Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States Part 14

Realizing this fact, and the deep interest that we take in the successful issue of this experiment that humanity is making for self-government, and realizing the fact that the ballot never can be given to us under more favorable circ.u.mstances, and believing that here on this continent is to be wrought out the great problem of man's ability to govern himself--and when I say man I use the word in the generic sense--that humanity here is to work out the great problems of self-government and development, and recognizing, as I said a few minutes ago, that we are one-half of the great whole, we feel that we ought to be heard when we come before you and make the plea that we make to-day.

REMARKS BY MRS. JULIA SMITH PARKER, OF GLAs...o...b..RY, CONN.

Mrs. PARKER. Gentlemen: You may be surprised, and not so much surprised as I am, to see a woman of over four-score years of age appear before you at this time. She came into the world and reached years of maturity and discretion before any person in this room was born. She now comes before you to plead that she can vote and have all the privileges that men have. She has suffered so much individually that she thought when she was young she had no right to speak before the men; but still she had courage to get an education equal to that of any man at the college, and she had to suffer a great deal on that account. She went to New Haven to school, and it was noised that she had studied the languages. It was such an astonis.h.i.+ng thing for girls at that time to have the advantages of education that I had absolutely to go to cotillon parties to let people see that I had common sense. [Laughter.]

She has suffered; she had to pay money. She has had to pay $200 a year in taxes without the least privilege of knowing what becomes of it. She does not know but that it goes to support grog-shops.

She knows nothing about it. She has had to suffer her cows to be sold at the sign-post six times. She suffered her meadow land to be sold, worth $2,000, for a tax of less than $50. If she could vote as the men do she would not have suffered this insult; and so much would not have been said against her as has been said if men did not have the whole power. I was told that they had the power to take any thing that I owned if I would not exert myself to pay the money. I felt that fought to have some little voice in determining what should be done with what I paid. I felt that I ought to own my own property; that it ought not to be in these men's hands; and I now come to plead that I may have the same privileges before the law that men have. I have seen what a difference there is, when I have had my cows sold, by having a voter to take my part.

I have come from an obscure town (I can not say that it is obscure exactly) on the banks of the Connecticut, where I was born. I was brought up on a farm. I never had an idea that it could be possible that I should ever come all the way to Was.h.i.+ngton to speak before those who had not come into existence when I was born. Now, I plead that there may be a sixteenth amendment, and that women may be allowed the privilege of owning their own property. That is what I have taken pains to accomplish. I have suffered so much myself that I felt it might have some effect to plead before this honorable committee. I thank you, gentlemen, for hearing me so kindly.

REMARKS BY MRS. ELIZABETH L. SAXON, OF LOUISIANA,

Mrs. SAXON. Gentleman, I almost feel that after Mrs. Wallace's plea there is scarcely a necessity for me to say anything; she echoed my own feelings so entirely. I come from the extreme South, she from the West. In this delegation, and in the convention which has just been held in this city, women have come together who never met before. People have asked me why I came.

I care nothing for suffrage so far as to stand beside men, or rush to the polls, or take any privilege outside of my home, only, as Mrs. Wallace says, for humanity. Years ago, when a little child, I lost my mother, and I was brought up by a man. If I have not a man's brain I had at least a man's instruction. He taught me that to work in the cause of reform for women was just as great as to work in the cause of reform for men. But in every effort I made in the cause of reform I was combated in one direction or another.

I never took part with the suffragists. I never realized the importance of their cause until we were beaten back on every aide in the work of reform. If we attempted to put women in charge of prisons, believing that wherever woman sins and suffers women should be there to teach, help, and guide, every place was in the hands of men. If we made an effort to get women on the school boards we were combated and could do nothing. Everyplace seemed to be changed, when there were good men in those places, by changes of politics; and the mothers of the land, having had to prostrate themselves as beggars, if not in fact, really in sentiment and feeling, have become at last almost desperate.

In the State of Texas I had a niece living whose father was an inmate of a lunatic asylum. She exerted as wide an influence in the State of Texas as any woman there. I allude to Miss Mollie Moore, who was the ward of Mr. Gus.h.i.+ng. I give this ill.u.s.tration as a reason why Southern women are taking part in this movement, Mr. Wallace had charge of that lunatic asylum for years. He was a good, honorable, able man. Every one was endeared to him; every one appreciated him; the State appreciated him as superintendent of this asylum.

When a political change was made and Governor Robinson came in, Dr. Wallace was ousted for political purposes. It almost broke the hearts of some of the women who had sons, daughters, or husbands there. They determined at once to try to seek some redress and have him reinstated. It was impossible. He was out, and what could we do? I do not know that we could reach a case like that; but such cases have stirred the women of the whole land, for the reason that when they try to do good, or want to help in the cause of humanity, they are combated so bitterly and persistently.

I leave it to older and abler women, who have labored in this cause so long, to prove whether it is or is not const.i.tutional to give the ballot to women.

A gentleman said to me a few days ago, "These women want to marry." I am married; I am a mother; and in our home the sons and brothers are all standing like a wall of steel at my back. I have cast aside every prejudice of the past. They lie like rotted hulks behind me.

After the fever of 1878, when our const.i.tutional convention was going to convene, broke the agony and grief of my own heart, for one of my children died, and took part in the suffrage movement in Louisiana, with the wife of Chief-Justice Merrick, Mrs. Sarah A.

Dorsey, and Mrs. Harriet Keatinge, of New York, the niece of Mr.

Lozier. These three ladies aided me faithfully and ably. When they found we would be received, I went before the convention. I went to Lieutenant-Governor Wiltz, and asked him if he would present or consider a pet.i.tion which I wished to bring before the convention.

He read the pet.i.tion. One clause of our State law is that no woman can sign a will. We will have that question decided before the meeting of the next Legislature. Some ladies donated property to an asylum. They wrote the will and signed it themselves, and it was null and void, because the signers were women. They not knowing the law, believed that they were human beings, and signed it. That clause, perhaps, will be wiped out. Many gentlemen signed the pet.i.tion on that account. I took the paper around myself.

Governor Wiltz, then lieutenant-governor, told me he would present the pet.i.tion. He was elected president of the convention. I presented my first pet.i.tion, signed by the best names in the city of New Orleans and in the State.

I had the names of seven of the most prominent physicians there, leading with the name of Dr. Logan, and many men, seeing the name of Dr. Samuel Logan, also signed it. I went to all the different physicians and ministers. Three prominent ministers signed it for moral purposes alone. When Mrs. Horsey was on her dying bed the last time she ever signed her name was to a letter to go before that convention. No one believed she would die. Mrs. Merrick and myself went before the convention. I was invited before the committee on the judiciary. I made an impression favorable enough there to be invited before the convention with these ladies. I addressed the convention. We made the pet.i.tion then that we make here; that we, the mothers of the land, are barred on every side in the cause of reform. I have strived hard in the work of reform for women. I pledged my father on his dying bed that I would never cease that work until woman stood with man equal before the law, so far as my efforts could accomplish it. Finding myself baffled in that work, I could only take the course which we have adopted, and urge the proposition of the sixteenth amendment.

I beg of you, gentlemen, to consider this question apart from the manner in which it was formerly considered. We, as the women of the nation, as the mothers, as the wives, have a right to be heard, it seems to me, before the nation. We represent precisely the position of the colonies when they plead, and, in the words of Patrick Henry, they were "spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne." We have been jeered and laughed at and ridiculed; but this question has pa.s.sed out of the region of ridicule.

The moral force inheres in woman and in man alike, and unless we use all the moral power of the Government we certainly can not exist as a Government.

We talk of centralization, we talk of division; we have the seeds of decay in our Government, and unless right soon we use the moral force and bring it forward in all its strength and bearing, we certainly cannot exist as a happy nation. We do not exist as a happy nation now. This clamor for woman's suffrage, for woman's rights, for equal representation, is extending all over the land.

I plead because my work has been combatted in the cause of reform everywhere that I have tried to accomplish anything. The children that fill the houses of prost.i.tution are not of foreign blood and race. They come from sweet American homes, and for every woman that went down some mother's heart broke. I plead by the power of the ballot to be allowed to help reform women and benefit mankind.

REMARKS OF MRS. MARY A. STEWART, OF DELAWARE.

Mrs. STEWART. I come from a small State, but one that is represented in this Congress, I consider, by some of the ablest men in the land. Our State, though small, has heretofore possessed and to-day possesses brains. Our sons have no more right to brains than our daughters, yet we are tied down by every chain that could bind the Georgian slave before the war. Aye, we are worse slaves, because the Georgian slave could go to the sale block and there be sold. The woman of Delaware must submit to her chains, as there is no sale for her; she is of no account.

Woman from all time has occupied the highest positions in the world. She is just as competent to-day as she was hundreds of years ago. We are taxed without representation; there is no mistake about that. The colonies screamed that to England; Parliament screamed back, "Be still; long live the king, and we will help you." Did the colonies submit? They did not. Will the women of this country submit? They will not. Mark me, we are the sisters of those fighting Revolutionary men; we are the daughters of the fathers who sang back to England that they would not submit. Then, if the same blood courses in our veins that courses in yours, dare you expect us to submit?

The white men of this country have thrown out upon us, the women, a race inferior, you must admit, to your daughters, and yet that race has the ballot, and why? He has a right to it; he earned and paid for it with his blood. Whose blood paid for yours? Not your blood; it was the blood of your forefathers; and were they not our forefathers? Does a man earn a hundred thousand dollars and lie down and die, saying, "It is all my boys'?" Not a bit of it. He dies saying, "Let my children, be they cripples, be they idiots, be they boys, or be they girls, inherit all my property alike."

Then let us inherit the sweet boon of the ballot alike.

When our fathers were driving the great s.h.i.+p of state we were willing to ride as deck or cabin pa.s.sengers, just as we felt disposed; we had nothing to say; but to-day the boys are about to run the s.h.i.+p aground, and it is high time that the mothers should be asking, "What do you mean to do?" It is high time that the mothers should be demanding what they should long since have had.

In our own little State the laws have been very much modified in regard to women. My father was the first man to blot out the old English law allowing the eldest son the right of inheritance to the real estate. He took the first step, and like all those who take first steps in improvement and reform he received a mountain of curses from the oldest male heirs; but it did not matter to him.

Since 1868 I have, by my own individual efforts, by the use of hard-earned money, gone to our Legislature time after time and have had this law and that law pa.s.sed for the benefit of the women; and the same little s.h.i.+p of state has sailed on. To-day our men are just as well satisfied with the laws of our State for the benefit of women in force as they were years ago. In our State a woman has a right to make a will. In our State she can hold bonds and mortgages as her own. In our State she has a right to her own property. She can not sell it, though, if it is real estate, simply because the moment she marries her husband has a life-time right. The woman does not grumble at that; but still when he dies owning real estate, she gets only the rental value of one-third, which is called the widow's dower. Now I think the man ought to have the rental value of one-third of the woman's maiden property or real estate, and it ought to be called the widower's dower. It would be just as fair for one as for the other. All that I want is equality.

The women of our State, as I said before, are taxed without representation. The tax-gatherer comes every year and demands taxes. For twenty years have I paid tax under protest, and if I live twenty years longer I shall pay it under protest every time.

The tax-gatherer came to my place not long since. "Well," said I, "good morning, sir." Said he, "Good morning." He smiled and said, "I have come bothering you." Said I, "I know your face well. You have come to get a right nice little woman's tongue-las.h.i.+ng."

Said he, "I suppose so, but if you will just pay your tax I will leave." I paid the tax, "But," said I, "remember I pay it under protest, and if I ever pay another tax I intend to have the protest written and make the tax-gatherer sign it before I pay the tax, and if he will not sign that protest then I shall not pay the tax, and there will be a fight at once." Said he, "Why do you keep all the time protesting against paying this small tax?" Said I, "Why do you pay your tax?" "Well," said he, "I would not pay it if I did not vote." Said I, "That is the very reason why I do not want to pay it. I can not vote and I do not want to pay it." Now the women have no right when election day comes around. Who stay at home from the election? The women and the black and white men who have been to the whipping-post. Nice company to put your wives and daughters in.

It is said that the women do not want to vote. Here is an array of women. Every woman sitting here wants to vote, and must we be debarred the privilege of voting because some luxurious woman, rolling around in her carriage and pair in her little downy nest that some good, benevolent man has provided for her, does not want to vote?

There was a society that existed up in the State of New York called the Covenanters that never voted. A man who belonged to that sect or society, a man whiter-haired than any of you, said to me, "I never voted. I never intended to vote, I never felt that I could conscientiously support a Government that had its Const.i.tution blotted and blackened with the word 'slave,' and I never did vote until after the abolition of slavery." Now, were all you men disfranchised because that cla.s.s or sect up in New York would not vote? Did you all pay your taxes and stay at home and refrain from voting because the Covenanters did not vote? Not a bit of it. You went to the election and told them to stay at home if they wanted to, but that you, as citizens, were going to take care of yourselves. That was right. We, as citizens, want to take care of ourselves.

One more thought and I will be through. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments give the right of suffrage to women, so far as I know, although you learned men perhaps see a little differently. I see through the gla.s.s dimly; you may see through it after it is polished up. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a great many smart men in the country, and smart women, too, give the right to women to vote without, any "ifs" or "ands" about it, and the United States protects us in it; but there are a few who construe the law to suit themselves, and say that those amendments do not mean that, because the Congress that pa.s.sed the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments did not mean to do that. Well, the Congress that pa.s.sed them were mean enough for anything if they did not mean to do that. Let the wise Congress of to-day take the eighth chapter and the fourth verse of the Psalms, which says, "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?" and amend it by adding, "What is woman, that they never thought of her?"

REMARKS BY MRS. LUCINDA B. CHANDLER, OF PENNSYLVANIA.

Mrs. CHANDLER. Gentlemen, it will be conceded that the progress of civilization, all that lifts humanity above a groveling, sensual, depraved state, is marked by the position, intelligence, and culture of women. Perhaps you think that American women have no rightful claim to present; but American women and mothers do claim that they should have the power to protect their children, not only at the hearthstone, but to supervise their education. It is neither presuming nor unwomanly for the mothers and women of the land to claim that they are competent and best fitted, and that it rightfully belongs to them to take part in the management and control of the schools, and the instruction, both intellectual and moral, of their children, and that in penal, eleemosynary, or reformatory inst.i.tutions women should have positions as inspectors of prisons, physicians, directors, and superintendents.

I have here a brief report from an a.s.sociation which sent me as a delegate to the National Woman Suffrage Convention, in which it is stated that women in Pennsylvania can be elected as directors on school boards or superintendents of schools, but can not help to elect those officers. It must very readily occur to your minds that when women take such interest in the schools as mothers must needs take they must feel many a wish to control the election of the officers, superintendents, and managers of the schools. The ladies here from New York city could, if they had time, give you much testimony in regard to the management of schools in New York city, and the need there of woman's love and woman's power in the schools and on the school boards. I am also authorized by the a.s.sociation which sent me here to report that the woman-suffragists and some other woman organizations of the city of Philadelphia, have condemned in resolution the action of the governor a year ago, I think, in vetoing a bill which pa.s.sed largely both houses of the Legislature to appoint women inspectors of prisons. On such questions woman feels the need of the ballot.

The mothers of this land, having breathed the air of freedom and received the benefits of education, have come to see the necessity of better conditions to fulfill their divinely appointed and universally recognized office. The mothers of this land claim that they have a right to a.s.sist in making the laws which control the social relations. We are under the laws inherited from barbarism.

They are not the conditions suited to the best exercise of the office of woman, and the women desire the ballot to purge society of the vices that are sure to disintegrate the home, the State, the nation.

I shall not occupy your time further this morning. I only present briefly the mother's claim, as it is so universally conceded. We now have in our schools a very large majority of women teachers, and it seems to me no one can but recognize the fact that mothers, through their experience in the family, mothers who are at all competent and fit to fulfill their position as mothers in the family, are best fitted to understand the needs and at least should have an equal voice in directing the management of the schools, and also the management of penal and reformatory inst.i.tutions.

I was in hopes that Mrs. Wallace would give you the testimony she gave us in the convention of the wonderful, amazing good that was accomplished in a reformatory inst.i.tution where an incorrigible woman was taken from the men's prison and became not only very tractable, but very helpful in an inst.i.tution under the influence and management of women. That reformatory inst.i.tution is managed wholly by women. There is not a man, Mrs. Wallace says, in the building, except the engineer who controls the fire department.

Under a management wholly by women, the inst.i.tution is a very great success. We feel sure that in many ways the influence and power that the mothers bring would tend to convert many conditions that are now tending to destruction through vices, would tend to elevate us morally, purify us, bring us still higher in the standard of humanity, and make us what we ought to be, a holy as well as a happy nation.

REMARKS BY MRS. SARA A. SPENCER, OF WAs.h.i.+NGTON.

Mrs. SPENCER. Miss Susan B. Anthony was chosen to present the const.i.tutional argument in our case before the committee. Unless there is more important business for the individual members of the committee than the protection of one-half of our population, I trust that the limit fixed for our hearing will be extended.

The CHAIRMAN. Miss Anthony is ent.i.tled to an hour.

Mrs. SPENCER. Good. Miss Anthony is from the United States; the whole United States claim her.