The History of Woman Suffrage Volume IV Part 44

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: We respectfully request that in the qualifications for voters in the proposed Const.i.tution for the new Territory of Hawaii the word "male" be omitted.

The declared intention of the United States in annexing the Hawaiian Islands is to give them the benefits of the most advanced civilization, and it is a truism that the progress of civilization in every country is measured by the approach of women toward the ideal of equal rights with men.

Under barbarism the struggle for existence is entirely on the physical plane. The woman freely enters the arena and her failure or success depends wholly upon her own strength. When life rises to the intellectual plane public opinion is expressed in law.

Justice demands that we shall not offer to women emerging from barbarism the ball and chain of a s.e.x disqualification while we hold out to men the crown of self-government.

The trend of civilization is closely in the direction of equal rights for women. [Then followed a list of the gains for woman suffrage.]

The Hon. John D. Long, Secretary of the Navy, calls the opposition to woman suffrage a "slowly melting glacier of bourbonism and prejudice". The melting is going on steadily all over our country, and it would be most inopportune to impose upon our new possessions abroad the antiquated restrictions which we are fast discarding at home.

We, therefore, pet.i.tion your Honorable Body that, upon whatever conditions and qualifications the right of suffrage is granted to Hawaiian men, it shall be granted to Hawaiian women.[119]

Notwithstanding this appeal, and special pet.i.tions also from the Suffrage a.s.sociations of the forty-five States, our Congress provided a const.i.tution in which the word "male" was introduced more frequently than in the Const.i.tution of the United States or of any State, in the determination to bar out Hawaiian women from voting and holding office. It was declared that only "male" citizens should fill any office or vote for any officer, a sweeping restriction which is not made in a single State of our Union. Not satisfied with this infamous abuse of power, our Congress refused to this new Territory a privilege enjoyed by every other Territory in the United States--that of having the power vested in its Legislature to grant woman suffrage--and provided that this Territorial Legislature must submit the question to the voters. It took care, however, to enfranchise every male being in the Islands--Kanaka, j.a.panese and Portuguese--and it will be only by their permission that even the American and English women residing there ever can possess the suffrage.

The members of the commission who drafted this const.i.tution were President Sanford B. Dole and a.s.sociate Justice W. F. Frear of Hawaii; Senators John T. Morgan, Ala.; Shelby M. Cullom, Ills.; Representative Robert R. Hitt, Ills. Justice Frear said over his own signature, Feb.

11, 1899: "I proposed at a meeting of the Hawaiian Commission that the Legislature be permitted to authorize woman suffrage, and President Dole supported me, but the other members of the commission took a different view." In other words, the Hawaiian members favored the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of their women but were overruled by the American members. If but one of the latter had stood by those from Hawaii its women would not have been placed, as they now are, under greater subjection even than those of the United States, and far greater than they were before the annexation of the Islands. Yet after the consummation of this shameful act the world was asked to rejoice over the creation of a new republic!

There is not the slightest reason to hope that the appeals for justice to the women of the Philippines will meet with any greater success, as it is the policy of our Government to give to men every incentive to study its inst.i.tutions and fit themselves for an intelligent voice in their control, but to discourage all interest on the part of women and to prevent them absolutely from any partic.i.p.ation. Having held American women in subjection for a century and a quarter, it now shows a determination to place the same handicap upon the women of our newly-acquired possessions.

During the spring of 1902, just before this volume goes to the publishers, the U. S. Senate Philippine Commission has been summoning before it a number of persons competent to give expert testimony as to existing conditions in those Islands. Among these were Judge W. H.

Taft, who for the past year has been Governor of the Philippines and speaks with high authority; and Archbishop Nozaleda, who has been connected with the Catholic church in the Islands for twenty-six years, and Archbishop since 1889, and who has the fullest understanding of the natives. Governor Taft said in answer to the committee:

The fact is that, not only among the Tagalogs but also among the Christian Filipinos, the woman is the active manager of the family, so if you expect to confer political power on the Filipinos it ought to be given to the women.

Archbishop Nozaleda testified as follows: (Senate Doc.u.ment 190, p.

109.)

The woman is better than the man in every way--in intelligence, in virtue and in labor--and a great deal more economical. She is very much given to trade and trafficking. If any rights and privileges are to be granted to the natives, do not give them to the men but to the women.

Q. Then you think it would be much better to give the women the right to vote than the men?

A. O, much better. Why, even in the fields it is the women who do the work; the men who go to the c.o.c.k fights and gamble. The woman is the one who supports the man there; so every law of justice demands that even in political life they should have the privilege over the men.

The action which our Government will eventually take in conferring the suffrage on the Filipinos can not be recorded in this volume, but the prophecy is here made that, in spite of the above testimony, and much more of the same nature which has been given by correspondents in the Philippines and by many who have returned from there, the Government of the United States will enfranchise the inferior male inhabitants and hold as political subjects the superior women of these Islands.

And again the world will be called upon to greet another republic!

FOOTNOTES:

[117] Miss Anthony spoke to a crowded house in the Fountain Street Baptist Church on The Moral Influence of Women, and the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw to another great audience in the Park Congregational Church from the text, "Only be thou strong and very courageous."

Calvary Baptist Church was filled to overflowing to hear Miss Laura Clay on The Bible for Equal Rights. Interested congregations listened to the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, who preached at the Division Street Methodist Church from the text, "Knowledge shall increase"; Miss Laura Gregg, who spoke at the Second Baptist Church on My Country, 'Tis of Thee; Mrs. Colby, at the Plainfield Avenue Methodist Church, on The Legend of Lilith; Miss Lena Morrow at Memorial Church, Miss Lucy E. Textor at All Souls, and Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton and various members of the convention in other pulpits.

[118] The following resolutions were adopted:

That we reaffirm our devotion to the immortal principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and we call for its application in the case of women citizens.

We protest against the introduction of the word "male" in the suffrage clause of the proposed Const.i.tution of Hawaii, and declare that upon whatever terms the franchise may be granted to men, it should be granted also to women.

In all the great questions of war and peace, currency, tariff and taxation, annexation of foreign territory and alien races, women are vitally interested and should have an equal expression at the ballot box, and we recommend to the President of the United States the appointment of a committee of women to investigate the condition of women in our new island territories.

We congratulate the women of Ireland who have just voted for the first time for munic.i.p.al and county officers, and we call attention to the fact that 75 per cent. of the qualified women voted, and that the dispatches say they discharged their duty in a serious and businesslike spirit, with a keen eye to the personal merits of candidates.

We congratulate the women of Colorado, whose Legislature lately pa.s.sed a resolution testifying to the good effects of equal suffrage by a vote of 45 to 3 in the House, and 30 to 1 in the Senate.

We congratulate the women of New Orleans, who are about to vote for the first time, on a tax levy for sewerage and drainage, and we commend their patriotic activity in collecting the signatures of 2,000 taxpaying women of that city in behalf of clean streets and a pure water supply.

We congratulate the women of France, who have just voted for the first time for judges of tribunals of commerce, and we call attention to the fact that in Paris, of the qualified voters, men and women taken together, only 14 per cent. voted, but of the women 30 per cent.

voted.

We congratulate the women of Kansas on the increased munic.i.p.al vote of April, 1899, over the entire State, Kansas City alone registering 4,800 women and casting over 3,000 women's votes at the munic.i.p.al election.

We thank the House of Representatives of Oklahoma for its vote of 14 to 9, and of Arizona for its vote of 19 to 5, for woman suffrage, and regret that the question did not reach the Councils of these Territories.

We thank the Legislature of California for its enactment, with only one dissenting vote in the House and six in the Senate, of a school suffrage law (which failed to receive the approval of the Governor), also we thank the Legislatures of Connecticut and Ohio, which have defeated bills to repeal the existing school suffrage laws of those States.

We thank the legislators of Oregon who have just submitted an amendment granting suffrage to women by a vote of 48 to 6 in the House and 25 to 1 in the Senate, and we hope that Oregon will add a fifth star to our equal suffrage flag.

This a.s.sociation is non sectarian and non partisan, and asks for the ballot not for the sake of advancing any specific measure, but as a matter of justice to the whole human family. In all the States where equal suffrage campaigns are pending we advise women and men to base their plea on the ground of clear and obvious justice, and not to indulge in predictions as to what women will do with the ballot before it is secured.

We protest against women being counted in the basis of representation of State and nation so long as they are not permitted to vote for their representatives.

We appreciate the friendly att.i.tude of the American Federation of Labor, the National Grange and other public bodies of voters, as shown by their resolutions indorsing the legal, political and economic equality of women.

We rejoice in the Peace Congress about to meet at The Hague, and hope it may be preliminary to the establishment of international arbitration.

[119] See also Chap. XXIII for further efforts to protect the women of Hawaii.

CHAPTER XX.

THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1900.

The Thirty-second annual convention of the suffrage a.s.sociation, held in Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., Feb. 8-14, 1900, possessed two features of unusual interest--it closed the century and it marked the end of Miss Susan B. Anthony's presidency of the organization. The latter event attracted wide attention. Sketches of her career and of the movement whose history was almost synonymous with her own, appeared in most of the leading newspapers and magazines of the country; special reporters were sent to Was.h.i.+ngton, and the celebration of her eightieth birthday at the close of the convention was in the nature of a national event.

On the opening morning the _Post_ said in a leading editorial:

Was.h.i.+ngton entertains the National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation from year to year with entire complacency, apart from any political prejudice, without any sense of partisans.h.i.+p and in a spirit of keen interest in the great propaganda which is being thus conducted. There was a time, not so very long ago, when the plea for suffrage was ridiculed far and wide; but the women have worked ahead undaunted by the scoffings of the world, until they have actually won the battle in such a marked degree as to give them unbounded a.s.surance for the future....

The world is beginning to take a new view of this suffrage question. The advent of women into the professions and even the trades, their appearance as wage-earners in virtually every branch of modern activity, and their success in these various enterprises which they have entered, have worked a reform even more significant than the absolute and universal grant of the suffrage would have been. It can not be denied by men to-day that the women have become economic factors of marked importance, and this appreciation has had a great influence in softening the sentiments of the male population toward the suffragists.

One of the foremost arguments formerly urged against the extension of the suffrage to women was that it would be harmful to woman's moral nature to thrust her into contact with the rough conditions of campaigning. The women answered that their entrance would perhaps redeem the immoral character of the politics of many communities. In the minds of impartial observers the argument was a stand-off. But this economic, professional tendency of the women has done much to destroy the force of the men's plea to preserve the women from contaminating contact with harsh conditions. The security of the average woman worker in the various lines of honest activity which the s.e.x has fearlessly entered has worked a revelation. The close of the century is witnessing a great change in public sentiment in this regard. The demand of the suffragists can not but be strengthened by the demonstrated fact that women can become workers in compet.i.tion with men without becoming demoralized.

Just where this new tendency will lead in an economic direction is a serious question, to be answered by facts rather than by theories. Some students of the science believe that it is working a revolution and is affecting the whole business fabric. There may be a reaction against it, affecting in turn the now moderate att.i.tude of most men toward the suffrage question; but in any event it is clear that this great agitation, carried on by the a.s.sociation now in session, has been of serious importance and not without palpable fruits.