The Ladies' Battle

SEPTEMBER, 1910

BY MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL

I

ONE fact concerning the womansuffrage movement is plain to all who have watched that movement: that is, the superficial and inadequate manner in which the matter has been discussed on both sides. The suffragists, in their spoken and published utterances, reveal that, while they propose a stupendous governmental change, they have little knowledge of the fundamentals of government, the evolution of representation, the history of politics, or the genesis, scope, and meaning of suffrage. In their treatment of the subject, they hopelessly confuse political, philanthropic, socialistic, and economic questions; nor do they seem able to discriminate between objects of national and those of state or municipal regulation. They have shown no grasp of the principles of government; few suffragists, perhaps, could explain, offhand, why the House of Representatives has a Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the Senate has a Committee on Foreign Relations. Yet such things are among the alphabet of representative government, and to attempt enormous governmental changes without knowing this alphabet is like trying to work the integral and differential calculus without knowing the ground-rules of arithmetic.

The objectors to woman suffrage have not always given logical or practical reasons against it. They feel an instinctive dislike to the overturning of the social order which woman suffrage would work, but they have reasoned little more than a person reasons who runs indoors from a hailstorm. The inconveniences of remaining exposed to a hailstorm are so plain that few persons work the matter out logically; they act on instinct, which, unlike reason, makes no mistakes. Still, if an effort were made forcibly to expose persons to hailstorms, a dozen conclusive reasons might be found why they should go indoors. Mr. William Dean Howells says that he has heard many appeals against woman suffrage, but that he has never heard any reasons against it; yet there are compelling reasons against it. They have not been much in evidence, because the debate has been chiefly in the hands of women whose knowledge of governmental principles is meagre.

Both sides—whether for or against — have assumed that the revolution would be over when a woman could walk up to the polling-booth and deposit a ballot in the box. It is at this point, however, that the revolution would begin. It is true that limited suffrage prevails in twenty-two states, and full suffrage in four, — Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah, — and still there is no general revolution. But it must be remembered that in the states where there is limited suffrage, women have shown a general indifference to exercising suffrage, while the experiment in the four crude and sparsely settled states in which there is full suffrage affords no adequate test for full suffrage in great centres of civilization, and in vast and crowded communities, with immense and diversified interests.

Wyoming is a state of cowboys and cattle-ranges. Idaho is dominated to a great degree by the Mormon Church, which has ever been the good friend of woman suffrage, and the most powerful advocate it has yet had. In Utah, the women-voters, under the lead of Mormonism, have voted steadily in favor of polygamists and law-breakers, who have been sent to Congress, in defiance of the law, by the votes of women. In Colorado, the most civilized of all the suffrage states, the suffrage experiment has not been entirely successful, as will be shown further on. The near view of suffrage does not seem to help it. During the last fourteen years, California, South Dakota, Washington, and Oregon have all defeated suffrage amendments to their constitutions.

II

There are two basic principles opposed to woman suffrage. A basic principle works with the merciless mechanism of a natural law, like gravitation, and is indeed a natural law. It may be violated for a time, just as a stick may be thrust in the cogs of a machine, but the machine will not work until the stick is removed, and is sure to be damaged by the performance. True, it is not only the suffragists who have defied a basic principle: it is within the memory of living men that the government of the United States, through some of its ablest and most experienced legislators, violated every principle of constitutional government, of common sense as well as common justice, by placing the ballot in the hands of recently emancipated slaves who could neither read nor write, and were without property.

By the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, in five states of the Union, all power and property were handed over to the combined vice and illiteracy of those states. By the Fifteenth Amendment, a coach and horses were driven through the Constitution of the United States by an attempt to compel the granting of the same civil rights to the recently emancipated slaves only a few generations removed from cannibalism, as to the highest type of the Caucasian race with a thousand years of civilization behind it. If civilization could be destroyed by legislative enactment, it would have been destroyed in the five Southern states which were thus delivered over to anarchy. But civilization cannot be destroyed by legislative enactment. It may be grievously injured, and frightful disorders and lasting wrong may follow; but the basic and natural law will always, in such dreadful events, rise above the statute law and civilization will maintain itself at all costs.

The reason against the enfranchisement of women bears no relation whatever to the reason for the practical disfranchisement of the Negro which now prevails throughout the Southern states. It may rather be compared to the disfranchisement of all the citizens of that district which has the highest percentage of literacy of any district in the country, and the highest percentage of individual wealth, and in which the government disburses three hundred and seventy-two millions of dollars a year in wages. This is the District of Columbia, containing a population of 343,005 souls. No citizen of the District has a vote. The experiment of giving these citizens votes had been fully tried, when, less than forty years ago, two of the greatest jurists of the age, the late Senator Thurman of Ohio, and former Senator Edmunds of Vermont, carried through, without division of party, a scheme of disfranchising every citizen in the most intelligent municipality in the country. Two reasons were given for this. One was to prevent the Negroes from voting, and the other was the belief that it was better there should be no political representatives at the seat of Federal government except Federal representatives.

In this case, as from the beginning of representative government, the ballot was recognized, not as a right, but as a privilege, which could be withheld from intelligent qualified persons, as well as from the unqualified. As Senator Elihu Root, one of the greatest living jurists, has tersely put it, “But if there is any one thing settled, it is that voting is not a natural right, but simply a means of government.”

III

The two basic reasons against woman suffrage are as follows: —

First, no electorate has ever existed, or ever can exist, which cannot execute its own laws.

Second, no voter has ever claimed, or ever can claim, maintenance from another voter.

In the suffrage states these basic laws are for the moment nullified.

Concerning the first of these propositions, a voter must have two qualifications. First, he must, except in occasional individual instances, be physically able to make his way to the polls, against opposition if necessary; and, second, he must be able to carry out by force the effect of his ballot. Law consists of a series of Thou-shaltnots, but government does not result until an armed man stands ready to execute the law. Force converts law into government. In civilized countries there are three methods of converting law into government — fine or compensation, imprisonment, and death. For all of these, physical force is necessary. To create an electorate unable to use physical force, is not, as the suffragists seem to think, merely doubling the present electorate. It means pulling out the underpinning, which is force, from every form of government the world has yet known.

Besides the two essential qualifications of a voter, there are many other desirable ones. Education is desirable, but not essential. The possession of education and intelligence does not enable women to force their way to the polls or to execute laws created under female suffrage. The spectacle of one half the electorate unable to execute a single law it has made, or even to deposit its ballots without the assistance of the other half, is a proposition so fantastic that it is difficult to attack it seriously.

The trouble would begin with the mere attempt of women to deposit their ballots. A dozen ruffians at a single polling-place could prevent a hundred women from depositing a single ballot. There can be no doubt that this means would be used by the rougher elements, and that the polls would become scenes of preordained disorder and riot. In addition to this rowdyism, respectable women would have to face the class that is not respectable, a thing appalling to modest women. The respectable women might invoke the law, but they could not enforce it. They would be dependent upon that moiety of men who might be willing to assist them. The constabulary has always proved totally inadequate to maintain order at the polls when there was a determined effort at disorder; and there is in the American nation a fixed hostility to the employment of troops at polling-places. It is a fact, probably unknown to the suffragists, that every administration which has ever passed a force bill, or even made a serious endeavor to do so, has lost the House of Representatives at the next election. This has given rise to the axiom that an electorate which cannot protect itself is not worth protecting, and the country is better off without it than with it. This principle has worked unerringly since the foundation of the Republic, and is in itself the natural protection of the ballot.

Supposing the ballots of women, however, to have been deposited by the indulgence of men, women will surely be called upon to legislate for men upon subjects of which no woman has ever had, or ever can have, any practical experience. True, men now legislate for women. But there is no trade, profession, or handicraft, of which women have a monopoly, and in which no man has any experience. It has often been pointed out that women could not, with justice, ask to legislate upon matters of war and peace, as no woman can do military duty; but this point may be extended much further. No woman can have any practical knowledge of shipping and navigation, of the work of trainmen on railways, of mining, or of many other subjects of the highest importance. Their legislation, therefore, would not probably be intelligent, and the laws they devised for the benefit of sailors, trainmen, miners, etc., might be highly objectionable to the very persons they sought to benefit. If obedience should be refused to these laws, who is to enforce them? The men? Is it likely they will? And if the effort should be made, what stupendous disorders would occur! The entire execution of the law would be in the hands of men, backed up by an irresponsible electorate which could not lift a finger to apprehend or punish a criminal.

Great questions would arise concerning national defense and internal protection. The votes of women, not one of whom would be called upon to share the hardships of a military life, might decree that a hundred thousand soldiers would be sufficient in a case where the men from whom these soldiers would be recruited would say that two hundred thousand were needed. By providing only half that number, those men might be sent to their destruction. Would they go? And if they refused, who is to make them go? Where would be the justice in allowing women a voice, and an utterly irresponsible ballot, on this subject? In municipal affairs, the men might decide that a city needed for its protection a police force of fifteen hundred men; the women, not one of whom would be called upon to risk her life as a policeman risks his, might conclude that a thousand men would be enough, and those thousand men would have to face odds with which it would require fifteen hundred men to deal; and awful disasters might result. But suppose the police refuse to meet these odds. Again, who is to make them do it? A considerable proportion of men are unable to do military or constabulary duty. To add to this irresponsible percentage among men the whole feminine electorate, would be to reduce the responsible electorate to a minimum.

In a recent magazine article, Mrs. Clarence Mackey, a leading suffragist, advances with much gravity the proposition that influence such as women now possess, without responsibility, is a very bad thing. She proposes to substitute the authority of the ballot in place of influence, but still without responsibility. If influence without responsibility is dangerous, authority without responsibility must be a thousand times more dangerous. It is, in fact, the most dangerous thing on earth. The logic of the suffragists is not always equal to that of Aristotle.

IV

The second basic principle against woman suffrage — that one voter cannot claim maintenance from another voter — would deprive married women of any claim for support from their husbands; and in all questions concerning women, wives and mothers must be considered first. From the beginning of representative government it has been recognized that when a man acquires a vote he gives up all claim to maintenance except upon public charity. On attaining his majority, a man loses all claim to maintenance, not even his own father being called upon to maintain him for another day. In the case of daughters, the unwritten law, which is always much more strictly obeyed than the written law, has decreed that the father, if able, shall maintain his adult daughters as long as they remain unmarried. The exceptions to this law only prove the rule. Under the present dispensation, the status between husbands and wives is, practically, that the husband has the vote and the wife has the property. In lieu of a vote, the law has given the wife enormous property privileges which, of course, are totally inconsistent with the possession of a vote. The law of property between husband and wife may be broadly stated as follows: —

The wife on her marriage does not become responsible for any debts owed by her husband before marriage; the husband on marriage becomes in many states responsible for every debt owed by the wife before marriage. The wife is the sole possessor of her own estate; the husband is not, and never has been, the sole possessor of his own estate unless there is a pre-nuptial contract. He cannot alienate his wife’s dower, either in his lifetime or by his will. A husband’s courtesy-right in his wife’s estate by no means corresponds in value with the wife’s dower-right in his estate. A wife is not liable for her husband’s debts; a husband may not excuse himself from paying his wife’s debts, even on the ground that they were contracted without his knowledge, or even against his prohibition.¹ The law compels him to pay those debts of his wife which are reckoned justifiable and in proportion to the husband’s income and station in life. A married woman is entitled to her own earnings; a married man is not, and never was, entitled to his own earnings. The law compels him out of them to give adequate support to his wife and minor children. The woman seeking divorce from her husband can compel him to pay her counsel fees, and to give her alimony if she be the innocent party, even if he marry again, and this alimony continues until the former wife’s death or remarriage. She can also compel her former husband to provide for the support of the minor children. A husband seeking divorce from his wife cannot force her to pay his counsel fees or secure alimony from her, or, if she be guilty, force her to support the minor children, although the wife may be wealthy and the husband may be penniless.

It may be said in passing that this over-indulgence on the part of men toward women in divorce laws is to a great degree responsible for the divorce evil. In most states, the laws concerning the property privileges of women seem to be embodied sentimentalism; and in some, the husband appears to have no rights which the wife is bound to respect. In Georgia, a recent legislature proposed to add to the gift of all of a man’s property to his wife, that it should be a felony in the State of Georgia for a man to ‘defame’ a woman. These delightful Knights of La Mancha omitted to define what constitutes defaming a woman.

One fact is admitted, however, by every person familiar with the rudiments of the common law — that all property privileges must be resigned at once by every woman who acquires a vote. This must be done as a matter not only of justice, but of necessity, for no voter can claim maintenance from another voter who may cast a vote which may not only impair, but even destroy, the power of the first voter to support the second voter. The wife, for example, may be a freetrader, and the husband a protectionist. The wife may, by her single vote, cause tariff changes that would enormously impair the husband’s power of supporting her. This impairment may be done in a more direct manner by the wife of an official. She may by her vote reduce his salary, or even cause his office to be abolished entirely, thereby leaving him without an income. To say that wives would always vote for their husbands’ financial interests is to accuse women of absolute and complete corruption. So it will be seen that, following an unbroken precedent which is founded upon a basic principle, a wife, on acquiring a vote, would have to give up all claim to maintenance upon any one whomsoever, except upon public charity; or she may be compelled, as in Utah, to support her husband.

But how can a woman, the mother of minor children, do without maintenance from her husband? It is the law of nature, as well as of custom, that the man should be the breadwinner of the family; and he is, ninetynine times out of a hundred. The few instances to the contrary only prove the rule. How many mothers with young children are capable of self-support? If, however, she becomes a voter she must take her place with all the voters, and abandon all claim to maintenance upon anybody. Where would the rights of the children come in? Who would be responsible for the support of minors ?

In the attempt to adjust the property rights between a husband and wife, both of whom are voters, and the minor children, chaos must result. It is a problem never before presented upon a considerable scale, and is practically incapable of adjustment; that is to say, the litigation which would result would swamp ten times as many courts as exist in the United States today. It would present unknown complications in the transfer of property, in the making of contracts, in the carrying on of business, in every transaction in which a married man or a married woman was a party. It would be necessary to wipe out most of the common law, ‘the world’s most copious fountain of human jurisprudence.’ No lawyer or financier living would undertake to prophesy the result, except stupendous loss to women and a cataclysmal confusion and destruction of values.

At this point comes in the most startling feature of the suffragists’ campaign. It might be imagined that the very first thing to be settled is: ‘How does the acquisition of a vote affect the property privilege of women?’ Until the suffragists are prepared to answer this question satisfactorily, it is difficult to see how they can ask votes for women. Now, so far as their printed utterances go, not one single word on this vital and stupendous point has been spoken by any suffragist. At their annual meetings, this subject has never been mentioned.

As a matter of fact, women in the suffrage states have their property privileges very much curtailed, and are liable for the support of their husbands in certain contingencies - a thing unknown in states without woman suffrage. Whether these facts and questions are kept in the background for fear lest, if they are brought forward, the whole suffrage body may be stampeded, or whether the suffragists themselves do not know that the inevitable consequences of acquiring a vote mean a loss of property privileges, cannot be stated. Judging, however, from this indifference to basic principles, the suffragists do not know that they will lose any property privileges by becoming voters.

The suffragists, however, haveadopted as a principle a strange fallacy,— not found in any system of government on this planet, — that the payment of taxes entitles the taxpayer to vote. The phrase ‘Taxation without representation is tyranny ’ has been wholly misunderstood by them. It is indeed a misleading phrase, especially to persons unfamiliar with governmental principles. But it was never meant or taken in the sense that the payment of taxes carried with it a vote. It did not refer to individuals at all, or to an enlargement of the electorate. There is not the smallest evidence to show that the colonies ever sought or desired parliamentary representation, and the subject was never mentioned except to be dismissed. As Sydney George Fisher says, in his Struggles for American Independence, ‘It is to be understood that they [the American Colonies] did not ask for representation in Parliament. They declared it to be impossible. . . . They always insisted that representation was impossible.’

The phrase, as originally used, referred to what were really international relations. The suffragists think it meant that nobody should pay taxes who had not a vote. This notion would have made the founders of the Republic smile — for, as a justice of the Supreme Court once calmly reminded an indiscreet advocate, ‘ It may be assumed that the Supreme Court of the United States knows something.’ It knows there is no essential relation between taxation and representation. It knows that, if this principle proclaimed by the suffragists were adopted, the public income would stop.

It must be remembered that taxation, in its inception, meant protection; that is to say, property-owners paid in order to have their property protected. In any event, a woman’s property as well as a man’s must be protected by a man. If her rights are infringed, she has the same redress that men have — the power of the courts, with men to carry the mandate into effect, because no woman can carry any law into effect. The property is taxed, and not the individual. Nobody has proposed that the property of minors should be exempt from taxation. In the District of Columbia with its 343,005 inhabitants, no man has a vote, but no man has had the assurance so far to ask exemption from taxation. The entire Army and Navy of the United States, including the officers, the best educated body of men in the country, are practically disfranchised through difficulty in establishing domicile, and for other reasons. Yet army and navy men are required to pay taxes just as much as civilians.

The idea that taxation carries with it a vote is peculiarly ludicrous when employed by suffragists from the South. There is probably not one of them to be found who advocates restoring the franchise to the two million Negro voters, increased by two more millions of ignorant Negro women-voters; but the Southern suffragists have not so far proposed to exempt the ten million Negroes in the South from taxation. But if no one should be taxed who has not a vote, then these ten million Negroes should be exempt from taxation; also all lunatics, minors, and criminals; all army and navy officers and men; all the inhabitants of the Territories and of the District of Columbia.

The twelve hundred thousand foreigners who are added annually to our population would also be exempt from taxation for at least five years — the shortest time, under our present naturalization laws, in which an alien may become a voter. But this would only be the beginning of the exemption. Citizenship cannot be forced upon any man, and immigrants might choose to remain aliens, and no doubt would, in order to escape taxation. Sad to say, great numbers of American citizens would cross the Canadian border and become loyal subjects of King George, and exchange their citizenship for exemption from taxes. If Mr. Carnegie, Mr. Rockefeller, and Mr. Pierpont Morgan should choose to become aliens, they would be exempt from taxation. Vast foreign corporations would be represented by a few individuals, who would remain aliens and pay no taxes. There are a few states where an alien cannot hold real estate, but there are many other forms of property which are taxed, and in most of the states a foreigner may own anything he can pay for, and he is taxed from the moment he acquires it. To differentiate between voluntary and involuntary aliens would be to call the whole population of the United States into court.

The proposition that taxation without representation is an injustice would no doubt be enthusiastically supported by every scoundrel among men in the United States of America. If a man by reason of crime were deprived of his vote, or by not having the educational qualifications which are usually required, he would also be exempt from taxation. In fact, if taxation without representation be adopted as a principle of government, nobody need pay taxes who does not want to, and the number of persons who really want to pay taxes is, unfortunately, small.

V

There can be no doubt that a wave of suffrage has swept over the world in the last few years. Besides what has been done in America, Australia and Finland have adopted full suffrage for women; and Sweden, Denmark, and New Zealand have limited suffrage in various forms. It is alleged that full suffrage in Australia and Finland has not worked well, but the experiment is too recent to be very valuable. And it must be remembered that no women have the property privileges of American women. In England, it would be unjust to confound the section of lawabiding and dignified, if mistaken, suffragists with the shrieking and savage mobs that make one shudder at the thought of intrusting them with the vote. It brings to mind the stern words of the late Queen Victoria, the first sovereign on earth who ever understood, maintained, and observed a constitution, and who in the sixty-four years of her reign had more governmental experience, more practical knowledge of politics than any woman who ever lived, — 4 The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write in checking this mad, wicked folly of “Woman’s Rights” with all its attendant horrors.’

This illustrious lady was celebrated for knowing what she was talking about.

The present Liberal Government has shown a singular vacillation concerning the frenzied English women who rioted for suffrage. Less than a year ago the London police were using dog-whips upon them. Now, the nonpartisan committee appointed by Prime Minister Asquith has reported a bill giving the franchise to women-householders in their own right, and those occupying at their own expense domiciles of a certain value. The bill has already passed its second reading, and may possibly be adopted at the present session of Parliament. With the example of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States before us, there is no reason to suppose that the British Parliament may not do something equally irrational. As in that case, Parliament may yield to the clamors of a frantic mob; but when a legislature does that, it always has to pay a fearful price. Also, Parliament is as likely as any American legislature to mistake a minority for a majority. For it must not be forgotten, that according to the suffragists’ own showing, woman suffragists are in a minority in every one of the twenty-six states in which they have full or limited suffrage, except in Utah. In that still polygamous state, woman suffragists have a majority.

VI

It must be said, however, of American suffragists in the past, that their course has generally been one of dignity and decorum. A few painful absurdities have been committed, like Miss Anthony’s Woman’s Bible, which was an effort to edit the Bible so that it might become a suffragist document. This attitude of dignity on the part of the suffragists has been recently disturbed by that strange psychic law which makes violence contagious. The shocking conduct of a part of the English suffragists has not been without its evil effect on American suffragists.

At the forty-second annual meeting of the Woman Suffrage Association, in Washington in April, 1910, the suffragists carried on a street campaign which was not without humorous aspects. Women, standing up in motors, would represent pathetically their miserable situation without the ballot, and make passionate appeals for a vote to men who themselves had no votes. The official proceedings and speeches showed a lamentable want of legal and governmental knowledge. One lady announced, ‘We will make a noise until we get a vote.’ This singular sentiment was applauded, in apparent forgetfulness that the only creature who gets what it wants by making a noise is a baby. Another delegate publicly advocated race-suicide, giving the perfectly logical reason that women could not attend properly to public affairs and look after their families as well. On the day when their petition was presented in the Senate, the galleries were crowded with suffragists, who became so noisy that the presiding officer, Senator Kean of New Jersey, was obliged to announce that if the disorder did not cease the galleries would be cleared.

The most shocking impropriety of all was the public insult to President Taft when he was their invited guest. The President yielded to strong pressure, and on the evening of April 15 made a short address to the suffragists assembled at the Arlington Hotel. The President spoke with courtesy and dignity, but on his making some guarded reference to the dangers attending the extension of the franchise, the suffragists proceeded to make history by hooting and hissing the President of the United States. This has never before occurred in the history of the country. No matter how hostile a crowd might be, or of what low elements it might consist, the President of the United States has always been treated with respect. A number of the suffragists, realizing their frightful blunder, sent a letter of apology to the President. The action, however, was not unanimous. At no time during the meeting was there any discussion, or even allusion to any changes which might result in the property privileges of women in the event of acquiring a vote. Many strange ideas of government, however, were presented. A brilliant and prominent advocate of woman suffrage gave the following as its chief objects: —

‘ Woman suffragists stand for sanitation, education, and the uplift of six million working women in the United States.’

A very slight analysis of this formula will show many fallacies.

First, is the universal fallacy on the part of the suffragists that all women will vote alike, and will vote right.

Second: neither sanitation nor education can be the first or even the most important object of government. Good laws well administered, a pure and competent judiciary, internal order, national defense, and many other things, must take precedence of sanitation and education. Neither sanitation nor popular education was known to the founders of the Republic; yet these founders added more to the forces of civilization than any group of sanitarians or educators that ever lived.

Third: neither sanitation nor education is a national affair, but both are the business of states and municipalities.

Fourth: sanitation and education are already well attended to by men, and as large a share of the public income is devoted to them as the people will bear.

Fifth: the proposition that one-half the electorate of the country shall devote its energies to the uplifting of six million working women in the United States is a bald proposition to create a privileged class. This is a thing abhorrent to republican institutions, and is the line of demarkation between republics and monarchies. There is not, and never can be, a line on any statute book in the United States, regulating work and wages between private individuals. Any proposition to that effect is socialism run mad. There is a socialistic association, highly favored by suffragists, to bring about that no shop-girl shall work for less than four dollars a week. It is only just to the well-meaning but ill-informed women who have gone into this movement, to say that their unfamiliarity with governmental problems is the reason that such a grotesque association exists. The innocent blunders of equally wellmeaning and ill-informed suffragists in New York City have involved them in violations of law, and several of their leaders were indicted in June, 1910, for boycotting and conspiracy.

Suffrage is neither a philanthropic scheme nor an economic measure, but a registering machine. The stock argument of the suffragists has ever been, that the suffrage would enable a woman to get the same pay for the same work as a man. What they probably mean by this is, that a woman working the same number of hours at the same employment as a man, should receive the same pay. But it has been tested, and needs no test, that the work of women for the same time at the same employment as men is not so good in quality or quantity, and for obvious reasons. A woman cannot stand physical effort and nervous strain as a man can; nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of every thousand go into work with the fixed intention of abandoning it at the first possible moment; a woman at the period of her greatest energy is liable at any moment to make a contract of marriage, which vitiates other contracts; and women are less amenable to discipline than men.

Suffrage would not increase the physical strength of women; it would not keep them at work if they had a good opportunity to escape from it; it would not prevent them from marrying if they wished to; and it would not make them any more amenable to discipline. Suffrage will not enlarge the scope of women’s employments. It will not enable them to climb telegraph poles, or to construct battleships, or to build sky-scrapers. It will have no effect upon either their work or their wages, work and wages being entirely controlled by the law of supply and demand.

VII

As to the actual working of woman suffrage, one community alone — Colorado — affords a full and fair test, after more than thirty years of suffrage, under conditions more nearly resembling these in older civilizations. In that time, charges that the Colorado electorate, as well as those of the other three suffrage states, was peculiarly corrupt, have been brought forward alongside of the counter-claim by the suffragists that Colorado led in reform the great procession of states. In 1904 came the celebrated contested election case of Bonynge versus Shafroth in the First Congressional District of Colorado, containing the city of Denver. This case was investigated during the second session of the Fifty-eighth Congress (H. R. report, No. 2705). The methods prevailing in the Colorado electorate were there fully and officially set forth. In this case, the certificate of election had been given to Mr. Shafroth, but it was contested by Mr. Bonynge, and the ballot-boxes were brought to Washington and opened in the House of Representatives.

The ballot-boxes disclosed a state of corruption comparable only with the worst days of reconstruction in the South. Out of a total of nearly nine thousand ballots cast, six thousand were fraudulent. In this orgy of fraud and forgery, the women-voters held their own gallantly. It was found that bogus ballots had been placed in the boxes, and in many cases that six or eight or ten of these bogus ballots were folded together in such a way that they could not have been voted separately or legally. The handwriting experts testified that all these bogus ballots had been filled in by four persons, one of them a woman; that this woman had numbered hundreds of these bogus ballots, and had them placed in the ballot-boxes. On page 23 of the report, it will be noted that the polling-list contained 422 names, and was in the handwriting of a woman clerk of the poll. On page 24 it was shown that this woman voted three times, and she also wrote in the party designation for many of the ballots. On the same page it is shown that another woman signed the certificate in two places purporting to have been signed by two other clerks. Certificates in a pollbook, purporting to be signed by each of the judges, were found to be in the handwriting of a woman, a clerk of the poll. On page 5 it is stated that although the names of seventy-five women appear on a poll-list, the committee found but two ballots on which the party name at the top appears to be in the handwriting of women.

This gives a slight idea of the corrupt methods prevailing among the women-voters of Colorado. The whole exhibition was such that Mr. Shafroth did what has never before been done in the history of a contested election case in the Congress of the United States. He rose and formally resigned the seat which had been given him upon the prima facie evidence of the certificate of election. Colorado has but three congressional districts, and in the First District is the city of Denver. Therefore, the state of affairs prevailing in the First Congressional District may be reasonably taken as representing one-third of the electorate of Colorado, and that the wealthiest and most enlightened third. No wonder that Judge Moses Hallett, for twenty-seven years United States District Judge for Colorado, and previously Chief Justice of Colorado as a Territory, said in an interview in the Denver Republican, on April 6, 1902:-

‘There is a growing tendency on the part of most of the better and more intelligent of the female voters of Colorado to cease exercising the ballot. If it were to be done over again, the people of Colorado would defeat woman suffrage by an overwhelming majority.’

As to the alleged purifying effect of women-voters on politics, it is not indicated by the following Associated Press dispatch, dated Denver, May 17, 1910: —

‘That Denver has gone “wet,” seems assured by the returns received up to eight o’clock to-night. Betting on a “wet” majority is two to one, with very little “ dry ” money in sight.’ The final ‘wet’ majority was two to one.

This comes from the oldest and most civilized centre of woman suffrage. From Utah, the only state in which woman suffragists have a majority, came on the 10th of June, 1910, the following Associated Press dispatch from one of the principals in a proposed prize fight, which had been prohibited in California by Governor Gillett: —

‘Salt Lake City can handle the fight, and it can be put on July 4th’ — prizefighting not being illegal in Utah.

The introduction of the woman-suffrage question into politics in the last two or three years has already made difficulties. Men, being the arbiters, have naturally and wisely kept, in general, out of the discussion. It has been mainly carried on by women, who must, of course, settle it among themselves, for it has been shown that men are willing to grant the ballot to women as soon as it is proved that a majority of women want it — and often long before this is proved. Whenever it has come to a test of numbers and political management between the suffragists and the anti-suffragists, the latter have secured an easy and overwhelming victory.

In 1894, a strong effort was made by the suffragists in New York State to have the Constitutional Convention of that year adopt a woman-suffrage amendment. The opposition was not aroused until the amendment appeared to be certain of a majority of votes. Then a rapid campaign was organized, a delegation of women went to Albany, and by masterly tactics they succeeded in having an amendment tacked on to the bill, making voting compulsory. In a few weeks the anti-suffragists defeated the result of twentyfive years of effort on the part of the suffragists.

In Massachusetts the anti-suffragists were brilliantly successful in the matter of the so-called Referendum of 1895. The Massachusetts Legislature passed a bill, submitting to the men-voters, and to the women-voters entitled to vote for school committees, the question whether municipal suffrage should be granted to women. The suffragists sought to avoid the test and appealed to the governor to veto the bill after it had passed. Both sides went actively into the campaign. The anti-suffragists, with great intelligence, decided to remain away from the polls, while exerting all their influence against the proposed measure. The votes of the men and the women were kept separate. The result was a majority of 100,000 men opposed to the bill. Out of an estimated number of 575,000 women of voting age, only 22,204 voted in favor of the bill. In 47 towns, not one woman’s vote was recorded in favor of it, and in 138 towns the suffragists secured in each 15 votes or less; 864 votes were cast against it.

This illustrates a fact very important for legislators to recognize — the insignificant number of suffragists in the whole body of women. At the National Woman Suffrage convention in April, 1910, a petition bearing the names of four hundred thousand women asking for suffrage was presented to the Congress of the United States. When it is recalled that there are about twenty million women of voting age in this country who have not asked for a change, it will be seen that the commotion made by the suffragists bears a very small relation to their numbers.

The idea of forcing suffrage, with all its attendant complications, and the sacrifice of property privileges, and changing the whole status of forty-five million women and girls and girl-children at the bidding of four hundred thousand, is in itself a monstrous proposition. If the suffragists believe that suffrage would be advantageous to women, they are justified in urging women to ask for it. But to demand of men that the status of ninety-five per cent of the women of the country be wholly changed at the solicitation of five per cent, certainly shows an admirable hardihood.

IX

The suffragists have said repeatedly that if a suffragist amendment to the Constitution were adopted, no woman need vote who did not wish to vote. This is equivalent to saying that if a sixteenth amendment, authorizing polygamy, were adopted, no one need practice polygamy who did not wish to do so. Nevertheless, it would change the status of every woman in the United States. Opposition to suffrage does not mean that women should not study public affairs, and take an intelligent interest in them. If women would read the proceedings in Congress and inform themselves upon state and national affairs, it would broaden their minds immensely, and there would be fewer suffragists. It would also add to their charms, because they could take a sympathetic interest in those public questions in which most men are more or less engaged. It was this ability to meet men on their own ground that gave the women of the French salons their power. Those glorious French women enchanted by their grace, their sweetness, and their exquisite femininity, and they ruled by virtue of their intellect and their profound knowledge of affairs. American women could, by the same means, exercise equal power.

The suffragists are quite correct in asserting that there are certain public questions in which women have a larger stake, and have probably a better knowledge, than men. One of these questions is divorce and remarriage. It is not overstating the fact to say that divorces in the United States, by their numbers and by the methods through which they are procured, have reached the point of a national leprosy. Perhaps the most important contributing cause has been the extraordinary indulgence shown to women by the divorce laws, which unfortunately make divorce cheap and easy, and force the husband to pay for it. There is always a demand for a uniform divorce law throughout the country, but the difficulties in the way have so far prevented any serious attempt to pass such a Federal law.

It has also been conceded for many centuries that women are the chief beneficiaries of monogamy, and the chief sufferers by lax marriage and divorce laws. The proposition need only be stated to prove itself — that the limiting, if not actual wiping out, of divorce is the greatest question, not only of the family, but of the state, before the women of this country. But it is a striking and vital fact, that so far as the suffragists are concerned, they have avoided, in all their public and printed utterances, the slightest allusion to, much less condemnation of, divorce. And yet their fixed contention has ever been, that woman suffrage represents purification and reform!

It would be vain for the suffragists to say that divorce cannot be checked, and even abolished. In South Carolina there is not, and never has been, any divorce; but a husband and wife, in extreme cases, may get all the relief which is necessary by a legal separation. Among the twelve million Catholics in the United States there are no divorces, and very few legal separations. In all of the Protestant denominations there are found numbers of earnest clergymen who decline to remarry divorced persons. In the Episcopal Church, especially, a band of conscientious and far-seeing men exists who take the only ground which has so far proved tenable: that no divorced person should remarry; that neither the guilt nor the innocence of the divorced persons can be considered; that a certain percentage of innocent persons must suffer in the operation of the most beneficent laws; and that the only thing to be considered is the greatest good of the greatest number.

So far, however, from the suffragists showing any antagonism to divorce, there seems to be a close relation between suffrage and divorce. It would be interesting to figure out the percentage of divorced women among the sufragists. Some of their most prominent leaders are divorced women. In the four suffrage states, all the causes for divorce exist that are recognized in the nonsuffrage states, and special causes which are peculiar to the suffrage states. For example, the last census (1900) shows that six women in Utah were divorced by their husbands for non-support.

The statistics of divorce show that the rate is practically higher in the four suffrage states than in any other states of the Union. There are five that have a higher rate of divorce than the suffrage states; but in three of these there are large Negro populations which furnish an enormous percentage of divorces. In Texas, for example, which has a larger percentage of divorces than any other state in the Union, the Census Bureau estimates that seventy-five per cent of divorces are granted to Negroes. In the other two states, in which there are very few Negroes, the divorce statistics show that the percentage of outsiders becoming temporary residents in order to obtain divorces, brings the rate for natives actually below that of the four suffrage states, in which the percentage of outsiders seeking divorce is small.

In addition to leading the country, practically, in divorces, these four states show that this abnormal rate of divorce prevails under conditions which are usually adverse to divorce. It is agreed among sociologists, and is proved by statistics, that divorce in general follows wealth, luxury, a highly artificial mode of life, and complex social conditions. In the four suffrage states, however, the general mode of life is simple and the social conditions primitive. These circumstances enhance very much the probable connection between suffrage and divorce. If suffrage gives any encouragement to divorce, that is enough to condemn it in the eyes of all political economists, all sociologists, all publicists, and all who love honor and decorum.

I ask pardon for introducing a personal note. My excuse is that I may help to disprove the fallacy that it is the woman who works that would profit by the ballot. I was but little past my twenty-first birthday when, on the strength of having earned about seven hundred dollars by my pen, I rashly assumed the support, by literature, of my family. The rashness, ignorance, and presumption of this can only be excused by the retired life I had led in the library of an old Virginia country-house, and in a community where conditions more nearly resembled the eighteenth than the nineteenth century. That I succeeded was due to tireless effort, unbroken health, a number of fortunate circumstances, and above all, what I am neither afraid nor ashamed to say, the kindness of the good God.

In the course of time, I became, through literature alone, a householder, a property-owner, a taxpayer, and the regular employer of five persons. My experience, therefore, has been more varied than that of most women, and I know something of the interests both of the woman who works and the property-owner, the taxpayer, and the employer. I can say with positiveness that there never was a moment when the possession of a vote would not have been a hindrance and a burden to me. I had no claim on any man whatever to help me fight my way to the polls; after I had voted I could not enforce my vote. I should have become involved in controversies which might have impaired my earning capacity; and there would have been the temptation, ever present to the weaker individual, of voting to please my employers. From this I was happily exempt.

These considerations, great in any woman’s case, would have been enormously increased in the case of a wife and the mother of a family, with all the sacrifice of property privileges and confusion of political and family relations which would have resulted. I admit that I should peculiarly dislike being divorced by a husband for non-support, as the six ladies were in Utah.

But none of the disadvantages of the ballot for me which I have mentioned, exist for men. They can fight their way to the polls, and enforce their votes; the controversies, which are so disastrous and undignified for women, are by no means so among men. In short, men have certain natural qualifications as voters which women have not, and never can acquire, and are perfectly adapted to working the great registering machine called suffrage.

In conclusion, it is my earnest hope and belief that the sound good sense of American women will defend them from suffrage, and protect their property privileges, their right to maintenance from their husbands, and their personal dignity. And if the women of this country will unite upon any true reform, such as the abolition of divorce, I believe their power to be so great that they can carry through measures which thinking men desire, but cannot effect without the assistance of women. I believe that the most important factors in the state are the wives and mothers who make of men good citizens to govern and protect the state, and I believe woman suffrage to be an unmixed evil.