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Mrs. Duniway. Gentlemen of the committee, do you think it possible that an
agitation like this can go on and on forever without a victory? |
REMARKS BY MRS. ZERELDA G. WALLACE, OF INDIANA. Mrs. WALLACE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, it is scarcely
necessary to recite that there is not an effect without a cause. |
The ratio of the popular vote in each case was about one-third for the amendment
and two-thirds against it. |
When one considers the strong passions and conflicts excited in
elections, it is vain to suppose that the really stronger would yield to the weaker
party. It is no more unjust to deprive women of the ballot than to deprive minors, who
outnumber those above the age of majority, and who might well claim, many of them,
to be as well able to decide political questions as their elders. To-day there is not a single interest of woman which is not shared and defended
by men, not a subject in which she takes an intelligent interest in which she
cannot exert an influence in the community proportional to her character and
ability. |
They got the proper officer to prosecute every rum-seller. I was at their
meeting. One woman reported that the officer in every city refused to prosecute the
liquor dealer who had violated the law. Why? |
While I would not have you
take this right or privilege from those men whom we invite to our shores, I do ask
you, in the face of this immense foreign immigration, to enfranchise the
tax-paying, intelligent, moral, native-born women of America. |
That is the point I want to make. We do not
want you to drive us back to the States. We want you men to take the question out
of the hands of the rabble of the State. THE CHAIRMAN. |
This was man's
generosity. MISS ANTHONY. Special legislation for the benefit of woman! I will admit you
that on the floor of the constitutional convention was a representative Mexican,
intelligent, cultivated, chairman of the committee on suffrage, who signed the
petition, and was the first to speak in favor of woman suffrage. Then they have in
Denver about four hundred negroes. |
If you can convince us that it is right we would not
stop to see how it affected us politically. MISS ANTHONY. |
You know that it would receive the most candid consideration. You know that it would receive not merely respectful consideration, but immediate
and prompt and just action upon your part. I have been told since I have reached Washington that of all women in the
country Indiana women have the least to complain of, and the least reason for
coming to the United States Capitol with their petitions and the statement of their
needs, because we have received from our own Legislature such amendments and
amelioration of the old unjust laws. In one sense it is true that we are the
recipients in our own State of many civil rights and of a very large degree of
civil equality. |
Mr. VEST. They are men's names. I did not say that the petition was signed by
ladies. |
REMARKS BY MRS. HELEN M. GOUGAR. Miss Anthony. I think I will call upon the other representative of the State of
Indiana to speak now, Mrs. Helen M. Gougar, of Lafayette, Ind. Mrs. Gougar. |
I appeal to you, therefore, to adopt the course that we suggest. Gentlemen of the committee, if there is a question that you want to ask me
before I make my final appeal, I should like to have you put it now; any question
as to constitutional law or your right to go forward. |
If we could convince every man who has
a vote in this Republic that this is not the case, I believe we could go far toward
removing the prejudice against us. If we could make them see that we are working
here merely because we know that the cause is right, and we feel that we must work
for it, that there is a power outside of ourselves which impels us onward, which
says to us: go forward and speak to the people and try to bring them up to a sense
of their duty and of our right. This is the belief that I have in regard to our
position on this question. It is a matter of duty with us, and that is all. In Massachusetts I represent a very much larger number of women than is
supposed. |
I am in favor of universal suffrage. Gentlemen, I ask this as a matter of justice; I ask it because it is an insult
to the intelligence of the present to draw the sex line upon any right whatever. |
I do not wish
to speak disparagingly in regard to the men in Congress, but I doubt if a man on
the floor of either House could have made a better speech than some of those which
have been made by women during this convention. Twenty-six States and Territories
are represented with live women, traveling all the way from Kansas, Arkansas,
Oregon, and Washington Territory. It does seem to me that after all these years of
coming up to this Capitol an impression should be made upon the minds of
legislators that we are never to be silenced until we gain the demand. We have
never had in the whole thirty years of our agitation so many States represented in
any convention as we had this year. |
Ever the world goes round and round; Ever the truth comes
uppermost; and ever is justice done. REMARKS BY MRS. LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE. Miss ANTHONY. I now have the pleasure of introducing to the committee Mrs.
Lillie Devereux Blake, of New York. New York is a great State, and therefore it has
three representatives here to-day. |
There is no need to do battle in this matter. In all kindness and gentleness we
urge our claims. There is no need to declare war upon men, for the best of men in
this country are with us heart and soul. It is a common remark that unless some new element is infused into our political
life our nation is doomed to destruction. What more fitting element than the noble
type of American womanhood, who have taught our Presidents, Senators, and
Congressmen the rudiments of all they know. |
I wish to say to you that there are millions of women in
the United States who have no homes. There are millions of women who are trying to
earn their bread and hold their purity sacred. For that class of women I appeal to
you. In the city of Albany there are hundreds of women in our factories making the
shirts that you can buy for $1.50 and $2, and all those women are paid for making
the shirts is 4 cents apiece. |
Therefore when men go to the
ballot-box they till vote "no," unless they have actual argument on it. I will
illustrate. We have six Legislatures in the nation, for instance, that have
extended the right to vote on school questions to the women, and not a single
member of the State Legislature has ever lost his office or forfeited the respect
or confidence of his constituents as a representative because he voted to give
women the right to vote on school questions. It is a question that the unthinking
masses never have thought upon. |
Simply because there is a
large balance of power in every city that does not want those laws executed. Consequently both parties must alike cater to that balance of political power. The
party that puts a plank in its platform that the laws against the grog-shops and
all the other sinks of iniquity must be executed, is the party that will not get
this balance of power to vote for it, and, consequently, the party that can not get
into power. |
The
framers of that instrument foresaw that time and experience, the growth of the
country and the consequent expansion of the Government, would develop the necessity
for changes in it, and they therefore wisely provided in Article V as follows:
The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall
propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the Legislatures
of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing
amendments, which in either case shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as
part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of
the several States, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof, as the one or the
other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress. Under this provision, at the first session of the First Congress, ten amendments
were submitted to the Legislatures of the several States, in due time ratified by the
constitutional number of States, and became a part of the Constitution. Since then
there have been added to the Constitution by the same process five different
articles. To secure an amendment to the Constitution under this article requires the
concurrent action of two-thirds of both branches of Congress and the affirmative
action of three-fourths of the States. |
In our
State she has a right to her own property. She can not sell it, though, if it is
real estate, simply because the moment she marries her husband has a life-time
right. The woman does not grumble at that; but still when he dies owning real
estate, she gets only the rental value of one-third, which is called the widow's
dower. Now I think the man ought to have the rental value of one-third of the
woman's maiden property or real estate, and it ought to be called the widower's
dower. |
You say that
whenever the Legislatures extend the right of suffrage to us by the constitutions
of their States we can get it. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Colorado,
Kansas, Oregon, all these States, have had the school suffrage extended by
legislative enactment. If the question had been submitted to the rank and file of
the people of Boston, with 66,000 men paying nothing but the poll-tax, they would
have undoubtedly voted against letting women have the right to vote for members of
the school board; but their intelligent representatives on the floor of the
Legislature voted in favor of the extension of the school suffrage to the women. The first result in Boston has been the election of quite a number of women to the
school board. In Minnesota, in the little town of Rochester, the school board
declared its purpose to cut the women teachers' wages down. |
MRS. SPENCER. Do make the point that the Congress of the United States leads the
Legislatures of the States and educates them. MISS ANTHONY. When you, representative men, carry this matter to Legislatures,
State by State, they will ratify it. |
I come here to ask you to make a niche
in the statesmanship and legislation of the nation for the domestic interests of
the people. You recognize that the masculine thought is more often turned to the
material and political interests of the nation. I claim that the mother thought,
the woman element needed, is to supplement the concurrent statesmanship of American
men on political and industrial affairs with the domestic legislation of the
nation. There are good men and women who believe that women should use their influence
merely through their social sphere. I believe both of the great parties are
represented by us. |
What would be the result of woman
suffrage if applied to the large cities of this country is a matter of speculation. What women have done in times of turbulence and excitement in large cities in the
past we know. Open that terrible page of the French Revolution and the days of
terror, when the click of the guillotine and the rush of blood through the streets of
Paris demonstrated to what extremities the ferocity of human nature can be driven by
political passion. |
As members of society, as those who are deeply
interested in the promotion of good morals, of virtue, and of the proper protection
of men from the consequences of their own vices, and of the protection of women,
too, we are deeply interested in all the social problems with which you have
grappled so long unsuccessfully. We do not intend to depreciate your efforts, but
you have attempted to do an impossible thing. |
But it has been said that the present law is unjust to woman; that she is often
required to pay tax on the property she holds without being permitted to take part in
framing or administering the laws by which her property is governed, and that she is
taxed without representation. That is a great mistake. It may be very doubtful whether the male or female sex in the present state of
things has more influence in the administration of the affairs of the Government and
the enactment of the laws by which we are governed. |
But we did not send the colored man to the States. No other
amendment touching the general national interest is left to be fought out by
individual action in the individual States. Under the terms of the Constitution
itself the people of the United States, having some universal common interest
affected by law or by the want of law, are invited to come to this body and try here
their question of right, or at all events through the agency of Congress to submit
that proposition to the people at large in order that in the general national forum
it may receive discussion, and by the action of three-fourths of the States, if
favorable, their idea may be incorporated in the fundamental law. |
Therefore I ask of
you, as representative men, as men who think, as men who study, as men who
philosophize, as men who know, that you will not drive us back to the States any
more, but that you will carry out this method of procedure which has been practiced
from the beginning of the Government; that is, that you will put a prohibitory
amendment in the Constitution and submit the proposition to the several State
legislatures. |
I find here a little extract that I copied years ago from the
Anti-Slavery Standard of 1870. As you know, Wendell Phillips was the editor of that
paper at that time:
"A man with the ballot in his hand is the master of the situation. |
I will simply call your attention to the total forgetfulness of the
Congress of the United States to the debt owed to the women of this nation during
the war. You have passed a pension bill upon which there has been much comment
throughout the nation, and yet, when an old army nurse applies for a pension, a
woman who is broken down by her devotion to the nation in hospitals and upon the
battle-field, she is met at the door of the Pension Bureau by this statement, "the
Government has made no appropriation for the services of women in the war." One of
these women is an old nurse whom some of you may remember, Mother Bickerdyke, who
went out onto many a battle-field when she was in the prime of life, twenty years
ago, and at the risk of her life lifted men, who were wounded, in her arms, and
carried them to a place of safety. She is an old woman now, and where is she? |
Therefore, it may be
fairly said, I think, that it was a military necessity that compelled one of those
acts of justice, and a political necessity that compelled the other. It seems to me that from the first word uttered by our dear friend, Mrs.
ex-Governor Wallace, of Indiana, all the way down, we have been presenting to you
the fact that there is a great moral necessity pressing upon this nation to-day,
that you shall go forward and attach a sixteenth amendment to the Federal
Constitution which shall put in the hands of the women of this nation the power to
help make, shape, and control the social conditions of society everywhere. I appeal
to you from that standpoint that you shall submit this proposition. There is one other point to which I want to call your attention. |
I will now introduce to the committee Mrs. May Wright Sewall, of
Indianapolis, who is the chairman of our executive committee. Mrs. SEWALL. Gentlemen of the committee: Gentlemen, I believe, differ somewhat
in their political opinions. It will not then be surprising, I suppose, that I
should differ somewhat from my friend in regard to the knowledge that you probably
possess upon our question. |
I wish to say further that there is no connection whatever between jury service
and the right of suffrage. |
You have the making of the nation. Would
you choose your statesmen? First make your statesmen. Indeed the whole cause on trial may be summarily ended by the proving of an
alibi, an elsewhere of demand. Is woman needed at the caucuses, conventions, polls? |
While we most heartily wish they
could all feel as we do, yet when it comes to the decision of this great question
they are mere ciphers, for if this question is settled by the States it will be
left to the voters, not to the women to decide. Or if suffrage comes to women
through a sixteenth amendment of the national Constitution, it will be decided by
Legislatures elected by men. |
Would there be no power in that? Would it not be a
kind of woman-suffrage to settle the very initials of all that ever bears upon the
public question? |
She exerted as wide an influence in the State of Texas as any woman
there. I allude to Miss Mollie Moore, who was the ward of Mr. Gushing. I give this
illustration as a reason why Southern women are taking part in this movement, Mr.
Wallace had charge of that lunatic asylum for years. He was a good, honorable, able
man. |
We have to
ask a question to which it is the answer, and whose answer is that of the whole
doubt and dispute. What is the law of woman-life? What was she made woman for, and not man? Shall we look back to that old third chapter of Genesis? When mankind had taken the knowledge and power of good and evil into their own
hands through the mere earthly wisdom of the serpent; when the woman had had her
hasty outside way and lead, according to the story, and woe had come of it, what
was the sentence? |
We plant
trees for posterity where forests have been laid waste and the beautiful work of
life is to be done over again; we can not expect to see our fruit in souls and in
the nation at less cost of faith and time. Take care, then, of the little children:
the men children, to make men of them; the women children—oh, yes, even above
all—to make ready for future mothering—to snatch from the evil that
works over against pure womanliness. Until you have done this let men fend for
themselves in rough outsides a little longer; except, perhaps, as wise, able women
whom the trying transition time calls forth may find fit way and place for effort
and protest—there is always room for that, and noble work has been and is
being done; but do not rear a new generation of women to expect and desire charges
and responsibilities reversive of their own life-law, through whose perfect
fulfillment alone may the future clean place be made for all to work in. Is there excess of female population? Can not all expect the direct rule of a
home? |
In these States
there is not a line of positive law to protect the mother; the father is the legal
protector and guardian of the children. Under the laws of most of the States to-day a husband may by his last will
bequeath his child away from its mother, so that she might, if the guardian chose,
never see it again. The husband may have been a very bad man, and in a moment of anger made the
will. The guardian he has appointed may turn out a malicious man, and take pleasure
in tormenting the mother, or he may bring up the children in a way that the mother
thinks ruinous to them, and she has no redress in law. Why do not all the fortunate
mothers in the land cry out against such a law? |
It is not founded upon force. Only that
degree of physical strength which is essential to a sound body—the home of
the healthy mental and moral constitution—the sound soul in the sound body is
required in the performance of the function of primary legislation. |
Those boys were not unkind, they simply
represented that onward push which is one of the grandest characteristics of your
sex; and the little girls, on the other hand, represented that gentleness and
thoughtfulness of others which is eminently a characteristic of women. This woman element is needed in every branch of the Government. |
Profoundly convinced of the justice of woman's demand for the suffrage, and that
the proper method of securing the right is by an amendment of the national
Constitution, I urge the adoption of the joint resolution upon the still broader
ground so clearly and calmly stated by the great Senator whose words I have just
read. I appeal to you, Senators, to grant this petition of woman that she may be
heard for her claim of right. How could you reject that petition, even were there but
one faint voice beseeching your ear? |
I speak now respecting
women as a sex. I believe that they are better than men, but I do not believe they
are adapted to the political work of this world. I do not believe that the Great
Intelligence ever intended them to invade the sphere of work given to men, tearing
down and destroying all the best influences for which God has intended them. |
The Greenback movement was quite popular in
Michigan at that time. The Republicans and Greenbackers made a most humble bow to
the grangers, but woman suffrage did not get much help. In Colorado, at the close
of the canvass, 6,666 men voted "Yes." |
I do not intend to discuss the question of woman suffrage upon this occasion,
and I refer to it mainly for the purpose of directing attention to the advanced
position which the people of this Territory have taken upon this question. |
It would be just as fair for one as for the other. All that I want is
equality. The women of our State, as I said before, are taxed without representation. The
tax-gatherer comes every year and demands taxes. |
A gentleman presented their petition; the ladies
were in the lobbies around the room. |
Whether that is because they want to keep us women out or not I am not
able to say; but for some reason the doors are so constructed that it is nearly
impossible to open them. I saw a number of little girls coming in through those
doors—every child held the door for those who were to follow. A number of
little boys followed just after, and every boy rushed through and let the door shut
in the face of the one who was coming behind him. That is a good illustration of
the different qualities of the sexes. |
There
is not a man, Mrs. Wallace says, in the building, except the engineer who controls
the fire department. Under a management wholly by women, the institution is a very
great success. |
I desire in closing simply to call for the reading of the joint resolution. I
could say nothing to quicken the sense of the Senate on the importance of the
question about to be taken. It concerns one-half of our countrymen, one-half of the
citizens of the United States, but it is more than that, Mr. President. This question
is radical, and it concerns the condition of the whole human race. |
They lie
like rotted hulks behind me. After the fever of 1878, when our constitutional convention was going to
convene, broke the agony and grief of my own heart, for one of my children died,
and took part in the suffrage movement in Louisiana, with the wife of Chief-Justice
Merrick, Mrs. Sarah A. Dorsey, and Mrs. Harriet Keatinge, of New York, the niece of
Mr. Lozier. These three ladies aided me faithfully and ably. When they found we
would be received, I went before the convention. I went to Lieutenant-Governor
Wiltz, and asked him if he would present or consider a petition which I wished to
bring before the convention. |
Woman. Her picture upon the pages of history to-day is
indelible. In the city of Paris in those ferocious mobs the controlling agency, nay,
not agency, but the controlling and principal power, came from those whom God has
intended to be the soft and gentle angels of mercy throughout the world. |
Respectfully,
Hon. H.W. BLAIR. I will add in this connection a letter lately received by myself, written by a
lady who may not be so distinguished in the annals of the country, yet, at the same
time, she has attained to such a position in the society where she lives that she
holds the office of postmaster by the sanction of the Government, and has held it for
many years. |
Mrs. SPENCER. I have been so informed. REMARKS BY MRS. NANCY B. ALLEN, OF IOWA. |
The motion was agreed to; and the Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, proceeded
to consider the joint resolution. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution will be read. The Chief Clerk read the joint resolution, as follows:
ARTICLE—. |
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Upon this question the yeas and nays will necessarily be
taken. |
That is the real question for the Senate to consider. It is not whether the Senate
would, itself, extend the suffrage to women, but whether those men who believe that
women should have the suffrage shall be heard, so that there may be a decision and an
end made of this great subject, which has now been under discussion more than a
quarter of a century, and to-day for the first time even in the legislative body
which is to submit the proposition to the country for consideration has there been a
prospect of reaching a vote. |
The amendment which has been presented before you reads:
ARTICLE XVI. SECTION 1. |
The right of suffrage in the United States shall be based on
citizenship, and the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of sex, or
for any reason not equally applicable to all citizens of the United States. |
The committee have no power to order the printing. That can only
be done by the order of the Senate. A resolution can be offered to that effect in
the Senate. I have only to say, ladies, that you will admit that we have listened
to you with great attention, and I can certainly say with very great interest. |
Through all that trial
when I, as a citizen of the United States, as a citizen of the State of New York
and city of Rochester, as a person who had done something at least that might have
entitled her to a voice in speaking for herself and for her class, in all that
trial I not only was denied my right to testify as to whether I voted or not, but
there was not one single woman's voice to be heard nor to be considered, except as
witnesses, save when it came to the judge asking, "Has the prisoner any thing to
say why sentence shall not be pronounced?" |
RANSOM]. If he were present I should vote "yea." Mr. DAWES (when his name was called). I am paired with the Senator from Texas [Mr.
MAXEY]. |
The soul is of no sex. If there be a distinction of soul by reason of the physical
difference, or accompanying that physical difference, woman is the superior of man in
mental and moral qualities. In proof of this see the report of the minority and all
the eulogiums of woman pronounced by those who, like the serpent of old, would
flatter her vanity that they may continue to wield her power. I repeat it, that the soul is of no sex, and that sex is, so far as the possession
and exercise of human rights and powers are concerned, but a physical property, in
which the female is just as important as the male, and the possessor thereof under
just as great need of power in the organization and management of society and the
government of society as man; and if there be a difference, she, by reason of her
average physical inferiority, is really protected, and ought to be protected, by a
superior mental and moral fitness to give direction to the course of society and the
policy of the state. |
I had the names of seven of the most prominent physicians there, leading with
the name of Dr. Logan, and many men, seeing the name of Dr. Samuel Logan, also
signed it. I went to all the different physicians and ministers. Three prominent
ministers signed it for moral purposes alone. When Mrs. Horsey was on her dying bed
the last time she ever signed her name was to a letter to go before that
convention. No one believed she would die. |
I am glad to hear it. It is two years since I was there, but I was
told that that was the case. In Utah the women were given the right to vote, but a
year and a half ago their Legislative Assembly found that although they had the
right to vote the Territorial law provided that only male voters should hold
office. The Legislative Assembly of Utah passed a bill providing that women should
be eligible to all the offices of the Territory. |
The Senator who last spoke on this question refers to the successful experiment in
regard to woman-suffrage in the Territories of Wyoming and Washington. Mr. President,
it is not upon the plains of the sparsely-settled Territories of the West that woman
suffrage can be tested. Suffrage in the rural districts and sparsely settled regions
of this country must from the very nature of things remain pure when corrupt
everywhere else. The danger of corrupt suffrage is in the cities, and those masses of
population to which civilization tends everywhere in all history. Whilst the country
has been pure and patriotic, the cities have been the first cancers to appear upon
the body-politic in all ages of the world. |
I admit that in the governments
of the world, past and present, men as a rule have assumed to be the ruling classes;
that they have instituted governments from participation in which they have excluded
women; that they have made laws for themselves and for women, and as a rule have
themselves administered them; but that the provisions conferring or regulating
suffrage in the constitutions and laws of governments so constituted determined the
question of the right of suffrage can not be maintained. Let us suppose, if we can, a community separated from all other communities,
having no organized government, owing no allegiance to any existing governments,
without any knowledge of the character of present or past governments, so that when
they come to form a government for themselves they can do so free from the bias or
prejudice of custom or education, composed of an equal number of men and women,
having equal property rights to be defined and to be protected by law. When such
community came to institute a government—and it would have an undoubted right
to institute a government for itself, and the instinct of self-preservation would
soon lead them to do so—will my friend from Georgia tell me by what right,
human or divine, the male portion of that community could exclude the female portion,
although equal in number and having equal property rights with the men, from
participation in the formation of such government and in the enactment of laws for
the government of the community? I understand the Senator, if he should answer, would
say that he believes the Author of our existence, the Ruler of the universe, has
given different spheres to man and woman. |
Who led those blood-thirsty mobs? Who shrieked loudest in that
hurricane of passion? |
If they fail to do this the best
interests of the country must suffer by a preponderance of ignorance and vice at the
polls. It is now a problem which perplexes the brain of the ablest statesmen to determine
how we will best preserve our republican system as against the demoralizing influence
of the large class of our present citizens and voters who by reason of their
illiteracy are unable to read or write the ballot they cast. Certainly no statesman who has carefully observed the situation would desire to
add very largely to this burden of ignorance. But who does not apprehend the fact if
universal female suffrage should be established that we will, especially in the
Southern States, add a very large number to the voting population whose ignorance
utterly disqualifies them for discharging the trust. If our colored population who
were so recently slaves that even the males who are voters have had but little
opportunity to educate themselves or to be educated, whose ignorance is now exciting
the liveliest interest of our statesmen, are causes of serious apprehension, what is
to be said in favor of adding to the voting population all the females of that race,
who, on account of the situation in which they have been placed, have had much less
opportunity to be educated than even the males of their own race. |
If we are to tear down all the blessed
traditions, if we are to desolate our homes and firesides, if we are to unsex our
mothers and wives and sisters and turn our blessed temples of domestic peace into
ward political-assembly rooms, pass this joint resolution. But for one I thank God
that I am so old-fashioned that I would not give one memory of my grandmother or my
mother for all the arguments that could be piled, Pelion upon Ossa, in favor of this
political monstrosity. |
Those women are good
temperance women. Our city council is composed almost entirely of saloon men and
those who visit saloons and brewery men. There are some good men, but the good men
being in the minority, the voices of these women are but little regarded. |
For good or for evil, for the serpent or for the redeeming
Christ, she must move, must influence, must achieve beforehand, and at the heart;
she must be the mother of the race; she must be the mother of the Messiah. Not
woman in her own person, but "one born of woman," is the Saviour. |
The rent of their
little rooms goes into the coffers of their landlords and pays taxes. The poor
women of the city of New York and everywhere are the grandest upholders of this
Government. I believe they pay indirectly more taxes than the monopoly kings of our
country. It is for them that I want the ballot. REMARKS BY MRS. ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT. |
Miss ANTHONY. Gentlemen of the committee, here is another woman I wish to show
you, Sarah E. Wall, of Worcester, Mass., who, for the last twenty-five years, has
resisted the tax gatherer when he came around. I want you to look at her. She looks
very harmless, but she will not pay a dollar of tax. |
If so, I
oppose to the request of these ladies the arguments of their own sex; but first, I
ask the Secretary to read a paper which has been sent to me with a request that I
place it before the Senate. The Chief Clerk read as follows:
We, the undersigned, respectfully remonstrate against the further extension of
suffrage to women. Mr. DOLPH. |
It is asking too much of a
moneyless class of people, disfranchised by the constitution of every State in the
Union. The joint earnings of the marriage copartnership in all the States belong
legally to the husband. If the wife goes outside the home to work, the law in most
of the States permits her to own and control the money thus earned. |
It was tried in Kansas, it was tried in New York, and everywhere that it was
submitted the question was voted down overwhelmingly. |
On the other hand, wherever refinement,
tenderness, delicacy, sprightliness, spiritual acumen, and force, are to the fore,
there the feminine ideal is represented, and these terms will be found nearly enough
for all practical purposes to represent the differing endowments of actual men and
women. Different powers suggest different activities, and under the division of labor
here indicated the control of the state, legislation, the power of the ballot, would
seem to fall to the share of man. Nor does this decision carry with it any injustice,
any robbery of just or natural right to woman. |
The nearer we approach to that divine ideal the nearer we
will come to realizing our hopes of finally securing at least the most perfect form
of human government that it is possible for us to secure. I do not wish to trespass upon your time, but I have felt that this movement is
not understood by a great majority of people. |
But how much is there of this objection of
want of time or physical strength to vote, in its application to women who are
bearing and training the coming millions? The families of the country average five
persons in number. If we assume that this gives an average of three children to every
pair, which is probably the full number, or if we assume that every married mother,
after she becomes of voting age, bears three children, which is certainly the full
allowance, and that twenty-four years are consumed in doing it, there is one child
born every eight years whose coming is to interfere with the exercise of a duty of
privilege which, in most States, and in all the most important elections, occurs only
one day in two years. That same mother will attend church at least forty times yearly on the average
from her cradle to her grave, beside an infinity of other social, religious, and
industrial obligations which she performs and assumes to perform because she is a
married woman and a mother rather than for any other reason whatever. |
It can not be, and I think is not claimed by any one, that the mother
who otherwise would be fit to vote is rendered mentally or morally less fit to
exercise this high function in the state because of motherhood. |
We apprehend no one who has properly considered this question will
doubt if female suffrage should be established that the more ignorant and less
refined portions of the female population of this country, to say nothing of the
baser class of females, laying aside feminine delicacy and disregarding the sacred
duties devolving upon them, to which we have already referred, would rush to the
polls and take pleasure in the crowded association which the situation would compel,
of the two sexes in political meetings, and at the ballot-box. If all the baser and more ignorant portion of the female sex crowd to the polls
and deposit their suffrage this compels the very large class of intelligent,
virtuous, and refined females, including wives and mothers, who have much more
important duties to perform, to leave their sacred labors at home, relinquishing for
a time the God-given important trust which has been placed in their hands, to go
contrary to their wishes to the polls and vote, to counteract the suffrage of the
less worthy class of our female population. |
They do not care about it one way or the other,
only they have an instinctive feeling that because women never did vote therefore
it is wrong that they ever should vote. |
If women were in the Government do you not
think they would protect the economic interests of the nation? They are the born
and trained economists of the world, and when you call them to your assistance you
will find an element that has not heretofore been felt with the weight which it
deserves. |
When you debate about the expediency of any
matter you have no right to say that it is inexpedient to do right. Do right and
leave the result to God. |
But I rise not to discuss this question, but to discharge a request. I know that
when a man attacks this claim for woman suffrage he is sneered at and ridiculed as
afraid to meet women in the contests for political honor and supremacy. |
SEC. 2. The Congress shall have power, by appropriate legislation, to enforce
the provisions of this article. Fortunately for the perpetuity of our institutions and the prosperity of the
people, the Federal Constitution contains a provision for its own amendment. |
The claim, then, of the minority of the committee that woman is represented by the
other sex is not well founded, and is based upon the same assumption of power which
lies at the base of all government anti-republican in form. It can not be claimed
that she is as a free being already represented, for she can only be represented
according to her will by the exercise of her will through the suffrage itself. As already observed, the exclusion of woman from the suffrage under our form of
government can be justified upon proof, and only upon proof, that by reason of her
sex she is incompetent to exercise that power. This is a question of fact. The common ground upon which all agree may be stated thus: All males having
certain qualifications are in reason and in law entitled to vote. |
Political parties would fain have us believe that tariff is the great question of
the hour. Political parties know better. It is an insult to the intelligence of the
present hour to say that when one-half of the citizens of this Republic are denied
a direct voice in making the laws under which they shall live, that tariff, or that
the civil rights of the negro, or any other question that can be brought up, is
equal to the one of giving political freedom to women. |
Let me read from the views of the
minority on page 1:
The fair authoress says:
This is a concession of the whole argument, unless the highest and final estate of
woman is to be something else than a mere individual. It would also follow that if
such be her destiny—that is, to be something else than a mere "individual
being"—and if for that reason she is to be denied the suffrage, then man
equally should be denied the ballot if his highest and final estate is to be
something else than a "mere individual." Thereupon the minority of the committee, through the "Fair Authoress," proceed to
show that both man and woman are designed for a higher final estate—to wit,
that of matrimony. It seems to be conceded that man is just as much fitted for
matrimony as woman herself, and thereupon the whole subject is illuminated with
certain botanical lore about stamens and pistils, which, however relevant to
matrimony, does not seem to me to prove that therefore woman should not vote unless
at the same time it proves that man should not vote either. |
And when a woman does these things,
as called of God—not talks of them, as to whether she may make claim to do
them—she carries a weight from the very sanctity out of which she steps, as
woman, that moves men unlike the moving of any other power. Shall she resign the
chance of doing really great things, of meeting grand crises, by making herself
common in ward-rooms and at street-corners, and abolishing the perfect idea of home
by no longer consecrating herself to
If individual woman, as has been said, may gain and influence individual man,
and so the man-power in affairs—a body of women, purely as such, with cause,
and plea, and reason, can always have the ear and attention of bodies of men; but
to do this they must come straight from their home sanctities, as representing
them—as able to represent them otherwise than men, because of their
hearth-priestesshood; not as politicians, bred and hardened in the public
arenas. That the family is the heart of the state, and that the state is but the widened
family, is the fact which the old vestal consecration, power, and honor set forth
and kept in mind. |
I never realized
the importance of their cause until we were beaten back on every aide in the work
of reform. |
More than that, and further back, and
lowlier down, suppose they should say, every one, "I will not have the new,
convenient house, the fresh carpetings, the pretty curtains, or even the least,
most fitting freshness, until I know the means are earned for me with honest
service to the world, and by no lucky turn of even a small speculation." Further
back yet, suppose them to declare, "I will not have the home at all, nor my own
happiness, unless it can be based and builded on the kind of life-work that helps
to make a real prosperity; that really goes to the building and safe-keeping of a
whole nation of such homes." |
When we do equal work we want equal wages. MRS. SAXON. California, in her recent convention, prohibits the Legislature
hereafter from enacting any law for woman's suffrage, does it not? |
In these three States
where the question has been submitted and voted down we can not get another
Legislature to resubmit it, because they say the people have expressed their
opinion and decided no, and therefore nobody with any political sense would
resubmit the question. It is therefore impossible in any one of those States. We
have tried hard in Kansas for ten years to get the question resubmitted; the vote
of that State seems to be taken as a finality. We ask you to lift the sixteenth
amendment out of the arena of the public mass into the arena of thinking
legislative brains, the brains of the nation, under the law and the Constitution. |
That is just the power and place that belong to you, and you must seize and fill. It is your natural right; God gave it to you. |
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