Revised from THE NEW REVIEW Jan. 25—Feb. 1, 1913.
TABOOED ASPECTS OF SUFFRAGE
DISCUSSION
BY THEODORE SCHROEDER
56 East 59th St., N. Y.
With a small-souled social reformer, considerations of expe-
diency weigh much more heavily than love for the whole simple
truth. He is more delighted with the power to influence unreº-
soned conduct, than with securing intelligent conviction. There is
an army of pettifogging agitators, who evade the unpopular
aspects of problems; who deal in half-truths; Who mislead by
question-begging epithets; who are careless of truth itself, quite
unconscious that they are intellectual frauds. That is why we
have tabooed aspects of problems. It also explains why many act
on motives, which their public “arguments” are designed to con-
ceal. I am going to indulge in another sort of discussion, in
which I will expose my naked mind to public Scrutiny.
- The problems of women and sex are generally so befogged
with maudlin sentimentalism, with cowardice and hyprocisy mask-
ing as chivalry, that any one writing on these subjects critically
and with robust frankness must expect to be misunderstood and
misrepresented. Some stupid ones will call me “woman-hater.”
A few will see that I can not hate or love women as a whole, nor
merely as women. A very few will see that I am really trying to
help women and humanity, by trying to liberalize all. Certainly
I know some women of fine feeling and big brain, to whom the
following strictures do not apply. These will understand and will
not feel hurt, even when they disagree with me. That will be the
test of the reader. “If he tries to see what it means, what truth
excuses it, he has the gift and let him read. If he is merely hurt,
or offended, or exclaims upon his author's folly, he had better take
to the daily papers; he will never be a reader,” (Stevenson).
JUSTICE AND WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE
A very handsome and very successful literary woman recently
stated to me her reasons for opposing woman's suffrage, substan-
tially as follows: “Woman’s Suffrage is the cult of the incompetent.
Without suffrage a clever woman can always get more than her
share of special privileges and advantages. I get more than my
share. Why should I help the suffrage cause?” To such persons
One can only answer that if woman’s suffrage is really the cult
of the incompetent, then such anti-suffrage sentiments express
the cult of the unjust. It is to be hoped that a time will come
when women and men are willing to renounce all advantage,
whether gained by cunning or by law, because all advantage is
parasitic. It is to be hoped that some day all will develop so fine
a sense of justice as not to desire special privileges and to be
ashamed to gloat over their possession. Such women, as the
one quoted, although enjoying economic independence, still retain
the mental status of the conscious, willing parasite. This is the
mental state which upholds exploiters and slaves, get-rich-quick
swindles, and child factory labor. But..we must not be too certain
that adherence to the cause of the suffragists necessarily implies
the existence of a more refined sense of justice, nor does it imply
willingness to renounce unjust advantage.
The pioneer suffragists were earnest apostles of justice and
liberty. Then the suffrage cause was too unpopular to be attrac-
tive as a mere fad for the bored victims of idle ease. Then, more
than now, women suffered from unjust legal discriminations, and
suffrage was insisted upon as a means to the end of Securing to
them more justice, and probably was not yet thought of as an end
in itself.
Incident to their pursuit of justice, these women attacked
boldly every intervening superstition. In those days it required
courage to repudiate the unjust sex-discriminations in property-
rights, which religious custom, statute law, and Christian igno-
rance had sanctified. These founders of the suffrage movement
were essentially iconoclasts, who dared to question rules of “right”
even though founded on alleged “divine revelation.” By courage-
ous and intelligent criticism, in which they dared to doubt even the
religion which had sanctified their wrongs, they did much to make
us scepical as to “Holy Writ.” Men became ashamed of their
laws and their creeds, so that new laws have abolished most of the
former property—wrongs inflicted upon women. Modern suffra-
gists, however, often ignore or even repudiate some of the women
most conspicuous in bringing about this wholesome change, such
Women as Mary Wollstonecraft and Matilda Joslyn Gage.
As another proof that now woman's suffrage bears but little
relation to the abolition of all unjust sex-discrimination, I call
attention to the eloquent silence of suffragists on the property-
Wrongs of married men. I concede that under our present property
system, parents should, to the full extent of their possessions, be
jointly and severally liable for the maintenance of their children
to a fully developed maturity. But just why the law should coerce
a man to support for life an idle and childless wife, merely be-
cause she once rendered him a legalized sex-service, is not clear
to me. With our advancing civilization, we have abolished impris-
onment for debt, earcept where it has been incurred as the price
for authorized sexual relations. “Eminently respectable” suffra-
gist conventions have not yet been heard to make public protest
against this statutory discrimination in favor of women. It will
be observed that no law imposes imprisonment for debt upon
prosperous wives who refuse to support their impecunious hus-
bands. If a refined sense of justice were the real motive-power
2

doeſ. 19.4%
behind the suffrage movement, we would more often hear demands
for the abolition of unjust advantages, as well as disadvantages.
In some states women have an advantage over men in the matter
of dower rights and exemption from execution. Since we do not
hear any protest against these advantages, we may suspect that
the suffragist mind is obsessed by “votes for women” as an end in
itself and that the lust for power precludes conscious concern with
promoting either human justice or liberty. -
Under present laws every woman whose expectations and
vanity are damaged, can find profit and Sweet revenge in that
legalized blackmail known as a suit for breach of promise to
marry. There are women big enough to scorn such “balm” for
wounded “affections”; others are afraid to expose their greedy
“love affairs” to public scrutiny; but no suffrage convention has
pledged itself to help abolish this advantage of the old sex-slavery.
Are suffrage conventions interested only in Such “justice” and
such “emancipation” as will induce women to desire “votes for
women” more than justice for men?
When some court invokes an old common-law precedent to jus-
tify a sex discrimination against women, public protest meetings
have been held and denunciatory resolutions promulgated. When
recently a New Jersey court, likewise following ancient preced-
ents, decided that a married woman engaged in the business of her
spouse must be presumed to be so merged in her husband that she
cannot become a criminal in her own right, but that in relation to
such business her criminal act (because of the marriage) is the
crime of her husband, and that he alone is punishable for it, there
was no suffragist's protest against the injustice. They want “votes
for women,” not just relations of the Sexes.
For this feminine silence in the face of injustice, it is no
sufficient excuse to say that men impose these laws on themselves.
First, because it is a lie. A few men impose such laws upon
other men. No Sane man ever consciously imposed an unjust dis-
advantage upon himself. And, secondly, because no true lover of
justice will countenance injustice simply because of its source.
Many of our friends want “votes for women” as an end, not as a
means to greater equality of men and women before the law, not
as a promoter of liberty. Hence they only protest against injustice
when it serves propagandist purposes, and thereby make us doubt
the genuineness of their interest in real justice as between the
SeXeS.
I presume that the present difficulty with the suffrage move-
ment of America is that it suffers from blight of respectability.
In consequence of this, our suffragists too often hedge and trim
and compromise and pettifog, and too often are willing to use every
intellectual trickery as a justifiable means to their end. It seems
quite likely that. from now on the suffrage movement will more
and more neglect its foundation-demands for personal and material
3
justice. Such demands will still be urged, but rather as a mask
to conceal a lust for power; not that justice may be done, but that
power for injustive be increased. For example, no Suffrage organ-
ization WOULD allow any of its officers publicly to urge the emin-
ently just proposition, that in the matter of sex women should be
accorded the same freedom which is tacitly conceded to men. In
States where women have suffrage, they have utterly failed to pro-
test against either proposed or existing laws which make sex-dis-
criminations on questions of personal liberty. Neither the slave-
ideal nor unjust female slave-virtues can be eliminated by statutes.
THE WAGE EARNING WOMEN
The present demand for woman’s suffrage comes chiefly from
two sources: Working women and Christian women. Many work-
ing women feel that they suffer much economic injustice, especially
in times of strikes, the outcome of which in so far as it depends
upon official action, would be more favorable if working women
had votes. These injustices are seldom found in the letter of laws,
but on the contrary are purely effects of their mal-administration
and mal-execution, Sanctified by a perverse public opinion and
founded upon lawless official “discretion.” We may well doubt the
existence of Such discriminations against women, as women, be-
cause every one of the wrongs suffered at such times is also in-
flicted upon male workers under like conditions. The fact remains
that, though the male worker has a vote, he gets no more relief
than do women. The remedy here is not to be found in suffrage
as such, but must come through that higher intelligence which
working men have not yet achieved and for want of which the
“captains of industry,” who control practically all important means
for the manufacture of public opinion, can with absolute certainty
fool most laboring men into the indorsement of “the system” and
its political Organizations, no matter how outrageously these deal
with the laboring man’s interests, or violate party pledges made
to secure his vote. At best, suffrage is only another opportunity
to Secure larger economic and political intelligence. In this respect
woman's suffrage, as such, will have no necessary, immediate and
direct effect in promoting economic justice, though in the long run
it will promote intelligence and thus indirectly promote justice and
liberty. Here the demand for suffrage is based simply upon oppo-
sition to Some particular injury from arbitrary power, without
protest against tyranous power as such. -
There are strong reasons for believing that the first effect of
woman's suffrage will be to retard the rate of legislative progress.
For some time to come Women will average less intelligence than
men concerning economic, political, and ethical problems, and con-
sequently will be fooled into supporting “the system” more easily
than men. Furthermore, Women as a class, being by education and
4
3-4 ºf T4a: .4-S cº-º-º:
(Ocz-4. 2 7 - ????.
an absence of self-reliance much more conservative than men, can
more easily be counted upon to support any “standpat” proposi-
tion of the powers that be. More effectually than men, Women are
influenced by a superstitious reverence for “respectability.” The
woman who dares to be an iconoclast, or even a “doubting Thomas”
toward anything in our social system that has a “respectable”
rating, is still too rare a person to be accepted as typical of her
sex or to receive much countenance from present American
suffragist organizations.
PERSONAL LIBERTY AND SUFFRAGE
The motive underlying the demand for suffrage in Some
quarters will readily be apparent when we remember that the
largest single organization of American women to demand suffrage
is the Women's Christian Temperance Union. The bulk of its
members neither know nor care to know about either economics
or politics, in the broader sense. They despise liberty, probably
because they usually feel themselves incompetent to assume the
responsibility which liberty imposes. Conscious of their own in-
capacity of self-government, they put their trust in God, the
preacher, or the politician. Judging others by themselves, such
women feel certain that all persons are and must remain forever
incompetent to look after themselves. Since such others will not
lean on God, our pious suffragists wish to force a godly prop under
these faithless ones, by using the machinery of the state to compel
comformity to their dwarfed conception of the religious life. The
great bulk of its membership is moved by most intense moral
sentimentalism, the chief aim of which is to inflict their own stupid
ideals upon a suffering public, by means of an ever increasing and
progressively irksome maternal legislation. So far as this class
of women and this organization are concerned, I believe they de-
mand suffrage, not to enlarge liberty and thereby perfect human-
ity, but to destroy liberty and to perpetuate indefinitely the seem-
ing necessity for tyranny and slavery. Being devoid of any
rational conception of right conduct, and being also guiltless of
any intelligent justification for such “moral” creed as they profess
to have, they are necessarily devoid of confidence in human ca-
pacity to produce right conduct by diffusing enlightenment. They
can’t be real democrats, and so, if too poor to be social snobs, they
can at least have the self-exaltation of moral snobbery. Thus they
are always led to favor the tyranny of moralization through legal-
ized violence. Never having attained to that intellectual stature
which is a condition precedent to an impersonal view of ethical
problems, they regard as the most important things in life the
little toy virtues demanded by the etiquette of the countryside.
Never having indulged in any game more devilish than croquet
or authors, these dearies are certain that all games which they do
not understand should be punished as crimes. Perhaps a sporty
5
son sometimes thinks it is smart to persist in violating the village
requirement of “good breeding” by smoking a cigarette in the
“sittin'-room”; so my self-righteous lady tyrant believes a law
should be passed making it a crime to sell tobacco to any of the
Johnnies on her block. Never having swallowed anything more
stimulating than water, our goody sisters obviously can’t under-
stand why anybody should desire anything else. The appetite for
anything more stimulating than pop and sweet parsons is to her
evidence of satanic possession. The booze merchant appears to
her as a real imp, deserving to be punished by new laws against
witchcraft, or the mob law of Carrie Nation. Hence, also, “pro-
hibition.” She is certain, this dear little soul, that all conduct or
ideas not prescribed in the decalogue nor taught in the Squeedunk-
corner's Sunday school, must of necessity be pleading the “devil’s”
cause. Especially is this so if she does not know the meaning of
these new teachings. Convinced that the “devil’s” side is not even
entitled to be heard, this sugar-coated duncelet insists that she will
not read any book not recommended by the sky-pilot of the croSS-
roads. Fearing that “satan” has as much influence over others,
as she knows he would have over her if she ever allowed him to
dance a “turkey trot” in her imagination, she vehemently de-
mands the suppression of all literature which describes scenes not
acted by herself—not yet—at least, not in public. It is to be ex-
pected that when they get votes, those to whom a lawn party given
to promote the sewing society’s interest in Chinese Missions is the
most ravishing vision ever presented to longing eyes, will try to
abolish the theatre, have a religious censorship of the mails, as
demanded by the American Federation of Catholic Societies, and
exclude the mention of tobacco and beer from the mails, as already
attempted. So we will secure a literature devoid of heresy, smok-
less, boozeless and orthodox, as we have already Secured a litera-
ture almost sexless.
Many of the intelligent suffragist agitators who do not ap-
prove these tyrannies, discreetly avoid giving to their dissent any
publicity. Apparently this is so because suffrage has become an
end in itself. Its promoters are but little concerned with liberty
as a means to human betterment and suffrage as a means to
liberty. Suffrage is wanted as an end, or as a means for satisfying
the lust for power. Hence it is impolitic for propagandists to dis-
cuss problems of liberty from any other viewpoint than that of our
ethical sentimentalists and moralists for revenue. Many women
would commend themselves more for their intellectual honesty and
moral courage if they were to “admit the corn” and defend .
Suffrage on the broader ground, conceding that probably women’s
votes would injure the state as a guardian of liberty, but help so-
ciety by enlarging woman’s outlook upon life and by educating her
into a greater desire for and understanding of liberty.
6
PROPERTY QUALIFICATION
The argument that women should vote because they pay a
property tax is regularly used by certain suffragists. Manifestly
the argument proves too much, since lunatics and infants also pay
a property tax. The property qualification for voting logically
results in multiple voting, according to the quantity of property
possessed. Do suffragists believe in that? If they are ready to
give legal sanction to our little aristocracy of dollars, they should
openly proclaim such a purpose. If they are opposed to it, more
of them should so declare and urge “votes for women” without any
sacrifice of democracy. In theory, at least, our government is not
established on the sacred rights of property owners, but is de-
clared to have been established to promote liberty and justice,
which are as much rights of the pauper as of the millionaire, and
more important to the former. The tax-paying argument for
woman's sugrage is about as Silly as the argument that women
should not vote because they only beget soldiers without being
soldiers.
I am opposed to all arbitrary discriminations as the basis for
voting, and so am opposed to a property qualification for voters.
But if I must discriminate in this matter, I would make it a
poverty qualification. As a rule, rich women have no real interests
which their male providers, or other rich friends, do not adequately
protect. This is conclusively shown in the general advantage of
the rich, without reference to sex. If the protection which the
male relatives of a rich woman are able to furnish shall prove in-
sufficient, than she can buy legislation, special privileges and lib-
erty, and so she has comparatively small need for the ballot, except
as an aid to economy, thus leaving more of her income to be spent
in ostentatous waste. Poor women cannot buy either liberty, legis-
lation, or exemption from the exploitation of the privileged, and
so have a greater need for the ballot to protect their purely per-
sonal and economic interests against legalized injustices, vested
wrongs, or official invasion.
THE EDUCATIONAL TEST
My opposition to arbitrary discrimination predisposes me
against the requirement of an educational qualification for suf-
frage. I cannot admit that the culturine acquired at schools and
colleges creates any presumption of capacity for the solving of
governmental problems. The purpose of educational institutions
is to standardize the intellect, and not to encourage intellectual
initiative, or promote judgment by impersonal standards. Stu-
dents are not taught methods for the discovery of truth, but are
expected unquestioningly to accept the ready-made allegations of
truth according to the standards of the last generation. Schools
are apt to teach us the rightfulness of whatever is popular with
the influential, whereas those who are harbingers of progress en-
courage us to suspect that “whatever is, is wrong.” If compelled
• 7
to prescribe an educational test, for either women or men, I would
make it a test for the elimination of parasites. I would require
that the voter's mind and body be so trained that he or she is both
able and anxious to do necessary creative work, at least to the
extent of contributing to human necessities a quantity equal to the
individual’s own consumption.
WILL WOMAN MORALIZE THE STATE?
The strongest argument against woman's suffrage is that
made by some of its advocates, namely, that woman will moralize
the state. By this is meant that she will vote for the Suppression
of all that harmless and self-regarding conduct which offends the
“ethical” superstitions of white neck-tied, ladylike men or other
nonentities, miscalled “good” women. If I believed this to be a
permanent consequence of woman's suffrage, I would certainly be
tempted to oppose it, I feel assured, however, that this will not
be a permanent result. The Ladies' Mission Sewing Circle can
have no influence upon government without experiencing a re-
action equal to its own action, and in the long run this will get
women away from their pettiness, even about so important a
question as the relationship of perdition to gum-chewing on
Sunday.
In the broader sense of promoting political righteousness,
women will have no special influence toward the elimination of
evil. Why do well-fed men steal? Why do they exploit their
fellows? Why do they accept bribes? Why do they give bribes?
The superficial observer will say, to get more money. But why
want more money than enough for a modest living? You have not
sufficiently answered when you say, it is for the lust of power. 1
still ask, how does the power manifest itself? How is the surplus
spent? And I answer, in ostentatious waste, in which a “good”
woman is the central figure. Even where she is only the head
servant of a profligate’s harem, she is still the chief beneficiary
of the Ostentatious waste, which is made possible only by exploita-
tion and graft, by political and economic wrongs, legalized or
otherwise. Is any one really simple enough to dream that these
“good” women are going to give up those advantages of luxurious
idle ease, secured by the husband's economic and political crimes?
I am not optimistic enough to believe that the priest-parroting,
pharisaical portion of femininity, has the least present capacity for
rendering any valuable service to the State, not yet! not till it
ceases to be what it now is—a conscious, willing parasite. The
best thing about suffrage is that it tends to develop the conscious-
ness of social relations to the point where such “good” women may
acquire so refined a sense of justice as to quit parasiting and be-
come a humanizing factor. -
CONCERNING MILITANT SUFFRAGISTS.
All methods probably have their use, and I am hardly dis-
posed to quarrel with the militant woman. Although by disposition
8
I would be averse personally to following their method, I cannot
but feel a kind of admiration for those English Suffragettes who
have emancipated themselves from stupid, enslaving, conventions.
In America the suffrage movement is so far under the blight of
respectability that but few women have ever dared even to think
of the expediency or justice of militant methods. To my mind,
legalized violence to enforce unjust inequalities is more pernicious
than unauthorized violence used to secure equality. The existence
of either is an indictment of our civilization. Unthinking slaves
to convention and victims of law-worship prefer legalized slavery
to unstatutory freedom. I welcome the state of mind which is
implied in militant methods, as at least preferable to that dead
level, inert, unthinking mass of respectable sub-mediocrity, which,
I fear, composes the mass of American suffragists.
SUFFRAGE AS A DEMORALIZER.
Among a large portion of femininity (which includes many
men) the strongest argument against votes for women is the claim
that Woman’s political contact with, and a broader knowledge of,
men and their ways will promote her “immorality.” So differently
- does my mind work that I consider this the very best argument
for woman’s suffrage. Those who fear woman’s suffrage as a
promoter of woman’s “immorality” obviously think that worldly
experience will make woman doubt conventional “moral” dogmas,
or even induce her to repudiate our popular “moral” sentimental-
ism in favor of a reasoned conception of morality. Such a result
I would welcome as a most valuable ethical advance. “I cannot
praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed,
that never Sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of
the race, where that immortal garland is run for, not without dust
and heat. * * * That virtue, therefore, which is but a young-
ling in the contemplation of evil and knows not the utmost that
vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank
virtue” (Milton). Personally I decline to applaud as “moral”
What is only a craven and stupid conformity to unenlightened
conventions. A knowledge of real life will possibly convince
Women of the folly that there is any virtue in sacrifice, and
through an enlightened social consciousness may persuade her
that the highest morality—the only true morality—is found in the
most refined sense of justice, consciously entertained and always
deliberately acted upon.
MORAL QUALIFICATIONS FOR WOTERS.
The foregoing subject is closely related to the often mooted
question of a moral qualification for female voters. It is hardly
necessary to add that those who propose such moral disqualifica-
tion are usually so obsessed by lewdness that they know of no
“moral” problem, nor ever heard of any “immorality,” except in
relation to sex. With these erotomaniacs, “morality” is always
9
synonymous with sexual orthodoxy. Though opposed to all arbi-
trary discrimination, if compelled to discriminate along “moral”
lines, I would disfranchise only the smug, well-kept, convention-
ally “moral” woman, who seldom can see anything reprehensible
in iniquities that are popular. Furthermore, she has little or no
real direct interest in government, because she can seldom See any-
thing beyond the interest of the one male voter who provides for
her needs and luxuries. But the unfortunate woman, especially
the prostitute, is the victim of government. She is the chief suf-
ferer from our legalized economic injustices. Although in a
measure a beneficiary, she is also the creature and victim of our
Puritan misconception of morals. She is the victim of every out-
break of “moral” hysteria, and the football of most fake reform-
ers and quack-moralists making a grand-stand play for the votes
of the Pharisees. She is the most frequent victim of police black-
mail and of the conscienceless landlord’s sordid greed. The pros-
titute, therefore, has a very genuine and a most direct concern
in the management of government, and should be the last to be
disfranchised by a government professing chief concern with
liberty and justice. -
& IN CONCLUSION
No! I am not opposed to “votes for women,” only my reasons
for favoring it are different from those usually eacpressed by
suffragists. I am not for suffrage because it will immediately
promote human liberty. I am convinced its immediate effect will
be the contrary. Yet I am for suffrage, because it seems to me
that such experience is the only way to cure men and women of
their savage instinct to do moralization through legalized violence.
I am not for Suffrage from any conviction that women have a
present capacity for improving the brand of “justice” handed out
by the state. It is probable that the lack of experience with the
problems of Social, economic and political justice has left woman’s
sense of justice even more primitive and crude than that of the
average man. I am for suffrage because I believe that exercise
With our complex problems of right will help both men and
women to a more refined sense of justice, so that ultimately all
will attack social problems by the use of their head, rather than
by stupid acquiesence, perverse sympathies or diseased nerves, and
will find harmonious adjustment through a growing social con-
Sciousness. I am not for suffrage because I believe women more
moral than men. On the contrary, I believe them less intelligent
than men about ethical problems. I am for suffrage because the
conflicts of political life may rationalize the stupid moral senti-
mentalism of men and women. I am not for woman's suffrage
from any belief that woman will improve the state. She can’t do
that, at least not yet, but any earnest effort to do so may improve
men and women by enlarging their intelligence, rationalizing their
10
Sympathies, and developing their social consciousness. Women
dominated by selfishness object to suffrage for fear they will lose
the “privileges” of their slavehood, the gilt which conceals the
ancient rust of their chains. To these I would say, don’t fear the
loss of anything whose value exists only in the imagination. Even
under hard conditions, the joy of self-reliant independence far
outweighs the satisfaction of physical comfort obtained through
slavish submission to irrational conventions, or the rhetorical
elevation to “queen of the kitchen stove.”
The mere agitation for woman's suffrage has already done
fine things for women. It has relieved some from the pettiness
and meanness of the old life. It is no longer so generally true as
it once was, that women are woman’s worst enemies. Women are
beginning to see themselves outside the old prison walls called
home. That social ignorance which made her look with jealousy
upon all the world outside as hostile to all within, is yielding to
the expanding consciousness of social relations. Already many
Women are beginning to see their kinship to more and more in-
clusive groups of other women. The walls of the home are mov-
ing out and the roof is increasing its capacity for shelter. If
progressive women still feel men to be enemies, it is because in
the mass of men social consciousness is not sufficiently developed
to enable them to understand and appreciate the higher aims and
ideals of the superior women. As our crude, childish self-con-
Sciousness expands to a family consciousness, a sectarian con-
Sciousness, an economic class consciousness, a partial conscious-
ness of sex unity, so ultimately we shall also develop a conscious-
ness of human solidarity, I am for suffrage because it will help
to humanize men and women through its failures at moralizing
them by force.
No! I do not hate women I am an admirer of intelligent
emancipated women. I have so much devotion to the interests of
Women, that even now I am sacrificing all possible popularity I
might have achieved among them, to the purpose of making men
more deserving of the love of intelligent women, and more women
deserving of the love of intelligent men. Some day many will know
the rare love between men and women of real culture who, through
a wide and growing field of consciousness of social relations, ex-
tend the intimately personal relation to more and larger groups,
ultimately approximating a conscious kinship to all humanity.
Among such men and women there will be neither self-effacement
On the one side, nor acceptance of sacrifice upon the other; no love
which ignores justice, but one which is the refinement of justice;
no passionless love, but one whose every passion is always subject
to the check and justification of the cold logic machine; no love
which is but a blind, shrinking, fearful, half-concealed sentimental-
ism, but one in which socially conscious beings realize themselves
in deliberate, intelligently proportioned, self-assertion. Here there
11
can be no parisitic devotion of a dependent upon the source of
gratuitous finery; no chivalrous sacrifice to the object of ostenta-
tious waste for ill-gotten gain; no groveling flattery to Secure con-
spicuous vain-glory; no master's condescension in tolerating the
childish whims of “mature” unreason; no lure of lust to its legal-
ized exchange for life's necessities; nor lure of gold toward legal-
ized prostitution and hypocritical affection. -
A love not rationally justified is not the product of culture:
if sacrifice is necessary to harmony, the love is not of that refined
sort where adjustment comes from deliberate harmonious self-
assertion, made possible through mutuality of consciousness. In
such a love of such beings, there would be a deliberate understand-
ing of all the relations, sexual, business, social, emotional, aesthetic
and intellectual; in short, the most broadly social and the most in-
timately personal relations are blended into a perfect harmonious
unity; not the unity which comes from the absence of capacity for
discrimination, nor that by which the weaker character uncon-
sciously imitates another, quite as uncultured, but more aggressive;
nor that in which the characterless one through unintelligent per-
petual adoration merges in the individuality of the superior. I
refer to the unity of cultured individuals, conscious of being as
different as warp and woof, yet one, interwoven in humanitarian
interests, who, amid complex differences, find ground for harmony
in the very borderland of discord, and reciprocity in that perfect
sympathy which is possible only to the clear-sighted Self-conscious
and socially conscious, that is highly cultured, persons.
Such cultured lovers of the future will scorn to supplement
their refined attraction by vulgar, pious mummery or legalized
coercion for compulsory cohabitation, and will look upon our laws
for regulating separate maintenance and divorce as most interest-
ing relics of a gruesome, barbarous past. With them the natural
tie that binds will be stronger than statutes, customs, rules; more
seductive than suits for breach of promise; more generous than
alimony decrees; more lasting and sane than the “spiritual affinity”
of diseased nerves; more refined than mere lusts of the flesh, or
those for gold; more humanizing than the lingering, dwarfed, soul-
shrinking conception of home and household duties.
To those who have not yet experienced the growing pains of a
budding social consciousness, this will not mean very much. To
others it may add definiteness to their purpose and encouragement
to their hopes. Those of wide social consciousness know it means
finer possibilities of family relations than any yet experienced, and
embodies the finest hopes of the race. Suffrage may destroy the
old home of master and slave, of patron and parasite, but in its
Stead it will contribute to the new and finer home of more free and
and more cultured equals; a centre of harmonious and humanizing
endeavor for the development of a nobler society. That is why
I am for woman’s suffrage.
12