the States of the Union and in all the Territories, but everywhere, woman shall stand before the law freed from the last shackle which has been riveted upon her by tyranny and the last disability which has been imposed upon her by ignorance, not only in respect to the right of suffrage, but in every other respect the peer and equal of her brother, man.
* * * * *
Mr. VEST. Mr. President, any measure of legislation which affects popular government based on the will of the people as expressed through their suffrage is not only important but vitally so. If this Government, which is based on the intelligence of the people, shall ever be destroyed it will be by injudicious, immature, or corrupt suffrage. If the ship of state launched by our fathers shall ever be destroyed, it will be by striking the rock of universal, unprepared suffrage. Suffrage once given can never be taken away. Legislatures and conventions may do everything else; they never can do that. When any particular class or portion of the community is once invested with this privilege it is used, accomplished, and eternal.
The Senator who last spoke on this question refers to the successful experiment in regard to woman-suffrage in the Territories of Wyoming and Washington. Mr. President, it is not upon the plains of the sparsely-settled Territories of the West that woman suffrage can be tested. Suffrage in the rural districts and sparsely settled regions of this country must from the very nature of things remain pure when corrupt everywhere else. The danger of corrupt suffrage is in the cities, and those masses of population to which civilization tends everywhere in all history. Whilst the country has been pure and patriotic, the cities have been the first cancers to appear upon the body-politic in all ages of the world.
Wyoming Territory! Washington Territory! Where are their large cities? Where are the localities in these Territories where the strain upon popular government must come? The Senator from New Hampshire, who is so conspicuous in this movement, appalled the country some months since by his ghastly array of illiteracy in the Southern States. He proposes that $77,000,000 of the people’s money be taken in order to strike down the great foe to republican government, illiteracy. How was that illiteracy brought upon this country? It was by giving the suffrage to unprepared voters. It is not my purpose to go back into the past and make any partisan or sectional appeal, but it is a fact known to every intelligent man that in one single act the right of suffrage was given without preparation to hundreds of thousands of voters who to-day can scarcely read. That Senator proposes now to double, and more than double, that illiteracy. He proposes to give the negro women of the South this right of suffrage, utterly unprepared as they are for it.
In a convention some two years and a half ago in the city of Louisville an intelligent negro from the South said the negro men could not vote the Democratic ticket because the women would not live with them if they did. The negro men go out in the hotels and upon the railroad cars. They go to the cities and by attrition they wear away the prejudice of race; but the women remain at home, and their emotional natures aggregate and compound the race-prejudice, and when suffrage is given them what must be the result?
Mr. President, it is not my purpose to speak of the inconveniences, for they are nothing more, of woman suffrage. I trust that as a gentleman I respect the feelings of the ladies and their advocates. I am not here to ridicule. My purpose only is to use legitimate argument as to a movement which commands respectful consideration, if for no other reason than because it comes from women. But it is impossible to divest ourselves of a certain degree of sentiment when considering this question.
I pity the man who can consider any question affecting the influence of woman with the cold, dry logic of business. What man can, without aversion, turn from the blessed memory of that dear old grandmother, or the gentle words and caressing hand of that blessed mother gone to the unknown world, to face in its stead the idea of a female justice of the peace or township constable? For my part I want when I go to my home–when I turn from the arena where man contends with man for what we call the prizes of this paltry world–I want to go back, not to be received in the masculine embrace of some female ward politician, but to the earnest, loving look and touch of a true woman. I want to go back to the jurisdiction of the wife, the mother; and instead of a lecture upon finance or the tariff, or upon the construction of the Constitution, I want those blessed, loving details of domestic life and domestic love.
I have said I would not speak of the inconveniences to arise from woman suffrage–I care not–whether the mother is called upon to decide as a juryman or jury-woman rights of property or rights of life, whilst her baby is “mewling and puking” in solitary confinement at home. There are other considerations more important, and one of them to my mind is insuperable. I speak now respecting women as a sex. I believe that they are better than men, but I do not believe they are adapted to the political work of this world. I do not believe that the Great Intelligence ever intended them to invade the sphere of work given to men, tearing down and destroying all the best influences for which God has intended them.
The great evil in this country to-day is in emotional suffrage. The great danger to-day is in excitable suffrage. If the voters of this country could think always coolly, and if they could deliberate, if they could go by judgment and not by passion, our institutions would survive forever, eternal as the foundations of the continent itself; but massed together, subject to the excitements of mobs and of these terrible political contests that come upon us from year to year under the autonomy of our Government, what would be the result if suffrage were given to the women of the United States?
Women are essentially emotional. It is no disparagement to them they are so. It is no more insulting to say that women are emotional than to say that they are delicately constructed physically and unfitted to become soldiers or workmen under the sterner, harder pursuits of life.
What we want in this country is to avoid emotional suffrage, and what we need is to put more logic into public affairs and less feeling. There are spheres in which feeling should be paramount. There are kingdoms in which the heart should reign supreme. That kingdom belongs to woman. The realm of sentiment, the realm of love, the realm of the gentler and the holier and kindlier attributes that make the name of wife, mother, and sister next to that of God himself.
I would not, and I say it deliberately, degrade woman by giving her the right of suffrage. I mean the word in its full signification, because I believe that woman as she is to-day, the queen of home and of hearts, is above the political collisions of this world, and should always be kept above them.
Sir, if it be said to us that this is a natural right belonging to women, I deny it. The right of suffrage is one to be determined by expediency and by policy, and given by the State to whom it pleases. It is not a natural right; it is a right that comes from the state.
It is claimed that if the suffrage be given to women it is to protect them. Protect them from whom? The brute that would invade their rights would coerce the suffrage of his wife, or sister, or mother as he would wring from her the hard earnings of her toil to gratify his own beastly appetites and passions.
It is said that the suffrage is to be given to enlarge the sphere of woman’s influence. Mr. President, it would destroy her influence. It would take her down from that pedestal where she is to-day, influencing as a mother the minds of her offspring, influencing by her gentle and kindly caress the action of her husband toward the good and pure.
But I rise not to discuss this question, but to discharge a request. I know that when a man attacks this claim for woman suffrage he is sneered at and ridiculed as afraid to meet women in the contests for political honor and supremacy. If so, I oppose to the request of these ladies the arguments of their own sex; but first, I ask the Secretary to read a paper which has been sent to me with a request that I place it before the Senate.
The Chief Clerk read as follows:
_To the honorable Senate and House of Representatives_:
We, the undersigned, respectfully remonstrate against the further extension of suffrage to women.
H.P. Kidder.
O.W. Peabody.
R.M. Morse, jr.
Charles A. Welch.
Augustus Lowell.
Francis Parkman, LL.D.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
Edmund Dwight.
Charles H. Dalton.
Henry Lee.
W. Endicott, jr.
Samuel Wells.
Hon. John Lowell.
William G. Russell.
John C. Ropes.
Robert D. Smith.
George A. Gardner.
F. Haven, jr.
W. Powell Mason.
B.F. Stevens.
Charles Marsh.
Charles W. Eliot, president, Harvard University. Prof. C.F. Dunbar.
Prof. J.P. Cook.
Prof. J. Lovering.
Prof. W.W. Goodwin.
Prof. Francis Bowen.
Prof. Wolcott Gibbs.
Prof. F.J. Child.
Prof. John Trowbridge.
Prof. G.I. Goodale.
Prof. J.B. Greenough.
Prof. H.W. Torrey.
Prof. J.H. Thayer.
Prof. E.W. Gurney.
Justin Winsor.
H.W. Paine.
Hon. W.E. Russell.
James C. Fiske.
George Putnam.
C.A. Curtis.
T. Jefferson Coolidge.
T.K. Lothrop.
Augustus P. Loring.
W.F. Draper.
George Draper.
Francis Brooks.
Rev. J.P. Bodfish, chancellor, Cathedral Holy Cross. Rt. Rev. B.H. Paddock, bishop of Massachusetts. Rev. Henry M. Dexter.
Rev. H. Brooke Herford.
Rev. O.B. Frothingham.
Rev. Ellis Wendell.
Rev. Geo. F. Staunton.
Rev. A.H. Heath.
Rev. W.H. Dowden.
Rev. J.B. Seabury.
Rev. C. Woodworth.
Rev. Leonard K. Storrs.
Rev. Howard N. Brown.
Rev. Edward J. Young.
Rev. Andrew P. Peabody.
Rev. George Z. Gray.
Rev. William Lawrence.
Rev. E.H. Hall.
Rev. Nicholas Hoppin.
Rev. David G. Haskins.
Rev. L.S. Crawford.
Rev. J.I.T. Coolidge.
Rev. Henry A. Hazen.
Rev. F.H. Hedge.
Rev. H.A. Parker.
Rev. Asa Bullard.
Rev. Alexander McKenzie.
Rev. J.F. Spaulding.
Rev. S.K. Lothrop.
Rev. E. Osborne, S.S.J.E.
Rev. Leighton Parks.
Rev. H.W. Foote.
Rev. Morton Dexter.
Rev. David H. Brewer.
Rev. Judson Smith.
Rev. L.W. Shearman.
Rev. Charles F. Dole.
Rev. George M. Boynton.
Rev. D.W. Waldron.
Rev. John A. Hamilton.
Rev. Isaac P. Langworthy.
Rev. E.K. Alden.
Rev. E.E. Strong.
Rev. M.D. Bisbee.
Rev. Oliver S. Dean.
Henry Parkman.
W.H. Sayward.
Charles A. Cummings.
Hon. S.C. Cobb.
Sidney Bartlett.
John C. Gray.
Louis Brandeis.
Hon. George G. Crocker.
John Bartlett.
John Fiske.
J.T.G. Nichols, M.D.
C.E. Vaughan, M.D.
John Homans, M.D.
Chauncey Smith.
Benj. Vaughan.
Charles F. Walcott.
J.B. Warner.
Walter Dean.
S.H. Kennard.
E. Whitney.
W.P.P. Longfellow.
H.O. Houghton.
J.M. Spelman.
J.C. Dodge.
E.S. Dixwell.
L.S. Jones.
G.W.C. Noble.
Charles Theodore Russell.
Clement L. Smith.
Ezra Farnsworth.
H.H. Edes.
Hon. R.R. Bishop.
H.H. Sprague.
Charles R. Codman.
Darwin E. Ware.
Arthur E. Thayer.
C.F. Choate.
Richard H. Dana.
O.D. Forbes.
Edward L. Geddings.
William V. Hutchings.
John L. Gardner.
L.M. Sargent.
H.L. Hallett.
E.P. Brown.
W.A. Tower.
J. Edwards.
G.H. Campbell.
Samuel Carr, jr.
Edward Brooks.
J. Randolph Coolidge.
J. Eliot Cabot.
Fred. Law Olmstead.
Charles S. Sargent.
C.A. Richardson.
Charles F. Shimmin.
Edward Bangs.
J.G. Freeman.
H.H. Coolidge.
David Hunt.
Alfred D. Hurd.
Edward I. Brown.
W.G. Saltonstall.
Thomas Weston, jr.
Richard M. Hodges, M.D.
Henry J. Bigelow, M.D.
Charles D. Homans, M.D.
George H. Lyman, M.D.
John Dixwell, M.D.
R.M. Pulsifer.
Edward L. Beard.
Solomon Lincoln.
G.B. Haskell.
John Boyle O’Reilly.
Arlo Bates.
Horace P. Chandler.
George O. Shattuck.
Hon. Alex. H. Rice.
Henry Cabot Lodge.
Francis Peabody, jr.
Harcourt Amory.
F.E. Parker.
A.S. Wheeler.
Jacob C. Rogers.
S.G. Snelling.
C.H. Barker.
J.H. Walker.
Forrest E. Barker.
John D. Wasbburn.
Martin Brimmer.
Fred L. Ames.
Hon. A.P. Martin.
Mr. DOLPH. If the Senator from Missouri will permit me, those names sounded very much like the names of men.
Mr. VEST. They are men’s names. I did not say that the petition was signed by ladies. I referred to the papers in my hand, which I shall proceed to lay before the Senate.
I hold in my hand an argument against woman suffrage by a lady very well known in the United States, and well known to the Senators from Massachusetts, a lady whose philanthropy, whose exertions in behalf of the oppressed and poor and afflicted have given her a national reputation. I refer to Mrs. Clara T. Leonard, the wife of a distinguished lawyer, and whose words of themselves will command the attention of the public.
The Chief Clerk read as follows:
[Letter from Mrs. Clara T. Leonard.]
The following letter was read by Thornton K. Lothrop, esq., at the hearing before the Legislative committee on woman suffrage, January 29, 1884:
The principal reasons assigned for giving suffrage to women are these:
That the right to vote is a natural and inherent right of which women are deprived by the tyranny of men.
That the fact that the majority of women do not wish for the right or privilege to vote is not a reason for depriving the minority of an inborn right.
That women are taxed but not represented, contrary to the principles of free government.
That society would gain by the participation of women in government, because women are purer and more conscientious than men, and especially that the cause of temperance would be promoted by women’s votes.
Those women who are averse to female suffrage hold differing opinions on all these points, and are entitled to be heard fairly and without unjust reproach and contempt on the part of “suffragists,” so called.
The right to vote is not an inherent right, but, like the right to hold land, is conferred upon individuals by general consent, with certain limitations, and for the general good of all.
It is as true to say that the earth was made for all its inhabitants, and that human has a right to appropriate a portion of its surface, as to say that all persons have a right to participate in government. Many persons can be found to hold both these opinions. Experience has proved that the general good is promoted by ownership of the soil, with the resultant inducement to its improvement.
Voting is simply a mathematical test of strength. Uncivilized nations strive for mastery by physical combat, thus wasting life and resources. Enlightened societies agree to determine the relative strength of opposing parties by actual count. God has made women weaker than men, incapable of taking part in battles, indisposed to make riot and political disturbance.
The vote which, in the hand of a man, is a “possible bayonet,” would not, when thrown by a woman, represent any physical power to enforce her will. If all the women in the State voted in one way, and all the men in the opposite one, the women, even if in the majority, would not carry the day, because the vote would not be an estimate of material strength and the power to enforce the will of the majority. When one considers the strong passions and conflicts excited in elections, it is vain to suppose that the really stronger would yield to the weaker party.
It is no more unjust to deprive women of the ballot than to deprive minors, who outnumber those above the age of majority, and who might well claim, many of them, to be as well able to decide political questions as their elders.
If the majority of women are either not desirous to vote or are strongly opposed to voting, the minority should yield in this, as they are obliged to do in all other public matters. In fact, they will be obliged to yield, so long as the present state of opinion exists among women in general, for legislators will naturally consult the wishes of the women of their own families and neighborhood, and be governed by them. There can be no doubt that in this State, where women are highly respected and have great influence, the ballot would be readily granted to them by men, if they desired it, or generally approved of woman suffrage. Women are taxed, it is true; so are minors, without the ballot; it is untrue, to say that either class is not represented. The thousand ties of relationship and friendship cause the identity of interest between the sexes. What is good in a community for men, is good also for their wives and sisters, daughters and friends. The laws of Massachusetts discriminate much in favor of women, by exempting unmarried women of small estate from taxation; by allowing women, and not men, to acquire a settlement without paying a tax; by compelling husbands to support their wives, but exempting the wife, even when rich, from supporting an indigent husband; by making men liable for debts of wives, and not _vice versa_. In the days of the American Revolution, the first cause of complaint was, that a whole people were taxed but not represented.
To-day there is not a single interest of woman which is not shared and defended by men, not a subject in which she takes an intelligent interest in which she cannot exert an influence in the community proportional to her character and ability. It is because the men who govern live not in a remote country, with separate interests, but in the closest relations of family and neighborhood, and bound by the tenderest ties to the other sex, who are fully and well represented by relations, friends, and neighbors in every locality. That women are purer and more conscientious than men, as a sex, is exceedingly doubtful when applied to politics. The faults of the sexes are different, according to their constitution and habits of life. Men are more violent and open in their misdeeds, but any person who knows human nature well and has examined it in its various phases knows that each sex is open to its peculiar temptation and sin; that the human heart is weak and prone to evil without distinction of sex.
It seems certain that, were women admitted to vote and to hold political office, all the intrigue, corruption, and selfishness displayed by men in political life would also be found among women. In the temperance cause we should gain little or nothing by admitting women to vote, for two reasons: first, that experience has proved that the strictest laws can not be enforced if a great number of people determine to drink liquor; secondly, because among women voters we should find in our cities thousands of foreign birth who habitually drink beer and spirits daily without intoxication, and who regard license or prohibitory laws as an infringement of their liberty. It has been said that municipal suffrage for women in England has proved a political success. Even if this is true, it offers no parallel to the condition of things in our own cities. First, because there is in England a property qualification required to vote, which excludes the more ignorant and irresponsible classes, and makes women voters few and generally intelligent; secondly, because England is an old, conservative country, with much emigration and but little immigration.
Here is a constant influx of foreigners: illiterate, without love of our country or interest in, or knowledge of, the history of our liberties, to whom, after a short residence, we give a full share in our government. The result begins to be alarming–enormous taxation, purchasable votes, demagogism,–all these alarm the more thoughtful, and we are not yet sure of the end. It is a wise thought that the possible bayonet or ruder weapon in the hands of our new citizens would be even worse than the ballot, and our safer course is to give the immigrants a stake and interest in the government. But when we learn that on an average one thousand immigrants per week landed at the port of Boston in the past calendar year, is it not well to consider carefully how we double, and more than double, the popular vote, with all its dangers and its ingredients of ignorance and irresponsibility. Last of all, it must be considered that the lives of men and women are essentially different.
One sex lives in public, in constant conflict with the world; the other sex must live chiefly in private and domestic life, or the race will be without homes and gradually die out. If nearly one-half of the male voters of our State forego their duty or privilege, as is the fact, what proportion of women would exercise the suffrage? Probably a very small one. The heaviest vote would be in the cities, as now, and the ignorant and unfit women would be the ready prey of the unscrupulous demagogue. Women do not hold a position inferior to men. In this land they have the softer side of life–the best of everything. There are, of course, exceptions–individuals–whose struggle in life is hard, whose husbands and fathers are tyrants instead of protectors; so there are bad wives, and men ruined and disheartened by selfish, idle women.
The best work that a woman can do for the purifying of politics is by her influence over men, by the wise training of her children, by her intelligent, unselfish counsel to husband, brother, or friend, by a thorough knowledge and discussion of the needs of her community. Many laws on the statute-books of our own and other States have been the work of women. More might be added.
It is the opinion of many of us that woman’s power is greater without the ballot or possibility of office-holding for gain. When standing outside of politics she discusses great questions upon their merit. Much has been achieved by women in the anti-slavery cause, the temperance cause, the improvement of public and private charities, the reformation of criminals, all by intelligent discussion and influence upon men. Our legislators have been ready to listen to women and carry out their plans when well framed.
Women can do much useful public service upon boards of education, school committees, and public charities, and are beginning to do such work. It is of vital importance to the integrity of our charitable and educational administration that it be kept out of politics. Is it not well that we should have one sex who have no political ends to serve who can fill responsible positions of public trust? Voting alone can easily be exercised by women without rude contact, but to attain any political power women must affiliate themselves with men; because women will differ on public questions, must attend primary meetings and caucuses, will inevitably hold public office and strive for it; in short, women must enter the political arena. This result will be repulsive to a large portion of the sex, and would tend to make women unfeminine and combative, which would be a detriment to society.
It is well that men after the burden and heat of the day should return to homes where the quiet side of life is presented to them. In these peaceful New England homes of ours, great and noble men have been raised by wise and pious mothers, who instructed them, not in politics, but in those general principles of justice, integrity, and unselfishness which belong to and will insure statesmanship in the men who are true to them. Here is the stronghold of the sex, weakest in body, powerful for good or evil over the stronger one, whom women sway and govern, not by the ballot and by greater numbers but by those gentle influences designed by the Creator to soften and subdue man’s ruder nature.
CLARA T. LEONARD.
Mr. HOAR. The Senator from Missouri has alluded to me in connection with the name of this lady. Perhaps he will allow me to make an additional statement to that which I furnished him, in order that the statement about her may be complete.
All that the Senator from Missouri has said of the character and worth of Mrs. Leonard is true. I do not know her personally. Her husband is my respected personal friend, a lawyer of high standing and character. All that the Senator has said of her ability is proved better than by any other testimony, by the very able and powerful letter which has just been read. But Mrs. Leonard herself is the strongest refutation of her own argument.
Politics, the political arena, political influence, political action in this country consists, I suppose, in two things: one of them the being intrusted with the administration of public affairs, and second, having the vote counted in determining who shall be public servants, and what public measures shall prevail in the commonwealth. Now, this lady was intrusted for years with one of the most important public functions ever exercised by any human being in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. We have a board, called the board of lunacy and charity, which controls the large charities for which Massachusetts is famous and in many of which she was the first among civilized communities, for the care of the pauper and the insane and the criminal woman, and the friendless and the poor child. It is one of the most important things, except the education of youth, which Massachusetts does.
A little while ago a political campaign in Massachusetts turned upon a charge which her governor made against the people of the commonwealth in regard to the conduct of the great hospital at Tewksbury, where she was charged by her chief executive magistrate with making sale of human bodies, with cruelty to the poor and defenseless; and not only the whole country, but especially the whole people of Massachusetts, were stirred to the very depths of their souls by that accusation. Mrs. Clara T. Leonard, the writer of this letter, came forward and informed the people that she had been one of the board who had managed that institution for years, that she knew all about it through and through, that the accusation was false and a slander; and before her word and her character the charge of that distinguished governor went down and sunk into merited obscurity and ignominy.
Now, the question is whether the lady who can be intrusted with the charge of one of the most important departments of government, and whose judgment in regard to its character or proper administration is to be taken as gospel by the people where her reputation extends, is not fit to be trusted to have her vote counted when the question is who is to be the next person who is to be trusted with that administration. Mrs. Leonard’s mistake is not in misunderstanding the nature either of woman or of man, which she understands perfectly; it is in misunderstanding the nature of politics, that is, the political arena; and this lady has been in the political arena for the last ten years of her life, one of the most important and potent forces therein.
It is true, as she says, that the wife and the mother educate the child and the man, and when the great function of the state, as we hold in our State and as is fast being held everywhere, is also the education of the child and the man, how does it degrade that wife and mother, whose important function it is to do this thing, to utter her voice and have her vote counted in regard to the methods and the policies by which that education shall be conducted?
Why, Mr. President, Mrs. Leonard says in that letter that woman, the wife and the maiden and the daughter, has no political ends to serve. If political ends be to desire office for the greed of gain, if political ends be to get an unjust power over other men, if political ends be to get political office by bribery or by mob violence or by voting through the shutter of a beer-house, that is true: but the persons who are in favor of this measure believe that those very things that Mrs. Leonard holds up as the proper ends in the life of women are political ends and nothing else; that the education of the child, that the preservation of the purity of the home, that the care for the insane and the idiot and the blind and the deaf and the ruined and deserted, are not only political ends but are the chief political ends for which this political body, the state, is created: and those who desire the help of women in the administration of the state desire it because of the ability which could write such a letter as that on the wrong side, and because the qualities of heart and brain which God has given to understand this class of political ends better than He has given it to the masculine heart and brain are needed for their administration.
I have no word of disrespect for Mrs. Leonard, but I say that, in spite of herself and her letter, her life and her character are the most abundant and ample refutation of the belief which she erroneously thinks she entertains. Nobody invites these ladies to a contest of bayonets; nobody who believes that government is a matter of mere physical force asks the co-operation of woman in its administration. It is because government is a conflict of such arguments as that letter states on the one side, because the object of government is the object to which this lady’s own life is devoted, that the friends of woman suffrage and of this amendment ask that it shall be adopted.
Mr. VEST. Mr. President, my great personal respect for the Senator from Massachusetts has given me an interval of enforced silence, and I have only to say that if I should print my desultory remarks I should be compelled to omit his interruption for fear that the amendment would be larger than the original bill. [Laughter.]
I fail to see that anything which has fallen from the distinguished Senator has convicted Mrs. Clara Leonard of inconsistency or has added anything to the argument upon his side of the question. I have never said or intimated that there were women who were not credible witnesses. I have never thought or intimated that there were not women who were competent to administer the affairs of State or even to lead armies. There have been such women, and I believe there will be to the end of time, as there have been effeminate men who have been better adapted to the distaff and the spindle than to the sword or to statesmanship. But these are exceptions in either sex.
If this lady have, as she unquestionably has, the strength of intellect conceded to her by the Senator from Massachusetts and evidenced by her own production, her judgment of woman is worth that of a continent of men. The best judge of any woman is a woman. The poorest judge of any woman is a man. Let any woman with defect or flaw go amongst a community of men and she will be a successful impostor. Let her go amongst a community of women and in one instant the instinct, the atmosphere circumambient, will tell her story.
Mrs. Leonard gives us the result of her opinion and of her experience as to whether this right of suffrage should be conferred upon her own sex. The Senator from Massachusetts speaks of her evidence in a political campaign in Massachusetts and that her unaided and single evidence crushed down the governor of that great State. I thank the Senator for that statement. If Mrs. Leonard had been an office-holder and a voter not a single township would have believed the truth of what she uttered.
Mr. HOAR. She was an office-holder, and the governor tried to put her out.
Mr. VEST. Ah! but what sort of an office-holder? She held the office delegated to her by God himself, a ministering angel to the sick, the afflicted, and the insane. What man in his senses would take from woman this sphere? What man would close to her the charitable institutions and eleemosynary establishments of the country? That is part of her kingdom; that is part of her undisputed sway and realm. Is that the office to which woman suffragists of this country ask us now to admit them? Is it to be the director of a hospital? Is it to the presidency of a board of visitors of an eleemosynary institution? Oh, no; they want to be Presidents, to be Senators, and Members of the House of Representatives, and, God save the mark, ministerial and executive officers, sheriffs, constables, and marshals.
Of course, this lady is found in this board of directors. Where else should a true woman be found? Where else has she always been found but by the fevered brow, the palsied hand, the erring intellect, ay, God bless them, from the cradle to the grave the guide and support of the faltering steps of childhood and the weakening steps of old age!
Oh, no, Mr. President; this will not do. If we are to tear down all the blessed traditions, if we are to desolate our homes and firesides, if we are to unsex our mothers and wives and sisters and turn our blessed temples of domestic peace into ward political-assembly rooms, pass this joint resolution. But for one I thank God that I am so old-fashioned that I would not give one memory of my grandmother or my mother for all the arguments that could be piled, Pelion upon Ossa, in favor of this political monstrosity.
I now propose to read from a pamphlet sent to me by a lady whom I am not able to characterize as a resident of any State, although I believe she resides in the State of Maine. I do not know whether she be wife or mother. She signs this pamphlet as Adeline D.T. Whitney. I have read it twice, and read it to pure and gentle and intellectual women. I say to-day it ought to be in every household in this broad land. It ought to be the domestic gospel of every true, gentle, loving, virtuous woman upon all this continent. There is not one line or syllable in it that is not written in letters of gold. I shall not read it, for my strength does not suffice, nor will the patience of the Senate permit, but from beginning to end it breathes the womanly sentiment which has made pure and great men and gentle and loving women.
I will venture to say, in my great admiration and respect for this woman, whether she be married or single, she ought to be a wife, and ought to be a mother. Such a woman could only have brave and wise men for sons and pure and virtuous women for daughters. Here is her advice to her sex. I am only sorry that every word of it could not be read in the Senate, but I have trespassed too long.
Mr. COCKRELL. Let it be printed in your remarks.
Mr. VEST. I shall ask that it be printed. I will undertake, however, to read only a few sentences, not of exceptional superiority to the rest, because every sentence is equal to every other. There is not one impure unintellectual aspiration or thought throughout the whole of it. Would to God that I knew her, that I could thank her on behalf of the society and politics of the United States for this production.
After all–
She says to her own sex–
After all, men work for women; or, if they think they do not, it would leave them but sorry satisfaction to abandon them to such existence as they could arrange without us.
Oh, how true that is; how true!
In blessed homes, or in scattered dissipations of show, amusement, or the worse which these shows and amusements are but terribly akin to, women give purpose to and direct the results of all men’s work. If the false standards of living first urge them, until at length the horrible intoxication of the game itself drives them on further and deeper, are we less responsible for the last state of those men than for the first?
Do you say, if good women refused these things and tried for a simpler and truer living, there are plenty of bad ones who would take them anyhow, and supply the motive to deeper and more unmitigated evil? Ah, there come both answer and errand again. Raise the fallen–at least, save the growing womanhood–stop the destruction that rushes accelerating on, before you challenge new difficulty and danger with an indiscriminate franchise. Are not these bad women the very “plenty” that would out-balance you at the polls if you persist in trying the “patch-and-plaster” remedy of suffrage and legislation.
Recognize the fact, the law, that your power, your high commission, is inward, vital, formative and causal. Bring all questions of choice or duty to this test; will it work at the heart of things, among the realities and forces? Try your own life by this; remember that mere external is falsehood and death. The letter killeth. Give up all that is only of the appearance, or even chiefly so, in conscious delight and motive–in person, surrounding, pursuit. Let your self-presentation, your home-making and adorning, your social effort and interest, your occupation and use of talent, all shape and issue for the things that are essentially and integrally good, and that the world needs to have prevail. Until you can do this, and induce such doing, it is of little use to clamor for mere outward right or to contend that it would be rightly applied.
This whole pamphlet is a magnificent illustration of that stupendous and vital truth that the mission and sphere of woman is in the inward life of man; that she must be the building up and governing power that comes from those better impulses, those inward secrets of the heart and sentiment that govern men to do all that is good and pure and holy and keep them from all that is evil.
Mr. President, the emotions of women govern. What would be the result of woman suffrage if applied to the large cities of this country is a matter of speculation. What women have done in times of turbulence and excitement in large cities in the past we know. Open that terrible page of the French Revolution and the days of terror, when the click of the guillotine and the rush of blood through the streets of Paris demonstrated to what extremities the ferocity of human nature can be driven by political passion. Who led those blood-thirsty mobs? Who shrieked loudest in that hurricane of passion? Woman. Her picture upon the pages of history to-day is indelible. In the city of Paris in those ferocious mobs the controlling agency, nay, not agency, but the controlling and principal power, came from those whom God has intended to be the soft and gentle angels of mercy throughout the world. But I have said more than I intended. I ask that this pamphlet be printed in my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. If there be no objection, the pamphlet will be printed in the RECORD as requested by the Senator from Missouri. The Chair hears no objection.
The pamphlet is as follows:
THE LAW OF WOMAN-LIFE.
The external arguments on both sides the modern woman question have been pretty thoroughly presented and well argued. It seems needless to repeat or recombine them; but in one relation they have scarcely been handled with any direct purpose. Justice and expediency have been the points insisted on or contested; these have not gone back far enough; they have not touched the central fact, to set it forth in its force and finality. The fact is original and inherent, behind and at the root of the entire matter, with all its complication and circumstance. We have to ask a question to which it is the answer, and whose answer is that of the whole doubt and dispute.
What is the law of woman-life?
What was she made woman for, and not man?
Shall we look back to that old third chapter of Genesis?
When mankind had taken the knowledge and power of good and evil into their own hands through the mere earthly wisdom of the serpent; when the woman had had her hasty outside way and lead, according to the story, and woe had come of it, what was the sentence? And was it a penance, or a setting right, or a promise, or all three?
The serpent was first dealt with. The narrow policy, the keen cunning, the little, immediate outlook, the expedient motive; all that was impersonated of temporary shift and outward prudence in mortal affairs, regardless of, or blind to, the everlasting issues; all, in short, that represented material and temporal interest as a rule and order–and is not man’s external administration upon the earth largely forced to be a legislation upon these principles and economies?–was disposed of with the few words, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman.”
Was this punishment–as reflected upon the woman–or the power of a grand retrieval for her? Not to man, who had been led, and who would be led again, by the woman, was the commission of holy revenge intrusted; but henceforth, “I will set the woman against thee.” Against the very principle and live prompting of evil, or of mere earthly purpose and motive. “Between thy seed and her seed.” Your struggle with her shall be in and for the very life of the race. “It,” her life brought forth, “shall bruise thy head,” thy whole power, and plan, and insidious cunning; “and thou shall bruise,” shalt sting, torment, hinder, and trouble in the way and daily going, “his heel,” his footstep. Thou, the subtle and creeping thing of the ground, shalt lurk after and threaten with crookedness and poison the ways of the men-children in their earth-toiling; the woman, the mother, shall turn upon thee for and in them and shall beat thee down!
Unto the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.” The burden and the glory are set in one. The pain of the world shall be in your heart; the trouble, the contradiction of it, shall be against your love and insight. But your pain shall be your power; you shall be the life-bearer; you shall hold the motive; yours shall be the desire, and your husband’s the dominion. Therefore shall you bring your aspiration to him, that he may fulfill it for you. “Your desire shall be unto him, and he shall rule.”
And unto Adam He said, “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife”–yes, and because thou wilt hearken–“thy sorrow shall be in the labor of the earth; the ground shall be cursed;” in all material things shall be cross and trouble, not against you, but “for your sake.” “In your sorrow you shall eat of it all the days of your life.” Your need and struggle shall be with external things, and with the ruling of them. “For your sake,” that you may learn your mastery, inherit your true power, carry out with ease and understanding the desire and need of the race, which woman represents, discerns afar, and pleads to you.
And Adam bowed before the Lord’s judgment; we are not told that he answered anything to that; but he turned to his wife, and in that moment “called her name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” Then and there was the division made; and to which, can we say, was the empire given? Both were set in conditions, hemmed in to divine and special work: man, by the stress and sorrow of the ground; woman, by the stress and sorrow of her maternity, and of her spiritual conception, making her truly the “mother of all the living.”
At the beginning of human history, or tradition, then, we get the answer to our question: the law of woman-life is central, interior, and from the heart of things; the law of the man’s life is circumferential, enfolding, shaping, bearing on and around, outwardly; wheel within wheel is the constitution of human power. It will be an evil day for the world when the nave shall leave its place and contend for that of the felloe. Iron-rimmed for its busy revolution and outward contact is the life and strength of man; but the tempered steel is at the heart and within the soul of the woman, that she may bear the silent pressure of the axle, and quietly and invisibly originate and support the entire onward movement. “The spirit of the living creature is in the wheels,” and they can move no otherwise. “When the living creatures went, the wheels went by them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.” That was what Ezekiel saw in his vision.
There can he no going forward without a life and presence and impulse at the center; and in the organization of humanity there is where the place and power of woman have been put. For good or for evil, for the serpent or for the redeeming Christ, she must move, must influence, must achieve beforehand, and at the heart; she must be the mother of the race; she must be the mother of the Messiah. Not woman in her own person, but “one born of woman,” is the Saviour. For everything that is formed of the Creator, from the unorganized stone to the thought of righteousness in the heart of the race, there must be a matrix; in the creation and in the recreation of His human child God makes woman and the soul of woman His blessed organ and instrument. When woman clears herself of her own perversions, her self-imposed limitations, returns to her spiritual power and place, and cries, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word,” then shall the spirit descend unto her; then shall come the redemption.
Take this for the starting-point; it is the key.
Within, behind, antecedent to all result in action, are the place and office of the woman–by the law of woman-life. And all question of her deed and duty should be brought to this test. Is it of her own, interior, natural relation, putting her at her true advantage, harmonious with the key to which her life is set? I think this suffrage question must settle itself precisely upon this ground-principle, and that all argument should range conclusively around it. Judging so, we should find, I think, that not at the polls, where the last utterance of a people’s voice is given–where the results of character, and conscience, and intelligence are shown–is her best and rightful work: on the contrary, that it is useless here, unless first done elsewhere. But where little children learn to think and speak–where men love and listen, and the word is forming–is the office she has to fill, the errand she has to do. The question is, can she do both? Is there need that she should do both? Does not the former and greater include the latter and less?
Hers are indeed the primary meetings: in her nursery, her home, and social circles; with other women, with young men, upon whose tone and character in her maturity her womanhood and motherhood join their beautiful and mighty influence; above all, among young girls–the “little women,” to whom the ensign and commission are descending–is her undisputed power. Purify politics? Purify the sewers? But what if, first, the springs, and reservoirs, and conduits could be watched, guarded, filtered, and then the using be made clean and careful all through the homes; a better system devised and carried out for separating, neutralizing, destroying hurtful refuse? Then the poisonous gases might not be creeping back upon us through our enforced economies, our makeshifts and stop-gaps of outside legislation. For legislation is, after all, but cut-off, curb, and patch; an external, troublesome, partial, uncertain application of hindrance and remedy. What physician will work with lotion and plaster when he can touch, and control, and heal at the very seat of the disease?
It is the beginning of the fulfillment that women have waked to the consciousness that they have not as yet filled their full place in human life and affairs. Only has not the mistake been made of contending with and grappling results, when causes were in their hands? Have they not let go the mainsprings to run after and effectually push with pins the refractory cogs upon the wheel-rims?
Woman always deserts herself when she puts her life and motive and influence in mere outsides. Outsides of fashion and place, outsides of charm and apparel, outsides of work and ambition–she must learn that these are not her true showing; she must go hack and put herself where God has called her to be with Himself, at the silent, holy inmost; then we shall feel, if not at once, yet surely soon or some time, a new order beginning. He, the Father of all, gives it to us to be the motherhood. That is the great solving and upraising word; not limited to mere parentage, but the law of woman-life. For good or for evil she mothers the world.
Not all are called to motherhood in the literal sense, but all are called to the great, true motherhood in some of its manifold trusts and obligations. “_Noblesse oblige_;” you can not lay it down. “More are the children of the desolate than of her who hath a husband.” All the little children that are born must look to womanhood somewhere for mothering. Do they all get it? All the works and policies of men look back somewhere for a true “desire” toward and by which only they can rule. Is the desire of the woman–of the home, the mother-motive of the world and human living–kept in the integrity and beauty for which it was intrusted to her, that it might move the power of man to noble ends?
Do you ask the governing of the nation? You have the making of the nation. Would you choose your statesmen? First make your statesmen.
Indeed the whole cause on trial may be summarily ended by the proving of an alibi, an elsewhere of demand. Is woman needed at the caucuses, conventions, polls? She is needed, at the same time, elsewhere. Two years of time and strength, of thought and love, from some woman, are essential for every little human being, that he may even begin a life. When you remember that every man is once a little child, born of a woman, trained–or needing training–at a woman’s hands; that of the little men, every one of whom takes and shapes his life so, come at length the hand for the helm, the voice for the law, and the arm to enforce law–what do you want more for a woman’s opportunity and control?
Which would you choose as a force, an advantage, in settling any question of public moment, or as touching your own private interest through the general management–the right to go upon election day and cast one vote, or a hold beforehand upon the individual ear and attention of each voter now qualified? The ability to present to him your argument, to show him the real point at issue, to convince and persuade him of the right and lasting, instead of the weak and briefly politic way? This initial privilege is in the hands of woman; assuming that she can be brought to feel and act as a unit, which appears to be what is claimed for her in the argument for her regeneration of the outer political word.
But already and separately, if every intelligent, conscientious woman can but reach one man, and influence him from the principle involved–from her interior perception of it, kept pure on purpose from bias and temptation that assail him in the outside mix and jostle–will she not have done her work without the casting of a ballot? And what becomes of “taxation without representation,” when, from Eden down, Eve can always plead with Adam, can have the first word instead of the last–if she knows what that first word is, in herself and thence in its power with him–can beguile him to his good instead of to his harm, as indeed she only meant to do in that first ignorant experiment? Would it be any less easy to qualify for and accomplish this than to convince and outnumber in public gathering not only bodies of men but the mass of women that will also have to be confronted and convinced or overborne?
Preconceived opinions, minds made up, men not so easily beguiled to the pure good, you say? Woman quite as apt to make mistakes out of Paradise as in? That only returns us to the primal need and opportunity. Get the man to listen to you before his mind is made up–before his manhood is made up; while it is in the making. That is just the power and place that belong to you, and you must seize and fill. It is your natural right; God gave it to you. “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.”
We can not do all in one day, and in such a day of the world as this. We plant trees for posterity where forests have been laid waste and the beautiful work of life is to be done over again; we can not expect to see our fruit in souls and in the nation at less cost of faith and time. Take care, then, of the little children: the men children, to make men of them; the women children–oh, yes, even above all–to make ready for future mothering–to snatch from the evil that works over against pure womanliness. Until you have done this let men fend for themselves in rough outsides a little longer; except, perhaps, as wise, able women whom the trying transition time calls forth may find fit way and place for effort and protest–there is always room for that, and noble work has been and is being done; but do not rear a new generation of women to expect and desire charges and responsibilities reversive of their own life-law, through whose perfect fulfillment alone may the future clean place be made for all to work in.
Is there excess of female population? Can not all expect the direct rule of a home? Is not this exactly, perhaps, just now, for the more universal remedial mothering that in this age is the thing immediately needed? Let her who has no child seek where she can help the burdened mother of many; how she can best reach with influence, and wisdom, and cherishing, the greatest number–or most efficiently a few–of these dear, helpless, terrible little souls, who are to make, in a few years, a new social condition; a better and higher, happier and safer, or a lower, worse, bitterer, more desperately complicated and distressful one.
“Desire earnestly the best gifts,” said Saint Paul, after enumerating the gifts of teaching and prophecy and authority; “and I show you,” he goes on, “a yet more excellent way.” Charity–not mere alms, or toleration, or general benignity, out of a safe self-provision; but _caritas_–nearness, and caring, and loving,–the very essence of mothering; the way to and hold of the heart of it all, the heart of the life of humanity. “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” That is the first word; it charges womanhood itself, which must be set utterly right before it can take hold to right the world. Here are at once task and mission and rewarding sway.
Woman has got off the track; she must see that first, and replace herself. We are mothering the world still; but we are mothering it, in a fearfully wide measure, all wrong.
Sacrifice is the beginning of all redemption. We must give up. We must even give up the wish and seeming to have a hand in things, that we may work unseen in the elements, and make them fit and healthful; that daily bread and daily life may be sweet again in dear, old, homely ways, and plentiful with all truly blessed opportunities. We are not to organize the world, or to conquer it, or to queen it. We are just to take it again and mother it. If woman would begin that, search out the cradles–of life and character–and take care of the whole world of fifty years hence in taking care of them, calling upon men and the state, when needful, to authorize her action and furnish outward means for it–I wonder what might come, as earnest of good, even in this our day, in which we know not our visitation?
And here again come allowance and exception for what women can always do when this world-mothering forces an appeal to the strength and authority of man. Women have never been prevented from doing their real errands in the world, even outside the domestic boundary. They have defended their husbands’ castles in the old chivalrous times, when the male chivalry was away at the crusades. They have headed armies when Heaven called them; only Heaven never called all the women at once; but when the king was crowned, the mission done, they have turned back with desire to their sheltered, gentle, unobtrusive life again. There has no business to be a standing army of women; not even a standing political army. Women have navigated and brought home ships when commanders have died or been stricken helpless upon the ocean; they have done true, intelligent, patient work for science, art, religion; and those have done the most who have never stopped to contend first, whether a woman, as such, may do it or not.
Look at what Dorothea Dix has done, single-handed, single-mouthed, in asylums and before legislatures. Women have sat on thrones, and governed kingdoms well, when that was the station in life to which God called them. If Victoria of England has been anything, she has been the mother of her land; she has been queen and protecting genius of its womanhood and homes. And when a woman does these things, as called of God–not talks of them, as to whether she may make claim to do them–she carries a weight from the very sanctity out of which she steps, as woman, that moves men unlike the moving of any other power. Shall she resign the chance of doing really great things, of meeting grand crises, by making herself common in ward-rooms and at street-corners, and abolishing the perfect idea of home by no longer consecrating herself to it?
If individual woman, as has been said, may gain and influence individual man, and so the man-power in affairs–a body of women, purely as such, with cause, and plea, and reason, can always have the ear and attention of bodies of men; but to do this they must come straight from their home sanctities, as representing them–as able to represent them otherwise than men, because of their hearth-priestesshood; not as politicians, bred and hardened in the public arenas.
That the family is the heart of the state, and that the state is but the widened family, is the fact which the old vestal consecration, power, and honor set forth and kept in mind.
The voice which has of late been so generally conceded to women in town, decisions as regarding public schools, is an instance of the fittingness of relegating to them certain interests of which they should know more than men, because–applying the key-test with which we have started–it has direct relation to and springs from their motherhood. But can one help suggesting that if the movement had been to place women, merely and directly, upon the committees, by votes of men who saw that this work might be in great part best done by them; if women had asked and offered for the place without the jostle of the town-meeting, or putting in that wedge for the ballot–the thing might have been as readily done, and the objection, or political precedent, avoided.
It is not the real opportunity, when that arises or shows itself in the line of her life-law, that is to be refused for woman. It is the taking from internal power to add to external complication of machinery and to the friction of strife. Let us just touch upon some of the current arguments concerning these external impositions which one set is demanding and the other entreating against.
If voting is to be the chief power in woman’s hands, or even a power of half the moment that is contended for it, it will grow to be the motive and end, the all-absorbing object, with women that it is with men.
The gubernatorial canvass, the presidential year, these will interrupt and clog all home business, suspend decisions, paralyze plans, as they do with men, or else we shall not be much, as thorough politicians, after all. And if we talk of mending all that, of putting politics in their right place, and governing by pure principle instead of party trick, and stumping and electioneering, we go back in effect to the acknowledgment that only in the interior work, and behind politics, can women do better things at all; which, precisely, was to be demonstrated.
Think, simply, of election day for women.
Would it be so invariably easy a thing for a home-keeper to do, at the one opportunity of the year, or the four years, on a particular day, her duty in this matter? It is easy to say that it takes no more time than a hundred other things that some do; but setting apart all the argument that previous time and strength must have been spent in properly qualifying, how many of the hundred other things are done now without interruption, postponement, hindrance, through domestic contingencies? or are there a hundred other things done when the home contingencies are really met by a woman? A woman’s life is not like a man’s. That a man’s life may be–that he may transact his out-door business; keep his hours and appointments; may cast his vote on election day; may represent wife and children in all wherein the community cares for, or might injure him and them–the woman, some woman, must be at the home post, that the home order may go on, from which he derives that command of time, and freedom from hindering necessities, which leave him to his work. And so, as the old proverb says, while man’s work is from sun to sun–made definite, a matter to which he can go forth, and from which he can come in–a woman’s work, of keeping the place of the forthgoing and incoming, is never done, from the very nature and ceaseless importance of it.
Must she go to the polls, sick or well, baby or no baby, servant or no servant, strength or no strength, desire or no desire? If she have cook and housemaid they are to go also, and number her two to one, anyway; probably on election day, which they would make a holiday, they would–as at other crises, of birth, sickness, death, house-cleaning, which should occur in no first-class families–come down upon her with their appropriate _coup d’etat_, and “leave;” making the State-stroke, in this instance, of scoring three votes, two dropped and one lost, for the irrepressible side.
How will it be when Norah, and Maggie, and Katie have not only their mass and confession, their Fourth-of-July and Christmas, their mission-weeks, their social engagements and family plans, and their appointments with their dress-makers, to curtail your claims upon their bargained time and service, but their share in the primary meetings and caucuses, committees, and torch-light processions, and mass meetings? For what shall prevent the excitements, the pleasurings, the runnings hither and thither, that men delight in from following in the train of politics and parties with the common woman? Perhaps it may even be discovered, to the still further detriment of our already painfully hampered and perplexed domestic system, that the pursuit of fun, votes, offices, is more remunerative, as well as gentlewomanly–as Micawber might express it–than the cleansing of pots and pans, the weekly wash, or the watching of the roast. Perhaps in that enfranchised day there will be no Katies and Maggies’ and the Norahs will know their place no more. Then the enlightened womanhood may have to begin at the foundation and glorify the kitchen again. And good enough for her, in the wide as well as primitive sense of the phrase, and a grand turn in the history that repeats itself toward the old, forgotten, peaceful side of the cycle it may be!
But the argument does not rest upon any such points as these. It rests upon the inside nature of a woman’s work; upon the need there is to begin again to-day at the heart of things and make that right; upon the evident fact that this can be done none too soon or earnestly, if the community and the country are not to keep on in the broad way to a threatened destruction; and upon the certainty that it can never be done unless it is done by woman, and with all of woman’s might. Not by struggles for new and different place, but by the better, more loving, more intelligent, deep-seeing, and deep-feeling filling of her own place, that none will dispute and none can take from her. We are not where woman was in the old brutal days that are so often quoted; and we shall not, need not, return to that. Christianity has disposed of that sort of argument. We are on a vantage ground for the doing of our real, essential work better than it has been done ever before in the history of the world; and we are madly leaving our work and our vantage together.
The great step made by woman was in the generation preceding this one of restlessness–the restlessness that has come through the first feeling of great power. It was made in the time when women learned physiology, that they might rear and nurse their families and help their neighborhoods understandingly; science, that they might teach and answer little children, and share the joy of knowledge that was spreading swiftly in the earth; political history and economy, that they might listen and talk to their brothers and husbands and sons, and leaven the life of the age as the bread in the mixing; business figures, rules, and principles, that they might sympathize, counsel, help, and prudentially work with and honestly strengthen the bread-winners. The good work was begun in the schools where girls were first told, as George B. Emerson used to tell us Boston girls, that we were learning everything he could teach us, in order to be women: wives, mothers, friends, social influencers, in the best and largest way possible. Women grew strong and capable under such instruction and motive. Are their daughters and grand-daughters about to leap the fence, leave their own realm little cared for–or doomed to be–undertake the whole scheme of outside creation, or contest it with the men? Then God help the men! God save the Commonwealth!
We are past the point already where homes are suffering, or liable to suffer, neglect or injury; they are already left unmade. Shall this go on? Between frivolities and ambitions, between social vanities, and shows, and public meddling’s and mixings–for where one woman is needed and doing really brave, true work, there are a hundred rushing forth for the mere sake of rushing–is the primitive home, the power of heaven upon earth to slip away from among us? Let us not build outsides which have no insides, let us not put a face upon things which has no reality behind it. Beware lest we make the confusion that we need the suffrage to help us unmake; lest we tear to pieces that we may patch again. Crazy patchwork that would be, indeed!
Are women’s votes required because men will not legislate away evils that they do not heartily wish away? Is government corrupted because men desire shield and opportunity for dishonest speculation; authority and countenance for nefarious combinations? The more need to go to work at the beginning rather than to plunge into the pitch and be defiled; more need to make haste and educate a better generation of men, if it be so we can not, except _vi et armis_, influence the generation that is. But do you think that if women are in earnest–enough in earnest to give up, as they seem to be to demand–they might not bring their real power to bear even upon these evil things, in their root and inception, and even now? Suppose women would not live in houses, or wear jewels and gowns, that are bought for them out of wicked millions made upon the stock exchange?
Suppose they would stop decorating their dwellings to an agony, crowding them hurriedly with this and that of the last and newest, just because it is last and new, making a show and rivalry of what is not a true-grown beauty of a home at all, but a mere meretriciousness; suppose they would so set to work and change society that displays and feastings, which use up at every separate one a year’s comfortable support for a quiet, modest family, should be given up as vulgarities; that people should care for, and be ready for, a true interchange of life and thought, and simple, uncrowded opportunities for these; suppose women would say, “No; I will not blaze at Newport, or run through Europe dropping American eagles or English sovereigns after me like the trail of a comet, or the crumbs that Hop-‘o-my-thumb let fall from his pocket that the people at home might track the way he had gone; because if I have money, there is better work to be done with it; and I will not have the money that is made by gambling manipulations and cheats.”
Do you think this would have no influence? More than that, and further back, and lowlier down, suppose they should say, every one, “I will not have the new, convenient house, the fresh carpetings, the pretty curtains, or even the least, most fitting freshness, until I know the means are earned for me with honest service to the world, and by no lucky turn of even a small speculation.” Further back yet, suppose them to declare, “I will not have the home at all, nor my own happiness, unless it can be based and builded on the kind of life-work that helps to make a real prosperity; that really goes to the building and safe-keeping of a whole nation of such homes.” Would there be no power in that? Would it not be a kind of woman-suffrage to settle the very initials of all that ever bears upon the public question? And to bring that sort of woman on the stage, and to the front, is there not enough work to do, and enough “higher education” to insist on and secure?
After all, men work for women; or, if they think they do not, it would leave them but sorry satisfaction to abandon them to such existence as they could arrange without us. In blessed homes, or in scattered dissipations of show, amusement, or the worse which these shows and amusements are but terribly akin to, women give purpose to and direct the results of all men’s work. If the false standards of living first urge them, until at length the horrible intoxication of the game itself drives them on further and deeper, are we less responsible for the last state of those men than for the first?
Do you say, if good women refused these things and tried for a simpler and truer living, there are plenty of bad ones who would take them anyhow, and supply the motive to deeper and more unmitigated evil? Ah, there come both answer and errand again. Raise the fallen–at least save the growing womanhood–stop the destruction that rushes accelerating on, before you challenge new difficulty and danger with an indiscriminate franchise. Are not these bad women the very “plenty” that would out-balance you at the polls, if you persist in trying the “patch-and-plaster” remedy of suffrage and legislation?
Recognize the fact, the law, that your power, your high commission, is inward–vital–formative, and casual. Bring all questions of choice or duty to this test, will it work at the heart of things, among the realities and forces? Try your own life by this; remember that mere external is falsehood and death. The letter killeth. Give up all that is only of the appearance–or even chiefly so, in conscious delight and motive–in person, surrounding pursuit. Let your self-presentation, your home-making and adorning, your social effort and interest, your occupation and use of talent, all shape and issue for the things that are essentially and integrally good, and that the world needs to have prevail. Until you can do this, and induce such doing, it is of little use to clamor for mere outward right, or to contend that it would be rightly applied.
Work as you will, and widely as you can, for schools, in associations, in everything whose end is to teach, enlighten, enlarge women, and so the world. Help and protect the industries of women; but keep those industries within the guiding law of woman-life. Do not throw down barriers that take down safeguards with them; that make threatening breaches in the very social structure. If women must serve in shops, demand and care for it that it shall be in a less mixed, a more shielded way than now. The great caravansaries of trade are perilous by their throng, publicity, and weariness. There used to be women’s shops; choice places, where a woman’s care and taste had ruled before the counters were spread; where women could quietly purchase things that were sure to be beautiful or of good service; there were not the tumult and ransacking that kill both shop-girl and shopper now.
This is one instance, and but one, of the rescuing that ought to be attempted. There ought at least to be distinct women’s departments, presided over by women of good, motherly tone and character, in the places of business which women so frequent, and where the thoughtful are aware of much that makes them tremble. And surely a great many of the girls and women who choose shop-work, because they like its excitement, ought rather to be in homes, rendering womanly service, and preparing to serve in homes of their own–leaving their present places to young men who might perhaps begin so to earn the homes to offer them. Will not this apply all the way up, into the arts and the professions even? There must needs be exceptional women perhaps; there are, and will be, time and errand and place for them; but Heaven forbid that they should all become exceptional.
Once more, work for these things that are behind, and underlie; believing that woman’s place is behind and within, not of repression, but of power; and that if she do not fill this place it will be empty; there will be no main spring. Meanwhile she will get her rights as she rises to them, and her defenses where she needs them; everything that helps, defends, uplifts the woman uplifts man and the whole fabric, and man has begun to find it out. If he “will give the suffrage if women want it,” as is said, why shall he not as well give them the things that they want suffrage for and that they are capable of representing? Believe me, this work, and the representation which grows out of it, can no longer be done if we attempt the handling of political machinery–the making of platforms, the judging of candidates, the measuring and disputation of party plans and issues, and all the tortuous following up of public and personal political history.
Do you say, men have their individual work in the world, and all this beside and of it, and that therefore we may? Exactly here comes in again the law of the interior. Their work is “of it”–falls in the way. They rub against it as they go along. Men meet each other in the business thoroughfares, at the offices and the street corners; we are in the dear depths of home. We are with the little ones, of whom is not this kingdom, but the kingdom of heaven, which we, through them, may help to come. This is just where we must abandon our work, if we attempt the doing of theirs. And here is where our prestige will desert us, whenever great cause calls us to speak from out our seclusions, and show men, from our insights and our place, the occasion and desire that look unto their rule. They will not listen then; they will remand us to the ballot-box.
“Inside politics” is a good word. That is just where woman ought to be, as she ought to be inside everything, insisting upon and implanting the truth and right that are to conquer. And she can not be inside and outside both. She can not do the mothering and the home-making, the watching and ministry, the earning and maintaining hold and privilege and motive influence behind and through the acts of men–and all the world-wide execution of act beside. Therefore, we say, do not give up the substance which you might seize, for the shadow which you could not hold fast if you were to seem to grasp it. Work on at the foundations. Insist on truth and right; put them into all your own life, taking all the beam out of your own eye before demanding–well, we will say the mote, for generosity’s sake, and for the holy authority of the word–out of the brother’s eyes.
Establish pure, honest, lovely things–things of good report–in the nurseries, the schools, the social circles where you reign, and the outside world and issue will take form and heed for themselves. The nation, of which the family is the root, will be made, and built, and saved accordingly. Every seed hath its own body. The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent-head of evil, and shall rise triumphant to become the ennobled, recreated commonwealth. Then shall pour forth the double paean that thrills through the glorious final chorus of Schumann’s Faust–men and women answering in antiphons–
“The indescribable,
Here it is done;
The ever-womanly
Beckons us on!”
Then shall Mary–the fulfilled, ennobled womanhood–sing her Magnificat; standing to receive from the Lord, and to give the living word to the nations:
“My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God, my Saviour. For He hath looked upon the low estate of His handmaiden; For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed, For He that is mighty hath done to me great things; And holy is His name.
And His mercy is unto generations and generations.”
The coming new version of the Old Testament gives us, we are told, among other more perfect renderings, this one, which fitly utters charge and promise:
“The Lord gave the word;
Great was the company
Of those
That published it.”
“The Lord giveth the word;
And the women that bring
Glad tidings
Are a great host.”
ADELINE D.T. WHITNEY.
Mr. BLAIR. Mr. President, before the vote is taken I desire to say but a word. Early in the session I had the opportunity of addressing the Senate upon the general merits of the question. I said then all that I cared to say; but I wish to remind the Senate before the vote is taken that the question to be decided is not whether upon the whole the suffrage should be extended to women, but whether in the proper arena for the amendment of the Constitution ordained by the Constitution itself one-third of the American people shall have the opportunity to be heard in the discussion of such a proposed amendment–whether they shall have the opportunity of the exercise of the first right of republican government and of the American and of any free citizen, the submission to the popular tribunal, which has alone the power to decide the question whether on the whole, upon a comparison of the arguments pro and con bearing one way and the other upon this great subject, the American people will extend the suffrage to those who are now deprived of it.
That is the real question for the Senate to consider. It is not whether the Senate would, itself, extend the suffrage to women, but whether those men who believe that women should have the suffrage shall be heard, so that there may be a decision and an end made of this great subject, which has now been under discussion more than a quarter of a century, and to-day for the first time even in the legislative body which is to submit the proposition to the country for consideration has there been a prospect of reaching a vote.
I appeal to Senators not to decide this question upon the arguments which have been offered here to-day for or against the merits of the proposition. I appeal to them to decide this question upon that other principle to which I have adverted, whether one-third of the American people shall be permitted to go into the arena of public discussion of the States, among the people of the States, and before the Legislatures of the States, and be heard upon the issue, shall the general Constitution be so amended as to extend this right of suffrage? If, with this opportunity, those who believe in woman suffrage fail, they must be content; for I agree with the Senators upon the opposite side of the Chamber and with all who hold that if the suffrage is to be extended at all, it must be extended by the operation of existing law. I believe it to be an innate right; yet an innate right must be exercised only by the consent of the controling forces of the State. That is all that woman asks. That is all that any one asks who believes in this right belonging to her sex.
As bearing simply upon the question whether there is a demand by a respectable number of people to be heard on this issue, I desire to read one or two documents in my possession. I offer in this connection, in addition to the innumerable petitions which have been placed before the Senate and before the other House, the petition of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. I take it that no Senator will raise the question whether this organization be or be not composed of the very _elite_ of the women of America. At least two hundred thousand of the Christian women of this country are represented in this organization. It is national in its character and scope; it is international, and it exists in every State and in every Territory of the Union. By their officers, Miss Frances E. Willard, the president; Mrs. Caroline B. Buell, corresponding secretary; Mrs. Mary A. Woodbridge, recording secretary; Mrs. L.M.N. Stevens, assistant recording secretary; Miss Esther Pugh, treasurer; Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, superintendent of department of franchise, and Mrs. Henrietta B. Wall, secretary of department of franchise, they bring this petition to the Senate. It has been indorsed by the action of the body at large. They say:
Believing that governments can be just only when deriving their powers from the consent of the governed, and that in a government professing to be a government of the people, all the people of a mature age should have a voice, and that all class-legislation and unjust discrimination against the rights and privileges of any citizen is fraught with danger to the republic, and inasmuch as the ballot in popular governments is a most potent element in all moral and social reforms:
We, therefore, on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Christian women engaged in philanthropic effort, pray you to use your influence, and vote for the passage of a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, prohibiting the disfranchisement of any citizen on the ground of sex.
I have also just received, in addition to other matter before the Senate, the petition of the Indianapolis Suffrage Association, or of that department of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union which has the control of the discussion and management of the operations of the union with reference to the suffrage. I shall not take the time of the Senate to read it. The letter transmitting the petition is as follows:
INDIANAPOLIS, IND., _January_ 12, 1886.
DEAR SIR: I have sent the inclosed petitions and arguments to every member on the Committee on Woman Suffrage, hoping if they are read they may have some influence in securing a favorable report for the passage of a sixteenth amendment, giving the ballot to women.
Will you urge upon the members of the committee the importance of their perusal?
Respectfully,
MRS. Z.G. WALLACE, _Sup’t Dep’t for Franchise of N.W.C.T.U._
Hon. H.W. BLAIR.
I will add in this connection a letter lately received by myself, written by a lady who may not be so distinguished in the annals of the country, yet, at the same time, she has attained to such a position in the society where she lives that she holds the office of postmaster by the sanction of the Government, and has held it for many years. She seems, as other ladies have seemed, to possess the capacity to perform the duties of this governmental office, so far as I know, to universal satisfaction. At all events, it is the truth that no woman, so far as I have ever heard, holding the office of postmaster, and no woman who has ever held the position of clerk under the Government, or who has ever discharged in State or in Nation any executive or administrative function, has as yet been a defaulter, or been guilty of any misconduct or malversation in office, or contributed anything by her own conduct to the disgrace of the appointing or creating official power. This woman says:
NEW LONDON, WIS., _January 18, 1887_.
Hon. H.W. BLAIR, _Washington, D.C._:
DEAR SIR: Thank you for the address you sent; also for your kindness in remembering us poor mortals who can scarcely get a hearing in such an august body as the Senate of these United States, though I have reason to believe we furnished the men to fill those seats.
There is something supremely ridiculous in the attitude of a man who tells you women are angelic in their nature; that it is his veneration for the high and lofty position they occupy which hopes to keep them forever from the dirty vortex of politics, and then to see him glower at her because she wishes politics were not so dirty, and believes the mother element, by all that makes humanity to her doubly sacred, is just what is needed for its purification.
We have become tired of hearing and reiterating the same old theories and are pleased that you branched out in a new direction, and your argument contains so much which is new and fresh.
We do care for this inestimable boon which one-half the people of this Republic have seized, and are claiming that God gave it to them and are working very zealously to help God keep it for them. (We will remember the Joshua who leads us out of bondage.)
I used to think the Prohibition party would be our Moses, but that has only gone so far as to say, “You boost us upon a high and mighty pedestal, and when we see our way clear to pull you after us we will venture to do so; but you can not expect it while we run any risk of becoming unpopular thereby.”
Liberty stands a goddess upon the very dome of our Capitol, Liberty’s lamp shines far out into the darkness, a beacon to the oppressed, a dazzling ray of hope to serf and bondsmen of other climes, yet here a sword unforbidden is piercing the heart of the mother whose son believes God has made us to differ so that he can go astray and return. But, alas, he does not return.
Help us to stand upon the same political footing with our brother; this will open both his and our eyes and compel him to stand upon the same moral footing with us. Only this can usher in millenium’s dawn.
This letter is signed, by Hannah E. Patchin, postmaster at New London, Wis.
As bearing upon the extent of this agitation, I have many other letters of the same character and numerous arguments by women upon this subject, but I can not ask the attention of the Senate to them, for what I most of all want is a vote. I desire a record upon this question. However, I ought to read this letter, which is dated Salina, Kans., December 13, 1886. The writer is Mrs. Laura M. Johns. She is connected with the suffrage movement in that State, and as bearing upon the extent of this movement and as illustrative not only of the condition of the question in Kansas, but very largely throughout the country, perhaps, especially throughout the northern part of the country, I read this and leave others of like character, as they are, because we have not the time:
I am deeply interested in the fate of the now pending resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, conferring upon women the exercise of the suffrage. The right is theirs now.
I see, in speaking to that resolution on December 8 in the Senate, that you refer to Miss Anthony’s experiences in the October campaign in Kansas as evidence in part of the growth of interest in this movement, and of sentiment favorable to it, and I am writing now just to tell you about it.
When I planned and arranged for those eleven conventions in eleven fine cities of this State, I thought I knew that the people of Kansas felt a strong interest in the question of woman suffrage; but when with Miss Anthony and others I saw immense audiences of Kansas people receive the gospel of equal suffrage with enthusiasm, saw them sitting uncomfortably crowded, or standing to listen for hours to arguments in favor of suffrage for women: saw the organization of strong and ably officered local, county, and district associations of the best and “brainiest” men and women in our first cities for the perpetuation of woman suffrage teachings; saw people of the highest social, professional, and business position give time, money and influence, to this cause; saw Miss Anthony’s life work honored and her feted and most highly commended, I concluded that I had before known but half of the interest and favorable sentiment in Kansas on this question. These meetings were very largely attended, and by all classes, and by people of all shades of religious and political belief. The representative people of the labor party were there, ministers, lawyers, all professions, and all trades.
No audiences could have been more thoroughly representative of the people; and as we held one (and more) convention in each Congressional district in the State, we certainly had, from the votes of those audiences in eleven cities, a truthful expression of the feeling of the people of the State of Kansas on this question. Many of the friends of the cause here are very willing to risk our fate to the popular vote.
In our conventions Miss Anthony was in the habit of putting the following questions to vote:
“Are you in favor of equal suffrage for women?”
“Do you desire that your Senators, INGALLS and PLUMB, and your seven Congressmen shall vote for the sixteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution?” and
“Do you desire your Legislature to extend municipal suffrage to women?”
In response there always came a rousing “yes,” except when the vote was a rising one, and then the house rose in a solid body. Miss Anthony’s call for the negative vote was answered by silence.
Petitions for municipal suffrage in Kansas are rolling up enormously. People sign them now who refused to do so last year. I tell you it is catching. Many people here are disgusted with our asking for such a modicum as municipal suffrage, and say they would rather sign a petition asking for the submission of an amendment to our State constitution giving us State suffrage. We have speakers now at work all over the State, their audiences and reception are enthusiastic, and their most radical utterances in favor of woman are the most kindly received and gain them the most applause.
And further to the same effect. I shall offer nothing more of that kind, but I have come in possession of some data bearing upon the question of the intellect of woman. The real objection seems to me to he that she does not know enough to vote; that it is the ignorant ballot that is dangerous; but that is a subject which of course I have no time to go into. However, I have some data collected very recently, and at my request, by a most intelligent gentleman of the State of Maine. Either of the Senators from that State will bear witness as to the high character of this gentleman, Mr. Jordan. He sent the data to me a few days ago. They show the relative standing of the two sexes in the high schools in the State of Maine where they are being educated together, and in one of the colleges of that State:
_High school No_. 1.–Average rank on scale of 100.–1882: boys 88.7, girls 91; 1883: boys 88.2, girls 91.3; 1884: boys 88.8, girls 91.9 (of the graduating class 7 girls and 1 boy were the eight highest in rank for the four years’ course); 1885: boys 88.6, girls 91.4 (eight highest in rank for four years’ course, 4 boys and 4 girls); 1886: boys 88.2, girls 91 (eight highest in rank for four years’ course, 7 girls and I boy).
_High school No_. 2.–Average rank on scale of 100.–1886: boys 90, girls 98 (six highest in rank for four years’ course, 6 girls).
_College_.–Average rank for fall term of the junior year on the scale of 40.–1882: boys 37.75, girls 37.93; 1883: boys 38.03, girls 38.70; 1884: boys 38.18, girls 88.59; 1885; boys 38.33, girls 38.13.
With only this last exception the average of the girls and young ladies in the high schools and at this institution of liberal training is substantially higher than that of the boys. I simply give that fact in passing, and there leave the matter.
I desire in closing simply to call for the reading of the joint resolution. I could say nothing to quicken the sense of the Senate on the importance of the question about to be taken. It concerns one-half of our countrymen, one-half of the citizens of the United States, but it is more than that, Mr. President. This question is radical, and it concerns the condition of the whole human race. I believe that in the agitation of this question lies the fate of republican government, and in that of republican government lies the fate of mankind. I ask for the reading of the joint resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution is before the Senate as in Committee of the Whole. It has been read. Does the Senator desire to have it read again?
Mr. BLAIR. Has it been read this afternoon?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. It has been.
Mr. BLAIR. That is all then. Now, I wish to have printed in the RECORD, by reason of the printed matter that has gone into the RECORD upon the other side, the arguments of Miss Anthony and her associates before the Senate committee, which is out of print as a document. These arguments are very terse and brief. I think it only just that woman, who is most interested, should be heard, at least under the circumstances when she has herself been heard on the other side through printed matter. It will not be burdensome to the RECORD, and I ask that this be done.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair hears no objection to the suggestion. The document will be printed in the RECORD.
The document is as follows:
ARGUMENTS BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE, UNITED STATES SENATE, MARCH 7, 1884.
By a committee of the Sixteenth Annual Washington Convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association, in favor of a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, that shall protect the right of women citizens to vote in the several States of the Union.
_Order of proceeding_.
The CHAIRMAN (Senator COCKRELL). We have allotted the time to be divided as the speakers may desire among themselves. We are now ready to hear the ladies.
Miss SUSAN B. ANTHONY. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the select committee: This is the sixteenth time that we have come before Congress in person, and the nineteenth annually by petitions. Ever since the war, from the winter of 1865-’66, we have regularly sent up petitions asking for the national protection of the citizen’s right to vote when the citizen happens to be a woman. We are here again for the same purpose. I do not propose to speak now, but to introduce the other speakers, and at the close perhaps will state to the committee the reasons why we come to Congress. The other speakers will give their thought from the standpoint of their respective States. I will first introduce to the committee Mrs. Harriet R. Shattuck, of Boston, Mass.
REMARKS BY MRS. HARRIET R. SHATTUCK.
Mrs. SHATTUCK. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: It seems as if it were almost unnecessary for us to come here at this meeting, because I feel that all we have to say and all we have to claim is known to you, and we can not add anything to what has been said in the past sixteen years.
But I should like to say one thing, and that is, that in my work it has seemed that if we could convince everybody of the motives of the suffragists we would go far toward removing prejudices. I know that those motives are very much misunderstood. Persons think of us as ambitious women, who are desirous for fame, and who merely come forward to make speeches and get before the public, or else they think that we are unfortunate beings with no homes, or unhappy wives, who are getting our livelihood in this sort of way. If we could convince every man who has a vote in this Republic that this is not the case, I believe we could go far toward removing the prejudice against us. If we could make them see that we are working here merely because we know that the cause is right, and we feel that we must work for it, that there is a power outside of ourselves which impels us onward, which says to us: go forward and speak to the people and try to bring them up to a sense of their duty and of our right. This is the belief that I have in regard to our position on this question. It is a matter of duty with us, and that is all.
In Massachusetts I represent a very much larger number of women than is supposed. It has always been said that very few women wish to vote. Believing that this objection, although it has nothing to do with the rights of the cause, ought to be met, the association of which I am president inaugurated last year a sort of canvass, which I believe never had been attempted before, whereby we obtained the proportion of women in favor and opposed to suffrage in different localities of our State. We took four localities in the city of Boston, two in smaller cities, and two in the country districts, and one also of school teachers in nine schools of one town. Those school teachers were unanimously in favor of suffrage, and in the nine localities we found that the proportion of women in favor was very large as against those opposed. The total of women canvassed was 814. Those in favor were 405; those opposed, 44; indifferent, 166; refused to sign, 160; not seen, 39. This, you see, is a very large proportion in favor. Those indifferent, and those who were not seen, were not included, because we claim that nobody can yet say that they are opposed or in favor until they declare themselves; but the 405 in favor against the 44 opposed were as 9 to 1. These canvasses were made by women who were of perfect respectability and responsibility, and they swore before a justice of the peace as to the truth of their statements.
So we have in Massachusetts this reliable canvass of the number of women in favor as to those opposed, and we find that it is 9 to 1.
These women, then, are the class whom I represent here, and they are women who can not come here themselves. Very few women in the country can come here and do this work, or do the work in their States, because they are in their homes attending to their duties,