The History of Woman Suffrage Volume IV Part 32

Womanliness will never be sacrificed in following the path of duty and service."

One of the princ.i.p.al addresses of the convention was that of Gen.

Robert R. Hemphill of South Carolina, who began by saying that in 1892 he introduced a woman suffrage resolution in his State Senate, which received fourteen out of thirty-five votes. He closed as follows: "The cause is making headway, though slowly it is true, for it has the prejudices of hundreds of years to contend against. The peaceful revolution is upon us. It will not turn backward but will go on conquering until its final triumph. Woman will be exalted, she will enjoy equal rights; pure politics and good government will be insured, the cause of morality advanced, and the happiness of the people established."

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell (Ma.s.s.) discussed The Strongholds of Opposition, showing what they are and how they must be attacked. Woman as a Subject was presented by Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick (La.), who said in part:

Women are, and ever will be, loyal, tender, true and devoted to their well beloved men; for they naturally love them better than they do themselves. It is the brave soldier submissive to authority who deserves promotion to rank and honor; so woman, having proved herself a good subject, is now ready for her promotion and advancement. She is urgently asking, not to rule over men, but to take command of herself and all her rightful belongings....

As a self-respecting, reasonable being, she has grave responsibilities, and from her is required an accountability strict and severe. If she owns stock in one of your banks, she has an influence in the management of the inst.i.tution which takes care of her money. The possession of children makes her a large stockholder in public morality, but her self-const.i.tuted agents act as her proxy without her authorization, as though she were of unsound mind, or not in existence.

The great truths of liberty and equality are dear to her heart.

She would die before she would imperil the well-being of her home. She has no design to subvert church government, nor is she organized to tear up the social fabric of polite society. But she has now come squarely up to a crisis, a new epoch in her history here in the South, and asks for a womanly right to partic.i.p.ate by vote in this representative government.

Gentlemen, you value the power and privilege which the right of suffrage has conferred upon you, and in your honest, manly souls you can not but disdain the meanness and injustice which might prompt you to deny it to women. Language utterly fails me when I try to describe the painful humiliation and mortification which attend this abject condition of total disfranchis.e.m.e.nt, and how anxiously and earnestly women desire to be taken out of the list of idiots, criminals and imbeciles, where they do not belong, and placed in the respectable company of men who choose their lawmakers, and give an intelligent consent to the legal power which controls them.

Do women deserve nothing? Are they not worthy? They have a n.o.ble cause, and they beg you to treat it magnanimously.

Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon (La.) described in an interesting manner Club Life among the Women of the South. Mrs. Blake gave a powerful address on Wife, Mother and Citizen. Miss Shaw closed the meeting with an impromptu speech in which, according to the reporter, she said: "It is declared that women are too emotional to vote; but the morning paper described a pugilistic encounter between two members of Congress which looked as if excitability were not limited to women. It is said that 'the legal male mind' is the only mind fit for suffrage." Miss Shaw then made her wit play around the legal male mind like chain lightning. "It is said that women are illogical, and jump to their conclusions, flea-like. I shall not try to prove that women are logical, for I know they are not, but it is beyond me how men ever got it into their heads that _they_ are. When we read the arguments against woman suffrage, we see that flea-like jumping is by no means confined to women."

On one evening the Hon. Henry C. Hammond of Georgia made the opening address, which was thus reported:

After declaring that the atmosphere of the nineteenth century is surcharged with the sentiment of woman's emanc.i.p.ation, he traced the gradual evolution of this sentiment, showing that one by one the shackles had been stricken from the limbs of woman until now she was making her final protest against tyranny and her last appeal for liberty. "What is meant," said he, "by this mysterious dictum, 'Out of her sphere?' It is merely a sentimental phrase without either sense or reason." He then proceeded to say that if woman had a sphere the privilege of voting was clearly within its limitations. There was no doubt in his mind as to woman's moral superiority, and the politics of the country was in need of her purifying touch. In its present distracted and unhappy condition, the adoption of the woman suffrage platform and the incorporation of equal rights into the supreme law of the land was the only hope of its ultimate salvation....

J. Colton Lynes of Georgia, taking for his subject Women to the Front, gave a valuable historical review of their progress during the last half century. Mrs. Josephine K. Henry was introduced as "the daughter of Kentucky," and the _Const.i.tution_ said the next day: "If the spirit of old Patrick Henry could have heard the eloquent plea of his namesake, he would have had no reason to blush for a decadence of the oratory which gave the name to the world." In considering Woman Suffrage in the South, Mrs. Henry said:

It is a.s.serted on all sides that the women of the South do not want the ballot. The real truth is the women of the South never have been asked what they want. When Pundita Ramabai was in this country she saw a hen carried to market with its head downward.

This Christian method of treating a poor, dumb creature caused the heathen woman to cry out, "Oh, how cruel to carry a hen with its head down!" and she quickly received the reply, "Why, the hen does not mind it"; and in her heathen innocence she inquired, "Did you ask the hen?" Past civilization has not troubled either dumb creatures or women by consulting them in regard to their own affairs. For woman everything in sociology, law or politics has been arranged without consulting her in any way, and when her rights are trampled on and money extorted from her by the votes of the vicious and ignorant, the glib tongue of tyranny says, "Tax her again, she has no wish or right to tell what she wants."

Where the laws rob her in marriage of her property, she does want possession and control of her inheritance and earnings. Where she is a mother, she wants co-guardians.h.i.+p of her own children. Where she is a breadwinner she wants equal pay for equal work. She wants to wipe out the law that in its savagery protects brutality when it preys upon innocent, defenseless girlhood. She wants the streets and highways of the land made safe for the child whose life cost her a hand to hand conflict with death. She wants a single standard of morals established, where a woman may have an equal chance with a man in this hard, old world, and it may not be possible to crowd a fallen woman out of society and close against her every avenue whereby she can make an honest living, while the fallen man runs for Congress and is heaped with honors.

More than all, she needs and wants the ballot, the only weapon for the protection of individual rights recognized in this government.

In short, this New Woman of the New South wants to be a citizen queen as well as a queen of hearts and a queen of home, whose throne under the present regime rests on the sandy foundation of human generosity and human caprice. It should be remembered that the women of the South are the daughters of their fathers, and have as invincible a spirit in their convictions in the cause of liberty and justice as had those fathers.

We come asking the men of our section for the right of suffrage, not that it be bestowed on us as a gift on a suppliant, but that our birthright, bequeathed to us by the immortal Jefferson, be restored to us....

The most pathetic picture in all history is this great conflict which women are waging for their liberty. Men armed with all the death-dealing weapons devised by human ingenuity, and with the wealth of nations at their backs, have waged wars of extermination to gain freedom; but women with no weapon save argument, and no wealth save the justice of their cause, are carrying on a war of education for their liberty, and no earthly power can keep them from winning the victory.

The Next Phase of the Woman Question was considered by Miss Mary C.

Francis (O.) from the standpoint of a practical newspaper woman. Mrs.

Chapman Catt, chairman of the national organization committee, made the last address, taking for a subject Eternal Justice. The _Const.i.tution_ said: "As a rapid, logical and fluent speaker it is doubtful if America ever has produced one more gifted, and the suffrage movement is fortunate in having so brilliant a woman for its champion."

Henry B. Blackwell urged the South to adopt woman suffrage as one solution of the negro problem:

Apply it to your own State of Georgia, where there are 149,895 white women who can read and write, and 143,471 negro voters, of whom 116,516 are illiterates.

The time has come when this question should be considered. An educational qualification for suffrage may or may not be wise, but it is not necessarily unjust. If each voter governed only himself, his intelligence would concern himself alone, but his vote helps to govern everybody else. Society in conceding his right has itself a right to require from him a suitable preparation. Ability to read and write is absolutely necessary as a means of obtaining accurate political information. Without it the voter is almost sure to become the tool of political demagogues. With free schools provided by the States, every citizen can qualify himself without money and without price.

Under such circ.u.mstances there is no infringement of rights in requiring an educational qualification as a pre-requisite of voting. Indeed, without this, suffrage is often little more than a name. "Suffrage is the authoritative exercise of rational choice in regard to principles, measures and men." The comparison of an unintelligent voter to a "trained monkey," who goes through the motion of dropping a paper ballot into a box, has in it an element of truth. Society, therefore, has a right to prescribe, in the admission of any new cla.s.s of voters, such a qualification as every one can attain and as will enable the voter to cast an intelligent and responsible vote.

In the development of our complex political society we have to-day two great bodies of illiterate citizens: In the North, people of foreign birth; in the South, people of the African race and a considerable portion of the native white population.

Against foreigners and negroes, as such, we would not discriminate. But in every State, save one, there are more educated women than all the illiterate voters, white and black, native and foreign.

The convention proper closed on Sat.u.r.day night, but the exercises Sunday afternoon may be said to have been a continuation of it. The official report said:

The services began at 3 o'clock and more than half an hour before this time the theatre was filled almost to its fullest capacity.

When the opening hour arrived there was not an empty chair in the house, every aisle was crowded, and people anxious to hear the sermon of the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw had invaded the stage. So dense became the crowd that the doors were ordered closed and people were refused admission even before the services began.

After the doors were closed the disappointed ones stood on the stairs and many of them remained in the streets. The vast congregation was made up of all cla.s.ses of citizens. Every chair that could be found in the theatre had been either placed in the aisles or on the stage, and then boxes and benches were pressed into service. Many of the most prominent professional and business men were standing on the stage and in different parts of the house.

Miss Shaw gave her great sermon The Heavenly Vision. She told of the visions of the man which it depended upon himself to make reality; of the visions of the woman which were forever placed beyond her reach by the church, by society and by the laws, and closed with these words: "We ask for nothing which G.o.d can not give us. G.o.d created nature, and if our demands are contrary to nature, trust nature to take care of itself without the aid of man. It is better to be true to what you believe, though that be wrong, than to be false to what you believe, even if that belief is correct."

Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) preached to more than a thousand people at the Bethel (colored) Church; Mrs. Meriwether at the Unitarian Church; Miss Yates and Miss Emily Howland (N. Y.) also occupied pulpits.

The evening programs with their formal addresses naturally attracted the largest audiences and occupied the most s.p.a.ce in the newspapers, but the morning and afternoon sessions, devoted to State and committee reports and the business of the a.s.sociation, were really the life and soul of this as of all the conventions. Among the most interesting of the excellent State reports presented to the Atlanta meeting were those of New York and Kansas, because during the previous year suffrage campaigns had been carried on in those States. The former, presented by Mrs. Jean Brooks Greenleaf, State president, said in part:

The New York Const.i.tutional Convention before whom we hopefully carried our cause--"so old, so new, so ever true"--is a thing of the past. We presented our pet.i.tion, asking that the word "male"

be eliminated from the organic law, with the endors.e.m.e.nt of _over half a million_ citizens of the State. We laid before the convention statistics showing that outside the city of New York the property on which women pay taxes is a.s.sessed at $348,177,107; the number of women taxed, 146,806 in 571 cities and towns; not reported, 389.

We had the satisfaction of knowing that the delegates a.s.sembled were kept upon a strong equal suffrage diet for days and nights together. At the public hearings, graciously granted us, we saw the great jury listen not only with patience but with evident pleasure and enthusiasm, while women representing twenty-six districts gave reasons for wanting to be enfranchised; and we also saw the creative body itself turned into a woman suffrage meeting for three evenings. At the close of the last we learned that there were in this convention ninety-eight men who dared to say that the freemen of the State should not be allowed to decide whether their wives, mothers and daughters should be enfranchised or not. We learned also, that there were fifty-eight men, const.i.tuting a n.o.ble minority, who loved justice better than party power, and were willing to risk the latter to sustain the former.[102]

The report of the Press Committee Chairman, Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick (Ma.s.s.), called especial attention to the flood of matter relating to the woman question which was now appearing in the newspapers and magazines of the country, to the activity of the enemy and to the necessity for suffragists to "publish an antidote wherever the poison appears." The Legislative Committee, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Henry and Mrs. Diggs, closed their report as follows:

In a State where there is hope of support from the political parties, where there has been long agitation and everything points to a favorable result, it is wise to urge a const.i.tutional amendment striking out the word "male" as a qualification for voters. This must pa.s.s both Houses in the form of concurrent resolution; in some States it must pa.s.s two successive Legislatures; and it must be ratified at the polls by a majority of the voters.

When the conditions are not yet ripe for a const.i.tutional amendment, there are many measures which are valuable in arousing public interest and preparing the way for final triumph, as well as important in ameliorating the condition of women. Among these are laws to secure school suffrage for women; women on boards of education and as school trustees; equality of property rights for husbands and wives; equal guardians.h.i.+p of children for mother and father; women factory inspectors; women physicians in hospitals and insane asylums; women trustees in all State inst.i.tutions; police matrons; seats for saleswomen; the raising of "the age of consent."

The report of the Plan of Work Committee, Mrs. Chapman Catt, chairman, began by saying:

The great need of the hour is organization. There can be no doubt that the advocates of woman suffrage in the United States are to be numbered by millions, but it is a lamentable fact that our organization can count its numbers only by thousands. There are ill.u.s.trious men and women in every State, and there are men and women innumerable, who are not known to the public, who are openly and avowedly woman suffragists, yet we do not possess the benefit of their names on our members.h.i.+p lists or the financial help of their dues. In other words, the size of our members.h.i.+p is not at all commensurate with the sentiment for woman suffrage.

The reason for this condition is plain; the chief work of suffragists for the past forty years has been education and agitation, and not organization. The time has come when the educational work has borne its fruit, and there are States in which there is sentiment enough to carry a woman suffrage amendment, but it is individual and not organized sentiment, and is, therefore, ineffective.

The audience was greatly amused when Miss Anthony commented on this: "There never yet was a young woman who did not feel that if she had had the management of the work from the beginning the cause would have been carried long ago. I felt just so when I was young." There was much laughter also over one of Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway's short speeches in which she said:

There are in Oregon three cla.s.ses of women opposed to suffrage.

1. Women who are so overworked that they have no time to think of it. They are joined to their wash-tubs; let them alone. But the children of these overworked women are coming on. 2. Women who have usurped all the rights in the matrimonial category, their husbands' as well as their own. The husbands of such women are always loudly opposed to suffrage. The "sa.s.siest" man in any community is the hen-pecked husband away from home. 3. Young girls matrimonially inclined, who fear the avowal of a belief in suffrage would injure their chances. I can a.s.sure such girls that a woman who wishes to vote gets more offers than one who does not. Their motto should be "Liberty first, and union afterwards."

The man whose wife is a clinging vine is apt to be like the oaks in the forest that are found wrapped in vines--dead at the top.

When Miss Anthony said, "One reason why politicians hesitate to grant suffrage to woman is because she is an unknown quant.i.ty," Mrs. Henry responded quickly, "There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman." A resolution was adopted for a public celebration in New York City of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's eightieth birthday, November 12, by the a.s.sociation.[103]

The treasurer, Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, reported the receipts of the past year to be $5,820, of which $2,571 went to the Kansas campaign.

The contributions and pledges of this convention for the coming year were about $2,000. In addition, Mrs. Louisa Southworth of Cleveland gave $1,000 to Miss Anthony to use as she thought best, and she announced that it would be applied to opening national headquarters. A National Organization Committee was for the first time formally organized and Mrs. Chapman Catt was made its chairman by unanimous vote.

Mrs. Colby presented the memorial resolutions, saying in part:

During the past year our a.s.sociation has lost by death a number of members whose devotion to the cause of woman's liberty has contributed largely to the position she holds to-day, and whose labors are a part of the history of this great struggle for the amelioration of her condition. Among these beloved friends and co-workers three stood, each as the foremost representative in a distinct line of action: Myra Bradwell of Chicago, Virginia L.

Minor of St. Louis, Amelia Bloomer of Council Bluffs, Ia.

Mrs. Bradwell was the first to make a test case with regard to the civil rights of women, and to prove that the disfranchised citizen is unprotected. [Her struggle to secure from the U.S.

Supreme Court a decision enabling women to practice law was related.] The special importance of Mrs. Minor's connection with the suffrage work lies in the fact that she first formulated and enunciated the idea that women have the right to vote under the United States Const.i.tution. [The story was then told of Mrs.

Minor's case in the U.S. Supreme Court to test the right of women to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment.][104] Mrs. Amelia Bloomer was the first woman to own and edit a paper devoted to woman suffrage and temperance, the _Lily_, published in Seneca Falls, N. Y. She was also an eloquent lecturer for both these reforms and one of the first women to hold an office under the Government, as deputy postmaster. The costume which bears her name she did not originate, but wore and advocated for a number of years.