Woman and the Republic / A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates :: CHAPTER III. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC.

CHAPTER III. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC.

The writers of the "History of Woman Suffrage" give the following account of the founding of their Association. In July, 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha O. Wright, and Ann McClintock issued an unsigned call for a convention, which was asked to consider the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman; and in preparation for the meeting, they wrote a "Declaration of Sentiments," which was adopted by the assembly. They say, in describing the writing of this declaration:— "The reports of Peace, Temperance, and Anti-Slavery conventions were examined, but all alike seemed too tame and pacific for the inauguration of a rebellion such as the world had never before seen. We knew women had wrongs, but how to state them was the difficulty, and this was increased from the fact that we ourselves were fortunately organized and conditioned…. After much delay, one of the circle took up the Declaration of 1776, and read it aloud with spirit and emphasis, and it was at once decided to adopt the historic document, with some slight changes. Knowing that women must have more to complain of than men under any circumstances possibly could, and seeing the Fathers had eighteen grievances, a protracted search was made through statute books, church usages, and the customs of society to find that exact number."

In such solemnly puerile fashion did they work out a travesty on one of the most august utterances ever penned. A young man who was present remarked: "Tour grievances must be grievous indeed when you are obliged to go to books in order to find them out." He might have added, "And they must be false indeed when you have to found most of your charges on dead- letter statutes and outgrown usages and customs."

The Preamble of their Declaration reads: "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course."

The declaration is as follows: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are suffer able, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they were accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled. The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world." Then follows a categorical parody of the eighteen grievances, which will be duly considered in this and later chapters.

After thirty years of Suffrage effort, the leaders say that this instrument contained all that the most radical have ever claimed. The Fathers of the Revolution say in their Preamble: "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." The Mothers of the Woman's Rebellion say: "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course." The strained and ridiculous attitude produced by ignoring the essential difference between a political movement and a sex movement is visible in every line, and yet that instinct which finds for a new cause its appropriate channel never carried more truly than in this presentment of the ultimate purpose of woman suffrage. The Fathers were met to dissolve the relations that bound their land politically to a foreign power, and to form a separate and equal nation. The Mothers were met to dissolve the relations that bound their sex politically to man, and to form a separate and equal sex organization. The Fathers proposed to free men, women, and children from the yoke of England. The Mothers proposed to free women and girls from the yoke of men. It is suggestive to consider the "slight changes," between the two Declarations.

The Fathers of the Revolution begin their protest by saying: "We hold these truths to be self-evident:—That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The Mothers of the Woman's Rebellion add nothing to the meaning, but detract greatly from the force of its expression, when in their parody they say: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men and women are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These women of all in America were the first to belittle themselves by seeming to assume that in a revolutionary document that was promulgated to declare a determination to wrest from tyranny the liberty that was an inalienable right for all, they and their sex were excluded because the generic term "man" was employed in relation to another inalienable right, which was about to be set forth,—that of revolution against intolerable tyranny. The Americans who framed that instrument would have been the last men in the world to assert that women were not the equals of men. They were not discussing abstract human or sex conditions. They met "to institute a new government." The Mothers of the Woman's Rebellion had an inalienable right to meet "to institute a new government," if they believed as sincerely as did the Fathers of the Revolution that "a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinced a design to reduce them under absolute despotism." Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were their natural and God-given rights. If they truly believed that these were trampled upon by government, they might be justified in revolting and attempting to form a new government. That they did not so believe, seems to be proved by their statement that "they knew that woman had wrongs, but how to state them was the difficulty, and this was increased from the fact that they themselves were fortunately organized and conditioned." The Declaration of Independence meant war against the ever-growing encroachment of despotism. The gauntlet was thrown down at the feet of a king by his subjects. The Declaration of Sentiments meant war against the whole social order as then constituted. The gauntlet was thrown down at the feet of man by those who declared him to be a determined foe.

They had not the remotest notion of "instituting a new government," far from it; they relied upon the old government to sustain them in making their attempted "rebellion" a revolution. Without the backing of the state's defence, they had no expectation or hope of enforcing any new enactment they might desire. They were gladly consenting to be governed, in order to prove that they withheld consent.

Should woman suffrage prevail, the foundation principles of democracy would have to be overthrown and "a new government instituted" in which the power should be delegated and not direct, if the nation thus formed was to "assume among the powers of the earth a separate and equal station." The leaders of the Suffrage movement well understood that they claimed no inalienable right to institute a new government, and this is again shown in another "slight change" made by them. The first count in the suffrage indictment against all men, but especially against those of the American Republic, reads as follows: "He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise." The Fathers made no claim or suggestion that the suffrage was an inalienable right, or a right at all. Not only is there nothing to intimate that voting was a natural right, but from that day to this it has been the theory and the practice of our Government to control the suffrage. The fact that "governments were instituted among men" for the purpose of securing inalienable rights, proves that in the opinion of the Declarers the method of instituting a government was not in itself inalienable. Governments to secure certain inalienable rights are instituted among men, wrote Jefferson, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." This was not the first government founded upon "consent of the governed." The English government had been so founded, but our fathers now refused their consent. That particular government could no longer exist for them with their consent. In their judgment, it had become destructive of the proper ends of all government, and so they proclaimed that the inalienable right to liberty made it—to use the words of the Declaration—"the right, the duty, of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to institute a new government."

In the New York Constitutional Convention of 1867, Mr. George William Curtis defended the proposition so to amend the Constitution as to extend the suffrage to women. In the course of his eloquent remarks he said: "The Chairman of the Committee asked Miss Anthony whether, if suffrage was a natural right, it could be denied to children? Her answer seemed to me perfectly satisfactory. She said simply, 'All that we ask is an equal and not an arbitrary regulation. If you have the right, we have it.'" To me it seems to discredit the logical powers both of Miss Anthony and of Mr. Curtis that one should have made this reply and the other should have rested content with it. That was a pertinent question, and it was not answered at all. To say "if you have the right, we have it," is not to tell whether one thinks children should have it. As a matter of fact, an agitation of "the rights of minors" arose from the discussion of "natural right," and also an agitation for "minority representation" that is continued to this day. Mr. Curtis added: "The honorable Chairman would hardly deny that to regulate the exercise of a right according to obvious reason and experience is one thing, to deny it absolutely and forever is another." To regulate a law is to abolish it, either relatively or absolutely, for some, and to maintain it for others. When the State of New York says that no alien who has not been naturalized shall vote, that no boy under twenty-one shall vote, that no person resident in one town or ward shall vote in another, that no criminal or pauper shall vote,—it acts on the natural principle of self-defence, which contravenes the dogma of a natural right of any one to the suffrage. On that principle it would be impossible for the Congress to impeach a President; to forbid, as it did, those who had been in rebellion from voting; or to deny the suffrage to a child or to any human being. Government itself becomes impossible. Judge Story, whom Suffrage writers claim as favorable to their cause on other grounds, says that the right of voting has always been treated as a granted and not a natural right, derived from and regulated by each country according to its ideas of government. Both Federal and State courts have decided again and again that there is no such thing as a natural right to suffrage.

The "consent of the governed" certainly meant something very different to our fathers, and to our statesmen, and to ourselves, from what it could mean to any other government on earth. Although the phrase itself may have been a euphemism which sprang from Jefferson's sympathy with the mighty rumblings of feeling that preceded the French Revolution, still, it was certainly meant that, so far as they could make it so, there should be vastly more consenting by popular vote than had been dreamed of in the mother country. But it did not mean that each and every individual in the state must consent to each and every law that governed him; for not only has no government ever been instituted which derived "just powers" in that way, but none ever will be, for there never can be such unanimity. It did not mean that every individual must consent to be governed somehow, by some scheme of government; for its laws were carefully framed so as to compel the external allegiance of those who never consent—the criminal and the anarchist. It did not mean even that consent, in the sense of agreement, was expected from a large body, or a small body, as the case might happen, of those who held views opposed to the policies that were controlling at any given time. It meant just what Jefferson meant in that other dictum of his: "The will of the majority is the natural law of every society, and the only sure guardian of the rights of man." Together they interpret each other, and are worthy of our Declaration and our Bill of Rights.

The inalienable right to liberty in all mankind forbids the right of anarchy in any of mankind; and the question of woman suffrage, strange as it may appear, actually narrows itself down, as it seems to me, to the question whether we shall have democracy or anarchy. Democratic government is at an end when those who issue decrees are not identical with those who can enforce those decrees.

But, after all, the claim to suffrage as a natural right has been practically abandoned by those who first made that claim. Their next proposition was, that it was a universal right, springing from the necessary conditions of organized society, and so should be granted to woman as a member of that society. They say in their Declaration: "He deprived her of the first right of a citizen—the elective franchise." Chief Justice Waite of the United States Supreme Court decided that citizenship carried with it no voting power or right. The same decision has been handed down by many courts in disposing of test cases.

It seems to me quite as evident that what is now called universal manhood suffrage does not rest upon any belief by the state that this is "the first right of a citizen," because no one doubts that if the time came when a majority deemed that the preservation of the state depended upon disfranchising a number of voters, they would be disfranchised although they remained citizens. The Suffrage leaders have, in theory at least, also abandoned the claim to suffrage on the ground of their universal right as citizens. A proof of this is seen in the fact that at various times they have suggested the extension of suffrage under qualification. Among the latest that I have noticed, is an address of Mrs. Stanton's to a Suffrage Convention, held in 1894, in which she proposed the following: "Resolved, that the women of New York petition the Legislature of the State to extend the suffrage to women on an educational qualification." She must therefore believe that the Legislature has the legal right to qualify it for men; and to withhold it from women is but an extension of the right to qualify suffrage, because it only says: "We do not consider woman citizens qualified to be voters." Writing a year ago, Mrs. Stanton said: "It is the duty of the educated women of this Republic to protest against the extension of the suffrage to another man until they themselves are enfranchised!" Thus it would appear that Mrs. Stanton does not believe in universal suffrage. A Suffrage speaker in New York not long ago said naively: "We [the women, when enfranchised] will vote to withhold the suffrage from the ignorant." She did not explain what would happen if the ignorant voted not to have the suffrage withheld; nor did she appear to realize that she was practically admitting that the present voters have the right to withhold the suffrage from those whom they consider unfitted for it.

But it is not true that American women did not, and do not, "consent to be governed." They have always consented loyally and joyfully. From the time of the Boston Tea Party down to the Civil War, and in such times of peace and prosperity as were indicated by the Columbian Exposition, when the Government formally asked the assistance of its woman citizens, they showed their consent by their deeds, and only the suffrage faction treated the invitation to share in the Exposition after the immemorial fashion of a discontented element. And the Suffragists themselves consent to be governed every time they accept the protection of the law or invoke it against a debtor; for they thereby acknowledge its proper application to themselves if the case were reversed.

The second count in the list of political grievances runs: "He has compelled her to submit to laws in the formation of which she had no voice." This was not true, for the women who wrote that sentence were free to use their voices in regard to every law they desired to affect, and circumstances have proved that they were sure of being heard, and, if the law were just, and for the general good, of assisting materially to establish it. At the very time when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were writing that indictment against the United States Government, Dorothea Dix was presenting a memorial to the National Congress asking for an appropriation of five hundred thousand acres of the public lands to endow hospitals for the indigent insane. That bill failed to pass, but in 1850 another bill, which she presented, asking for ten millions of acres, passed the House and failed in the Senate merely for want of time to consider it. Four years later a bill making appropriations of the ten millions of acres to the separate States passed both houses, and President Pierce vetoed it, because he believed the general Government had no constitutional power to make such appropriations. She then went to the Legislatures of the States, with the result that is so well known. Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana, and North Carolina founded lunatic asylums, and the work was begun which is culminating in the separation of the insane from the criminal, the women from the men, in every town and county of the land. The right of petition is not only as open to women as to men, but because of the non-partisan character of their claims and suggestions they find quicker hearing. Miss Louise Lee Schuyler has been more successful in securing the enactment of laws for which she presented the need than any one politician in the State of New York, before whose Legislature they have both pleaded,—he with a vote which had to contend against other votes, she with a voice that spoke the united mind of a body of philanthropic women. There was no unjust law which the Suffrage Association could not have changed during these fifty years, had it cared to try, and indeed its members make the boast that many of the changes are their own. Change and improvement of laws was not their aim. It was a vote upon changing or not changing laws that they sought for. The difference is world-wide.

The third count in the indictment runs: "He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant men—both natives and foreigners." Dr. Jacobi represented the Suffrage cause before the Special Committee of the Constitutional Convention of New York State in 1894. After drawing, in fine and truthfully glowing words, a picture of woman's progress under the institutions and laws of the United States, she said: "For the first time, all political right, privilege and power reposes undisguisedly on the one brutal fact of sex, unsupported, untempered, unalloyed by any attribute of education, any justification of intelligence, any glamour of wealthy any prestige of birth, any insignia of actual power…. To-day, the immigrants pouring in through the open gates of our seaport towns, the Indian when settled in severalty, the negro hardly emancipated from the degradation of two hundred years of slavery,—may all share in the sovereignty of the State. The white woman,—the woman in whose veins runs the blood of those heroic colonists who founded our country, of those women who helped to sustain the courage of their husbands in the Revolutionary War; the woman who may have given the flower of her youth and health in the service of our Civil War—that woman is excluded. To-day women constitute the only class of sane people excluded from the franchise, the only class deprived of political representation, except the tribal Indians and the Chinese." To the same effect the editors of the "Suffrage History" say: "The superiority of man does not enter into the demand for suffrage; for in this country all men vote; and as the lower orders, of men are not superior to the higher orders of women, they must hold and exercise the right of self-government on some other ground than superiority to woman." Here it would seem that Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony had been thinking, but they never followed their own thought to its inevitable conclusion. Universal manhood suffrage does relieve the men of this country from the unjust aspersion the women of the Suffrage movement put upon them, that they excluded women on account of inferiority.

No native American, who by the very fact of that nativity is bound to support the Constitution of the United States, and no foreign-born citizen who has taken the oath of allegiance to it, has a right by his vote to do anything that will imperil or impede the carrying out of its principles and its commands. "The establishment of justice, the insurement of domestic tranquillity, provision for the common defence, security in the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," cannot be perfected or maintained without the present exercise and the reserve power of manhood strength. This Government laid aside all "attribute of education, or glamour of wealth, or prestige of birth," and committed its life to the keeping of its defenders. In this land, the vote is the "insignia of actual power," but it is only the insignia; the power to defend themselves and those who make country and home worth defending, lies with the individual defenders. To attempt to put it into the hands of those who are not physically fitted to maintain the obligations that may result from any vote or any legislative act, is to render law a farce, and to betray the trust imposed upon them by the constitution they have sworn to uphold. Universal manhood suffrage is the crowning result in the long evolution of government. Our statesmen of the Revolutionary period did not contemplate it. But stability was the thing for which they sought—the thing for which all statesmen of all times have been searching. If a government is not stable, it is of little consequence that it is full of noble ideals; and the most far-reaching thought has now grasped the idea that manhood strength is the natural and only defence of the state. This is the underlying theory of our Government, the one solid rock on which it rests. "When any question of governmental policy comes up, we virtually decide it, sooner or later, by a manhood vote; and as the decision has a majority of the men of the country behind it, there is no power that can overthrow it. If we attempt to establish policies or execute laws to which a majority of the men are opposed, we throw away our one assurance of stability, and are in constant danger of revolution. Even in the comparatively brief history of our Republic, there are plentiful instances to show that a majority of men will not submit to a minority, no matter how many non-combatants are joined with that minority. To give women a position of apparent power, without its reality, would be to make our Government forever unstable.

"This is placing the Christian and civilized Government that stands as an example of peaceful progress on a foundation of brute force," cries the Suffragist. The founders of the Woman Suffrage movement apparently did not take the least account of either the military or the judicial powers that are provided for in every State constitution, as well as in the Nation's. They demanded "immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States," but said not a word about the duties, disabilities, and money loss involved in the possession of those rights and privileges. The Fathers of the Revolution closed their Declaration of Independence from the tyranny of England by pledging "their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor" to attain it. The Mothers of the Woman's Rebellion closed their Declaration of Independence from the tyranny of man, and especially from the tyranny of the United States Government, with a pledge to distribute tracts and hold conventions, while they depended upon the courtesy of the tyrants to protect them in the peaceful execution of their design. Is it any wonder that the descendants of the old heroes who had fought their way to our liberties smiled when the by-laws of the would-be revolt were handed to them?

When the attention of the women was called to the fact that force was needed, and that women were exempt from military service and jury and police duty, they answered that "In an age when the wrongs of society are adjusted in the courts and at the ballot-box, material force yields to reason and majorities." So successful has our Government been in carrying out the benign purposes for which its heroes staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, that in ordinary times we see little of the strength that stands quietly but firmly behind every law's enactment and every poll's decision. The "strong arm" of the law would lose its power to compel obedience if behind the decree of judge, jury, and legislators there was not a sheriff or a body of militia ready to commit the unconsenting criminal to prison, or to take care of an unruly minority. At an election, the minority do not acquiesce in the decision of the majority because the outcome of the vote has convinced them that the majority were right, and they were wrong. They have not become suddenly converted to the views of the majority. That decision, as recorded by the ballot, shows that if the minority do not keep their opinion in abeyance, there are men enough on the other side to compel them. Civilization has advanced so far that, instead of blows there are arguments in court, instead of bullets there are ballots at the polls; but the blows and the bullets must always be ready, in case the arguments and the ballots are unheeded. The physical strength that was given to man to use, like every other gift, for the good of the race, he is so using when he holds it as a dernier ressort for law and order.

Dr. Jacobi says, in her address, "capacity to bear arms, in fulfilment of military duty, is not, in the State of New York, reckoned among the necessary qualifications of voters." The statement is also made by other Suffragists that "numerous classes of men who enjoy political rights are exempt from military duty,—all men over forty-five, all who suffer mental or physical disability, such as the loss of an eye or a forefinger; clergymen, physicians, Quakers, school-teachers, professors, and presidents of colleges, judges, legislators, congressmen, state-prison officials, and all county, State, and National officers; fathers, brothers, or sons having certain relatives dependent upon them for support, all of these summed up in every State would make millions who may be exempted, and therefore there is no force in the plea that if women vote they must fight." It is not true that any class of voters is exempt. The State, regulating that matter as it regulates the age and residence of voters, as long as it has more defenders than it needs for immediate use, makes demand upon the youngest or strongest, but if it needs them all, then all must serve. Again, all, whether young or old, perfect or imperfect, must be reckoned with as elements in making up the count. Lawless men do not exempt themselves from riot and rebellion because they are lame or over forty-five. In the South, during the Rebellion, there were few indeed who did not serve in some capacity. If there were blind and aged men enough to make a real difference in majorities, Americans would quickly see the propriety of doing as some republics that have to stand with arms more "at attention" have done, and exclude them from the vote.

But, suppose all those mentioned were really exempt, how would that apply to women? If a like number were counted out, there would still be a goodly array, from the maiden of twenty-one to the matron of forty-five, from which to draw. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony write: "Women have led armies in all ages, have held positions in the army and navy for years in disguise, have fought, bled, and died on the battlefield in our late war." The isolated occasions on which they have done so are not such as to commend the practice, neither do the Suffragists propose seriously to commend it. Dr. Jacobi, in her address before the Committee of the Constitutional Convention, says: "We do not admit that exemption from military duty is a concession of courtesy, for which women should be so grateful as to refrain from asking for anything else. The military functions performed by men, and so often perverted to most atrocious uses, have never been more than the equivalent for the function of child-bearing imposed by nature upon women. It is not a fanciful nor sentimental, it is an exact and just equivalent. The man who exposes his life in battle, can do no more than his mother did in the hour she bore him. And the functions of maternity persist, and will persist, to the end of time,—while the calls to arms are becoming so faint and rare that three times since the Revolutionary War, an entire generation of men has grown up without having heard them."

This question of military service is not a question of equivalent at all— sentimental or otherwise; it is a question of the actual service, and as to the service to the state given by women in bearing sons, the men work not only to support those sons but to support also their mothers and sisters, and that far beyond the child-bearing age of the mother.

As to the rareness of the calls, I read of seven wars since the Revolution, and three insurrections, not counting the riots and strikes at Chicago, Homestead, Brooklyn, and in the mountains in the West. Dr. Jacobi said in an article in the "New York Sun," two years ago, "We do not vote for war." That appears like a quibble, for we vote for what brings, or may bring it; but neither is it exact in fact. Three times, at least, in our history men have deposited their ballots in the box, knowing that the result meant peace or war. These were at the second election of Madison in 1812, the election of Polk in 1844, and that most solemn of all the acts of our country-men, the second election of President Lincoln. There have been other elections in which war issues were linked with the decisions, but in a less direct way.

The same writer says also, "The will of the majority rules, for the time being, not, as has been crudely asserted, because it possesses the power, by brute force, to compel the minority to obey its behests; but because, after ages of strife, it has been found more convenient, more equitable, more conducive to the welfare of the state, that the minority should submit, until, through argument and persuasion, they shall have been able to win over the majority. Now that this stage in the evolution of modern society has been reached, it has become possible for women to demand their share also in the expression of the public opinion that is to rule. They could not claim this while it was necessary to defend opinions by arms; but this is no longer either necessary or expected." How long is it since this comfortable state of things was evolved? Has England consented to it? In view of Venezuela and the Monroe Doctrine it would be necessary to have her. Has Spain mentioned her resignation of a right to appeal to arms in case she was not pleased with the conduct of our Government in regard to Cuba? Does the Sultan know about it, so that in case we see a good fair fighting chance to help the Armenians he will understand that the ages of strife are over, and that persuasion has been found more equitable and convenient than a resort to arms? And the Czar, and the erratic German Emperor, are they in the evolutionary agreement? Force is just what men are able to make it. It is not brutish unless it is brutishly used. There is as much force in the world to-day as there ever has been, but it is better applied. It is the object of a Christian civilization to persuade more and more men to come to the defence of good against evil in forms of government. Despotism and absolutism are corrupt uses of force. Republicanism and a constitutional government are its nobler uses. But the force is still behind them, or there would be no power to continue such liberal forms. During the first Republic, Marathon and Thermopylae saved the principle of Western democracy against Oriental despotism, Salamis and Plataea saved Greek letters and Greek art to the continents that were yet to be. Christianity changed the motive but not the method in evolution; and, finally in the last great Republic, the American Revolution proclaimed liberty of thought, the war of 1812 secured American independence, while, beside the wandering Antietam and on the field of Gettysburg "green regiments went to their graves like beds" that the Union might live, and that human slavery might die. Manhood force, led by intelligence and goodness, is the bulwark of that maternity that must persist if heroes are to be. Dr. Jacobi's admission that women could not claim the vote while it was necessary to defend opinions by arms, is a vital one, for it contravenes her entire argument.

Another plea of the Suffrage leaders is that "men send substitutes, and so could women." The answer in regard to exempt classes will apply here also, because in case of need both substitute and substituter are obliged to serve. During our Civil War the fact that a man had sent a substitute did not prevent him from being called in the next draft. The state claims both men as its defenders. But whom do the women propose to substitute? Other women? No, they propose to substitute men! The Suffragists seriously suggest that half the population, exempted by nature from military duty, shall become organic members of a government whose reliance, embodied in every constitution, is upon the ability and the willingness of its organic members to do military duty in defence of those constitutions, and that this exempted half may have it as their sole office, in case of war, to vote when and where the lives, the fortunes, and the sacred honor of those other organic members shall be laid down or imperilled. Suffragists seem to forget, when they boast of Joan of Arc, that the army she led was masculine.

The English socialist, Mrs. Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in her addresses in this country two years ago, said: "Woman is not protected through chivalry, but because the men know that to put women to the front is national suicide. Woman's part in war is not to wail or weep, but to furnish the army for the future." Then there is to be an army for the future! Was there no "national suicide" when over three million men were "put to the front" in the Rebellion, and more than five hundred thousand, North and South, laid down their lives, so that through the veins of this generation runs none of the gallant blood they spilled? Shall the fathers, and possible fathers, be the only ones to die, if the mothers and betrothed proclaim themselves no longer desirous of being protected by such high sacrifice? If women cease to "weep and wail," will men not cease to be willing to be "furnished by them to the army?"

"At any cost one good is cheap—
The soldiers die lest women weep;
And this reward is great and high—
The women weep that soldiers die."

Women and soldiers cannot transpose their work. The duty of each to the Republic is equally "great and high;" but in order to be done it must be kept distinct as now.

But all this is subordinate to the real, vital question. In the passages just quoted, the writers make an error that is made so persistently by all Suffragists whenever the argument of force is alluded to, that it seems necessary to repeat the explanation. They assume that this argument, briefly stated, is: The men do the fighting, therefore they ought to be rewarded with the ballot. That is not the argument; it is no matter of reward. The argument, briefly stated, is this: Stability is one of the highest virtues that any government can possess, and perhaps the most necessary. It can have no stability if it issues decrees that it cannot enforce. The only way to avoid such decrees is, to make sure that behind every law and every policy adopted stands a power so great that no power in the land can overthrow it. The only such power possible consists of a majority of the men. Therefore, the only safe thing for the Government to do is, to carry out the ascertained will of a majority of the men. This does not always secure ideally good laws, but it does secure stability and avoids revolution. The majority may blunder; but they are the only power that can correct their own blunders.

But war does not call for the only form of public service. There are others provided for in the National and State constitutions, which are constant and exacting. They are jury, police and militia duty. When a boy reaches twenty-one the law says to him, "You are my servant." If a fire breaks out, the foreman can legally lay his hand on the boy's shoulder, and say, "Help to put out this conflagration." When the law is broken, the sheriff can say to him, "Help me make this arrest." When a turn of the judicial wheel brings out his name, he must serve the state on a jury; if a riot occurs, he can be called out to quell it; and if a war arises, he can be drafted to fight against the country's enemies. There is not a single act of defence to which the voter was subjected by law when the Constitution was framed, to which he is not subject now, and subject because he is a voter. The vote is not given to him as a reward for standing ready to give this service to the state; it is a recognition by the state that, as he must stand ready to defend it, he should assist in establishing the laws which it may call upon him to enforce. As he has assisted to frame them, he cannot refuse to defend them. Woman's only relation to this defence is that of beneficiary, and therefore her relation to the laws with which that defence is associated must be one of advice and not of control. Fortunately for her, advice may prove sometimes to be control of the most satisfactory kind, a kind that admits of mental power and does not exact physical.

The statement is further made by Suffragists that "though woman needs protection of one man against his whole sex, in pioneer life, in threading her way through a lonely forest, on the highway, or in the streets of a metropolis on a dark night, she sometimes needs, too, the protection of all men against this one. But even if she could be sure, as she is not, of the ever-present, all-protecting power of one strong arm, that would be weak indeed compared with the subtle, all-pervading influence of just and equal laws for all women. Hence woman's need of the ballot, that she may hold in her own right hand the weapon of self-protection and defence." The possession of the ballot has not been able to secure for men "the subtle and all-pervading influence of just and equal laws," and despite his holding the ballot in his own hand, man has had to hold also a more apparent weapon if he visit a striker's camp or meddle with an anarchist riot. Something more tangible than protective influence is needed to make the public streets of this city safe for women in broad daylight. Again, they say that "Wisdom would suggest division of labor in peace as well as in war." Wisdom would have no chance to make such a suggestion, if women attempted to do the same work as do men, in the same way. There is true division of labor now, in peace as well as in war.

Suffragists mention as a final indignity the extension of the suffrage to the negro. Their protest only serves to suggest another forcible illustration of the fact that law and the enforcement of law may be different things. The suffrage is not extended to the negro. The Congress of the United States voted that it should be so extended; and while the Government stood behind his vote with its military power, the negro voted. But no one pretends that he has done so, to any practical extent, since that time. Unarmed, the negro finds that he cannot enforce his own vote against the will of white men armed to the teeth. The "all-pervading influence of just and equal laws" cannot enforce it for him. Would the women be any better off, if the men chose that they should not exercise the vote? Who would enforce it?

This fact and argument show how little arbitration has to do with the practical decision concerning suffrage. Suffrage writers and speakers harp upon the thought that arbitration will take the place of force. That method of settling disputes cannot come too quickly, but it has not come yet. It has no real bearing on the organization of the state as resting upon the civil and military service of its citizens. England consented to arbitrate with the powerful United States, but refused to arbitrate with defenceless Nicaragua in a far less important matter. Congress has seriously considered exterminating the remnant of the beautiful herd of seals that once played in our Northern Pacific waters, because British subjects have continued, in violation of the Arbitration treaty, to kill the animals with cruelty. Behind arbitration, as behind all law and order, military power must always stand and must sometimes be used. One more proof that the vote is not the real power, but only its insignia, lies in the fact that legislation has not been able to put an end to strikes and riots. Laws that forbid them are passed with all due form; but when they come, as come they do, the reading of the riot act is suspended and the regiments are ordered to Chicago, or Buffalo, or Brooklyn, or Homestead, or Cripple Creek, or Cleveland, or the Indian country. The force of those bodies was not "brutal," it was physical power obeying mental; and unless mental power can command physical, there is no way in which mental power can enforce its decrees in government. There are now facing us tremendous moral issues, which presage tremendous struggles; and a very notable example of the dangers that would attend woman suffrage is suggested by them. If women had the power to create a numerical majority when there was a majority of the law's natural and only defenders against them, they might soon precipitate a crisis that would lead to bloodshed, which they would be powerless either to prevent or to allay. Would the majority of men submit to the minority of men associated with non-combatants? American history furnishes no reason for supposing that they would. The Dorr War in Rhode Island is a case in point, in local matters. I am neither an alarmist nor a believer in war as a panacea; but if we discuss this subject at all, we must discuss it with facts and not fancies in our minds.

Dr. Jacobi again says, in her book: "It may be said, for it has been said, that the objection to seeing a vote of seven hundred men overcome by a coalition of three hundred men with eight hundred women, lies in the fact that the defeated minority knows, if it had a free hand and was allowed to use fisticuffs, it could pound into a jelly a majority composed so largely of women. It would feel, therefore, sullen, restive, and justly indignant, that it should be prohibited from using this power and obliged to submit to a merely nominal force and supremacy."

The objection to seeing seven hundred men defeated by a coalition of three hundred men with eight hundred women, lies in the fact that the defeated minority knows that it has a free hand, and that nothing less than eight hundred men could prevent it from using its physical power, were it so inclined. Only a force and supremacy that was real, and not nominal, could make it to submit. The rhetorical trick of belittling the matter by speaking of it as "fisticuffs" will not pass in this discussion. When the South Carolina negroes on election day looked into the rifle-barrels of the Red-shirt clubs, it was no matter of fisticuffs. When every statesman in our country was eagerly seeking a peaceful solution of the Hayes-Tilden dispute, it was not fisticuffs that they feared. When the Dostie convention was broken up and its leaders murdered in New Orleans, it was not by means of fisticuffs. When the Chicago anarchists threw their bomb into the ranks of the policemen in Haymarket Square, they were not playing at fisticuffs. When the rail way strikers in Pittsburg stopped the trains, "killed" the locomotives, and burned the freight, there was no fisticuffs about it. And when a Southern minority refused to abide by the result of the election of 1860, and the Northern majority shouldered muskets and went down and compelled them to, not the most flippant writer would have thought of calling it fisticuffs. All these are simply readily recalled instances of the necessity for power in the enforcement of law.

She goes on to say: "But is it only in such a hypothetical case that a minority would know it could, if allowed to resort to physical force, shiver to fragments the majority? The burly brakemen in railroad strikes would, probably, in a fair hand-to-hand encounter, be much bested over all the stockholders of the road,—weakened, not only because they included women in their midst, but also by sedentary habits and predominately indoor occupations. Why do they not try this way of settling their difficulties? Why do not the classes in England, who still remain entirely disfranchised, and with whom rests so much physical strength, drop their fists into the balance as Brennus did his sword, and cut short the futile, womanish discussion? The answer is ready in every one's mouth. It is not that it cannot be done, but that, on the whole, people are all agreed that it is best it should not be done. It is not that physical force is respected less, but that mental force is respected more."

I reply that both these things have been attempted over and over again, and the agreement of all the wise and good people that it is best that it should not be done cannot prevent it. Behind the burly brakemen who have seized the train, and the stockholders to whom it lawfully belongs, there lies a power greater than all the brakemen and stockholders together. We call it the power of law. It is, in fact, the power of a sovereign people, who, having made that law, are able to enforce it against the breakers of it. It is necessary, in the discussion of this point, to have clearly in mind the difference between sovereign power and delegated power. When a member of a stock company attends the annual meeting and casts one vote for every share that he holds, he is exercising delegated power. The sovereign people, acting through their representatives in the legislature, have delegated to the company the power to regulate its affairs in this way, and guaranteed to each shareholder this privilege. Should a combination of some of the shareholders attempt to prevent one from exercising it, he would appeal to the court, and behind the court stands the power of the people, many times larger than any stock company that exists. On the other hand, when men go to the polls on election day, they exercise, not delegated, but sovereign, power. There is no greater power, above and beyond themselves, to regulate their actions. The enfranchised classes in England do drop their fists into the balance, and, as a result, we have seen the extensions of suffrage that marked the years 1832 and 1848, and the reason some classes are still unfranchised is, that the monarchy that wills their unfranchisement has, as yet, more power at command than those who would enfranchise them. Mental and moral force is more respected with every rolling year, because those who respect it have been able to obtain control of the physical power that can force its decrees upon those who do not respect it.

The third count in the indictment is: "Having deprived her of the first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides." As, in securing the exact number of grievances mentioned by the Fathers, the Mothers were compelled to string out their distresses somewhat, I will quote the next count in the indictment, and consider these two together. "After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognized her only when her property could be made profitable to it."

The many-sided oppression, and the deprivation as a married woman, belong in other chapters. The remaining portions of the two counts may be summed up under the familiar cry: "No taxation without representation." What did that just accusation mean when our fathers uttered it in regard to English tyranny? Did they mean that their property was taxed, and they had no redress? The phrase originated with Patrick Henry, who read to the Virginia House of Burgesses the decision gleaned from a study of "Coke upon Lyttleton," that "Englishmen living in America had all the rights of Englishmen living in England, the chief of which was, that they could only be taxed by their own representatives," and on that was founded the resolution adopted by them that the colonies could not be lawfully taxed in a body in which they were not represented; for the colonies, as well as individuals, had no vote in Parliament. They meant that their property could not be so taxed, and they meant far more. The more that they meant was embodied by Jefferson in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, when he said: "Can any one reason be assigned why a hundred and sixty thousand electors in the island of Great Britain should give law to four million in the States of America?" John Hancock meant that and more when he said: "Burn Boston and make John Hancock a beggar, if the public good requires it." He was offering his taxed property to defend the liberties of the four millions against the hundred and sixty thousand electors. The refusal of the majority to be ruled longer by the minority was the main motive of determination not to submit. But at that time all voting was connected with a tax on property, and so was the suffrage established by these men. And under those property-tax laws women who held property could vote. It was when taxation ceased to go with representation, that the women ceased to vote. There is now no connection between taxation of property and representation. When people were allowed votes in proportion to the amount of property they held, and could vote in different counties and States, there was a connection, and that law gave the rich man more voting power than the poor man. But all aristocratic qualification was done away with, and the government came to rely solely on the strength of individual men for its defence, instead of upon men and women with money enough to raise soldiery. There is a money tax levied on the property of men and women alike; and in return for the payment of this tax the property of both men and women is made secure against unlawful injury. In order to make it secure, the state lays, upon men alone, a service tax, and with that tax goes representation, or the vote. This service tax does not fall upon woman, and it cannot be demanded of her; so it is not true that "Man has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it." He has, in return for the money tax, so guarded her property through the service tax on men that it is of profit to her, which without that guard it could not be.

The tax on property is collected from that of minors and unnaturalized citizens, resident or non-resident, and to all these classes, as well as to non-voting women, is given the right of petition and legal redress of whatever sort. The men do not have "equal rights" in regard to public control of their taxable property, if equal rights means that each man shall be able to say what shall be done to, or with, or about, the property on which he pays taxes. The penniless voter can have as much to say as to whether a railroad shall cross the lands of a millionaire as the millionaire himself. At every town election the minority are unheeded, so far as the vote goes, and women with property interests would be no better off if they secured votes in the only way they can be secured—one voice, one vote.

Lydia Maria Child said, in a letter reprinted in the Woman's edition of "The Rochester Post-Express" in 1896: "I reduce the argument to very simple elements. I pay taxes for property of my own earning and saving, and I do not believe in taxation without representation. As for representation by proxy, that savors too much of the plantation system, however kind the master may be. I am a human being, and every human being has a right to a voice in the laws which claim authority to tax him, to imprison him, or to hang him."

Not only has every human being in the United States a right to a voice in the laws that claim authority to tax him, imprison him, or hang him, but he can exercise that right in all portions of the United States where the laws that claim this authority are able to enlist sufficient physical force to execute the authority claimed. Where they have not that power, neither the voter nor the non-voter has any redress against violence offered to property or limb or life. Gerrymanders and lynchings in many parts of our land prove the truth of this. The mastery of men who abide by and execute law is not a mastery over women for the sake of the spoils of taxation or the disposal of life, but the mastery over lawlessness everywhere in order that tax-payers of either sex, native or alien, voters or non-voters, may be enabled to have that voice in the laws which, as human beings, is their right. As to the "vote by proxy," if Mrs. Child could not trust her husband, her son, her brother, or best friend to look after her interests, she certainly could not trust the carrying out of her wish, as expressed in her vote, to the men who cast in their ballots by her side.

In return for the taxes paid, women get just what men get, namely, roads, gas, water, schools, etc. The women who have refused to pay their taxes because they did not vote, have been treated with a leniency that proves the courtesy of the law-enforcers. They would have made short work with men who were non-voters, who had tried the same tactics. When a man's vote is challenged and refused, he does not dream of saying: "I shall not pay my tax," and the assessor never inquires whether he votes or desires to vote. The men in the District of Columbia do not find their unfranchised condition assuaged by the smallness of their account with the assessor. Neither do they realize or believe that they are governed without their consent, or exempt from police or military duty. This is a striking proof that the vote is not a reward for service. They are male American citizens, over twenty-one years old, and they must contribute service simply and solely for that reason. This is the price they pay for established order.

For, after all, what is government, and what are taxation and representation? When and how did society consent to be governed? When did it agree to be taxed and to be represented? The awful story of history, from the slaying of Abel to the slaughter of half a million men in the War of Secession, is the answer. It never did agree, it has not yet agreed. The struggle of civilization is the effort to make it agree. Implanted in the bosom of man by his Maker is the belief in his individual freedom, of worship as concerns that Maker, of protection as concerns man. Side by side with that, was implanted the principle of surrender of a part of that freedom for just cause. There came a time when men said: "Let us use arguments instead of force in these decisions," and some form of vote was instituted. With this they fought and voted by turns, as they set up or knocked down emperors, kings, popes, and presidents. War has been changed by progress because man has changed; but main strength to drive home the truths gained on the moral battlefield is still the power behind the throne of the National conscience, even in this enlightened land.

Though the Mothers of the Rebellion did not ask, and apparently did not think of asking, to share the military duties incident to suffrage, we must discuss it, if we are to consider the subject thoroughly. To be a voting citizen, is to be a possible soldier citizen. There is no way of fulfilling the moral part of the duty, and leaving unfulfilled the physical, and it is cowardly to attempt it. So the question comes, could American women be soldiers? They could, for a few in disguise were in service during the War of Secession. Titled women of Europe are honorary officers; but this playing soldier is a relic of Middle-Age chivalry. Women can be seriously destructive; but no one will claim that organized military duty is really practicable for them. And the suffrage proposition does not look to anything of the kind. The Suffragists demand equal vote in sending their fathers, brothers, sons, husbands, and lovers to the military field of action, and propose to be absolutely exempt from equal share in the duty that that vote now lays upon male voters. Before the law there could be no distinction of duty on account of race, sex, or previous condition of servitude. The "emancipated" woman would be emancipated into that which the Declaration of Independence expressly called for, "the right and privilege of the people to bear arms."

The constitution of Utah says that the State militia is to consist of "able-bodied males," and I have not yet heard that the women who vote there have insisted that the word "male" be struck out of that clause of the Constitution. By no means, every woman expects to be exempt. After women had succeeded in getting the framers of the constitution of every State to strike out the word "male," from its voting qualification, they would expect them to insert the word "male" in mentioning the service qualification. O Equality, where is thine equal for granting privilege! Such chivalry, it would seem, is an insult to the power and intelligence of the women of Utah, who celebrated their "enfranchisement" by a convention to favor the free coinage of silver, 16 to 1, and whose behavior on that occasion was, to say the least, boyish. The tax upon time and strength, and the money loss of citizen service, Suffrage leaders did not once allude to. They did not, and do not, propose to pay even a double money tax on account of expected exemption. Little as this would have availed to meet the actual situation, it would have shown their good will, and some comprehension of justice, while they talked of an absurd and intangible "right."

But, it might be said, "Utah did insert such a clause into her constitution, and so could other States. It is, after all, common sense that rules, and men can legislate what they please." The law passed by Utah, which provided that "male voters must be tax-payers, while female voters need not be," was decided to be unconstitutional, and this one also may well be. At the end of Utah's Constitution, as of every other, and of every bill that is passed, occurs or is understood something like this sentence from the United States Constitution: "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." Is it the "appropriate legislation" that gives to Congress, or to any other body, the power to enforce the article decided upon by a majority? We know that it is not. It is the men who can enforce it if it is disobeyed. Every day we see that some laws are "dead letters," not because the legislation appropriate to their enforcement was not perfect, but because they are not enforced. When Mr. Roosevelt became Chairman of the Police Commission there had been for some time a bill, duly legislated, for the enforcement of the Sunday closing of liquor saloons in New York city. But the saloons had not been closed. Mr. Roosevelt summoned the police, and proceeded to enforce the law. If they had refused, the militia stood behind them. Do you say, "Very well, if Miss Willard had been Chairman of the Commissioners she could have done the same." There would have been this great difference. Mr. Roosevelt himself was as much subject to serve at the call of the law, as were the policemen. He was not a dictator merely, he was part and parcel of the strength that he invoked. The reason for obedience rested on the same ground in each case—service in which each stood equal. It is a specious form of mistake to suppose that "men can legislate just what they wish to." They can legislate only what the majority decrees, and they can legislate effectively only what they have power to enforce. Had the saloon-keepers refused to obey Miss Willard, not she, but Mr. Roosevelt and other men would have had to enforce the law.

It is absurd in itself, and annoying to Suffrage advocates, to talk about military duty for woman. Her very nature forbids it. So it is, and so it does, and therefore it is equally absurd to talk about her attempting to assume duties whose very nature forbids their being done by her. Were voting only a matter of obtaining the opinion of women on matters that concern the country, or concern them (and all matters that concern the country concern them), all precedent gathered from the treatment of American women by American men goes to prove that no urging would have been required to secure for them as large a measure of suffrage as was consistent with their duties and their desires.

In 1879 an earnest discussion on Woman Suffrage was held in the legislature of Massachusetts. Four propositions were pending. The first was that a constitutional amendment should be submitted to the people, which, if accepted, would decree to women full suffrage. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Lucy Stone and William Lloyd Garrison argued the case for the women. Col. Higginson said that if ability to fight were made the test of voting "a large proportion of men, especially of professional men, would be disfranchised. The report of the Surgeon-General of the United States showed that of the thousand clergymen who volunteered or were drafted during the war, 945 were declared to be unfit for service. Of the lawyers who volunteered or were drafted, 650 were rejected, and of the physicians, 745." He added, "You must go down to the mechanics and laborers before you can find a class of men a majority of whom will fulfil this requirement. Of the clergymen who preach that woman suffrage is wrong because women can do no military duty, only one twentieth would themselves be accepted for such service. There is but one class of men better fitted than mechanics for military service, and that is the prize-fighting class, and therefore the constituency which sent John Morrissey to Congress was the only constituency that ever carried out this idea to the end." Col. Higginson, who played a gallant part in the Civil War, should have remembered what poor fighting material the country found in such men as formed the constituency of John Morrissey. The regiment of Zouaves raised in New York City by Billy Wilson, the pugilist, was found to be so mischievous, as well as worthless, that it was shipped to the Dry Tortugas in order to rid the army of a pest. On the other hand, many of the most gallant as well as most orderly soldiers came from dry-goods stores and apothecary shops. The pugilists and roughs are the very ones that are good for nothing as soldiers; they belong to the class that makes soldiery necessary.

When Col. Higginson can use such logic, it is no wonder that women have repeated the argument. The question was not whether, because certain men who were naturally looked upon by the Government as its defenders, and as such were called upon to fight, proved physically unable, but whether the Government had a right, because of its very existence, to call upon those men, and in case of need, to say to them "Put yourself into physical condition for this service." If it had such a right, by what law under the constitution of the United States could Lucy Stone ask to vote and not expect to have her military fitness inquired into, and be asked to put herself into physical condition for it?

Recalling the action of her grandfather, she, better than some other women, might have realized the necessity of force for government. Her defiant spirit might well have descended from that ancestor who led four hundred men in Shays's Rebellion, when, in the State before whose tribunal she was speaking, he assisted in preventing court sessions, and swelled the ranks of the rioters who were decrying taxes and calling for fiat money, in a land that was impoverished and was struggling for a sound financial standing after a war that had been waged to guarantee the blessings of freedom to her and to her children.

As a matter of fact, many of those men whom Col. Higginson referred to as deemed unfit, did go into immediate training, and "muscular Christianity" would now present to the Surgeon-General a different showing. It was one of the surprising things, in a statistical way, to find that city-bred boys stood the marching and exposure of the Civil War campaigns better than their country brothers, and that the yard-stick turned into as effective a sword as the pruning-hook. Garrison, who maintained for so many years that men should not vote because the government was founded on force, had the grace not to speak on this phase of the question, but he said it was cruel that women should be disfranchised and classed with paupers, idiots, and criminals. Senator Hayes asked him if there was no "difference between a person who was disfranchised and one who never had been enfranchised?" and added that "he could see no argument for woman suffrage in the proposition that certain classes of men were not permitted to vote." Neither can I.

The argument for woman suffrage which bases it upon a fancied grouping of women with the vile and brainless element in the country, appears to me to be at once the weakest and the meanest of all. When the United States Government invited its woman citizens to share in making the Columbian Exposition the most wondrous pageant of any age, they responded from every town and hamlet by sending of their best. But the national Suffrage Association, as its official exhibit, gave a picture of the expressive face of Miss Willard surrounded by ideal heads of a pauper, an idiot, and a criminal, with a legend recording their belief that it was with these that American men placed American women. So false a picture must have taught the thoughtful gazers the opposite lesson from the one intended. It could have told them that the United States Government had at least guarded one trust with sacred care. The pauper was excluded from the ballot as not being worthy to share with freemen the honor of its defence. The unfortunate was excluded by an inscrutable decree of Providence. The criminal was excluded as being dangerous to society. The women were exempt from the ballot because it was for their special safety that a free ballot was to be exercised, from which the pauper and the criminal must be excluded. They were the ones who have given to social life its meaning and its moral, the ones who give to civic life its highest value.

The authors of the "History" so often referred to, in answer to the claim that "government needs force behind it, and those who make the laws must execute them, and a woman could not be a sheriff or policeman," say: "Woman might not fill these offices as men do, but might far more effectively guard the morals of society and the sanitary conditions of our cities." A "moral guard" might be an excellent thing to ward off the ghosts in a country burying-ground, but would hardly prove effective against the riot of a Tammany mob on the night of an exciting election. It is absurd to speak in such fashion of work that is needed every hour. The crust of our civilization is very thin—how thin, the nation learned during the campaign just passed. Like a tempest from a clear sky, or one of their own cyclones, burst an influence from a portion of the West and South, that would have overturned the Government. Men struck fanatically and misguidedly at the integrity of the Supreme Court, at the power of the United States to hold jurisdiction over its own public affairs where they conflicted with State right, at the currency that gave the country ability to be honest at home and abroad, at the prosperity and honor of every citizen.

Fifteen years ago Suffrage leaders wrote in view of the wonderful advance of woman: "The broader demand for political rights has not commanded the thought its merits and dignity should have secured." If this was true, it had not been for lack of having the demand pressed home upon Congress and upon every State and Territorial legislature (save in most of the South), in season and out of season, by every device known to politics, as well as by a steady and impetuous flow of literature and petitions. How have these bodies answered this long appeal? It would take too much time and space, even were it of value, to follow the course of its ups and downs through all these years, but I mention first the fact that no State in New England has ever granted constitutional, or even municipal suffrage, although in some of the old thirteen it could have been done by an act of the legislature, a constitutional amendment not being needed. These are some of the figures for the past few years:

In Vermont, in 1892, the House passed a municipal suffrage bill—yeas 149, nays 83. In 1894 the House defeated a similar bill by a vote of 108 to 106, and refused reconsideration by a vote of 124 to 96. Thus a favorable majority of 66 in 1892 was changed to an adverse majority of 28 in 1894.

In Massachusetts, in 1894, the House passed a municipal suffrage bill by a vote of 119 to 107. In 1895 it defeated a similar bill, the vote standing, yeas 97, nays 137, on the question of carrying the bill to a third reading. In the same year an act was passed permitting all persons qualified to vote for school committee to express their opinion at the state election by voting "Yes" or "No," to the question: "Is it expedient that municipal suffrage be granted to women?" Not one woman in four voted in favor of the proposition, although if suffrage has any traditionary power outside of New York State, that power should have been felt in Massachusetts.

In Maine, in 1893, the Senate passed a municipal suffrage bill, which was defeated in the House. In 1895 the House passed a municipal suffrage bill, which was defeated in the Senate.

In New Hampshire, in 1895, the House refused a third reading to a municipal suffrage bill, by a vote of 185 to 108.

In Connecticut, in 1895, the Senate rejected a House municipal suffrage bill, while a presidential suffrage bill did not reach a vote. And in Rhode Island a proposition for a suffrage Constitutional amendment was referred to the next legislature.

All these States had granted school suffrage and could grant municipal suffrage by act of the legislature. In 1893 municipal suffrage bills were defeated in Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Full suffrage bills were defeated in Arizona and New Mexico. A township suffrage bill was defeated in Illinois, a license suffrage bill in Connecticut, and a village suffrage bill in New York. In that year, also, the Supreme Courts gave decisions adverse to suffrage laws. In 1893 a bill was defeated in the United States Senate which proposed to give women the municipal vote in the Cherokee Outlet. The vote stood 40 to 9.

In Washington Territory the Legislature passed a law conferring suffrage on woman in 1883; but this was declared invalid by the courts in 1887, because its nature was not sufficiently defined in its title. It was re- enacted in 1888, and again declared invalid by the United States Territorial Court, on the ground that the Act of Congress which organized the Territorial legislature did not empower it to extend the suffrage to women. In 1889 the people, in forming their State constitution, decided against suffrage.

In 1894, in the election of November 6, Kansas defeated a constitutional amendment granting full suffrage, by a majority of 34,827.

In Iowa, in the same year, the Senate defeated a proposition to submit a suffrage constitutional amendment to the people. In 1895, bills for full suffrage and for municipal suffrage again failed to pass, and the question was submitted to the people in 1896, and resulted in defeat.

In 1895, also, a township suffrage bill was twice defeated in Illinois.

In Indiana a proposition to strike the word "male" out of the Constitution, was not even reported from the committee to which it was referred.

In the same year, in Kansas, a bill passed the Senate which proposed to confer upon nine specified women the full suffrage in response to their petition. The Senate also passed a bill conferring upon women the vote for presidential electors; but neither ever reached a vote in the House. In Michigan, the same year, a proposition to submit a constitutional amendment was defeated, and a similar resolution in Missouri was also defeated. Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin, and South Carolina also defeated propositions to submit the question to the people in 1895.

Since January, 1897, Nova Scotia, two Territories, and ten States have dealt with the suffrage proposal, and all but one of these have rendered adverse decisions. In Nova Scotia an old bill was reconsidered, and a larger majority was obtained against it. The territories are Arizona and Oklahoma. The states in which it was defeated are Iowa, Nevada, Nebraska, Kansas, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, and California. The last two had given it heavy defeats but a few months previously. Indiana's Supreme Court handed down an adverse decision. The favorable state was Washington, where the Legislature voted to submit an amendment to the people next year.

Certainly, the question cannot be said not to have received the attention that any vital subject might have claimed, and the answers show that, as comprehension of the meaning of democracy has grown, and as liberty of thought and action for men and women has increased, the proposition to cast an unequal burden, not upon a disfranchised class, but upon an unfranchised sex which in every class has its own correlative and equal duties, rights, and privileges, is losing ground.

But, it is answered, look at the suffrage triumphs in Utah State and Idaho. Let us look at them more closely. It is my opinion that a few more such triumphs would end in its utter overthrow. Utah introduced suffrage by a simple legislative act. Woman suffrage was abolished in Utah Territory by Federal statute, because it was found to be sustaining the Mormon Church and the institution of polygamy. The Suffragists profess to hold in abhorrence churchly and polygamous rule. Here was an opportunity for them to say to the Government: "This is not what we meant by suffrage, nor what we desire suffrage to be used for. We approve this real disfranchisement." Did they do anything of the kind? Far from it. In 1876 they passed the following: "Resolved, That, the right of suffrage being vested in the women of Utah by their constitutional and lawful enfranchisement, and by six years of use, we denounce the proposition about to be again presented to Congress for the disfranchisement of the women of that Territory, as an outrage on the freedom of thousands of legal voters and a gross innovation of vested rights; we demand the abolition of the system of numbering the ballots, in order that the women may be thoroughly free to vote as they choose, without supervision or dictation; and that the chair appoint a committee of three persons, with power to add to their number, to memorialize Congress, and otherwise watch over the rights of women of Utah in this regard during the next twelvemonth."

In 1878 the report of Utah's governor contained the following: "All voters must be over twenty-one years of age, and must have resided in the Territory six months, and in the precinct one month. If males, they must be native born or naturalized citizens of the United States, and tax- payers in the Territory. A female voter need not be a tax-payer, and if the wife, widow or daughter of a native or naturalized citizen, need not herself be native or naturalized!" In 1892 the Utah Commission made to the Secretary of the Interior a report which gave it as their opinion that the sanction of the Church had been withdrawn only temporarily in regard to polygamous practices, and would be restored after a political purpose had been served. That same year a party was formed calling itself the "Liberal Party," and it carried Salt Lake City in the first election in which National party lines were drawn. This was one plank of its platform: "Anxious as every Liberal is to see every difference adjusted, as anxious as they are to exercise the utmost privileges accorded to the most favored Americans, they remember what first caused clashing here was the presence and control of an unyielding Theocracy and an imperium in imperio, and they cannot fail to note that at the last conference of this theocratic organization the old assumptions were all renewed." They therefore deprecated immediate Statehood. The bill granting it passed Congress in 1894. The Republican, Democratic and Populist parties in Utah all favored Statehood, and at the election following the Constitutional Convention these parties all inserted planks favoring free coinage of silver 16 to 1, demanding the return by government of "real estate belonging to the Mormon Church," and favoring the retention of woman suffrage.

The women of Utah were greatly in evidence during the late presidential election. Several of them were candidates for office; but it is a significant fact that, even in Utah, and even on the Republico-Demo- Populist ticket, the women's vote ran far behind that for the men. "The Salt Lake Herald" for November 13, 1896, records the fact that "Woman suffrage gave Utah to Bryan," and in another place it says: "The women on both tickets polled a small number of votes." Martha Cannon, who was elected State Senator, obtained 8,167 votes. The men on the same ticket, elected to the same office, polled, respectively, 9,875, 9,355, 9,244, 9,036 votes. Mrs. Cannon was on the free silver ticket against her husband, who was nominated for the same office on the Republican ticket. Of the other candidates for the senatorships on that ticket, four were men and one a woman. The men's vote stood: 6,405, 6,197, 6,129, 5,961. The woman's was 4,692. The only woman put up for State Representative ran 2,000 votes behind her ticket. One man only, "the ex-dog-catcher" of the county, fell below her. The woman's vote was 4,879, the dog-catcher's 4,325.

I copy from the "Salt Lake Herald" a few sentences taken from an interview with Mrs. Cannon, State Senator elect. When asked if she was a strong believer in woman suffrage, she answered: "Of course I am. It will help women, and it will purify politics. Women are better than men. Slaves are always better than their masters." "Do you refer to polygamy?" was asked. "Indeed I do not," she answered. "I believe in polygamy. My father and mother were Mormons, and I am a Mormon…. A plural wife isn't half as much of a slave as a single wife. If her husband has four wives, she has three weeks of freedom every single month…. Of course it is all at an end now, but I think the women of Utah think, with me, that we were better off in polygamy…. Sixty per cent. of the voters of this State are women. We control the State…. What am I going to do with my children while I am making the laws for the State? The same thing I have done with them when I have been practicing medicine. They have been left to themselves a good deal…. Some day there will be a law compelling people to have no more than a certain amount of children, and the mothers of the land can live as they ought to live." This is the character and opinion presented by the highest State official that woman suffrage has as yet given to the United States. Comment upon it seems unnecessary, so far as it would be needed to express the disgust of the majority of American women at such sentiments and such a situation. But has any Suffrage speaker or meeting denounced them, or deprecated the result of the election? I have heard of none. The National Suffrage Convention, which was held in Iowa, in January, 1897, had the newly-elected Populist women as guests of honor, and held a jubilation over the two new Suffrage States—Utah and Idaho. Idaho has elected a Populist woman or two. The vote in that State in favor of the gold standard and that against woman suffrage tally within forty-two votes.

The instinctive alliance of the Woman Suffrage movement with the uncertain and dangerous elements in our political life is well exemplified by the campaign in California in connection with the late presidential election. Mrs. Barclay Hazard, who was almost the sole woman to express publicly the opposition which the majority of women felt, to the Suffrage idea, has given me the following clear account of the conditions and result. She says: "If the advocates of Woman Suffrage give a really frank and truthful answer to the question, 'What caused the defeat of the movement in the late campaign in California?' they must reply, 'Public sentiment was against it.' In all fairness, there is no other reason. Let us consider the conditions under which the campaign was carried on. In the first place, the Suffragists were most fortunate in choosing a time when the whole country, as well as the State of California, was torn by a question of such vital importance to continued life and well-being that all other matters were in danger of going by default.

"Second: They were extremely well organized and had command of a campaign fund of no mean magnitude, which enabled them to keep in the field such able and experienced agitators as Miss Susan B. Anthony and the Rev. Anna Shaw, to say nothing of numerous lesser lights.

"Third: There was absolutely no organized opposition to the movement. The women who disapproved were as a rule entirely unaccustomed to public speaking and were averse to coming forward in any way. They remonstrated in private but would not express their views openly.

"Fourth: Last but by no means least, our Suffrage friends may be said to have had the press of the State with them. The 'Los Angeles Times' (the most influential paper in the southern part of the State) cannot be said to have aided the movement, neither did it actively antagonize it beyond admitting to its columns occasionally letters from the 'Antis.' Yet for this small opposition I heard an ardent advocate propose that the Suffragists should boycott the paper!

"Now, was ever a cause fought for under conditions more conducive to success? 'Every thing,' to use a current slang phrase, 'seemed to be going their way.' They fully expected to win, and those of us most opposed to their ideas in private sadly conceded their probable victory. The result when it came was all the more a surprise and blow to the Suffragists and a welcome reassurance to the friends of stability and conservatism. The figures show us that while the stronghold of Populism, the South, went for the measure, Alameda County turned the scale. One must know California to realize what that means. Alameda County contains the city of Oakland, which is admittedly the most respectable and moral city in California; it also contains the town of Berkeley, which is the home of the University of California with its large faculty of clever men, most of them from the East. Yes, it was here in the stronghold of morals and intellect that the Woman Suffrage movement in California met its fate."

A question constantly and properly asked is: "How does woman suffrage work where it is exercised?" So far as I can obtain information, where it has worked at all, it has been detrimental to women and to the State.

Of Wyoming there is much testimony to the fact that during the Territorial period (1868-'89) women did little voting, and played no appreciable part in political life. Populism and Free Coinage had begun to play a prominent part in the whole section when Wyoming was admitted to Statehood in 1890. At the election that followed its admission there was a fusion that resulted in the election of a Populist Governor, and such was the riotous state of feeling that the Governor was obliged to enter the State House through a broken window. A year later this same Governor, in his annual message, proclaimed woman suffrage to be a notable success. As a proof, he pointed to the fact that there were no criminals in the State, and that the jails were empty. A little research into official documents showed that there might be other reasons, because the criminals and those guilty of small offences were at that time lodged in other States, and a year later, when the authorities took possession of Laramie Prison, given by the Government, and brought home their evil-doers, they outnumbered, in proportion to population, those of New Mexico, which certainly should be a fair place for comparison.

For a time, women served on juries, and there is testimony to the fact that in many respects they served well. But the practice of calling them was soon suspended, and never has been renewed. The only public office of consequence held by them was bestowed by the Republicans but a year or two ago, when Miss Reel was made State Superintendent of Schools. In our late crucial election, Wyoming and its woman suffrage gave their voices for Populism and Free Coinage. The scale hung in the balance. Why, if woman is a greater political power for good than man, did she not turn it for the principles which the State had held were best? The true test of the working of woman suffrage lies in a study of the legislation connected with it, and this will be presented under its appropriate heading.

The scenes of shameful defiance of law and order in the midst of which Colorado admitted woman to the ballot are of more recent occurrence and are fresh in memory. Populism never has played in Colorado the part that it has in Kansas, but "anything for free coinage" has been the motto, and in abiding by it the State brought in, and afterward turned out, Gov. Waite, of disgraceful memory. Again, last year, there was Republican- Democratic-Populist fusion to beat the gold standard, and much Populist rule was again the result. One good authority writes me that women "have introduced an element of order and respectability upon election day that was never observed before." He says he thinks that, "as a whole, the people are very much satisfied with woman suffrage and believe that it has resulted beneficially in so far as it has made politics a little better than they were." Another says that "the influence of woman in politics did not prevent the last Republican caucus of Arapahoe Co. from being the most disgraceful in the history of the State. The Convention, though presided over by a woman, was completely in the power of the 'gang,' and sent to Pueblo the most unworthy delegate ever sent." This gentleman also says he has "heard numbers of intelligent women state that they were sorry the ballot had ever been given to them." Orderliness at the ordinary elections is expected here, without calling upon women to act as "moral police" at the polls. So quiet are they that it has been found practicable to place coffee-stands in charge of women near some of the booths, when women have requested it in the hope of preventing drunkenness. A friend said to me some time ago: "You know that I have been a Suffragist. I am most thoroughly converted. I have been three months in Colorado. It is enough to cure any one."

A Denver correspondent of the "Chicago Record," says: "The women of Colorado took no active part in the recent campaign, but they did not forget to vote…. The experiment of having women in the State Assembly did not prove satisfactory, at the last session, and it was quite generally conceded that there would be no more women sent to that body; but the Populists won in this county, and on their ticket were three woman candidates, so the coming session will again have three women as members."

Of course the effect of suffrage in new States is not a criterion of its effect elsewhere. And whether the effect could be shown to be good or bad, the main argument would not be touched. The interesting thing to trace is the affiliations of the movement.

In addition to those that have been mentioned we recall the fact that in our recent political campaign, four parties that nominated candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States, had in their conventions women as delegates and members of committees. They were the Populist, the Free-Silver, the Prohibition, and the Socialist-Labor parties. The woman-suffragists of the Prohibition party left the rock- ribbed champion that had put a Suffrage plank in every platform for years, in order to go with Free Silver and Populism of the most extravagant type. These parties also had Suffrage planks. Altgeld and Debs, Coxey and Tillman were only men, but Mary Ellen Lease furnished to the campaign that strain of exalted fanaticism that at once points out woman's glory and woman's danger.

The Suffrage indictment we have been considering is summed up as follows: "Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one half of the people of this country, their social and religious degradation—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States."

Dr. Jacobi in "Common Sense" says: "To this very day the survivors of that group of pioneer women have an abstract way of stating their claim which, to modern ears, sounds somewhat archaic."

She is not archaic when she says: "During the long ages of class rule, which are just beginning to cease, only one form of sovereignty has been assigned to all men—that, namely, over all women. Upon these feeble and inferior companions all men were permitted to avenge the indignities they suffered from so many men to whom they were forced to submit."

Mary A. Livermore is not archaic when in the "North American Review" for February, 1896, she says: "Her physical weakness, and not alone her mental inferiority, has made her the subject of man. Toiling patiently for him, cheerfully sharing with him all his perils and hardships, the unappreciated mother of his children, she has been bought and sold, petted and tortured, according to the whims of her brutal owner, the victim everywhere of pillage, lust, war, and servitude. And this statement includes all races and peoples of the earth from the date of their historic existence."

I deny the truthfulness of the archaic accusation, and denounce as an absurdity the bombastic demand. I resent, as an unwarranted insult to woman and to man, the still more bitter modern representations of woman's condition and woman's rights in this world, and especially in this Republic. They are simply false.

Archaic or modern, the dictums of the Suffrage pioneers have been repeated at their every convention. Overlaid with sentiment as much of the Suffrage idea has become, contradictory as it is in argument and in statement of fact, blended as are its sophisms with the real progress of the time, sincere and well-meaning as are many of its advocates, sex antagonism is the corner-stone of its foundation. The Woman's Rebellion is a more complex affair than the American Revolution. The latter was the natural result of the earnest and united protest, by a large majority of men and women of the American Colonies, against the tyranny of a monarchical government. The former was a protest by a small band of women and men against what they claimed to be universal tyranny. They attacked law and custom all along the line, and the weapon forever kept in order for the service was the demand for woman's possession of the ballot. Where she does not possess it, and has not asked it, her influence is mightiest. The relation of woman to the Republic is a study worthy the most exalted patriotism. In it is involved the broader question of her relation to man and to the destiny of the race. When told of her son's heroism in crossing the Delaware, Mary Washington said, "George will not forget the lessons I have taught him." Through the mother's devoted faith and the son's obedient power, the foundations were laid of a government whose sole reliance must still be on woman's inspiration and man's willing strength. These are evidently God's instruments for our Nation's upbuilding.

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