The History of Woman Suffrage Volume VI Part 67

The bill was reported favorably by the committee and pa.s.sed by the Senate without objection or even discussion on September 15. In the House it was referred to the Committee on Woman Suffrage, which set April 29, 1918, for a hearing. Delegate Kalanianaole had been called back to Honolulu by business but was represented by his secretary and there were present Mrs. Park, who presided, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, honorary president of the National Suffrage a.s.sociation, and Mrs.

Pitman, the princ.i.p.al speaker. Judge John E. Raker was chairman of the committee, which did not need any argument but was interested in asking many questions of Mrs. Pitman. At the close of the hearing the committee voted unanimously to make a favorable report. The bill was pa.s.sed June 3 without a roll call. It was signed by President Wilson on the 13th.

The matter was now in the control of the Hawaiian Legislature, which received pet.i.tions from a number of organizations of women to exercise its power to confer the suffrage without a referendum to the voters.

This was recommended by Governor C. J. McCarthy and early in the session of 1919 the Senate took this action and sent the bill to the House. This body under outside influence refused to endorse it but subst.i.tuted a bill to send the question to the voters. The Senate would not accept it and both bills were deadlocked.

The women were then spurred to action; old suffrage clubs were revived; one was formed in Honolulu of the native high cla.s.s women and what is known as the "missionary set," a very brilliant group. Mrs.

Dorsett made a tour of all the Islands to arouse interest and on Mani, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Mrs. Harry Baldwin, clubs were formed all over the island. A Hawaiian Suffrage a.s.sociation was organized. At the next convention of the National a.s.sociation a resolution was adopted that it be invited to become auxiliary without the payment of dues and the invitation was officially accepted with thanks.

The Federal Suffrage Amendment proclaimed by Secretary of State Colby Aug. 26, 1920, included the women of the Territories and it was thus that Hawaiian women became enfranchised. They voted in large numbers at the November elections that year.

THE PHILIPPINES.

The Philippine Islands came under the jurisdiction of the United States as a consequence of the Spanish-American war in 1898 and their government soon became an active question in Congress. There was a desire to permit their own people to partic.i.p.ate in this to some extent and the National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, always on the watch tower, took immediate action toward having women included in any scheme of self-government. With the recent example before it of the most unjust discrimination against them in the admission of Hawaii as a Territory, the a.s.sociation under the presidency of Miss Susan B.

Anthony pet.i.tioned the members of Congress to recognize the rights of women in whatever form of government was adopted. At its annual convention in 1899 impa.s.sioned speeches were made against taking away from Filipino women the position of superiority which they always had held under Spanish rule by giving the men political authority over them.

In 1900 Military Governor-General Otis ordered a re-organization of the munic.i.p.alities. To decide who should have a vote in local affairs the Philippine Commission of the U. S. Senate summoned well informed persons and among them, in the spring of 1902, were Judge William H.

Taft, Governor-General of the islands, and Archbishop Nozaleda, who had been connected with the Catholic church there for twenty-six years and archbishop since 1889. Both declared that the suffrage should be given to the women rather than to the men, the former saying: "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. Following is part of the Archbishop's statement. (Senate Doc.u.ment, 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 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 in political life they should have the privilege over the men.

Notwithstanding this and other testimony of a similar nature the Commission framed a Code giving a Munic.i.p.al or local franchise to certain cla.s.ses of men and excluding all women, taking away from them the privileges they always had possessed. The men soon began demanding their own lawmaking body and in response Congress pa.s.sed an Act to take effect Jan. 15, 1907, to provide for the holding of elections in the Islands for a Legislative a.s.sembly. The Act limited the voters to "male persons 23 years of age or over," thus again putting up the barriers against women and including them in the list of the disqualified as listed--"insane, feeble-minded, rebels and traitors."

The U. S. Government did, however, give women to the same extent as men all educational advantages, which heretofore had been denied them and their progress was very rapid. In 1912 Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, visited Manila on her trip around the world and was warmly received. A meeting was called at the Manila Hotel for August 15 and twelve women responded.

After making an address she helped them form a club which they called Society for the Advancement of Women. Thirty attended the next meeting two weeks later and they took up active philanthropic work. In a little while most of the women of influence were members of it and it was re-organized as the Woman's Club of Manila. Its work extended in many directions and it became one of the city's leading inst.i.tutions.

Other clubs were formed and they joined the General Federation of Clubs in 1915. There are between 300 and 400 clubs in the Islands (1920).

Meanwhile the men were not satisfied with their one-house Legislative a.s.sembly largely under American control, but wanted more power. In response Congress provided for a Legislature of a Senate of 24 members and a Lower House of 90, all to be elected except two of the former and nine of the latter, who would be appointed by the American Governor-General to represent districts where elections were not held, the Act to go into effect in 1918. The suffrage was still confined exclusively to males, although in 1916 the Women's Club had organized fifty-seven Mothers' Clubs for the welfare of infants; had secured through women lawyers legal aid for over thirty poor women; had been instrumental in having 15,000 people make gardens to give variety to their fish and rice diet and done a vast amount of other valuable public work. The Act pa.s.sed by large majorities, members voting for it who had persistently voted against the Federal Amendment to enfranchise the women of the United States.

The Philippines were from 1917 represented in Congress by an able and progressive Commissioner, Jaime C. De Veyra, an advocate of woman suffrage. His wife, a native of Iloilo, who had been prominent in civic work in the Islands, shared his views, and was a frequent visitor at the suffrage headquarters in Was.h.i.+ngton. In 1919, a.s.sisted by Miss Bessie Dwyer, vice-president of the Manila Women's Club, she gave beautifully ill.u.s.trated addresses in Was.h.i.+ngton and New York, on the position of women in the Islands. In these and in interviews she said:

Philippine women have always been free and have always been held as equals of the men. In the little rural "barrios" you will always find some sort of woman leader. All over the islands they are highly considered. Even when old they exercise full sway over the family and have the last word in all financial matters. The married children still cling to the mother as adviser. The young women who marry go into partners.h.i.+p with their husbands and while the men handle the workers it is the women who do the paying and oversee things generally. They are engaged in all kinds of business for themselves and are employed by scores of thousands.

Many thousands carry work home where they can take care of their children, do the housework and be earning money.

They have the same opportunities in the professions as men, are successful physicians and lawyers and members of the Bar a.s.sociation. Laws made for them have combined the best of Spanish and American precedents. They are guardians of their own children; married women may hold property; of that which accrues to a married couple, the wife is half administrator. These are vested rights and cannot be taken away.

A short time ago the question of woman suffrage was introduced into the Legislature, not by the initiative of American women but urged by Madame Apacibile, wife of one of the government secretaries. A pet.i.tion signed by 18,000 women asking for a joint legislative hearing was sent to the law makers who granted it.

Three Filipina women spoke, one the widow of the eminent Concepcion Calderon, a successful business woman, owning a fish farm and an embroidery enterprise. Others were Mrs. Feodore Kalon, Miss Almeda and Miss Pazlegaspi, the last two practicing lawyers. Only one man appeared in the negative. The president of the Senate, the Hon. Manuel L. Quezon, is in favor of woman suffrage.

Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison recommended to the Legislature to give the suffrage to women, as it has the power to do.

A bill was introduced and pa.s.sed the Senate almost unanimously Dec. 7, 1919, but it was not acted upon by the House. As the Const.i.tution of the United States is not in force in the Philippines the women were not enfranchised by the Federal Suffrage Amendment in 1920 but must await the action of their own Legislature.

PORTO RICO.

After Porto Rico came under the control of the United States as a result of the Spanish-American war in 1898 its political status was undetermined for a long time. Shortly before that war Spain had granted universal suffrage to all its men over 21. Congress confirmed this privilege as to the affairs of the island but they had no voting rights in those of the United States. After a few years the more progressive of the people began asking for the status of a Territory with their own Legislature. This agitation was continued for sixteen years before Congress took action and agreed on a bill which would admit the islanders to citizens.h.i.+p. As usual the chief difficulty was over the suffrage. There was a desire to have a slight educational and a small property qualification but as a large majority of the men were illiterate and without property this aroused a protest, which was supported by the American Federation of Labor. On May 22, 1916, while the Porto Rican bill was under consideration in Committee of the Whole in the Lower House of Congress, the Republican floor leader, James R.

Mann (Ills.), discovered that a majority of those present were Republicans and suffragists. He therefore proposed a clause giving the franchise to the women, which was pa.s.sed by 60 to 37. He expected to put the Democrats in the position of voting it down the next day in regular session but when it came up Republicans joined with Democrats in defeating it by 80 noes to 59 ayes.

Finally when, under pressure, the committee was obliged to put in universal suffrage for the great ma.s.s of illiterate men, even the most ardent advocates of woman suffrage among the members felt that it would be unwise to add universal suffrage for women. In answer to the urgent request of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation that this injustice should not be done to women, Senator John F. Shafroth, chairman of the Committee on the Pacific Islands and Porto Rico, wrote: "I would have been very glad to incorporate a provision including women but it would have killed the bill. I was notified by Senator Martine of New Jersey and others that they would not permit a provision of that kind to go into it and the parliamentary stage of the bill was such that any one Senator could have defeated it. As it was, it took two years to get the bill before Congress and fully twenty motions to have it considered and if either prohibition or woman suffrage had gone into it there would have been no bill for Porto Rico. We avoided the word 'male' in prescribing the qualifications of electors."

The Act, which received the approval of President Wilson March 2, 1917, provided that at the first election for the Legislature and other officers the electors should be those qualified under the present law, and thereafter voters should be citizens of the United States 21 years of age and have such additional qualifications as might be prescribed by the Legislature of Porto Rico. The election took place on July 16. While this Act was an improvement on the one which admitted Hawaii as a Territory it left the many educated, tax paying women, the woman in business, the teachers in government and mission schools, the nurses in the hospitals, the social workers, wholly in the power of men.

About 1916 there was incorporated in Porto Rico an organization called La Liga Feminea de Puerto Rico, which worked energetically for the social uplift of the people and for the political enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women. The official organ was _La Mujer del Siglo Veinte_--_The Twentieth Century Woman_. Early in the spring of 1917 Mrs. Geraldine Maud Froscher, an American living in Porto Rico, appealed to the National Suffrage a.s.sociation for financial a.s.sistance for a campaign preparatory to the introduction of the woman suffrage bill in the Legislature that year. Literature was sent immediately and the a.s.sociation agreed to pay the expenses of Mrs. Froscher, who organized suffrage leagues in all towns of any considerable size, addressed women's clubs, interviewed legislators and distributed literature. In this work she had the able a.s.sistance of Mrs. Ana Roque Duprey, the first president of the San Juan Suffrage League, editor of the above paper and later of _El Heraldo de la Mujer_--_The Woman's Herald_, with Mrs. Froscher as the American editor.

In August, 1917, at the first session of the new Legislature, a bill was introduced in the Lower House to give women the right to hold office but without the right to vote and one to give them equal rights. Later two more bills were introduced but none was pa.s.sed. As Porto Rico is an unincorporated Territory of the United States, its women were not enfranchised by the Federal Suffrage Amendment in 1920.

At three consecutive sessions of the Legislative a.s.sembly a pet.i.tion for woman suffrage has been presented.

FOOTNOTES:

[213] The History is indebted for this chapter to Mrs. Jeannette Drury Clark, a graduate of the University of California, who with her husband, John A. Clark, an attorney, has made her home in Fairbanks for the past fifteen years.

[214] History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV, pages 325, 343, 346, 446.

CHAPTER LI.

PROGRESS OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

1900 - 1920.[215]

I consider it an honor to have been asked to take up the pen from the date 1900, when my dear friend and colleague, the late Helen Blackburn, laid it down after writing the chapter on Great Britain for Volume IV of the History of Woman Suffrage. I am particularly fortunate in that it falls to my lot to include the year 1918, when Victory crowned our fifty years' struggle in these islands to obtain the Parliamentary franchise for women.

Several circ.u.mstances entirely outside our power of control combined to promote the rapid growth of the movement at the beginning of the XXth Century. The chief of these were the South African war, 1899-1902, and the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. The war with the Transvaal was caused by the refusal of President Kruger and his advisers to recognize the principle that taxation and representation should go together. The so-called Uitlanders, who formed a large proportion of the population of the Transvaal and provided by taxation a still larger proportion of its revenue, were practically excluded from representation. This led to intense irritation and ultimately to war. It was, therefore, inevitable that articles in the press and the speeches of British statesmen dealing with the war used arguments which might have been transferred without the alteration of a single word to women's suffrage speeches.

I have described on pages 29 and 30 of Women's Suffrage, a Short History of a Great Movement, the strong impulse which had been given to the electorial activity of British women by the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883, which made paid canva.s.sing illegal and otherwise reduced electorial expenses. Very soon after it came into operation both the chief political parties organized bands of educated women to act as canva.s.sers, election agents, etc., in contested elections. The war stimulated this electorial activity of women. A general election was held in 1900 and in the absence of husbands, sons and brothers in South Africa, many wives, mothers and sisters ran the whole election on their behalf. Several of these were well known anti-suffragists.

Even Mrs. Humphry Ward herself, on the occasion of an important anti-suffrage meeting in London, excused her absence on the ground that her presence was required by the exigencies of the pending election in West Herts, where her son was a candidate. Suffragists again were not slow to point the moral--if women were fit (and they obviously were fit) not only to advise, persuade and instruct voters how to vote but also to conduct election campaigns from start to finish, they were surely fit to vote themselves.

The death of Queen Victoria in January, 1901, called forth a spontaneous burst of loyal grat.i.tude, devotion and appreciation from all parties and all sections of the country. Every leading statesman among her councillors dwelt on the extraordinary penetration of her mind, her wide political knowledge, her great practical sagacity, her grasp of principle, and they combined to acclaim her as the most trusted of all the const.i.tutional monarchs whom the world had then seen. How could she be all that they justly claimed for her, if the whole female s.e.x laboured under the disabilities which, according to Mrs. Humphry Ward, were imposed by nature and therefore irremediable?

Nevertheless, it must not be supposed, genuine as were these tributes to Queen Victoria's political sagacity, that her example immediately cleared out of the minds of the opponents the notion that women were fitly cla.s.sed with aliens, felons, idiots and lunatics, as persons who for reasons of public safety were debarred from the exercise of the Parliamentary franchise.

The Parliament returned in 1906 had an immense Liberal majority. There were only 157 Unionist members in the House of Commons against 513 Liberals, Labour men and Nationalists, all of whom were for Home Rule and therefore prepared to support in all critical divisions the new administration which was formed under the Premiers.h.i.+p of Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman. The new House contained 426 members pledged to Women's Suffrage. The Premier was himself a suffragist but his Cabinet contained several determined anti-suffragists, notable among whom were Mr. Herbert H. Asquith, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. James Bryce, chief secretary for Ireland (now Lord Bryce), who became British Amba.s.sador to the United States in 1907. The new Prime Minister received a large, representative suffrage deputation in May, 1906, in which all sections of suffragist opinion were represented, and their case was laid before him with force and clearness. In reply he told them that they had made out "a conclusive and irrefutable case" but that he was not prepared to take any steps to realize their hopes. When asked what he would advise ardent suffragists to do he told them to "go on pestering." This advice was taken to heart by the group (a small minority of the whole) who had lately formed in Manchester the organization known as The Women's Social and Political Union, led by Mrs. Pankhurst.

An unforeseen misfortune was the death in 1908 of Sir H. C. Bannerman and the fact that his successor was our princ.i.p.al opponent in the Government, Mr. Asquith. It was not very long before he revealed the line of his attack upon the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women. He informed his party in May, 1908, that his intention was to introduce before the expiration of the existing Parliament a Reform Bill giving a wide extension of the franchise to men and no franchise at all to women. In the previous February a Women's Suffrage Bill which removed all s.e.x disability from existing franchises had pa.s.sed its second reading in the House of Commons but this apparently had no effect on Mr. Asquith.

There were, however, some cracks in his armour. He admitted that about two-thirds of his Cabinet and a majority of his party were favourable to Women's Suffrage and he promised that when his own exclusively male Reform Bill was before the House and had got into committee, if an amendment to include women were moved on democratic lines, his Government, as a Government, would not oppose it. This was at all events an advance on the position taken by Mr. Gladstone upon his Reform Bill of 1884, when he vehemently opposed a women's suffrage amendment and caused it to be defeated.

The emergence of what was afterwards known as "militancy" belongs to this period, dating from the General Election of 1906 and very much stimulated by Premier Bannerman's reply to the deputation in that year and by the att.i.tude of Mr. Asquith. It will ever be an open question on which different people, with equal opportunities of forming a judgment, will p.r.o.nounce different verdicts, whether "militancy" did more harm or good to the suffrage cause. It certainly broke down the "conspiracy of silence" on the subject up to then observed by the press. Every extravagance, every folly, every violent expression, and of course when the "militants" after 1908 proceeded to acts of violence, every outrage against person or property were given the widest possible publicity not only in Great Britain but all over the world. There was soon not an intelligent human being in any country who was not discussing Women's Suffrage and arguing either for or against it. This was an immense advantage to the movement, for we had, as Sir H. Campbell Bannerman had said, "a conclusive and irrefutable case." Our difficulty had been to get it heard and considered and this "militancy" secured. The anti-suffrage press believed that it would kill the movement and it was this belief which encouraged them to give it the widest possible publicity. The wilder and more extravagant the "militants" became the more they were quoted, described and advertised in every way. The sort of "copy" which anti-suffrage papers demanded was supplied by them in cartloads and not at all by law-abiding suffragists, who were an immense majority of the whole. This can be ill.u.s.trated by an anecdote. The Const.i.tutional suffragists had organized a big meeting in Trafalgar Square and had secured a strong team of first-rate speakers. The square was well filled and on the fringe of the crowd the following conversation was overheard between two press men who had come to report the proceedings. One said he was going away, the second asked why and the first answered: "It's no good stopping, there's no copy in this; these women are only talking sense!"

The earlier years of militant activity were in my opinion helpful to the whole movement, for up to 1908 the "militants" had only adopted sensational and unusual methods, such as waving flags and making speeches in the lobby of the House and asking inconvenient questions at public meetings. They had suffered a great deal of violence but had used none. From 1908 onwards, however, they began to use violence, stone throwing, personal attacks, sometimes with whips, on obnoxious members of the Government, window smas.h.i.+ng, the destruction of the contents of letter-boxes--in one instance the destruction of ballot papers cast in an election. Later arson practised for the destruction or attempted destruction of churches and houses became more and more frequent. All this had an intensely irritating effect on public opinion. "Suffragist" as far as the general public was concerned became almost synonymous with "Harpy." This cause which had not been defeated on a straight vote in the House of Commons since 1886 was now twice defeated; once in 1912 and once in 1913. The whole spirit engendered by attempting to gain by violence or threats of violence what was not conceded to justice and reason was intensely inimical to the spirit of our movement. We believed with profound conviction that whatever might be gained in that way did not and could not rest on a sure foundation. The women's movement was an appeal against government by physical force and those who used physical violence in order to promote it were denying their faith to make their faith prevail.

The difference made a deep rift in the suffrage movement. The const.i.tutional societies felt bound to exclude "militants" from their members.h.i.+p and on several occasions issued strongly-worded protests against the use of violence as political propaganda. The fact that men under similar circ.u.mstances had been much more violent and destructive, especially in earlier days when they were less civilized, did not inspire us with the wish to imitate them. We considered that they had been wrong and that "direct action," as it is now the fas.h.i.+on to call coercion by means of physical force, had always reacted unfavorably on those who employed it. While the const.i.tutional societies freely and repeatedly expressed their views on these points, the "militants" not unnaturally retorted by attempting to break up our meetings, shouting down our speakers and provoking every sort of disorder at them. It was an exceptionally difficult situation and that we won through as well as we did was due to the solid loyalty to const.i.tutional and law-abiding methods of propaganda of the great ma.s.s of suffragists throughout the country. We quoted the American proverb, "Three hornets can upset a camp meeting," and we determined to hold steadily on our way and not let our hornets upset us. Our societies multiplied rapidly both in numbers and in members.h.i.+p. For instance, the number forming the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies increased from 64 in 1909 to 130 in 1910 and went on increasing rapidly until just before the war in 1914 they numbered more than 600, with a revenue of over 42,000 pounds a year.