Anti-Suffrage Essays Part 4

Our Homestead Commission was established to investigate defective housing conditions and study building and tenement house laws. Its members are unpaid, though the labor representative is reimbursed for any loss he may suffer from absence from his regular occupation.

It can truly be said that no State in the union shows such grateful and worthy appreciation to its veterans as does Ma.s.sachusetts. In 1914 over $700,000 was given to the veterans of our Civil War and to certain of their dependent relatives, and to women army nurses. Under a special gratuities act of 1912 she gave each living veteran of the war the sum of $125, this one act alone costing over $500,000.

Among other of her good works, she appropriates each year $15,000 for the relief of injured firemen and families of firemen killed in the performance of their duty, and since the fund was established has expended $270,000 for this work. The State also provides under a contributory system for its employes.

Nowhere in the country are the people's savings and insurance more zealously guarded than by Ma.s.sachusetts, and here again she is leading the way in the savings bank life insurance legislation. The bank commission was established in 1838, the insurance commission in 1855, the savings bank life insurance board in 1907, these three departments costing in 1914 almost $200,000.

In dealing with her labor problems Ma.s.sachusetts maintains a Department of Labor and Industries (1913) which investigates industrial conditions and enforces the labor laws; an Industrial Accident Board (1912) which enforces law compensating injured employes. These two boards together const.i.tute a joint board for the prevention of industrial accidents and diseases. There is also a Board of Conciliation and Arbitration (1886) which mediates and arbitrates industrial disputes, and a Minimum Wage Commission (the first in the country), which investigates the wages of women and minors, and forms boards to recommend scales of wages in low paid industries. Over $200,000 was expended by these boards in 1914.

On encouraging farming and caring for her forests, fisheries, and game, was spent over $600,000 in 1914. This was distributed in many ways, some being in form of bounties to children and youths, to agricultural societies to encourage orcharding, poultry raising, for the purchase of forest lands, the prevention of forest fires, the propagation of wild birds and animals.

Preparedness was not overlooked, over half a million dollars being expended on the militia in 1914. On highways and harbors nearly a million dollars was spent.

Over a million and a quarter dollars was spent on public buildings, the total valuation of state properties being over $8,300,000, the State capitol and land itself being valued at over five and one-half million dollars.

This is the record of Ma.s.sachusetts. The suffragists have shown wisdom in avoiding reference to these facts. They could not well do otherwise, however, since they are allied with those detestable groups in our midst who are preaching anarchy and revolution as a means to better government. Better government where? This record is one that the men of the State may well be proud of; it is a record that its women will continue to make possible by their non-partisan influence in government, by the training of its future citizens, by the teaching of those lessons of civic honesty and uprightness that make for national integrity as exemplified in the history of our Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts.

VI

Ma.s.sACHUSETTS COMPARED WITH SUFFRAGE STATES

CATHERINE ROBINSON

_Miss Catherine Robinson was a student at Radcliffe in 1911; graduated from Miss Wheelock's Kindergarten Training School in 1915; has worked two winters among the children in the cotton mills of Georgia, and has been affiliated with Neighborhood House in East Boston, and with the a.s.sociated Charities in the Co-operative Workrooms. She is now connected with the Social Service Department of the Ma.s.sachusetts General Hospital, her work being in the Orthopaedic Clinic for Children. Miss Robinson was formerly a suffragist, but after studying the question decided that the suffragists' claims are illusions which never become realities. She says: "Everything I do along these lines (Social Service) convinces me more than ever what a detriment the vote would be to our s.e.x."_ _J. A. H._

Not long ago I heard Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, the President of the National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, say at Springfield:

"Laws have nothing to do with this question of woman suffrage; facts have nothing to do with it. I shall not answer facts. We do not promise to do great things for women; why should we? All we ask is the right to vote."

All suffrage speakers are not so frank about their inability to answer facts as Dr. Shaw is, nor do they cease from claiming that good laws for women exist chiefly in suffrage states.

Ma.s.sachusetts gives to her women the best protection of any state in the Union. In January, 1915, New York ranked first, but since our legislative enactments of 1915, Ma.s.sachusetts is again in the lead. We have, in the first place, the Maternity Act. Then we have the law prohibiting women in industry from working more than fifty-four hours per week. We have the absolute prohibition of night-work for our women in textile, mercantile, and manufacturing establishments. We are one of the five states in the Union to have such a law. All the five states are male suffrage states. Not a single woman suffrage state prohibits the night employment of its women; and yet among the laws safeguarding the health of women workers, the prohibition of night work is of the most fundamental importance.

Some women suffrage states do not even set a limit to the hours a woman may work. In Wyoming, Nevada, and Kansas--all woman suffrage states, you note--there is no limitation of hours of labor and no prohibition of night work. Some one may say that Colorado, California, Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton have an eight-hour limitation. They have; but in each case the canneries are excepted, so that in those states where the cannery business is of vast importance, the women therein employed may work any number of hours and any time of the day or night. Not long ago in New York a similar law was proposed, allowing women and children to work seventy-two hours a week in canneries, but the bill was defeated.

Colorado, to be sure, has the eight-hour law, but it does not prohibit night work for women, so that the eight hours can be at night; neither does Colorado require one day of rest in every seven. In Ma.s.sachusetts and New York there is a law specifically requiring one day of rest in every seven for employees in factories, workshops, and all mercantile establishments.

Another way in which we can protect women is by early closing hours, and prohibition of work before a certain hour in the morning. Again we find that it is in the male suffrage states that women have acquired such protection, for New York sets an early closing hour of 5 p. m. for her women in factories, mercantile, and manufacturing establishments, and Ma.s.sachusetts sets 6 p. m. Fourteen other male suffrage states set 10 p. m. as the closing hour; and all these states prohibit work before 6 a. m. What do we find in the woman suffrage states? Simply that out of the eleven suffrage states, one state, California, sets a 10 p. m.

limit, but it does not apply to canneries.

As women enter further into the industrial field, more and more laws are made for their protection. The men have done wonderfully for our women.

Whenever the public conscience is aroused to the need of a law, that law is pa.s.sed. Women do much, in fact, nearly everything, towards arousing that public conscience, but we find when we study the laws as they exist in our state that our men have made better laws for the protection of our women than the men and women have made together in any suffrage state. Let me add some of the other good laws we have in Ma.s.sachusetts. We have the Mothers' Pension Bill. This law was originated by a man in a male suffrage state. We have the Equal Guardians.h.i.+p Law. There are suffrage states where neither of these laws exist.

Not long ago Mrs. Maud Wood Park, a.s.serted that I was misstating the laws in suffrage states. She said I did not know the happenings in the legislature this year. I have made a careful study of the laws proposed and the action taken upon them in the eleven suffrage states and the four big "campaign states" in the legislative year of 1915. I find that while in Ma.s.sachusetts we enacted _five_ new laws relating to our women and children a.s.suring them of still greater protection and better public health regulations, Arizona turned down five laws for women which already exist here in our own state. I was unable to find any suffrage state which could compare in any favorable way with the progress Ma.s.sachusetts has made. Wyoming turned down a bill regulating the employment of children and a bill limiting the hours a woman may work.

As long as I have mentioned Arizona, let me continue the comparison one step further and point out that on the 16th of February, 1915, Mrs.

Berry, an Arizona suffragist, introduced a bill regulating and granting teachers' pensions. The bill was indefinitely postponed. In the same year Ma.s.sachusetts women teachers introduced a bill asking to have their former pensions granted again to them. At the same time the men teachers introduced a similar bill; and it is an interesting fact that the men were turned down, while the women's bill was signed by the Governor. For our suffrage friends who say that women must have the ballot to be listened to, this is rather a stumbling block. I happened to be up at the State House the day the bill went through, and heard one of the women who was interested say: "It's a mighty lucky thing we women did _not_ have the vote." This is the latest example of what Ma.s.sachusetts men are interested in doing for Ma.s.sachusetts women. Let us voice our just pride that Ma.s.sachusetts touches the high water mark of protective legislation and stands as an example to all other states.

VII

WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND WAR

MRS. CHARLES P. STRONG

_Mary B. Strong, widow of Dr. Charles P. Strong of the Harvard Medical School; studied for three years at the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology; former President of the Sat.u.r.day Morning Club; Vice-President of the Cambridge Indian a.s.sociation; Corresponding Secretary of the Ma.s.sachusetts Women's Anti-Suffrage a.s.sociation._ _J. A. H._

When the great European war broke out in 1914, the suffragists tried to use the situation to further their propaganda. They remind me of the mad philosopher who suggested it would be well to profit by an eruption of Vesuvius in order to boil an egg.

The incongruity of suffragists attempting to pose as a peace party is obvious to anyone with a memory and a sense of humor. Before the war broke out, American suffrage leaders were applauding, feasting, and subsidizing the British virago who instigated the setting on fire of 146 public buildings, churches, and houses, the explosion of 43 bombs, the destruction of property valued at nearly two million dollars (not including priceless works of arts), and many cases of personal a.s.sault.

In 1912 they justified the destruction of the Rokeby Venus; in 1914 they professed horror at the bombardment of the Cathedral of Rheims. Is this insincerity or hypocrisy, or mere aberration of mind?

The best time to work for peace is before war breaks out. The suffrage organization was not conspicuous in seizing the many opportunities for furthering the cause of peace before it was too late. In 1911 Mrs.

Frederick Nathan, a prominent suffragist, was asked to contribute to the American Society for the Judicial Settlement of Disputes. She sent the following characteristic refusal:

"Mrs. Frederick Nathan prefers to give her money to the Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation.... She has no faith in Courts of Law and Equity which deny justice to women."

Was this boycotting of the peace movement condemned by the suffragists?

Not at all; Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, President of the Ma.s.sachusetts Suffrage a.s.sociation, was glad to print the refusal in the official organ of the National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation. Miss Blackwell, in holding up this example to its members, scornfully declared that several of the peace society were "prominent opponents of equal rights for women." In those days, the suffragists were not hitching their wagon to the quiet star of peace; it has been their constant practice to attach themselves, for publicity's sake, to whatever movement is conspicuous on the front pages of the newspapers--eugenics, or s.e.x drama, or red-light abatement, or what not--and to abandon that ephemeral interest whenever it has ceased to serve the purpose of advertis.e.m.e.nt.

And so, when the war broke out, the boycotters of peace societies, and colleagues of militants, made a rapid s.h.i.+ft of costumes, and tried to play roles in the Woman's Peace Party. So hurried was their change of mental att.i.tude that their thoughts on the subject were splendid instances of snap judgment.

In truth, the breaking out of the war was most embara.s.sing to them. Like a bull in a china shop, the rush of brutal fact destroyed many of their pretty theories. The stereotyped suffrage answer, when anti-suffragists pointed out that physical force was the fundamental basis of government, had been that this was no longer true. For example, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobs, speaking of women's demand for the ballot, said, about 1895: "Women could not claim the ballot while it was necessary to defend opinions by arms, but this is no longer necessary or expected." And Mrs.

Susan Fitzgerald in 1912 declared: "The age of the fighting man is pa.s.sing. The world is coming to be ruled by intellect." When will the suffragists learn Lowell's maxim: "Don't never prophesy--onless ye know!" It is, however, a characteristic of professional false prophets not to lose their imperturbality and effrontery, but to trust that their followers will forget their mistaken guesses and listen open-mouthed to a new dispensation.

The essential dogma of the Woman's Peace Party (none but suffragists admitted!) was that the adoption of woman suffrage was a necessary and effectual step toward abolis.h.i.+ng war. "If women had had the vote in all countries now at war," said Mrs. Catt, "the conflict would have been prevented." History shows women at least as much inclined to war as men--a fact ill.u.s.trated in the French Revolution, in our Civil War, in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and in other instances too numerous to mention. The suffragists, ignorant of that fact, or ignoring it, advanced in support of their proposition a series of specious arguments designed to catch popular opinion. Of these arguments two were at the outset of the movement especially harped upon: (1) the alleged "international solidarity of women," and (2) the supposed likelihood of woman's opposition to militarism.

What was meant by the "solidarity of women" is explained in Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's words: "The interests of women, being fundamentally the same, are so universal that no national distinctions can cut deeply into them, as may possibly sometimes happen with the national distinctions between men." Following that notion, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw issued an appeal to the women's organizations in the belligerent countries, urging them to put a stop to the war. The replies received showed that the expected "international solidarity of women" was imaginary. The a.s.sociation of Austrian Women's Clubs, for example, replied that n.o.body understanding the causes of the war, would have addressed such a request to them.

"Being women of those countries," ran this reply, "where our husbands, brothers, and sons are fighting for the existence or non-existence of our state, for our homes, for their wives and children, we cannot say: 'Do not fight'!" Similarly, the women's societies of France refused to accept any invitations to peace palavers. In short, the real "solidarity" was discovered to exist, not between women of different nations, but between the women and the men of each nation.

The falsity of the other argument--that woman suffrage would tend against militarism--was crus.h.i.+ngly refuted when Dr. Ernest Bernbaum drew attention to the recent history of militaristic policies in England and Australia. In male suffrage England, Lord Roberts, despite his personal popularity and strong arguments, was unable to get sufficient support for his program of universal military service. In woman suffrage Australia and New Zealand, on the other hand, the same line of arguments was completely successful by 1911. There, boys from their twelfth year are required to be enrolled for instruction in drill and the rudiments of military science. The penalties for failure are severe, and public opinion supports their enforcement; in New Zealand a boy was sent to jail for refusing service, on ground of conscientious scruples; another was fined and went into exile. The electorate was determined that New Zealand and Australia should be nations in arms; indeed they were more drastic than Germany, where many exemptions from military service on various grounds are allowed. It is instructive to recall that when in March, 1914, Winston Churchill, Lord of the Admiralty, advised Australia that, in view of the j.a.panese alliance, it did not need to spend as much money on wars.h.i.+ps, the Australian statesmen frankly intimating their distrust in alliances, declared they would proceed with their expensive naval program, which was supported by both political parties. I do not say that what is termed "militarism" is a bad policy; I do say that when the suffragists state that woman suffrage tends against militarism they state what is diametrically opposed to the real truth of history. In this case, as usual, they draw their principles not from observation of what is happening but from what they wish and fancy would happen.

The theories of the Suffrage Woman's Peace Party being false, it is not surprising that their actions prove bewilderingly futile. They brought together a group of "hand-picked" delegates, quite unrepresentative of the real sentiment of the nations they were nominally representing, and forgathered in a so-called Woman's Peace Conference at the Hague. Miss Jane Addams supplied the American press with rose-colored accounts of its proceedings. Her reports were justly condemned by the New York Times as bad journalism, because they did not "tell the whole of the truth."

They were calculated to give the impression that the Conference was harmonious, and that its deliberations led to really practicable conclusions. Not to conceal the truth, it must be said, that these pacific ladies, who surely ought in their own circle to have exhibited that "international solidarity" which the s.e.x as a whole had failed to manifest, soon developed sharp antipathies. One of the few British delegates who went to the conference (need it be said she was not Mrs.

Pankhurst?) disturbed its complacency by reminding those present that they really did not represent the sentiments of the warring nations.

When it came to discussing the actual situation and specific terms of peace, there arose strong differences of opinion--along national lines.

The chief resolution offered,--that peace should be made without delay,--could not be pa.s.sed until an amendment, adding the words "with justice," was accepted,--words which each belligerent would interpret in a different manner. Needless to say, the amendment rendered the high-sounding resolution a useless ma.s.s of ambiguous words.

Equally futile were the subsequent travels of the delegates of the Woman's Peace Party. At a time when the energy and money of every woman should have been whole-heartedly devoted to practical deeds of charity, these misguided women wasted their means and strength in fool's journeys to the capitals of all the great nations. They made proposals for immediate peace negotiations, which were listened to with more patience and politeness than their amateurish character deserved, but which were of course without exception pigeon-holed.

Having moved the nations to mirth by one modern version of "Innocents Abroad," the suffragists appear to have thought it a good advertis.e.m.e.nt to send forth a second. This time they attempted to screen themselves behind the figure of Mr. Henry Ford, wearing a celluloid b.u.t.ton, "Out of the Trenches by Christmas!" But when a man acts with apparently inexplicable foolishness, it is generally safe to say, "_Cherchez la femme!_" In this case, the truth presently came out: the unfortunate Mr.

Ford was merely the "angel" of the new travelling troupe. It was Mme.

Schimmer, professional suffragist-pacificist, who had persuaded him to launch his argosy. As Mr. Ford himself confessed on his ignominious return, he was "simply backing up and financing the plans of the Woman's Peace Congress." The second expedition, like the first, developed an astounding fighting spirit among the peace delegates, and accomplished nothing. (It is worth noting that woman-suffrage Denmark prohibited the party from holding any public meetings.)