Of all the wonders which the history of civilization presents to us, especially during the past century, by far the most remarkable is the progress of woman. Just as we teach the story of political and religious freedom to the rising generation, in order that the blessings of civil and religious liberty may be more fully prized and guarded, so all girls and women should be taught something of the long, arduous struggle which women have had in order to reach the position which they now occupy in the most enlightened parts of the earth. Though a painful struggle, its history is instructive and stimulating. If we know what public opinion has been in the past regarding woman’s place in the world, we can more truly decide whether or not present-day tendencies are to persist.

It is so easy for the unthinking to assume that the world is as it was intended to be and that the customs and conventionalities of society are divinely ordained. This is one of the reasons why we should be careful students of history. No one who has the wide point of view which such study gives can fail to recognize the fact that ours is by no means a completed world, but that evolution is as surely in progress now as ever it was, and that human society is still in the making. Each generation is in duty bound to know the accumulated wisdom of past ages and to add something to it for future generations.

There are many phases of the so-called “woman-question,” the enfranchisement of woman being only one of them, though the one we are hearing most about to-day. All the questions which have arisen, and all which are likely to arise in the future, may be summed up in one or two all-important questions: Is there any freedom, privilege, or opportunity accounted good for men that should be denied to women? If so, to whom belongs the right to deny it?

Within the last few years many conventional ideas regarding woman’s sphere have been swept away and still others are disappearing. While the discussion is going on, sometimes with heat and bitterness, but sometimes calmly and sanely, a generation of girls is growing up, each one of whom is vitally concerned. In what sort of a world are these girls soon to take their places? To what extent are the duties and responsibilities of woman to be different from what they have been? The girl of to-day, who is to be the woman of to-morrow, should come into this new world open-eyed and intelligent.

Only a few hundred years ago philosophers were seriously debating the question whether or not women have souls. With the passing of the centuries an attitude of mind so extraordinary was no longer possible, but other ideas, which are not much less amazing in the light of to-day, long persisted.

The literature of any age reflects current public opinion, and if we would know how women were regarded and what qualities were thought most desirable in them, all we need do is read the literature of that period. Euripides reflects Greek sentiment when he makes Iphigenia say to Achilles, “Better a thousand women should perish than one man cease to see the light.” The Latin motto, Bene vixit qui bene latuit (“She has lived well who has kept well concealed”), speaks eloquently of woman’s place in the days of the Roman Empire. In the metrical romances of the mediÆval period, women seem to live only to grace a tournament or to furnish opportunity for a feat of chivalry on the part of some knight-errant. In Chaucer’s time such stories as that of Patient Griselda force us to the conclusion that she was the most highly esteemed woman who patiently endured the grossest injustice and the most cruel wrong. The weak and sentimental women of Fielding, Richardson, and other eighteenth-century novelists call forth our pity when we realize the purposeless lives they were expected to lead. We must not overlook the fact, however, that in every age there have been marked exceptions to the general rule. From the time of Deborah, or long before, each age has had its “new women,” its nonconformists, who insisted upon doing their own thinking. Most of Shakespeare’s heroines are of this type.

From time immemorial laws have rested heavily upon women. This is true of the Roman law, so just and fair in most respects. Woman was not a citizen with the rights and privileges of a citizen; she was in a state of perpetual tutelage. We do not, however, have to go back to Roman times to find unjust discrimination against women. In this country Connecticut was the first State to give women the power to make a will, which it did only one hundred years ago. It is not long since a law was enacted in Massachusetts giving women a legal right to their own clothing. It took a terrible tragedy only a few years ago, the killing of a number of innocent children by their half-crazed mother lest they fall into the hands of their unworthy father, to cause the Massachusetts Legislature to abolish the law which made the father the sole guardian of his children.

In those parts of the world where the Christian religion is little known, the progress of women has been even slower and beset with more obstacles than in Christendom. Indeed, the women of those countries must look to Christian lands for their salvation. Buddhism, the principal religion of Japan, teaches that woman’s only hope of heaven is that she may be reincarnated as a man. Confucius, the founder of the religion that prevails in China, taught that ten daughters do not equal the value of one son. The woman of Brahminic faith is forbidden to read the scriptures or to offer prayer in her own right. We all know something of the horror of the suttee in India, which, until prohibited by English law, permitted a widow to be sacrificed on her husband’s funeral pyre. The Moslem man prays, “O God, I thank thee that thou hast not made me a woman,” and the Koran teaches that strict obedience to her husband is the only condition upon which a woman can be saved.

The fact that so few women have attained a supreme place in any art or profession is often brought forward to prove the natural inferiority of women. When we recall how few men attain the first rank in spite of the honors and rewards showered by an approving world upon such a man, and when we remember that until recently it was considered hardly respectable for a woman to write a book, to paint a picture, or even to publish music, the surprising thing is that so many women have defied public opinion and have given expression to the genius that was in them. George Eliot wrote under the name of a man in order to get a hearing. The rich poetic gifts of Dorothy Wordsworth largely increased the fame of her illustrious brother. No one knows how many of Felix Mendelssohn’s beautiful “Songs without Words” were the work of his sister Fanny, as we are told by his recent biographers. Caroline Herschel was another gifted sister whose labors helped bring honor and fame to her brother, the great astronomer. If any of these women had lived in the twentieth century, the world would have paid them high honor for the work of their gifted minds.

The last half of the nineteenth century brought educational opportunity to women and the inevitable result followed: they began to reason and hence to ask their share of things, and it looks as if they would not stop until they get it. What are they asking? That all artificial barriers to their freedom be removed, nothing more. So far as nature has created barriers for them and placed limitations upon them, these barriers and limitations should be respected, must be respected. With these, reasonable women have no quarrel. It is the artificially made barriers they are determined to remove. The Chinese woman is realizing that she has burdens sufficiently heavy to bear without adding that of an artificial deformity. Life will not be any too easy for the feminine half of the race even when they have obtained every right and every opportunity to which they have a claim.

One of the things which women asked in vain for many years was the privilege of higher educational opportunity. One hundred years ago there was not a single college in our country which opened its doors to women. All the arguments which are put forward against the enfranchisement of women to-day were put forward yesterday against the extension of their educational opportunities. Serious-minded and earnest men—and women, too—argued that women had no use for the higher education; that they were not capable of receiving it, and that if some, by chance, were equal to it intellectually, they were not physically. The final and seemingly unanswerable argument was that education would unfit women for the sacred duties of the home. Now that our colleges are graduating more than ten thousand young women every year who have not lost their health and who make better wives and mothers because of their wider horizon and broader interests, no one remembers these foolish fears.

Another privilege which women have been seeking for many years is the opportunity to work; that is, they have been asking that there be no artificial barriers between them and the work they want to do. The world is yielding them this privilege, though slowly and somewhat grudgingly. We are still told occasionally that woman is out of her place whenever she seeks remunerative employment outside of the home. It makes little difference, however, who approves and who disapproves. To put things back to where they were one hundred years ago would be no less difficult than to turn back Niagara River. Statistics tell us that there are at present over eight million women in this country engaged in gainful occupations.

Perhaps you ask, But why do women rush out into the world to find work? Why can we not go back to the good old times when all women found shelter and safety within the walls of the home? The answer to this question is a very complex one. More than fifty years ago Harriet Martineau wrote of conditions in England, “A social organization framed for a community of which half stayed at home while the other half went out to work cannot answer the purposes of a society of which a quarter remains at home while three quarters go out to work. With this new condition of affairs, new duties and new views must be adopted.”

There is wide disagreement as to the answer to the question why so many women are engaged in gainful employments. You can best work out the problem for yourself by recalling the women and girls of your acquaintance who are earning a livelihood by work outside of the home. Ask one of these why she does not give up her present position and go back to the “shelter of the home.” She will probably tell you that there is in her home no possible means of support for her. The chances are that she will tell you that her labor is one of the sources of income for the maintenance of that home and dependent ones in it.

The talk of some people would lead you to think that if women would only behave themselves they might all spend their lives in weaving and spinning, as their great-grandmothers did. But if they did this there would be no market for their labors; and who would earn the money necessary for their support? If you knew the facts in regard to the average home of one hundred years ago, you would find conditions vastly different from what they are now. Then, the great bulk of the population lived on farms, from which the labor of all drew sustenance for all. For many years the trend of population has been toward the cities, and the man who once made a comfortable living from the farm, with the assistance of his family, now works in a store or a factory or some other industrial concern. The compensation is often not enough for the family necessities, and the labor of women must be added to that of men. Formerly there were few men who did not have several dependent women relatives in addition to wife and daughters. Now a self-respecting woman prefers the independence which comes with self-support.

Moreover, a great deal of the most interesting work has been forced out of the home. Labor-saving inventions have multiplied and every year brings new ones. Thus have the forces of water and air and electricity conspired to take away much of the ancient prerogative of woman. Your great-grandmother, in all probability, made all the clothing for her family, men included. Moreover, she and her assistants wove the cloth and her hands spun the wool out of which it was made. The linen and the wool must still be woven and made into cloth, but it must be done outside of the home. One would almost have to be wealthy now in order to wear garments toward which no machine had made any contribution. The Ruskin weaving industries of England are an example of the handwork of the twentieth century, but the textiles made on those looms are costly.

In your great-grandmother’s home were manufactured all the lights needed, the wax or tallow candles. We now demand gas and electricity. Then all the food consumed in the home was prepared there. Now vast canneries and factories do the work at less cost than it can be done in the home. Ready-made clothing can often be bought as cheaply as the materials alone for home manufacture.

What I wish to show is that the transference of the labor of the home to the factory has robbed many women of useful, satisfying labor. This has produced widespread unrest among them. The protest against inactivity has caused an increasing army of women to knock upon the door of every opportunity for productive, satisfying occupation.

It is not a wrong instinct in women which urges them, when not needed in the home, to find activity outside of it. If you have a craving to do something in the world, don’t be ashamed of it. It may not be best for you to do it, but the wish to do it does not prove that you are unwomanly, even if it is something that has oftenest been done by men. I am always glad when I find a girl seriously taking up some line of work by means of which she may, if necessary, gain a livelihood. Is it wise for parents to bring their daughters up without any definite aim, instilling into their minds the idea that they will always be taken care of and protected? Who is protected, who can be protected, when fortunes are heaped up to-day only to be swept away to-morrow?

In the progress of women, it is the question of their enfranchisement which is particularly agitating the world to-day, just as, yesterday, it was the question of their education. We have no right not to be interested in the matter. The statement may fearlessly be made that there is not an American young woman alive to-day upon whom will not fall, if she lives to a reasonable age, the responsibility of the ballot. You may believe in woman suffrage or you may not, yet, with your consent or without it, there will some time be placed in your hands an instrument for the possession of which men struggled and fought for hundreds of years, and for which many of them died; and for which women have struggled since long before you were born, and for which many of them would have been willing to die. The danger is that when woman suffrage shall have become universal, and we are no longer reminded, as we now constantly are, of the cost and the value of the ballot, we shall cease to prize it, and shall grow careless of its use, as many men also have done. That is the way of the world. What one generation purchases at tremendous cost, the next accepts as a matter of course. A distinguished woman, who, though she labored hard to help secure higher educational privileges for women, was born a little too soon to avail herself of them, gave an illustration of this. Her granddaughter, just home on her first vacation from college, said to her, “Grandmother, I wonder that you did not go to college. It is splendid!” How little that girl knew of the long, uphill struggle that had taken place in order that she might receive a college education!

Why are women asking for an opportunity to vote? Whatever arguments may be adduced in favor of woman suffrage, we always come back to equality as a first principle, the primary right of each individual to claim before the law the same right as every other individual. It is not entirely a question of the wise use of suffrage, it is a question of liberty and equality. As the world has become more enlightened, liberty has more and more become its governing principle, and the progress cannot stop until every adult fitted for citizenship in any civilized state shall be enfranchised.

Here are several reasons why, it seems to me, women should have the ballot.

First, in order that they may feed and clothe their families properly and provide healthful homes for them to live in. The preparation of food used to be solely women’s business, but it is not now, as I have said. Upon proper inspection of dairies, bakeries, canneries, etc., every family depends for its well-being. Adulteration of food and misbranding need to be guarded against. We all know something of the struggle that has been waged for years by the Consumers’ League and other beneficent agencies against the sweat-shop system. Poisonous germs may lurk in a garment made under unwholesome conditions. A polluted water-supply or a defective sewage system may bring disease or death into any home. The ballot is not the only weapon which can be employed against these evils that menace the home, but it is probably the most effective one.

Another reason why women should vote is for the sake of the moral welfare of their children. It is the voter who has it in his hands to eliminate the saloon and to control the public dance-hall, the debasing theater or moving-picture show, and other sources of moral corruption. It is the voter who has the power to establish libraries and art galleries, playgrounds and parks.

Women ought to vote for the sake of protecting and helping those who cannot help themselves; for the sake of abolishing child-labor, and of securing humane hours and reasonable wages for working-women as well as better protection for young girls against those who would ensnare them. They should vote, also, in order that they may have a voice in measures affecting the public welfare, such as old-age pensions, mothers’ pensions, industrial insurance, prison reform, better care of the sick and the aged, and all forms of civic betterment.

Women should vote in order that they may help to abolish unjust discrimination against women. Even in this free Republic many steps will have to be taken before women will have the same rights before the law as men. The enfranchisement of women will hasten that time. It is only a few years since Senator Tillman, of South Carolina, called to his aid an ancient law of that State in order to enable his son, who had left his wife, to take their children from her. South Carolina is not the only State in which the law, in case of a legal separation, is most unjust to the woman. According to a recent authority, women have the same rights as men in the guardianship of their children in only sixteen States of the Union. In some States the father has even power to deed the children away from their mother. In a number of the States of the Union, the husband still has legal control of his wife’s property and he may claim her wages. Every woman should resolve to do all in her power to help to abolish such obviously unjust laws as these.

There is one more reason why women should vote, and that is, for their own growth and enlargement. Only a few hundred years ago woman had practically no liberty. She had little freedom before marriage, small choice in marriage, unequal rights as a wife, no legal right to her children. She could own no property; educational opportunities were denied her; and her life from birth to death was determined by others, not by herself. One has only to read such a story as Browning’s “The Ring and the Book” to understand something of the wrongs that millions of women suffered before the days when the world in the process of evolution was brought to a more enlightened idea of the rights of woman. What vast progress she has made! One who knows the story of it can be patient in regard to further progress, confident that it will come as surely as the planets will continue in their orbits. And we must not forget that at every step upward hands of strong and fearless men have been held out to her, else she could not have reached her present position. That person is doing small service to the world who attempts to set the interests of women over against those of men and to create antagonism between them. Let us never forget that their interests are not opposed to each other, but that in the long run nothing can be detrimental to one which is not also detrimental to the other.