Woman and the Republic Part 12

In asking for laws that carried out these claims, or some of them, Mrs.

Stanton said, in addressing the New York Legislature in 1854: "If you take the highest view of marriage as a Divine relation, which love alone can const.i.tute and sanctify, then of course human legislation can only recognize it.... But if you regard marriage as a civil contract, then let it be subject to the same laws that control all other contracts. Do not make it a kind of half-human, half-divine inst.i.tution, which you may build up but cannot regulate."

These doctrines--from those of Frances Wright to those of Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony--were put forth in the name of social purity and true marriage. A great body of Suffragists never have accepted them. They were repugnant, in this form, to a majority who were demanding "equal rights."

In January, 1871, Mr. Hooker (husband of Isabella Beecher Hooker), said in the New York Evening Post: "The persons who advocate easy divorce would advocate it just as strongly if there was no Suffrage movement. The two have no necessary connection. Indeed, one of the strongest arguments in favor of Woman Suffrage is, that the marriage relation will be safer with women to vote and legislate upon it than where the voting and legislation are left wholly to men. Women will always be wives and mothers, above all things else. This law of nature cannot be changed, and I know of n.o.body who desires to change it." As he had just been referring to "persons who advocated easy divorce," and who originated the Suffrage movement, his statement that he knew of n.o.body who desired to change marriage seems funny.

It was one of the matters remarked upon with satisfaction by Suffrage leaders during our Const.i.tutional Convention Suffrage campaign, that such a large number of speakers advocated Suffrage because of its advantage to the home. Mrs. Cora Seabury said: "Where woman is, homes naturally exist, and not without her. The 'divine veracity in nature,' which in her case has survived the chaos of ages and the varying civilization of six thousand years, is not now to be disproved by an incident comparatively so trivial as that of taking the ballot." Dr. Jacobi puts the idea in this way: "Mr. Goldwin Smith declares that woman suffrage aims at such a 's.e.xual revolution' as must cause the 'dissolution of the family.' The Suffrage claim does not aim at this; it seeks only to formulate, recognize, and define the revolution already effected, yet which leaves the family intact. The _Patria Potestas_ is gone. A man has lost, first, the right to kill his own son, then the right to order the marriage of his daughter, then the right to absorb the property of his wife. Nevertheless, he survives, and the family, shorn of its portentous rights, bids fair in America to remain the happiest of all conceivable natural inst.i.tutions; more profound than society, so immeasurably deeper than politics that the fortunate wife, daughter, or sister is puzzled when the two are mentioned in the same breath."

All these writers agree in demanding the ballot in order to make some essential change in woman's condition. Some of them hold that this change cannot be made unless the relations of wife and mother can be set aside when the individual considers them detrimental; others hold that it can be made and leave the relations intact; and one believes that this change is already so far made, while the relations are still intact, that nothing need be feared from further change. It reduces itself to matter of opinion and prophecy on the part of those who agree with the early leaders that essential change is needed, but do not agree with them as to the steps necessary. The appeal must be to facts.

The originators of the movement ought to know what the movement meant. The marriage laws were the first attacked, and are still being hammered at in favor of divorce, although legislation has outrun their demand in changing the outgrown laws in regard to property and contracts. Mr. Hooker said: "The persons who advocate easy divorce would advocate it just as strongly if there was no Suffrage movement." How can that be, when the women who inspired the Suffrage movement, and who began it and still carry it on, proclaimed this as a necessary part? But, this question aside, it may be said that the marriage relation has been the most unsafe in the hands of the women whose idea of equality either repudiates it outright or inveighs against its present status. From the revolutionary and infidel portion of France, from which it sprang, to the recently dead Oneida Community, who but women who imbibed the doctrine that marriage was bondage, have sustained the various forms of license which called itself freedom?

Transcendentalism and Libertinism worked together, and both found women who could be fitted to the task of destroying the home.

Mrs. Seabury avers that where woman is, homes will naturally exist. Homes have not existed "naturally." There was a long, long time in human history when not a dream of a home existed. From lawless individualism to tribal life, from tribe to clan, from the clan, at last, through mighty struggles, the family was evolved--the final grouping of the race--the social unit. That point was not reached until man the savage, man the rover, had consented to be bound, and bound for life, to one woman. It has been one object of Christian civilization to hold man to this saving compact. First to hold his spirit by affection for wife and child, and next to hold his material interests for the sake of society. The work has so well progressed that to-day the man's family is dearer to him than his own life. He will live for them, and fight for them; and the women who proclaim that man is woman's enemy, are the a.s.sa.s.sins of their own peace and of the growing peace of home.

A proof that "women will not always be wives and mothers above all things else," is to be found in the story of the women who have engaged in intrigue from the days of ancient Egypt. A woman State senator-elect says: "I am a Mormon, and believe in polygamy." The organizations that are first to proclaim the so-called freedom of woman from the marriage bond, are the same that would repudiate all government, human and divine.

But man has no more set the bounds of woman's life than woman has set those of man's. It is false to say that man has "usurped the prerogative of Jehovah," in a.s.signing her a sphere of action. He has a.s.signed neither her sphere nor his own. Their spheres have been worked out from the conditions that made them male and female. The ideal that faith could picture was presented in the Old Testament, and when Christ said, "For the hardness of your hearts Moses commanded to write a bill of divorcement, but in the beginning it was not so," he spoke the ultimate word. Save for adultery, the family was not to be broken, and the laws of modern life, which grow freer in every other respect, are approaching nearer to this model as society progresses, and most rapidly so in the most progressive states.

There is a fine bit of unconscious humor in Miss Anthony's remark that "Woman must accept marriage as man proffers it, or not at all." Man is at present blinded by the belief that he must proffer marriage as woman will accept it, or not at all. Society has lodged with her what Mrs. Stanton calls "only the veto power." Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton apparently wish the women to do the proffering, the accepting, and the rejecting. With so insignificant a part a.s.signed him, it would seem a pity that there should be a sort of necessity for man to play in the marriage role at all. When Suffrage leaders have so arranged matters that the bride retains her maiden name, she can spend her summers in Europe and her winters in Florida, while her husband works all the year round in New York to support her, without her being subjected to the mortification of seeming to desert the man whose name she bears.

You cannot teach this untruth to the girl without teaching it to the boy.

The struggle of civilization has been to teach that manhood was not the great fact of man's life, and he has learned it through the chivalry and tenderness that appealed to and developed his higher nature. But if once he understands that woman does not hold herself in need of his chivalry and tenderness, the husbandhood and fatherhood that now bind him to one sacred vow of married love, and tame the savage within him, will not long prevent him from seeing his own advantage in the new order.

Wifehood and motherhood 'incidental relations.' They are incidental!

Incidental not only to the continuance of the race in civilization, but to all that is best and holiest in that continuance. The mothers of the Rebellion say: "The love of offspring, common to all orders of women and all forms of animal life, tender and beautiful as it is, cannot as a sentiment rank with conjugal love. The one calls out only the negative virtues that belong to the apathetic cla.s.ses, such as patience, endurance, self-sacrifice, exhausting the brain forces, ever giving, asking nothing in return; the other, the outgrowth of the two supreme powers in nature, the positive and negative magnetism, the centrifugal and centripetal forces, the masculine and feminine elements, possessing the divine power of creation in the universe of thought and action. Two pure souls fused into one by an impa.s.sioned love. This is marriage, and this is the only corner-stone of an enduring home."

The "homes" built solely upon this cornerstone have not endured in this country. The children born under such principles are taken care of by the "Community" in a building apart from that occupied by the "pure souls."

The "inst.i.tutional" bringing up of children was lately advocated in this city by Mrs. Stanton Blatch at Suffrage meetings.

The virtues that the Suffrage leaders denounce as "apathetic" are those that Christ signalized as the heavenly virtues, and are those which heroes emulate, whether they be women or men.

Dr. Jacobi says the Suffrage movement, "aims only to regulate and define the revolution already effected, and which leaves the family intact." I think it has been proven from words and acts that it does aim at just such a "s.e.xual revolution" as threatens the family with dissolution. It aimed to accomplish this by every means in its power, by an industrialism which it desired should make woman independent of man, by divorce laws, and by the use of the ballot. Who has shorn man of all his portentous rights? Man himself, through the influence of woman. Is it likely, then, that he was taking steps in the direction of the destruction of his own home? He was endeavoring to build it on those sure foundations that make it what it is.

He can build if woman occupies, but he cannot both fight for the home and against it. Circ.u.mstances, and not Suffrage cries, have forced or enticed woman into the trades and professions. She has gone farther afield for her work, partly because the Aegis of home is more broadly spread than it formerly could be on account of the very strength of the marriage tie, which makes honor, home, and woman more secure. So far as she has gone to help the home, and because of love of it, such causes have not hurt the family life, and will not. But when we come to Suffrage we have met a different matter. The vote is not an affair of feeling or opinion, like religious belief. The fact that the men of the family are the natural defenders of law, and the women are not, is seen at close quarters in the home, and in case of opposite votes and any serious resulting action, the father and son must stand in the att.i.tude of actual physical as well as political antagonism to the mother and daughter. If it came to an issue, man would have to decide whether he would defend his own opinion, expressed in his ballot, or the opposite opinion expressed by his wife in her ballot. And the mere suggestion of difference in family opinion, final action upon which could only be taken by a resort to that in which the men must always be superior, would not only endanger family life and peace, but would develop a fatal inequality between the s.e.xes. If the women of the family vote with the men, they only double the vote and the expense, without changing the result; if they vote against the men, they stand in the ridiculous att.i.tude of opposing them where they cannot do more than pull hair, or inviting a revolution which they cannot stay.

As to the possibility of this, there are a few striking and suggestive facts at hand. The sound judgment and law-abiding element of this country expressed itself in no uncertain tones at the late election. After the defeat of Mr. Bryan, he was given a tremendous demonstration of approval at Denver, in which the women played a conspicuous part. Mrs. Bradford said: "The women tried to welcome you to the White House. When a few more stars have been added to the Equal Suffrage banner, the women _will_ welcome you to the White House." Mrs. Patterson, President of the Equal Suffrage League, said in seconding the address of welcome: "Women of Colorado, I present to you the first president of the twentieth century-- William Jennings Bryan." An invalid of whom I know, travelled from California to her home in Colorado in order to cast her vote for Bryan, while her husband cast his for McKinley in California. Mrs. Cannon, of Utah, was elected on the Free-Silver ticket, against her husband on the Gold-Standard ticket. Mrs. Cronine, a Populist member of the legislature of Colorado, is reported as saying: "It hurt my husband, a lifelong Republican, to see me vote against his party and carry both our children with me." Should there be political disturbance in Colorado and Utah, in 1900, here are three husbands on record who might be called upon by the United States authorities to put down by force, perhaps to kill, those whose lawlessness their wives had instigated and abetted. In one instance the man's own sons may fight against him, impelled to do so by the lessons taught by their mother. It requires no stretch of fancy to see the possibility of civil war brought to the doors of every home, when women vote. And the occasion that would bring it would not be the saving of the Nation's life, but its overthrow; not freedom for an oppressed cla.s.s, but mingled bondage and license for a s.e.x now free; not the preservation of home, but its destruction. The Suffrage women who here among us are talking so foolishly about arbitration and universal peace, seem to have no conception that with their next breath they are endeavoring to establish the conditions for the most horrible of conflicts--that of s.e.x.

So far from the "taking of the ballot" being "trivial," it is the most serious and dangerous business in which a woman can engage.

The home is not a natural inst.i.tution unless it is maintained by natural means, and woman suffrage and the home are incompatible. John Bright, in reply to Mr. Theodore Stanton's question why he opposed suffrage, said, "I cannot give you all the reasons for the view I take, but I act from the belief that to introduce women into the strife of political life would be a great evil to them, and that to our own s.e.x no possible good could arise. When women are not safe under the charge or care of fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, it is the fault of our non-civilization, and not of our laws. As civilization founded on Christian principles advances, women will gain all that is right for them to have, though they are not seen contending in the strife of political parties. In my experience I have observed evil results to many women who have entered hotly into political conflict and discussion. I would save them from it."

How true this is, and how wise are the fears expressed by Mr. Bright, we realize afresh at every study of the exciting campaign of November, 1896.

The Woman's Journal, the Suffrage organ, published a letter from its California correspondent descriptive of the work of their women in watching the count on the Suffrage amendment. One woman who felt "terribly blue" says that a man patted her on the shoulder and told her to keep up her courage, and she says: "It broke me up, I can tell you, for I never could stand sympathy. If people will let me alone, I can grit my teeth and stand it, but when they say kind things to me I go to pieces. However, as I was bound I would not show those men how badly I felt, and give them a chance to say women were hysterical, I smiled weakly--very weakly, I'm afraid--but still it was a smile and pa.s.sed as such. Then I began to get sick--ye G.o.ds! how sick! The excitement in the booth stopped, but there was an excitement in my head that had not been there before! Everything got black and began to go round. They could have counted us out a dozen times, and I should never have known the difference." Again the correspondent says: "Mrs. W. was so tired that she broke down." "Mrs.

Babc.o.c.k waxed eloquent, and had the meeting in tears. Miss Shaw said she wanted to speak of one who had been forgotten, because she came here before any of the rest, and worked so hard that she had ruined her health, and lay pale and white on her couch at home. She stood there, and the tears rolled down her cheeks, and she didn't try to wipe them away. Every one was crying. Mrs. Blinn said, 'I cannot speak. I feel too much to say anything,' and then she broke down and cried. Mrs. McCann soon had everybody crying about Miss Hay, and when Miss Hay got up she was crying too. So we had a very weepy morning, you see." In describing the departure of Miss Anthony and Rev. Anna Shaw for the East she says: "Oh, it was awful! awful! The whole thing was like a funeral."

With the steady improvement in machinery and in education, the wife and mother can be more and more relieved of work. But the home depends as much as ever upon her love, her skill, her care. She now has means, which science has just taught the world, of learning how to provide, on proper principles, for children, how to dress sensibly, cook wholesomely, make the home sanitary. Nursing is a fine art now, and comforts can be placed within the reach of every invalid, if the mother knows how to do it. If home is to be hospitable, and a centre of social influence, all the artistic and homely powers are demanded. If the family is to be well- dressed, the mother must attend to it. If home is to be beautiful, the mother and daughter must make it so. In these days, there is little need of slaving; and there is a glimpse ahead of leisure for thought and self- culture such as men would find it hard to make. The long and enforced retirement of maternity may prove a time for most valuable improvement. In our social life there is too little culture that is the result of absorption by a quiet process of mental a.s.similation. The place where this can be best achieved is in the home. The danger of our fascinating modern life, with its endless calls and opportunities outside, lies in the strain it puts upon systems that are far more delicately organized than man's.

Nature meant that women should have periods of quiet. Let us honor our own natures, exalt our own opportunities, love and lead our own lives, and so bless the world and the Republic through perfected homes.

I have considered this question mainly from the view-point of the wife and mother; but the home relations are vastly broader. In regard to their whole scope, some of the Suffrage leaders have uttered this dictum: "The isolated household is responsible for a large share of woman's ignorance and degradation." If this declaration does not mean that the Suffrage movement aims to tear down the individual home, it means nothing. The world must judge which system is responsible for the larger share of woman's ignorance and degradation.

CHAPTER XII.

CONCLUSION.

In the opening of this volume I have given it as my opinion that the movement to obtain the elective franchise for woman is not in harmony with those through which woman and government have made progress. I have spoken of the marvellous forward impulse that has marked the pa.s.sage of the last half-century, and have mentioned the growth of religious liberty, the founding of foreign and home missions, the extinction of slavery, the temperance movement, the settlement of the West, the opening of the professions and trades to women, the progress of mechanical invention, the sudden advance of science, the civil war, and the natural play of free conditions, as among the causes of this impulse. I have pointed out the fact that the Suffrage movement has nearly reached its semi-centennial year, and has made a record by which its relation to these progressive forces can be judged, and I have appealed from the repet.i.tion of its claims to the verdict of its accomplishment.

In the second chapter I have considered the growth of republican forms the world over, and endeavored to show that the dogma of Woman Suffrage is fundamentally at war with true democratic principles, and that, practically, woman suffrage has been allied with despotism, monarchy, and ecclesiastical oppression on the one hand, and with the powers of license and misrule that a.s.sail republican government on the other.

In the third chapter I attempt to prove this further by a study of the origin of the Suffrage movement, and by its relation to the Government of the United States. I try to refute the two propositions which it has put forth as solid resting-ground for woman's claim to the elective franchise in this land--"Taxation without representation is tyranny," and "There is no just government without the consent of the governed." I have also set forth the difference between munic.i.p.al and const.i.tutional suffrage, and shown that the extension of school suffrage, so far from being a stepping- stone to full suffrage, affords another evidence that such full suffrage is unprogressive and undemocratic. It is held that regulated, universal manhood suffrage is the natural and only safe basis of government.

In the fourth chapter I consider the early relation of the Suffrage movement to the causes of anti-slavery and temperance. I also discuss the att.i.tude of the Suffrage leaders during the civil war, and indicate that the Suffrage movement was not patriotic, and was a hindrance to emanc.i.p.ation and reform.

The fifth chapter treats of the connection of the Suffrage movement with the change that has taken place in the laws, and it contains a synopsis of the present laws of New York regarding women. From this study it appears that the Suffrage movement did not originate the change in the laws; that many changes most vigorously urged by its a.s.sociations never have been enacted; and that change of laws has not been so much sought as a voice upon change of laws--the fact being, that the vote _per se_ has been urged as the panacea for all woman's wrongs.

The sixth chapter deals with Woman Suffrage and the trades. It shows that this movement was not instrumental in opening the trades to women; that the conditions of industrial life are not changed in such essentials as would involve a change of s.e.x relation to Government; and that, so far from altering the basis of government, industrialism has introduced new problems of such grave import that security in the enforcement of law is doubly necessary. It shows, furthermore, that socialistic labor has been naturally the friend of Woman Suffrage, while the safer and sounder organizations have extended sympathetic help to woman.

The seventh chapter discusses the connection of Woman Suffrage with the professions. It aims to show that here, too, suffrage has not been necessary to gain, for women who were fitted to hold it, an honorable place; and, in regard to the places they have not yet entered, it is held that the impulse must come from within. It is argued that, in the professions, as in the trades, Suffrage effort has hindered more than it has helped, and that in the West its practical working is the most damaging thing that has attended woman's real progress.

The eighth chapter considers the connection of Woman Suffrage with education. Its conclusions are, that not education, but coeducation, was the persistent demand of Suffragists, and that woman's advancement in college and university was wrought out by the impulse gained from women who opposed the Suffrage idea, and made practical by men to whom also that idea was repugnant. It is suggested that women who could prepare and defend the ignorant Suffrage Woman's Bible have no right to utter a syllable in protest of the educational ideas of men and women who are competent to speak on the subject, and whose verdict has been, on the whole, for separate study during collegiate age, wherever such could be afforded, while it is not disputed that coeducation has its place and its uses.

The ninth chapter presents Woman Suffrage in its relation to the church.

It first discusses, briefly, a few points in the Suffrage Woman's Bible, published in New York in 1895. This is a commentary on such pa.s.sages in the Pentateuch as relate to women, and the t.i.tle "Rev." is prefixed to four names of editors on its t.i.tle-page. This book, or rather a book of which this is the first instalment, was promised by Suffrage writers and speakers from the beginning. It is considered to contain the consummate blossom of the mind that first expounded the Suffrage theory--the mind that grasped it as a whole, in its full meaning and intent, and never has wavered in expression as to its ultimate object and the means by which that object is to be sought. This chapter sets forth, in few words, the present writer's view of woman in the creation, and of St. Paul's att.i.tude toward woman. The chapter further discusses woman's early preaching in this country, and shows that it has not been such as to build up religion or the state, but has been such as to suggest that, while the possibilities of her nature tend to make her supreme in capacity to point the way to higher regions, it also contains qualities that may render her peculiarly dangerous as a public leader.

The tenth chapter, ent.i.tled "Woman Suffrage and s.e.x," alludes briefly to the social evil, and then discusses the Suffrage ideas in regard to s.e.x as explained by both their older and more recent writers. It discusses the disabilities of s.e.x in relation to the suffrage--the difficulties in the way of jury duty, police duty, and office-holding--and draws the conclusion that the fulfilment of such necessary work of the voting citizen is practically an impossibility for woman, and has been found to be so in the Western States.

The eleventh chapter has for its t.i.tle "Woman Suffrage and the Home." It sets forth the belief that the Suffrage movement strikes a blow squarely at the home and the marriage relation, and that the ballot is demanded by its most representative leaders for the purpose of making woman independent of the present social order. It argues that communism is the natural ally of Suffrage, and that, as homes did not spring out of the ground, they will not remain where men and women alter the mutual relations out of which the inst.i.tution of home has slowly grown.

The general conclusion of the book is, that woman's relation to the Republic is as important as man's. Woman deals with the beginnings of life; man, with the product made from those beginnings; and this fact marks the difference in their spheres, and reveals woman's immense advantage in moral opportunity. It also suggests the incalculable loss in case her work is not done or ill done. In a ruder age the evident value of power that could deal with developed force was most appreciated; but such is not now the case. It lies with us to prove that education, instead of causing us to attempt work that belongs even less to the cultivated woman than to the ignorant, is fitting us to train up statesmen who will be the first to do us honor. The American Republic depends finally for its existence and its greatness upon the virtue and ability of American womanhood. If our ideals are mistaken or unworthy, then there will be ultimately no republic for men to govern or defend. When women are Buddhists, the men build up an empire of India. When women are Mohammedans, the men construct an Empire of Turkey. When women are Christians, men can conceive and bring into being a Republic like the United States. Woman is to implant the faith, man is to cause the Nation's faith to show itself in works. More and more these duties overlap, but they cannot become interchangeable while s.e.x continues to divide the race into the two halves of what should become a perfect whole. Woman Suffrage aims to sweep away this natural distinction, and make humanity a ma.s.s of individuals with an indiscriminate sphere. The attack is now bold and now subtle, now malicious and now mistaken; but it is at all times an attack.

The greatest danger with which this land is threatened comes from the ignorant and persistent zeal of some of its women. They abuse the freedom under which they live, and to gain an impossible power would fain destroy the Government that alone can protect them. The majority of women have no sympathy with this movement; and in their enlightenment, and in the consistent wisdom of our men, lies our hope of defeating this unpatriotic, unintelligent, and unjustifiable a.s.sault upon the integrity of the American Republic.

NEW YORK, _March, 1897_.

THE END.