REPUBLICS VERSUS WOMAN i/VOOLSEY REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN REPUBLICS versus WOMAN Contrasting the treatment accorded to woman in Aristocracies with that meted out to her in Democracies By MRS. WOOLSEY THE GRAFTON PRESS NEW YORK COPYRIGHT 1903 BY THE GRAFTON PRESS, NEW YORK IN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN 'T'HIS book is dedicated with feelings of congratulation to women who are sub- jects of monarchies, and with feelings of sym- pathy to women who are citizens of republics, by 284366 INTRODUCTION SOME little time ago, while travelling abroad, I met a remarkably talented young woman, who at once evinced the greatest friendship for me. She belonged to an aristocratic and very rich family of continental Europe. I immediately discerned that my being a citizen of a Republic was the real and only cause of her marked interest; and some pre- science or other straightway caused me to say as little as possible on the subject. As she did the talking I was soon able to find out that she was either a socialist or an anarchist of the most extreme type. In a few days there arrived on the scene a charming young gentleman of rank and dis- tinction, who, in order to renew his offer of mar- riage, constantly sought the society of this young personage. When she could, she eluded him; when she could not elude him, she rejected him. Naturally I was deeply interested in the romance; and, being a woman, I just as natural- vii INTRODUCTION ly 'decided to remain and await the denouement. My curiosity regarding this fascinating mem- ber of my sex was so great that I would have risked anything, even the fate of Lot's wife, to unravel the tangle of her thoughts and ac- tions. She and I soon became almost inseparable companions; and in a short time grew so inti- mate that she confided to me her secret hopes and fears. She told me that, while she was passionately devoted to her admirer, she would never marry, as she had decided to dedicate her life to the betterment of humanity ; that, in her estimation, the only permanent way in which to elevate society was to destroy aristocracies; and that it was with this object in view that she had come so far from home, as it was her only op- portunity of meeting other persons who shared her opinions. With them she was going to formulate some plan for the accomplishment of their end. The constant surveillance of her parents would, she said, make it impossible for her to meet her co-workers in the future. Her parents, she explained, were in entire ignorance viii INTRODUCTION of her political theories ; and, at home, she would iiot have any opportunities for doing the work which lay nearest to her heart. As my devotion to her had won her parents' hearty friendship, she had determined to ask them to let her travel with me. She had known from the first, she said, that she would have my entire sympathy in her laudable efforts; for, being a citizen of a re- public, I should naturally condemn and detest the tyranny of monarchies, etc., etc. She would then and there have confided her every thought to me and have made my blood run cold, had I not prevailed on her to drop 'the subject until I had had time to give her sug- gestions my most serious and dispassionate con- sideration. This mistaken altruism upon the part of any member of my sex would have keenly touched my heart, but coming from one for whom I felt such personal attachment, it aroused my great- est apprehension as well. I determined at once to save her from her theories, but I soon dis- covered the only possible way to do so was to reach the associates who were influencing her. ix INTRODUCTION I therefore urged her to let me address her co-workers at one of their meetings. I swore eternal secrecy as to their identities, should I ever be admitted to their sanctum, and I vowed that if they answered to my satisfaction the ques- tions which I should put to them, I not only would become a life member of their society (and immediately thereafter induce her parents to let her travel about Europe with me), but would further use my Yankee ingenuity to de- vise some plan for ridding the earth of aristo- crats a plan which would be so speedy and effective that all others would pale into insignifi- cance compared with it. (My blushes, as I said this, she mistook for indignation. ) My plan worked so effectually that in the course of a week I was invited to the rooms of one of her co-theorists, where a little coterie of women had assembled. I detected at a glance that several of them were aristocrats that all evidently were (just what I had expected to find) women of unusual ability, courage and determination; and that "I must make an un- suspected, merciless, and persistent attack upon INTRODUCTION that citadel to make it surrender" ; or, in other words, I noted what I was prepared to note that these women could not be reached by small talk or frivolity; also that I must master them at once or they would conquer me. When I first began to speak they evinced great suspicion of me, and immediately became so vociferous in their disapproval that I could scarcely be heard; but, as I continued, I first gained their confidence, then their courteous at- tention, and soon their good will. This young personage introduced them en masse to me and said : "Friends, Mrs. Woolsey, who will address us, is from the largest Repub- lic of the world; a kinsman of hers,* history relates, was sent to America by the English government as an explorer in 1584; her people thereafter helped overthrow monarchists by driving the British from that continent; they were present at the birth of the American Re- public, assisted at its christening, and have ever since aided in guarding its life and development. *Captain Barlow of the English navy see English or American Histories. xi INTRODUCTION We shall, therefore, hear an account of our sex in this the freest, the most advanced, and the best of all existing forms of government or so- ciety, from one who is unbiased, either through heredity or association, by old world prejudices and narrowness. This lady will speak to us chiefly of woman's position in a republic in contradis- tinction to her position in a monarchy. And as democracy is so close to our own ideal of society, we can easily see how its lofty conception of womanhood must be preserved as it evolves into our yet more liberal belief. For as we have all agreed, the future of our sex is foreshadowed by a republic. When we answer certain ques- tions which will be put to us, Mrs. Woolsey will become a member of our prospective society; and I am confident she will be one of our most efficient workers, and particularly the one whom tyrants will fear most." (Cheers.) THE ADDRESS WOMAN'S POLITICAL STATUS THE tone of the foregoing introduction increased the difficulties of my task, but I at once arose and plunged into my subject, saying Ladies, our kind friend has never heard me express my opinion of woman's position either in democratic or aristocratic government. But the fact that I am an American,* I greatly fear, has led both you and her to infer that I, of course, favor her status in the former. (Sub- dued murmurs.) Nothing could give me greater pride or pleas- ure than to assure you that women in Republics have greater influence in the State and home, are better protected, enjoy a purer fire-side, and receive greater public and private consideration, *When I use the word "American" I mean a citizen of the United States of North America. Public and political, I use as synonymous words. American Repub- lic is the name people generally give to the United States Republic. 3 REPUBLICS w. WOMAN than women in any other form of government; but my conscience forbids and prompts me to tell you "the plain, unvarnished truth." (Con- tinued murmurs.) I can easily understand how the reading of the fundamental or basic principles of any re- public would lead you to believe that woman's condition and position amid such teachings would be preferable and superior in every re- spect to her condition and position in any aris- tocracy. It is not difficult to see how you would expect the disciple of democratic doctrines to live up to loftier liberty, truer justice and broader freedom than all others. You look for them to be the most chaste, the most sober, the most unselfish of men. It is a beautiful dream but it is only a dream. Muck as I regret it I must tell you that there is abs lutely no cor- respondence between their principles and their practices, which are, in reality, as different as light and darkness. If you will impartially examine facts, you will find that every privilege granted to woman by a republic is also accorded to her b^ a mon- 4 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN archy; and that there are many privileges granted her by the latter that the former can never accord. (Hisses.) I defy you to show me a single right, liberty, or privilege, either political, legal, civic, or social, ever allowed woman by a republic, that is not allowed her by a monarchy. (Hisses.) But on my part I can show you numerous rights, liberties, and privi- leges, political, legal, and social, enjoyed by our sex in an aristocracy, which it will never enjoy in a democracy, even should such government endure until the end of time. (Moans.) Should a republic grant the ballot to woman generally (which, believe me will never occur), even then no member of our sex could ever reach its zenith of power the Presidency; for in a republicfJthe Salic Law reigns, as inexor- able as death. Even should a woman possess the talents and merits of a goddess, the sex pre- judices of men in the mass are so ineradicable, that they would never elect her to their Chief Magistracy, and the Salic Law, I would re- mind you has never been absolute in any mon- 5 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN archy, for even in France women as Regents could act as rulers. Republicanism is, in its entire nature and con- struction, a masculine monopoly and must necessarily confer all its pinnacles, authorities, powers, honours, glories, favours, distinctions, exclusively upon men. It is woman's implacable foe between it and her an irreconcilable con- flict exists and the two can have no other issue than a mortal duel. (A voice: "You deceit- ful little Yankee!") A monarchy on the contrary has no heights which woman has not ascended she is Empress and Queen no barriers she cannot surmount, no forces hostile to her which she cannot conquer. An aristocracy is nature's realm, nature's arena for womankind; and her highest destiny can only be reached therein. It is connected with her past, is in unison with her present and con- tains the embryo of her future. (A voice: "Traitress!") A monarchy agrees with all known facts touching men's relations to one an- other, and comprehends the laws of justice, free- dom and morality ; and it is only in such institu- 6 REPUBLICS w. WOMAN tions that the dignity, justice, and freedom due to woman can be granted and maintained, (Voices: "How dare you come here!") "A Republic is a mere theory, at constant war with nature, never comprehending liberty, and at best only understanding license" ; and in such an institution freedom and justice to woman can never be granted and maintained. (A voice : "Let us refuse to listen!" Disturbance.) Here is a picture of the first woman in the largest Christian aristocracy Queen Victoria, crowned, and seated upon Britain's throne. Look on that picture, then on this this latter being the public ideal of the "First lady" in the largest democracy on earth in forty-one States embraced within the Republic of the United States of North America. In the second picture you see all women therein included in the one, at the feet of forty million men chained to criminals and lunatics, living under that most dangerous, hopeless, exasperating and oppressive of all tyrannies, "the will of the masses." I think you will agree with me that the person who asserts that these republican 'I REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN States, which class all women publicly with their mental and moral outcasts, have as lofty an ideal of womanhood as an empire of 400,000,- 000 people an empire which has a woman for its political, legal, civic, social and religious head is as irrational as one who would assert that the moon is as radiant as the sun. (A voice : "You are polite, I must say !" ) Beyond any question the person who believes that the republics of France, Brazil, Mexico or any others grant to womankind the posi- tion, influence or esteem granted by any aris- tocracy of Europe, has no more knowledge of actual conditions than had Balaam's ass of the laws of gravitation. Nor can one read history without perceiving that the republics of an- tiquity, too, held woman in lower public esteem than did the aristocracies of antiquity. It is always the classes, never the masses, who set up elevated ideals of womanhood; and it is only where the influence of the classes is paramount that woman need look for the highest recognition. The pre-eminent statesmen of every country have argued and granted that genuine republi- 8 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN canism pre-supposes political equality. And if we examine the lexicographers they too define a citizen as one who possesses the rights of suf- frage (or a vote). Bouvier says, "A citizen is a person who, under the constitution and laws of the United States Republic, has a right to vote for public offices." Worcester says, "A citizen is an inhabitant of a Republic who has a right to vote for public offices." Webster says, "In the United States Republic a citizen is a person who has the right of exercising the elec- tive franchise." Richard Grant White says, "A citizen is a person who has political rights, and the word can only be properly used to imply the possession of such rights." The very meaning of a Republican government is clear it is the right of honest and rational adult members thereof to individual choice of representation. Yet the national government of no Republic protects woman in the right to representation or gives her a voice therein. In consequence of this, confiscation of liberties, rights and privi- leges of woman politically, legally, civilly, in trade, and in all and everything concerning her, 9 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN occurs again, again and again; and (as in such government non-representation is equivalent to ostracism) her interests are ignored, overlooked and uncared for. Woman, like the fabled Pro- metheus, lies chained and helpless while the vul- ture preys on her vitals. In speaking of woman in democracy I shall speak of her chiefly in the one I belong to, as her position therein is, on the whole, better than in any other. You know, of course, that the vast North American democratic Republic is a collec- tion of many States. In the forty-one States embraced in these United States, every citizen twenty-one years of age has a voice in the gov- ernment, through individual choice of repre- sentation; or has the right to complete self- government through having votes, or the right to make all laws under which he lives with the following exceptions.* *The citizen must be twenty-one years of age a couple of the Southern States insist upon educational qualifications, which are, however, not hard to overcome as a few months' instruction suffices. (The intention is to bar out illiterate negroes.) But the difficulty of sex can never be overcome. Once a woman, never a voter 10 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN In Alabama all citizens have votes or right to self-government except persons convicted of the crimes of treason, idiots, lunatics, and women. In Arkansas all citizens have votes or self- government except persons convicted of heinous crimes, the insane, and women. In California all citizens have votes or self- government except persons convicted of em- bezzlement of public money, of infamous crimes, idiots, lunatics and women. In Connecticut all citizens, who can read Eng- lish have votes or self-government except those convicted of heinous crimes and women. In Delaware all citizens have self-government or votes except persons convicted of infamous crimes, felons, women, idiots and lunatics. In Florida all citizens have self-government or votes except lunatics, women, and persons guilty of heinous crimes. In Georgia all citizens have self-government except persons convicted of perjury, bribery, murder, the insane and women. In Illinois all citizens have self-government except persons Convicted of bribery in elections, 11 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN the inmates of insane and criminal institutions, and women. In Indiana all citizens have votes or self-gov- ernment except persons guilty of infamous crimes, lunatics, imbeciles and women. In Iowa all citizens have votes or self-govern- ment except the insane, women, and persons con- yicted of heinous offences. In Kansas all citizens have complete suffrage or self-government except public embezzlers, persons guilty of treason and felony, the insane, and women. In Kentucky all citizens possess self-govern- ment or votes who are not imprisoned for crime or lunacy, except women. In Maine all citizens have self-government except public paupers, idiots, the insane, and women. In Maryland all citizens have self-government except perpetrators of heinous crimes, the in- sane and women. In Massachusetts all citizens who can rea'd English can vote, except paupers, persons under guardianship, criminals and women. 12 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN In Louisiana all citizens have votes except felons under indictment, the insane and women. In Michigan all citizens have self-government except women, duellists, incarcerated criminals, and lunatics. In Minnesota all citizens have self-govern- ment except those convicted of treason, arson, those who are non compos mentis and women. In Mississippi all citizens have self-govern- ment except women, bigamists, (who have been convicted), perjurers, and the inmates of pris- ons and institutions for the feeble minded. In Missouri all citizens have votes or self- government except criminals the insane, the feeble-minded and women. In Montana all citizens have votes or self- government except perpetrators of unpardon- able offences, women and the insane. In Nebraska all citizens have self-government or votes except those convicted of treason, arson, felony, the insane and women. In Nevada all citizens have self-government or votes except unpardoned convicts, women and the feeble-minded. 13 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN In New Hampshire all citizens have votes or self-government except public paupers, inmates of penitentiaries and lunatic asylums, and women. In New Jersey all citizens have votes or self- government except convicts, lunatics and women. In New York all citizens have votes or self- government who are not imprisoned for crime or lunacy, except women. In North Carolina all citizens have votes or self-government except convicts, lunatics and women. In North Dakota all citizens have self-govern- ment or votes except convicts, women, and luna- tics. In Ohio all persons have votes or self-govern- ment except the perpetrators of infamous crimes, women and idiots. In Oregon all citizens have votes or self-gov- ernment except convicts, women, and the non compos mentis. In Pennsylvania all persons have self-govern- ment or votes except perjurers, election bribers, the insane and women. REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN In Rhode Island all citizens have votes except lunatics, women and inmates of poor-houses. In North and South Carolina all citizens have votes or self-government except felons, duellists, murderers and women. In Tennessee all citizens have self-government or votes except those convicted of bribery, arson, murder or other infamous offences, women and idiots. In Vermont all citizens have self-govern- ment or votes except perjurers the feeble- minded and women. In Virginia all citizens have self-government or votes except persons convicted of the crimes of treason, embezzlement, bribery, felony, lar- ceny, murder and women. In Washington all citizens have votes or self- government except women, murderers and per- sons incarcerated in penal and lunatic asylums. In Wisconsin all citizens have self-government or votes except the feeble-minded, women, and persons in the penitentiary. And, ladies, that is not the worst of it, for it should be borne in mind that the hydra the [15 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN forty-million headed monster which is placed over American women by their government as their ruler, is not the creation of the native- born white men only, but also of millions of men from the slums, prisons and fields of the entire world the scum, the outcasts, the outlaws from over the earth negro ex-slaves, semi-barbari- ans from Africa, semi-savage Indians,* Mexican ex-peons, Chinese ex-coolies,f Russian ex-serfs, Roumanian ex-bandits, Turkish ex-brigands, penniless Italians, Poles, Hungarians, and peas- ants from Ireland, Germany and Austria. And yet it grows worse, for our sex is not even equal, in the eyes of the Republic, with criminals and lunatics for in nearly all the States, the luna- tic, during his lucid intervals, has complete self- government, can vote and make laws for our women; and the criminal, when pardoned, has complete self-government, can vote and make laws for our women. No man is so low therein as * Indians who give up their tribal relations or pay taxes can vote. fChinese who are citizens of the U. S. vote in several States. 16 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN woman, except the murderer after he is hanged. And it grows worse, for foreigners, aliens, in many States, even before they are citizens there- of, men who can scarcely speak a word of Eng- lish, men who can scarcely spell in their native tongues, men who have no knowledge of law or government, men whose bodies are filthy almost to vermin, and whose minds are filled with every vice if they declare intentions, have complete self-government, can vote and make laws for our women. Women and dumb beasts are there- in about upon a public equality and of all human things woman only is made a permanent outcast. Is not this the very limit of political impu- dence? (Voices: "Yes, yes, yes!") Do you not agree with me that the Republic is based upon invidious discriminations of sex? (Voices: "We do ! we do !" ) And that according to all its own axioms, to all its own precepts, to all the standards which it itself has established, its women represent thirty-five million serfs?* (Voices: "Yes, yes, yes!") Search the histories *By 40,000,000 men I mean adults and boys by 35,- 000,000 women I mean adults and girls, 17 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN ol every barbarous tribe and you will find no sentiment regarding women touching lower depths. Do you not agree with me that such principles would disgrace the savage that crouches and crawls in the jungles of Africa? (Voices: "We do! We do! We do!") And if, in the possession of a cannibal king, you found such laws, written in blood, would there not be perfect harmony between them and their surroundings? (Voices: "Yes! yes! yes!") How long, do you think, it will take men who in- culcate such ideas to drift down into the mid- night of barbarism? (Voices: "Not long!") You will surely never again expect a member of your sex to be loyal to a government which thus humiliates woman! (Voices: "Never!") For such institutions I have no words to express my loathing, my contempt, my abhorrence! (Pro- longed cheers.) I can see the blushes of burning shame mount on your cheeks at the knowledge that men in whom you have expressed such confidence should heap indignities and outrages like these upon your sex. To imagine that a government which 18 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN teaches such doctrines has advanced or can ad-^ vance woman is an absurdity so apparent that I am surprised that anybody should ever give credence to it. Such doctrines could not by any possibility be the civilisers of womankind. On the contrary, they have necessarily polluted the imagination of men, robbed our sex of the high- est esteem, and covered the cradle of every girl with disfavour. Nowhere is masculine self- preference, self -idolatry, so constantly nurtured as in a republic. Think of the harmful influence it has upon every boy to grow to manhood in absolute certainty that without any merit or effort of his own, the government makes him the absolute ruler, during his entire adult life, of every woman in the land! Of his privilege he is sure, and that although he be the most grossly ignorant and the vilest of the vile; for his standing is secure just because of the acci- dent of being born a male. No matter how su- perior she may be in goodness, character, or education, woman must perforce be placed in a lower class! Then think of the effect of such teachings on 19 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN low negroes, whose minds are filled with outrage and murder! Think how debased and ignorant foreigners are affected by the rampant spirit! The effects of these teachings I shall show you later on. But I feel sure that you recognize the complete lack of agreement between pretensions and actual facts; and that the imagined rights of our sex in republics vanish when impartially examined in the light of history. The pre-eminent American, Wendell Phillips, known to the world as one of the staunchest ad- vocates of democracy who ever lived, confessed the following to a gentleman in his latter days. "Strange as it may sound I fear our republic will never be made to understand that the rights of men and women must rise or fall together derived as they are from the same authority, involved in the same axioms, demonstrated by the same arguments that the laws of equal freedom apply alike to both sexes, and any other hypothesis will involve it in extricable diffi- culties. Nothing so discourages me as the re- alization that a republic constantly fosters and nurtures sex-prejudice the prejudice of men in 20 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN favor of men against woman, a prejudice coin- pared with which that of race or class is of trifling importance." "It is inexplicable to me that the government which is based upon loftier liberty, justice, equality than any other, should, by special en- actment, empower men to intrench upon the rights, liberties and privileges of women to an extent unsanctioned by other forms of govern- ment. When our national government inserted the word "male" into its Constitution, it evinced a greater preference and partiality for all the men over the women of the nation than any gov- ernment ever before showed for its men over all its women; it thus notified the States that they could take away and confiscate any of the privileges which they grant to women (and this they constantly do) and that women had no higher tribunal to appeal to than the judgment of the separate localities wherein they reside. It told the several States that any legal or poli- tical or civil privilege which they grant to wom- an is a mere local privilege (not a right) which they at any time can take away; from her, and REPUBLICS w, WOMAN that the general government will never intervene in her behalf, because it has placed women out- fcide its Constitution and beyond its jurisdiction. t tThe National government* protects the rights f ""Wherever American women use the ballot, it is as a privilege and not as a right, as its use is not protected by the Constitution of the United States. Men can take that privilege away from women on account of their sex, whenever so inclined. The right of male citizens to vote is, on the other hand, protected by the constitution, and no State can take that right away. The States can affix, qualifications (qualifications mean requirements which a little time or effort can over- come). But the right to vote cannot be permanently taken away. The State may regulate, but not prohibit, the right of a male to vote. Had Congress intended to secure to the women of the nation equal rights and protection with the men, the word "male" would never have been inserted in the National Constitution." From a speech by the Hon. J. L. Routt, three times Governor of Colorado. "Sex cannot be a qualification any standard that could be required by any State, either physical, mental, financial or educational, as a qualification for the exer- cise of the right of suffrage, can be met by a very great number of women (to the exclusion of many men), but to make of sex (an unsurmountable thing) a re- quirement for the use of the ballot, is a piece of arro- gant despotism that no monarch ever arrogated to him- self." Mrs. L. D. Blake. REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN of every male citizen beneath its flag and it leaves all the women absolutely without its pro- tection or recognition and at the mercy of the States. Thus our Republic, after due and ma- ture deliberation, purposely robbed its women of every right, and left them merely the pos- sessors of precarious privileges which they must gain and retain as favors (and not as rights), just as women in any despotism gain and retain favors and privileges." "The very basic principle of our Republic the very foundation upon which it stands is the right to individual representation. Yet when a woman asks the government to live up to its principles, she is insultingly told that when all women ask for the ballot it will be granted. We have a law that murder shall be punished. Now suppose when a woman is murdered the court should announce that the murderer would be re- leased untried; and when the murdered woman's mother should appear to plead for justice and to demand the enforcement of the law, the court should say: "Yes, madam, the law says that a murderer shall be punished, but as all the women REPUBLICS w. WOMAN in our jurisdiction have not individually de- manded that the law be enforced, we cannot ex- tend its benefits and protection in your case, and we cannot punish this murderer until every mem- ber of your sex comes to court to make that de- mand." No intelligent man denies that the American "woman has no rights which men are bound to respect" and that "she is a woman without a country." American men generally assert that no race, class, or nation can be trusted to legislate fairly and intelligently for another race, class or nation that even fathers, sons, brothers, can never legislate fairly and intelli- gently for their own fathers, sons and brothers ; and yet they presume to legislate for another sex, for a creature of a different creation; for a creature whose character and characteristics are as different from those of man as if she were of a different world! The world's great ad- vocates of democracy have all started out by be- lieving that therein woman would be given great- er opportunities in every respect than is given her in other forms of government. But the very reverse of this has happened upon practical ex- REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN periment, for instead of woman even retaining the public power and recognition which she has in Christian monarchies, she is gradually sink- ing in all such respects in every republic, to Ori- ental obscurity and insignificance and besides she has practically lost thereby about all the civic and many of the strictly social opportuni- ties which her sex possesses in aristocracies. It breaks my heart to confess this even to myself. Let intelligent womanhood ever discover these facts and the death knell of democracy will reverberate throughout the world." When the fifteenth amendment was added to the Constitution of the Republic, giving millions of male African ex-slaves the ballot, J. S. Mill said: "It is not to be believed that a nation which admits negroes to the plenitude of all political power, will still retain woman in a state of helotage, which is more degrading to her than ever, because being no longer shared "by any of the male sex it constitutes every wom- an in the land the inferior of every man." After placing the female sex under the heels of crimi- nals, peasants and incapables from every part 25 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN of the globe, the government added farther in- sult to injury by placing it under the dominion of the lowest race and order of manhood the African ! You cannot inquire into the history of the Republic without agreeing with me that there were never greater acts of tyranny, vanity, sel- fishness or arrogance, than were committed by the male founders thereof, when they enacted provisions securing to themselves all self-govern- ing rights, protections and recognitions, and left the entire female population practically without any national rights, recognitions or pro- tections whatsoever. The explanations that are offered in extenuation thereof are identical with, and differ in no single particular from those of- fered by the worst despots of history for their unjust assumptions of power. Nor can there be found, either in Pagan or Christian annals, the records of acts of infamy equal to those of their successors, ostracising their own countrywomen, outlawing them with savages and subjecting them to the government of outside barbarians. "Not since God called light out of darkness, 26 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN have men been guilty of such baseness toward the women of their race." You will find in the national policies of all republics, that man is the Alpha and Omega; that the laws of all are wholly masculine all things, legal, civic, and political being restricted to the thoughts, feelings, and desires of men; that in dealing with womankind they are the coldest, hardest, and the most cynical govern- ments in Christendom; and that they always apply to our sex all their political sophistry, false assumptions, and blind selfishness. A republic indeed was the first government to establish an aristocracy of sex, for as Mill says, "We must consider a government aristo- cratic, be the class it excludes from representa- tion great or small." An oligarchy of class, where the refined govern the uncouth; of learn- ing, where the educated govern the ignorant ; of race where the Saxon rules inferior people, is natural and can be endured ; but an oligarchy of sex is the most odious aristocracy under the sun. For the political disabilities of sex are far more grievous than those of class (a citizen in a re- 27 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN public permanently disfranchised or refused en- franchisement is always a citizen attainted) ; and an oligarchy or aristocracy of sex is infinitely more absolute than any recorded in the annals of history. You have always heard that the Brahmin caste system was the most terrible chain ever laid upon humanity investigate the sex-caste of democracy, and you will concede that it is a chain which weighs upon women with more crushing power than that which weighs upon the Brahmin. The universal and exclusive manhood suffrage of republics has established an aristocracy of sex and thereby unquestionably imposes more cruel despotism upon woman than is attempted by any Occidental monarchy upon any class of its sub- jects. For every aristocracy proper is based upon birth, refinement, wealth, charity, ability, education, character, brave deeds, nobility, or acts of chivalry, but in a republic it is based upon sex alone, exalting brute force above moral power, vice above virtue, ignorance above intelli- gence, and coarseness above refinement. In monarchies a woman can be political head, 28 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN can hold office ; in all of them certain of our sex have hereditary rights which raise them above the masses of men ; certain privileges not grant- ed to peasant males; certain honours, ranging from an occupancy of the throne to the smallest (dignities, which place them above the majority of men. Millions throughout monarchies have municipal suffrage, and in several parts of the British Empire have complete suffrage. There are no women in Europe (except in France, which is also a republic) so degraded politically as the women of the American Republics. "In- cleed," says Carlyle, " the disfranchisement of woman as woman is a democratic novelty." In monarchies a woman has direct political power the dividing lines are not sex, but rank. A peasant woman has no political power nor has her husband. Rank gives it to man and in a degree to woman, but "a republic is a pure sex- ocracy." Politically speaking all the men in democracies are patricians and all the women are plebeians. For as De Tocqueville says: "Wherever one class has exclusive or peculiar powers, there is an aristocracy, or an oligarchy." 29 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN It is too late by thirty centuries for republics to put in their brazen plea of woman's incompe- tency in political affairs. The jealous Jewish theocracy was judged by Deborah, who led armies to victory, and under whose guidance the land had peace for forty years. There was the mighty Semiramis, who founded Babylon, and whose wisdom was the bed-rock of the State. She led armies in person, and her talents were so great, both in peace and war, that after her death her people reckoned her among the gods. Then the famous Zenobia, that Empress feared and hated by the Roman Empire, to whose sway nearly the whole of the Eastern Provinces sub- mitted. Then Isabella of Castile. What Span- ish ruler, or indeeed any other of her day, equalled her in intelligence, was so great a protector of science, art and literature? It was owing to her personality that Spain was productive of the most important consequences to the whole world. Then Elizabeth, who picked up a pros- trate nation and made England the sovereign power of the world ! What Tudor was her equal indeed what English King ever equalled 30 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN her? What Russian ruler in personal force or energy excelled the Great Catherine of that land? It was she who first codified Russian laws, and throughout the land stand great monuments to her far-reaching intelligence, in the shape of public improvements which first gave Russia its impulse to encroach upon the four quarters of the globe. What Austrian Sovereign had the executive ability and unusual discernment of Maria Theresa? Though opposed by all the powers of Europe and possessing but one ally among them, she maintained the greatness and integrity of her Empire and was eminent in peace as she was in war. Which of the House of Brunswick for one moment compares with Victoria ? In fact what ruler that ever lived has so greatly elevated and ennobled the entire world as she? How much of the glory of the nine- teenth century enhaloes her throne? Under her rule England has gained such a foothold that "the sun never sets upon her possessions." And had a Victoria been upon England's throne in 1776, the entire North American continent would to-day be a part of the British Empire. REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN We all know that the Nineteenth Century was ushered in with a craze fer republicanism; and that this feeling increased in force and momen- tum until the revolutions of 1848, when thrones trembled and fell, and universal democracy threatened to sweep the world. We find the twentieth century coming in with a general love among superior people everywhere for mon- archies, and this change is due more to a woman to Victoria than to all other causes com- bined. It makes me shudder to think how far behind, not only the female sex, but the entire Christian world would be now if Great Britain had been prejudiced enough to have excluded a woman from her throne. And if Her Majesty's female subjects knew the dangers lurking for them in so-called liberal institutions, they would never cease their efforts until she is crowned Victoria I, Empress of a United British Empire, for in no other possible way could they so abso- lutely insure to themselves and their female de- scendants rights, opportunities, recognitions, distinctions, as by the augmenting of their royal head over an Imperial Federation. REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN Compared with male the number of female rulers has been very limited, but their percentage of pre-eminence has been vastly greater. I could continue much longer and tell you of Queen-Regents and others ruling in their own right, of Joan of Arc, the only human creature who at 17 years of age ever commanded the entire military forces of a nation, and of many; others if necessary. In the face of evidence like this, think of re- publics, those governments which are run exclu- sively by men, and which are, were, and ever will be failures, having the temerity to assert that women are unfit for political power or even recognition! "It is enough to enrage the very gods!" How proud we should be that republics cannot defraud us of the right to claim that rulers of our sex have a bigger account to their credit than those of the other sex ! Four of the proudest thrones on the globe are to-day honoured by being filled by women and considerably more than half of the human race is ruled over by them. Queen 33 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN Victoria rules 400,000,000 souls; the Empress of China over 400,000,000; Queen Wilhelraina over 30,000,000, and the Queen Regent of Spain over 0,000,000. Our sex, with crowns on their brows, may enter Parliaments; may govern em- pires. In every state or class which is upon an aristocratic basis they are indulged to the full- est. As we know, many women have political power and rank conferred on them in monarchies, and when that happens, their rank and power are equal to those of men. But in republics no wom- an is deemed worthy of publicity, honour or re- nown all are rebuffed or disowned. Democ- racy has had to follow the army of progress led by aristocracy, but it has done so far in the rear, protesting, denouncing, ridiculing and execrating. Had a republic been the first and only form of government, woman's position would have remained for ever the same as that she occupied in the Dark Ages, for a republic is incapable of any feeling for her except that of prejudice, and ever glories in seeing her pros- trate, "covered with the dust of obedience." It is an axiom of the philosophers that the po- REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN sition assigned to woman by a nation is a true index of its civilization. Then where do repub- lics register upon civilization's thermometer? (A voice: "Below zero!" Laughter and ap- plause.) WOMAN'S LEGAL STATUS Every effort to introduce more advanced legis- lation for our sex has been bitterly opposed by republics. They have occasionally been persuad- ed to amend and patch some grotesque law, but they have done so in a spirit of vindictiveness that almost drove to madness the proud women who have had to appeal to them. Let us contrast this with aristocracies where many legal and political privileges have been granted to our sex by those in power (and gen- erally without women asking them), simply as a matter of right and in accordance with the ad- vance of civilization. Let us take Russia for example. (Hisses and moans.) Russia, God bless her, was the first government in Christian Europe to grant wives the right to individually REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN hold and control property, the first government to grant to large numbers of women any politi- cal recognition. Throughout the length and breadth of that vast empire, wives are mistresses of their own fortunes and all woman-household- ers can vote either direct or by proxy in munici- pal matters. These are privileges they have had for centuries, and were enjoyed by them at a time when every wife in every republic was sim- ply a legal and political serf. There are no other women who are so free socially* as those in the land of the Great White Czar; and the Russian government is doing more, as a government, to advance the interests of our sex than the com- bined republics of the world. (Voices: "Are these facts? Can they be proved?") Yes, for *Young girls in America formerly went about un- chaperoned and that was the only ground for the com- mon impression abroad that American women were freer than others of their sex; but to-day no young women are more rigidly chaperoned than those in Ameri- ca. Exclusive of Turkey, no married women in Europe demand and possess so little genuine liberty as marriecf women in America, where Society's laws are absolutely man's laws as political and financial dependents cannot create laws of any kind either for themselves or otherSt 36 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN I make no statements which you cannot verify. My love for our young friend here and my al- legiance to every member of my sex impels me to tell you "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" and I do so in the full conscious- ness that, if such ever becomes known, I shall be victimized to my very grave. But there is France, a republic, at your very door, and you need not cross the sea for an ex- ample of democracy. France has accomplished less in the elevation and in the practical ameliora- tion of woman's condition than any other ad- vanced country in Europe. Woman in France, as wife, as daughter, in her relation to divorce, in her political, legal and civil life, has about the lowest status in Europe. Then there are the republics of South America where neither legally, politically, nor education- ally, is woman much advanced beyond her mediae- val conditions in fact, her legal and educa- tional status generally is far inferior to that of woman in parts of the Orient (especially in Turkey) ; while her political standing is not so good as in, Japan. 37 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN But let us return again to the government I live in the American Republic that govern- ment which eternally brags and prates about liberty and equality and see if it does better generally for women than a government which never brags or prates about liberty and equality. Let us see the wife's legal status therein in sixteen States a wife has no right to her own earnings and the husband can collect the same for his own use ; in eight States she has no right to her own property; in several States she has no interest in the estate her husband owned at their marriage, and on his dying she has no dower therein. In no State of the Union, if the wife dies first, can she bequeath any part of her property which she, as wife, has helped the hus- band amass, even to their children, for during the husband's life she has only an interest of a pauper or dependent in such estate. In several States a wife has no right to her own inherited property, which, unless placed in the hands of trustees (and away from her own management) becomes absolutely her husband's property at their marriage, and at his death she is only en* 38 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN titled to a fraction thereof as dower. In thirty- six States the wife has no right to her own chil- dren, for the law gives the father legal control and guardianship of them.* Thousands of husbands, when they die, leave wills which are marvels of injustice and cruelty. Men have even willed from their wives the very property that they received through their mar- riage. Even the guardianship of children has been given to others. In nearly every State, the father is next of kin to the children, the law thus averring that the father is, in its eyes, a nearer blood relation than the mother. To illus- *A father may, without the mother's consent, by his last will or testament, appoint a guardian for his child, born or unborn. This guardian will have control or management of the child's property, and, in case the mother dies while the child is still a minor, he will be entitled to the custody of the child, and the mother can in no way prevent his having it. If the father dies without having appointed a guar- dian, and it becomes necessary to appoint a guardian of the person and estate of the child, or children, the Probate Court appoints said guardian, but the Probate Court is not bound to appoint the mother. It may ap- point a stranger, and that, too, without the consent of the mother. 39 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN trate: A boy fourteen years of age was killed by a railway train some time ago. His father having permanently deserted the family, the boy helped toward the support of the family. The mother, therefore, brought suit against the rail- way company to recover damages for her loss. The case was decided against her because, by the statute of the State in which the accident hap- pened, the next of kin to the child is the father ; and the mother was, therefore, entitled to no damages. In one State the husband may perpe- trate any wrong, outrage or infamy against a wife; but under no conditions or circumstances can she divorce him. In the same State the hus- band may make contracts which, for years at a time, will bind his infant girls (as soon as they are six years of age) to labor as factory hands. The children can be compelled to work for twelve hours a day. The mother has absolutely no re- dress at law. Large numbers of these little girls receive only from six to ten cents a day for their work, and many of them work from six o'clock at night until six o'clock the next morning. In five States husbands can bind their little 40 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN girls as factory hands for years (they usually only live four years after being thus bound, and those who live longer are mental and physical wrecks). The helpless wife has no redress; she cannot interfere. In whole sections in the South in the country districts women have practically all the work to do; and they support their chil- dren and their husbands. In one of the oldest States the law allows male brutes to lead girls of seven years of age to their ruin; in six of the States at ten years of age; and in four of the States at twelve years of age. The helpless mother has no right to change these laws. By the wills of some of our millionaire mag- nates, the faithful wife and mother finds herself poor compared with any of her own sons, and one son is made the head of the family, with the lion's share of those millions left to him to do with as he sees fit. Please remember that there is only one country in Europe (England) where the law of primogeniture prevails, and even in that country the eldest son is simply a life tenant of the real estate. This is an entirely different matter from a boy inheriting the 41 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN American millions both personal and real estate to do with as he pleases. In all the States a man is privileged to enter any occupation, profession or trade which is supposedly a feminine vocation. The law does not protect women against such encroachments by men. In nearly all the States, women, on the other hand, are refused the right to enter certain refined, elevating and suitable occupations, in which they might make honest livings, the men being protected by law against such invasion. In the "free republic" there are dozens and doz- ens of other sustained laws, equally inequitable, touching woman's relations to man. Some of these laws pass belief. And yet, an ignoramus or liar will tell you that the laws in America are more generous to women than to men ! The "age of consent law alone stands as a monstrous con- tradiction to any such declaration in every State in the Republic." And, referring to women in general, wher* ever they perform the same service as men, they usually get far less remuneration, the various local governments paying them generally, even REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN as teachers, only about one-third of what men receive. And all the things you have heard about the courts being so much more tender to women than to men, are just so many baseless fabrications. Out of tens of thousands of similar incidents, I especially recall that on the very day the Re- public sent to a Royal Court as its Minister a man who had murdered his rival and had not even been indicted for it, a woman who had killed her rival under the identical circumstances was sentenced to be hanged. The same court which one week exonerated a brother for killing his sister's traducer, the next week sentenced a girl to life imprisonment for killing her seducer. The same court which awarded a boy $3,500 damages against a company for the loss of his left hand, awarded a poor girl only $2,500 for the loss (under the exact circumstances) of both her feet. In the same city where a woman was sentenced to prison for five years for stealing a ring, a man was sentenced to prison for five years for killing his wife. Besides, in one city alone, 500 respectable women were arrested in forty- REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN eight hours for being on the street without male escorts after 9 o'clock P. M., under circum- stances where the law never arrests men indeed, all over America women are liable to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment under circumstances where men are never arrested or molested. Hon. Mr. Coudert who, after Hon. Mr. Choate (United States Ambassador to Eng- land), is America's most eminent lawyer, said: "There are constantly brought to the attention of all attorneys cases of women whose interests have cruelly suffered through the dealings of men, simply because women are handicapped by our unjust laws." I have searched the records of my country as impartially and as fairly as was possible, and I have found no single instance where American men (and they claim to represent the women) have volunteered, without feminine solicitation, to enact laws which would give women general liberties, rights and opportunities. Had it not been for noble and intelligent women no effort would have been made, even to this day, to elevate and ameliorate the position 44 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN and condition of our sex generally in the Repub- lic, and all such reforms ever made therein are due to the impulses given by women. Every chain or manacle ever broken was broken by women; every abuse ever destroyed was destroyed by women; the labor that was rewarded was re- warded by women ; the defenceless who were pro- tected were protected by women; every justice which triumphed was gained by women ; and they have gained for woman every victory she has achieved. And should they now lay down their arms or relax their vigilance, every post they have captured for their sex would be speedily assaulted and re-taken by the enemy. Indeed when these women cried "Halt!" the Repub- lic was forcing our sex to retrace its steps "was slowly driving it back to barbaric night." The Republic had imprisoned woman, and behind its walls perpetrated against her every possible crime, every conceivable outrage. A few heroic souls, a few sublime hearts, realizing that this meant for women mental ruin and for men moral death, broke through its gates and bars. When the Republic could not entice them back into its 45 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN female Bastile with offerings of toys, trinkets and sweets saying to them things which igno- rant women construed as gallantries, but which the intelligent knew were insults it lashed them with whips of scorpions. When the fearless few said: "You shall not tell women they are an- gels (which you do that you may enslave them the more easily) and treat them as if they were devils !" it grew livid with wrath and heaped up- on them every malevolence and indignity. The most pathetic struggle of the oppressed against despotism which has ever been made was that of these unselfish women. No martyrs of history ever endured the insults, epithets, abuse and sar- casm, such as they were subjected to. Believe me, republicanism, per se y has gained no victories for woman our sex is not indebted to it for a single right, for a solitary reform. There is no instance to be found where it ever volunteered to grant women generally recogni- tion, opportunity, friendship, sympathy or help ; and everything our sex has accomplished therein has been in spite of and not on account of de- mocracy. You who have had such faith in demo- 46 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN cratic institutions can scarcely credit these facts. (Voices: "Yes; we do credit them now!") It is the very height of impudence and false- hood for America to point to the grand and glorious women therein and say "These are the results of our institutions !" Suppose you heard of a father who had forced his daughter to have no public associates except lunatics and crim- inals ; who compelled her to seek her every pro- tection, liberty, privilege through all the niggers and unwashed, unlettered men in the community ; who made her feel that she was the most despised, outcast, outlawed thing of earth; who tried to crush from her brain the idea she had a right to think, pointing to his daughter, who, in spite of all the injustices, humiliations and wrongs he had heaped on her, had attained a splendid wo- manhood, saying: "She is the result of my treatment and training!" You would unhesi- tatingly say that he was a fraud, a bluffer, a liar. And what words would apply to that boast of the Republic? (A voice: "Those same com- plimentary epithets." Prolonged cheers.) 47 REPUBLICS w. WOMAN Please remember that many women have made successes of their lives, and have gained distin- guished reputations in every despotism; and such instances in America can in no way be ascribed either to friendship or to voluntary rec- ognition. Do not mistake a coincidence for a cause. Republicanism, instead of being woman's friend, has always been her determined antagon- ist ; it has uniformly opposed all her aspirations ; and only to the extent that the belief in de- mocracy has decreased has woman's position position therein advanced. I shall now tell you some things about my own experience, for you will thus be confronted with a living reality instead of some mere abstract theory ; and because I feel that in no other way can I so readily convince you that all the things you have heard about the rights and equalities of American women are mockeries and false- hoods. When I was yet almost an infant I heard my father say he was ashamed to publicly record (he was writing a law-book at the time) that "in this so-called 'free Republic' the wife's legal status in this State is little better than that of 48 REPUBLICS w. WOMAN its former negro slave, and that in the eye of the law, the married white woman is almost as devoid of personality as the African ex-bond- man."* In after years I made inquiry and found I was living in a State where a wife's earnings legally belonged to her husband ; where her personal property (such as money, bonds, consols, stocks, jewels) belonged to her husband ; where all the rents and profits accruing from her property or real estate, belonged, too, to her husband; where the wife could make no will which the husband could not prevent the probate of ; where the law forcibly prevented *At the solicitation of the speaker's great-grand- mother, her great-uncle, Judge Robert Trimble (after- wards Justice of the United States Supreme Court) drafted the first bill ever drawn upon the American continent to give to married women the right to control their property and their children. That was about the year 1802. It was impossible to get any member of the legislature to introduce the bill, or even to give it a reading. A second and similar bill was drafted by her grandfather (afterwards Judge John Trimble, of the Kentucky Court of Appeals) about 1804. He also failed to induce any member of the legislature to intro- duce his bill, as the prejudice against giving such jus- tice to women was overwhelming. 49 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN the mother from acting as guardian even of her own children, if she were married; where the married mother did not own her own children. Thus you see that I knew when very young, that all that men generally said about America being a free country and everybody in it equal was a lie made out of whole cloth. Years after- wards, when I wished to finish my studies, I was compelled to attend an inferior University, as the nation's greatest educational institutions were closed to me on account of my sex. When I went through one of those magnificently-en- dowed seats of learning, when I found that Negroes, Indians, Chinamen men of all nations, races and climes were admitted to its splendid halls as students, and that entrance thereto was forbidden to every member of my sex, I became for the first time fully conscious wliat it meant to be a woman; and that night, for the first time, I failed to say my prayers. I I could not ; "Amen stuck in my throat." As these universities are only quasi-public in- stitutions, I shall not farther expatiate thereon, as I wish to deal chiefly with woman's position 50 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN with regard to laws and the government. And when I refer to other things it is only in order to show you that your belief that American men are more generous to women or are better than the men of other countries is a case of mistaken confidence, entirely unwarranted by facts. And I could easily prove to you that, in strictly social matters, they have less charity for women than have the men of other countries but that would be going entirely out of my province. When I was a very young girl, a cousin of mine who had charge of me took me to Washing- ton, the National Capital. She went there to ask Congress (the National Legislature) to add an amendment to the Constitution which would place the white women of the Nation upon a public equality with its negro men. The first Member of Congress we met was a negro who had been formerly a slave of our own grand- father (I have never forgotten my cousin's humiliation), and, can you credit it that "flat- nosed, nappy headed African" was opposed to the Government granting white women recogni- 51 REPUBLICS w. WOMAN tion equal to what it had given him! Years afterwards I went to the Legislature of a State where I heard native-born, tax-paying, educated ladies address a Committee thereof in order to gain some justice for their sex. Not a man of that Committee was a native-born American; but they were those who according to Schopen- hauer, "had left Europe for Europe's good." During the time this Committee was being ad- dressed the members thereof pared their nails, looked out the windows, thumped upon their chair-arms, and treated these ladies with the most insufferable insolence. At another State Legislature I saw an ex-son of Ireland throw a petition, addressed to the Legislature of which he was a member, into a wastepaper basket. The petition in question had been signed by thousands of ladies, a num- ber of whom presented it. But the member of Legislature had no more consideration for them than if they had been a flock of sheep bleating for his recognition. As he was in authority the petition was not allowed to reach the Legisla- ture for consideration. He said that the Legis- 52 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN lature was too busy with important matters to waste its time with the affairs of women. The Legislature, it may be remarked en passant, enacted almost 1,000 laws, not twenty per cent, of which were enforced, or were enforcible! If you ladies could hear that fellow talk about "Ireland's wrongs" (as he does so constantly), you would actually believe him to be in sym- pathy with liberty, equality, and all such things, and that he meant something more thereby than giving Irishmen a chance to tyrannize over other people. At another time I addressed a letter to a member of Congress asking him to see me in* order to discuss the matter of his arrangiag to introduce into that National Legislature a bill on behalf of my sex. I stated in my letter that, foreigner as he was by birth, he would assuredly concede that I, a native American, had as good a right to recognition by this gov^ ernment as himself; especially so as my ances- tors had fought for and helped found the Re- public. Besides, I said, I had paid taxes which were so heavv that they were virtually a con- 53 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN fiscation of the property on which they were levied taxes which were greater in amount than the entire Colonial Government was ex- pected to pay through the Stamp Act to the English Government during six months ; and the levying of the Stamp Tax caused the Revolu- tion, the Colonies declaring in flaming indigna- tion and fury that "taxation without represen- tation is despotism, slavery, robbery." I fur- thermore told him that, for several years, I had given employment to several hundreds of for- eign-born workmen, who could not even read or write in their native tongues, and that the gov- ernment made them my rulers. All of which, I impressed upon him, he should acknowledge was an outrage on me. I received no reply to my letter. When, later, I saw the congressman, he said he had more important matters to attend to than securing rights for women. When I re- monstrated at this, and declared I would make his remarks public property, he retorted he did not care if I did, for women had no votes and could do him no harm. He said he was more and more grateful daily that he had become a 54 REPUBLICS w. WOMAN member of a government, the very construction of which precluded the possibility of any woman ever occupying therein any public po- sition of genuine power and authority. I told him that my grandmother, and the grand- mothers of many thousands of our women who belonged to the Colonial Dames and the Daugh- ters of the Revolution and all such societies, had helped found the Republic, just as much as the men; that the male founders had no right or authority from them to make them and their female descendants political outcasts and pariahs; that I did not believe that such had been the intention of the male founders of the Republic. I informed him that a cousin of mine, having remained loyal to the mother- country, had returned to England, and that for a long time her female descendants had voted there upon equal terms with men upon municipal questions and affairs; that those who went to Australia vote upon all questions, having full suffrage; that the female descendants of her daughter (who married a Russian), had voted in Russia for almost a century upon every ques- 55 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN tion upon which men vote in that country. I asked what gain it had been to me or to any other woman to have been transferred from sub- jects of the English monarchy to citizens of the American Republic. I reminded him that Amer- ican women had gained the limited recognitions and privileges they possess only after years of the hardest, most disheartening, most cruel, most humiliating fighting that any women in the world ever before underwent to gain privi- leges and recognitions. He replied that the founders of the Re- public believed, as did all their sex with the exception of the "sillies" who allowed wom- en to occupy thrones, that the world belongs to men; that they had purposely prevented American women from being placed in a position where they could seriously question this gen- eral masculine belief; that Mrs. Adams,* Mrs. *Mrs. Adams was the wife of one who later became President; Mrs. Lee, a sister of the famous General R. H. Lee; Mrs. Brevard, an eminent Southern woman; Miss Livingston, a cousin of Phil. Livingston, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. 56 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN Lee, Mrs. Brevard, Miss Brent and Miss Liv- ingston, expressing the wishes of all educated women in the Colonies, had personally implored the men who organized the Republic, to grant women recognition and equality with the men. As the Revolutionary forefathers had ignored women in the face of appeals like these, not hav- ing mentioned them in either the State or Na- tional Constitutions, it was, he declared, clear proof that it was their fixed intention and pur- pose to deprive women of rights, allowing them only such privileges as the men in separate localities chose to grant them. His opin- ion, he maintained, was coincided in by the Su- preme Court of the United States (which is America's tribunal of final appeal), and by American men in an overwhelming majority, and that there was no longer room for any sur- mise on the part of American women as to what the intent of the founders of the Republic had been. If you ladies could hear him expatiate upon liberty, equality, and all such things (as he does constantly), you would actually believe that he is in sympathy with people who struggle 57 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN for their rights. Personally I don't believe a word uttered by such men, for I know them too well. I know that they are wolves in sheep's clothing, and that they consider our sex the choicest morsels they can devour. I am sure that my experience alone would convince any sane person that America is not a free country where everybody is equal. It has doubtless occurred to you ladies long before this, that men who screech and yell for "free Ireland," or republicanism, or anarchism, or other similar "isms," as long as they them- selves are subjects, make no especial effort when they have power within their grasp, to apply their principles to women. Nay, more, the very things which such men avow are outrages, des- potisms and crimes, they premeditatively practice upon women with a vindictiveness and offensive- ness that no government ever called upon them, or upon their female subjects to endure. Now, ladies, I beg you to divest yourselves of all prejudice, and tell me if you can see any ad- vantage so far that our sex has in a democracy over an aristocracy? I am confident you are 58 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN conscientious women. Upon your answer rests my future course. If you answer that you do see that our sex has more advantages in a de- mocracy, I shall keep the promise I made you, shall become a life-member of your organiza- tion, and shall be a greater foe to aristocracies than any of you would ever dare to become. Do you see any advantage so far that our sex has in a democracy over an aristocracy? (Cries of "No, no! We do not!") Do you see any ad- vantage that our sex has in belonging to the so-called most liberal government in Christendom the American Republic over be- longing to the so-called most autocratic Russia? (Cries of "No, no! We do not; we do not!") Thank you for your consideration and fair- ness. I am pleased to hear you say that you do not for indeed such advantages are not to be seen. On the contrary, the Russian woman has incalculable advantages over the woman of the Republic. While the condition and posi- tion of the Russian woman constantly grow brighter and better, those of the American woin- 59 REPUBLICS w. WOMAN an grow darker and worse; for with the steady increase in the population of the Republic there are added to and placed over the American worn* an as rulers, millions of debased Negroes, penniless Italians, Spaniards, Poles and Hungarians; Russian ex-serfs; peasants from Ireland, Germany and Austria; ex-bandits and slaves from Turkey and Armenia; Mexican ex- peons ; and the vicious, unwashed and unlettered in all the States of the Republic. "In proportion as you multiply the rulers the condition of the politically ostracised is more hopeless and degraded." I cannot see how any sane creature believes that the individual who wears one political yoke is as heavily burdened as she who wears forty million political yokes; or that a one-headed ruler is more oppressive than a forty-million-headed ruler ! By not making such men your rulers (through their representatives) your governments have never forced you to cringe in the dust at the feet of niggers, and men from the fields, slums and prisons of foreign lands ; nor yet at the feet 60 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN of the inferior and debased natives; to implore of such rights to your children, your wages, your property, the bodies of your little girls; nor to ask them to grant you protection, liber- ties, and opportunities. As a matter of fact, the American woman lives in the largest and most overwhelming des- potism on earth. Take any dictionary pub- lished, hunt the meaning of the word "despot- ism," and you will see that I do not exaggerate in the slightest. No Chinese woman has more than one absolute, irresponsible and arbitrary ruler ; American women have forty million abso- lute, irresponsible and arbitrary rulers. The Chinese woman has just as much voice in her own government and in making the laws by which she is controlled as the American woman. These American rulers will tell you that China is the largest and most overwhelming despotism on earth, and that Chinamen are slaves. Let us see what has been the status of a male subject in China since 1776 since the foundation of the American Republic and contrast his politi- cal, legal, civic, educational and commercial 61 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN opportunities with those possessed by American women during that time. Every Chinaman has had every privilege of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, which the highest nobleman pos- sessed; every office in the government, with one exception that of Emperor was open to him ; he was at liberty to enter any university and get the best education in the realm; no trade, no occupation, no profession was closed to him by law; he legally owned his children, his personal property, the results of his labor, the profits of his real estate, and could make a will or legacy. Now compare all that with the political, legal, educational, civic and commercial opportunities afforded American women since 1776. If you still say Chinamen have been slaves, what have American women been? (A voice: "The word has not been coined!") If you still say the Chinese government has been a despotism for its men, what has the American government been for its women? (A voice: "He he Hades!" Laughter.) On China's throne there sits a woman the one absolute ruler over its more than two hundred million men is 62 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN to-day a member of our sex. (Cheers and applause. ) Years ago I saw republican institutions just as they are and just as I am showing them to you. I then realized that a republic is a government of males, for males, and by males; and that no other intelligent or truthful definition thereof could be given. I then determined to do all in my power to preserve and augment Christian aristocracies, for I realize that it was a ques- tion for my sex of self-respect and opportunity against humiliation and ostracism. I have abandoned all attempts to reconcile republics with justice for my sex; such reconciliation, I know, is impossible. I realize that republicanism must ever try to prove the unjust just, the un- natural natural, the immoral moral, and my constant prayer is that the monstrous delusion may die. (A voice: "We should like to attend the funeral but not as mourners!") REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN WOMAN'S CIVIL STATUS I herewith cite to you, absolutely from mem- ory, things which I have gleaned from different sources at various times, for loyalty to my sex ?has been my life's hobby, and I have always noted everything bearing upon woman's condi- tion. And let me beg just here, as I have promised the strictest secrecy towards you that you will never divulge that I told you all these things; for no American woman can publicly announce such truths and not be crucified. In- stead of attacking the arguments the individual who makes them will be attacked, and I am not seeking martyrdom. A diplomat has said: "In the United States Republic marriage is easily made, boys and girls entering into it with little or no ceremony and at an age when they should be at school. But if marriage is easy, divorce is no less so, and is so frequent it creates no comment. When we consider that, in addition to legal divorce, there is an appallingly large number of separations 64 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN and desertions ; and when we reflect on the noble nature and unselfish devotion of women, their maternal instinct and their dislike of publicity we can safely assume that an enormous propor- tion of the marriages contracted therein result in misery. Not only are the various easy mar- riage and divorce laws most unfortunate for these women, but the whole social organization bears most heavily upon them. The prevailing belief amongst people in Europe is that women in the Republic enjoy an enviable lot; whereas a glance at the laws and customs affecting them shows how helpless and unprotected they are. They have no legal claim upon parents except in childhood, and so feel forced to marry, but with the melancholy consciousness that mar- riage is no certain or reliable bond. As a dis- guised selfishness prevents the father from giv- ing a dowry, the husband also selfishly makes no settlement, and the poor dowerless girl enters married life with no assurance of any provision for herself and children, save that which depends solely upon the good will of her husband* Worse than all, the ease with which divorce can 65 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN be obtained renders the length of married life very uncertain. The different systems of laws, the sovereignty of the States, the existence of trust estates, render any decree of court for allowance or alimony practically nuga- tory."* "Yet from a glance at the Constitution of this government and the utterances of its public men, a stranger would imagine that an ideal condition of society exists therein for women. But such are transparent screens which deceive none but novices." Women are often imprisoned, fined, or pun- ished there for immorality (the men never are) ; *"There are over 20,000 divorces granted annually in the American Republic. Ten years of the most thor- ough and impartial investigation has convinced me that for every woman who has been divorced, at least 100 were legally entitled to divorces; and that 98 men in every 100 (in the upper and middle classes) who are entitled to divorce obtain such. Practically the entire womanhood of the lower classes is lewd. On account of children or financial dependence, wives submit to wrongs which husbands would not countenance for a moment. At least 90 per cent, of the men whose wives divorce them, or who desert their families, are native- born." 66 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN and the number of victims of men's passions and selfishness has multiplied and grown until in no land on earth are there vaster armies of them. Drunkenness and gambling are also alarming- ly prevalent, the percentage of gambling amongst these men being larger than in any other country ; and their per capita use of alco- hol also being larger than that of any other men.* No men hold more rigidly to one social scale for themselves and to another for women, and yet any good which might be accomplished by honesty, publicity or truth, is always para- lyzed by that vice of vices hypocrisy which clings to the male Yankee like the shirt of Nes- sus. Bellamy has said: "At the very bottom of the heap, bearing the accumulated burden of the whole mass, is woman in every republic. So far beneath the estate of man is woman therein, that *In making up their tables of the use of alcoholic drinks, statisticians include women. But as women only consume one per cent, thereof, they should practically be excluded, and this (when reduced to pure alcohol) shows that American men consume more per capita than the men of any other country. 67 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN it would be a mighty uplift for her could she attain the level of even its lowest man I" Richard Henry Savage said: "Women are far more dependent in America than in Europe. It will offend the habitually boastful Yankee to be told that the personal and property rights of women are generally more safely guard- ed in Europe than here, but it is true nevertheless." Mrs. J. K. Henry said: "As if to sound a note of warning to our rich girls, the American press teems with recitals of domestic woes of our women who have married titled foreigners, but they need not go abroad to find domestic woes. Marital infidelity has well-nigh turned our own Republican domestic system into pandemonium, as our court records everywhere attest, but not even the smallest fraction of it has been told there." I shall now quote to you an opinion which I value far above any ever expressed, not only because it is the opinion of one of the greatest statesmen of the Nineteenth Century, but chiefly because it is that of a thinker who could 68 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN view all Occidental institutions with eyes of equal impartiality, and all branches of the Cau- casian race without prejudice in favor of one above the other that of the pre-eminent Li- Hung Chang,* who, when asked what he thought of woman in Western civilization, said: "Nothing I observed in my tour of the world caused me such surprise as the position of woman in the American Republic I found it as far below that of her sex in Christian monarchies as I had expected to find it above. All I had heard about the 'queenship' of the American woman, inquiry proved to be the merest humbug and pretence. Assuredly her crown is tinsel and her throne is nil. "The Republic has increased and augmented the rights and privileges of its men over those of its women, to a degree that is not tolerated by a monarchy; and the difference of condition between the sexes is vastly greater in the Repub- lic than in a monarchy. A thorough investiga- tion since has convinced me that there is no gov- *President U. S. Grant said that Chang was one of the three really great man he saw in his tour of the world. 69 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN ernment which is necessarily so antagonistic to all women as a republic no one in which the entire female sex may logically hope for so little." Let us farther test the boast of the American Republic that its women are better cared for, better treated, better protected than women in any other government. Let us take Russia, by way of contrast, not through any preference for that country, but simply because its gov- ernment is the very extreme in ideal from a re- public. During the time I had events noted I found that while over eight thousand women were murdered in the Republic, less than one thousand women were murdered in Russia and please remember that Russia has almost twice the population. The number of women mur- dered in the Republic is something appalling,* their murderers being in the vast majority of cases native-born American men. (A voice: "I suppose the women ought to cry out 'sex preju- *During the time I kept tag I found that over three- fourths of the victims of murder were women the ma- jority of their murderers being their husbands. 70 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN dice' !" ) Yes, that is the true solution. I think Russia ought to address a Note to that masculine oligarchy, the American Republic, and call its attention thereto; for if as many Russian Jews were murdered, mutilated, out- raged, denied justice and recognition as women are in the Republic, that Republic would cry aloud, "Race prejudice !" and would, if it dared, call Russia's attention thereto. I found there were eighty per cent, more rapes committed in the Republic than in Russia. So perilous is the condition of woman's life and body in the entire Southern portion of the coun- try that a Governor of eminence has advised all women therein to carry firearms for self-de- fence.* I found that while over nine thousand wives (exclusive of divorcees) were deserted by husbands in the Republic, less than five hundred wives were deserted in Russia. I found that while twelve women had been mobbed in the Re- public, not a woman had been mobbed in Rus- *Russia liberated 00,000,000 slaves; the Republic liberated only 4,000,000. 71 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN sia. The last case of mobbing I noted was that of a poor young girl, who, when she truthfully disclaimed any knowledge of the whereabouts of her father (who had been wrongfully accused of stealing a purse containing a few dollars), was riddled with shot, and, while yet alive, was thrown into a nearby river. The mob was com- posed of native-born Americans,* who made no effort to conceal their identities. The State in which she had lived disavowed any capacity to punish her murderers, and the National Govern- ment declared that it had no authority to punish them. I found that several women had met with capital punishment in the Republic for com- mission of murder upon ordinary individuals, while none had met such for similar offences in Russia, as this latter government puts no wom- an to death except for an attack upon a member of its Royal family. I found that while several *The only reason I call attention to the fact that these are native-born Americans, is that if I did not some American would vow that it is the vast foreign-born population in the Republic who are guilty of these out- rages. REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN native-born American judges had refused to take the testimony of women in their courts, an- nouncing from the bench, "All women are liars their testimony is unreliable!" no judge of any Russian court had so decreed. I found that while several native-born American judges had decided that a husband had the right to ad- minister corporal punishment to his wife, no judge of a Russian court had so decided. And by the way, the champion wife-beater of the world is a native-born American whose wife proved that, in a married life of less than twenty years, he had administered to her over a thou- sand beatings. I found that more women work in the fields of America than in Russia, and more little girls work in its factories. (In fact little girls are not allowed to work at all in Russian factories.) I found that during the time that every wife in Russia was mistress of her own fortune, no wife could control hers in the Republic ; and I also found that while women in Russia have been willingly granted certain privileges, legal and political, by the govern- REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN ment, women themselves, in the Republic, in the face of insults and attacks upon them amount- ing to persecution, have had to fight inch by inch for every privilege they possess. I never think of the difference in the manner by which Russian and American women gained the privi- leges they each possess, without recalling to mind the difference in the manner by which Rus- sian slaves and American slaves were liberated "the Czar by a sweep of his pen struck off the chains of serfdom from millions of his subjects, (Cheers) while the Republic waited to be driven from its system of human slavery by fire and sword." (Hisses.) I trust I have dissipated forever such myths as that women in a Republic are accorded great- er protection, consideration, or tenderness than women in any other government. (Voices: "You have indeed!") If you should ever visit America (and had any courage left after getting past the insulting officials at the Port who would receive you), you, being especially interested in your own sex, REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN would first visit the great Astor Library in New York in order to search for data in relation to woman. You would first search through a guide- book of New York City to find public monu- ments erected therein to American women but you would not find one then you would think of those in the metropolises of monarchies erect- ed in honour of their women. You had expected that in every metropolis of the Republic there would be a monument to Isabella of Spain, reaching to the very clouds; that America had remembered the impetus given to it by Elizabeth of England, and that her statue would cap the dome of its every capitol; that everywhere bronze and marble images would bespeak reverence for Abigail Adams and Mar- garet Brent, who fearlessly raised their voices against that greatest crime of all the centuries against the Republic of the United States of America snatching woman from a government wherein woman could be Queen, and placing its educated, taxpaying womanhood in position to become serfs to the lowest races and orders REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN of mankind; that a public reminder would ap- pear everywhere in honour of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who opened with her pen the Bastille of Slavery and led forth 4,000,000 human chattels as freedmen; that monuments penetrating the very skies, would appear throughout the land in glory of Elizabeth Stanton and Susan An- thony, to whom American womanhood owes prac- tically all the advance, recognitions and privi- leges which have been accorded the sex;* that Frances Willard, who did more than any other human being to teach men "it is a crime to take into their stomachs an enemy to steal away their brains," would be remembered with public sta- tues everywhere. But you would find that this land which has produced women with characters and brains as lofty and broad as its mountains and inland seas (and no women in the world are nobler, more intelligent, more virtuous than *Such great women and friends to womankind as Stacy Stone, Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe (of a younger generation), Lillie D. Blake, and Anna Shaw, might have been classed with these two origin- ators in America of "the Woman Movement." 76 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN those of America) has not a single public monu- ment to any woman throughout the length and breadth of the Republic. On inquiry you would not be surprised for you would find that a re- public is merely a masculine oligarchy, and that it naturally has not volunteered to honour any . woman.* Then you would search further in the guide to New York for theatres, railway stations,, museums, markets and libraries named in hon- our of American women. You would not find one. And that would cause you to think of the violent contrast between the Republic and aris- tocracies in this matter. You would next look for the streets, parks, boulevards, named after American women. You would not find one ; but you would think how many such could be found in the metropolises of monarchies. You would next look at the names of the great inter-ocean steamers and for the ships of the Navy *There are two or three statues to women, but they were erected by their private friends; they are in no sense monuments. 77 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN standing in its docks. Not one of them, you would find, was named after an American woman. And you would remember how that many of the ships and docks of mon- archies are named after women. You might next try to find out what political offices were filled by women in the Empire State of New York a State where women pay millions an- nually in taxes. And again your search would be in vain, for you would not find one. In de- spair you would scan the names of the counties, mountain peaks, and States throughout the land, thinking that among them you might pos- sibly find at least one given in honour of an American woman. You would have your labour for your pains, for you would not find one. Then you would remember how in aristocratic lands woman has been so highly honoured in these respects. Then, in bewilderment, you would seek the political history of the United States government and hunt for the names of American women honoured therein. You would find not one. And then you would think of REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN women were honoured in the public histories of monarchies. Then you might run over to Washington to see a President inaugurated into office. As he passed through the streets, honoured and viewed by hundreds of thousands of citizens, you would notice to your amazement that there was no woman at his side, no women in the escort, but only men, MEN, MEN. Then you would think of the coronation of your own Sovereign, as he passed through the streets with a woman who was crowned at his side and ladies in his escort; or of Queen Wilhelmina, as she lately passed through the streets of Holland amid the cheers of thousands of her subjects, with ladies in her escort. Then, on reflection, you would see it would be ridiculous for the President's wife or any woman in the Republic to escort the Presi- dent, for women can not be leaders there in any civic function, because they have no official rank they are not honorary Admirals, or Colonels of regiments like the Empress of Germany and many titled ladies; or Governors, like Princess Henry of Battenberg, and do not receive 79 REPUBLICS w. WOMAN many like honours such as ladies have in aristocracies.* You would listen to the President's inaugural address (or the taking of his oath of office) and would see no woman was near, as an attendant, and that the President made no reference to women, no woman's name has ever been mentioned in any inaugural address of any President in the Republic since the beginning of the government. Then, you would think of the coronation speech lately uttered by King Vic- *I will here illustrate for my readers by referring to the visit of Prince Henry of Prussia to America, which has occurred since this speech was made. This Imperial personage was not received officially by any woman any- where in the Republic, no woman having a sufficient public rank to receive him officially. When he dined officially at the White House (the President's official residence) no woman was present. (Even if the Presi- dent's wife had been present, it would have been only as a private individual). When he attended the opera officially, no woman was in his box. At the official ban- quets which were tendered to him by cities, States or by the nation, no woman was present. This could not have occurred in any aristocracy, for the year previous, even when visiting China, the chief personage to give him official recognition was the Empress. 80 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN tor Emmanuel III. of Italy, which teems with thanks and gratitude to women recognition of the Queen-Mother and Queen- Wife. You would find (and it would surprise you beyond belief) that it is illegal for the American Government against its very National Consti- tution even to tender thanks to a woman how- ever great her service may be to it ; that on the very day that its Congress refused to vote a mes- sage of thanks to a noble young woman* who had given a fortune to its Army, three aristoc- racies had conferred distinguished favours upon women, the Czar of Russia even appointing one an honorary Admiral in his Navy. You would find that no woman, in recogni- tion of her own individual ability or merit has ever been entertained at dinner at the White House. Then you would involuntarily think of the many women who had been publicly feted in the palaces of your rulers. (There is no other country where women of ability receive so little recognition or encouragement from "the powers that be" as in America "the powers that be" *Helen Gould. 81 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN including the Presidents, Governors of States and officialdom generally.) You would find that no woman was ever grant- ed a National or State funeral in the Republic; even the funeral of a President's wife is always private, the time of her burial or evidences of mourning being unobserved throughout the land. Then you would think of all Austria late- ly stricken in grief and clad in mourning for their beloved Empress Elizabeth. Then you would notice that a President's wife is not a Presidentess, and that political history does not of necessity make mention of the fact that he had a wife. An Emperor's wife is an Empress, a King's is a Queen, a Duke's is a Duchess, the wife of a Marquis is a Marchio- ness and so on. But American titles (and they are legion) belong exclusively to males, and every wife is simply a plain "Mrs." An aristocrat shares his titles and honours with his wife, but in a democracy the men wear "all the mantles," and all the "plums" fall into masculine laps. You would find that the personal or individu- al face of no American woman has ever been REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN upon the bills or upon the coins of the Republic, but only those of men, MEN, MEN.* Then you would think of Queen Victoria's beloved counte- nance, during the greater part of the century, and of the beautiful image of Queen Wilhelmina, upon the coins and bills of their respective coun- tries. Then you would recall the fact that in an aristocracy married women often keep their maiden titles or name, but that the only couple of cases you would find here of married women who kept their maiden name were those who were ridiculed or censured therefor. (In aristocracies the husband and the children sometimes take the wife's names, and no adverse comments are caused thereby. ) In fact, married ladies are not deemed of enough importance to have their names in any public directory of any city in the Republic. You would find that cultured ladies in the Republic are also at a terrible disadvantage and that they never can create Salons that there *Wherever women's faces are used they are imper- sonal. 88 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN never could be in the United States the equiva- lents of a Lady Palmerston, or a Lady Blessing- ton, or a Lady Jersey, or a Lady Salisbury. You would find, in spite of all you had heard to the contrary, that there is only one American woman whose fortune (she amassed it herself) can at all compare with many of the vast for- * tunes of women in Europe.* You would find that even the sports and all such pastimes of these women are copied from an aristocracy (no American ever having origi- nated such pleasures, liberties, or benefits for women) until the late rather close intercourse between these and English women, American women were generally very under-sized and deli- cate thus even the larger physical growth of Americans to-day has depended upon a Mon- archy. You would find that even in woman's sup- posedly most natural sphere, the social one, wom- en in a republic are at a very great disadvan- tage compared with their sex in an aristocracy no woman in a democracy has ever been sufficient- *Mrs. Hetty Green. 84 REPUBLICS w. WOMAN ly a social leader to establish general fashions, either political, moral, mental or physical. The reason why all women in a republic are socially insignificant (even a President's wife having no prestige or influence outside of her little coterie of personal friends) is because no one is made pre-eminent by such a government. It would occur to you that if a woman be at the head of an aristocracy she can address a proposal to a man of marriage, without the propriety thereof being questioned, but the woman who claimed this as her prerogative in a Republic would arouse masculine ire generally thereby. You would remember that at balls and on all such occasions that all Royal ladies take the initiative again and ask men to dance with them, escort them about and such like things but no woman in a Republic would dare claim such as her rightful prerogative. You could go on indefinitely making these contrasts in favour of your sex in an aristocracy, but you would cease, as by now you would clearly see that woman has about as much future 85 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN or chance in a Republic as a snowball has under a scorching sun. You would realize that am- bitious womanhood and a republic cannot exist together the two are hopelessly incompatible. You would realize that there is nothing woman can achieve in a republic which she cannot achieve in far less time and with far less exer- tion, trial, self-denial or humiliation in a mon- archy, and there are many things which your sex can achieve in a monarchy that through no effort, self-denial, or time can it achieve in a republic. And you would realize that as indi- viduals in every government must retrograde if they cannot go forward, as human society must go backward if it cannot advance, and as a republic places all our sex in the same mold, where it keeps them from the cradle to the grave, that woman is the reef upon which every republi- can ship of state will founder. Then you would find that nearly six million women in the Republic work for their daily bread outside their households, thousands work- ing in "sweatshops" at starvation wages, aver- aging only a dollar and a half to two dollars per 86 REPUBLICS w. WOMAN week. According to that good friend of all women, "The New York Journal," seven thou- sand women go insane annually in New York alone for want of sufficient food and clothing. Slavery far worse than that of the negro before the war, serfdom far worse than that which ever existed in mediaeval Europe, binds down these helpless creatures. Do you wonder that there are in America as vast armies of out- cast women as in any country on earth that hundreds of thousands of these victims, ground down by competition to the point of starvation, in misery and degradation, yield to temptations which give them food, clothing, shelter? "If you have tears to shed prepare to shed them now." You would find that all you had heard about American men working only that the women of their families could have "heaps" of money to spend is like all the other myths, for you would ascertain that while the women in New York spend $40,000,000 for such neces- saries as dresses, the men spend on alcoholic drinks and tobacco alone, almost $100,000,000 ; upon their palatial clubs (to which no woman 87 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN belongs) sports, and such mentionable luxuries about $60,000,000 more; and that (in a whis- per) all this is a mere bagatelle to what they spend on the "unmentionable."* (Laughter. A voice: "Poor, virtuous paragons!" Another voice: "You have buried our last illusion.") Amen! I feel sure you now agree with me that democ- racy has added nothing to woman's power, in- fluence, opportunity that our sex has not gained thereby financially, politically, legally, socially, nor been blessed therein by association with a more sober, more chaste, more unselfish manhood than elsewhere and that all women therein have lost forever the distinctions, hon- ours, favours, glories, powers, opportunities, which belong to some of the sex in an aristoc- racy, to enough at least to make it quite re- spectable to be publicly classed with women. (Laughter.) I feel sure our young friend will never again ask me, "Why do so many American women seek to live in aristocracies?" You cannot find an *The same ratio holds throughout the country. 88 REPUBLICS w. WOMAN ambitious woman in any monarchy who wishes to live in a republic. Millions of women in republics would gladly desert their governments, if their freedom from family ties admitted of such a step. There is a true saying (which originated in America by the way) that "every woman is at heart an aristocrat." This arises from that strongest impulse of nature, self- preservation (as well as a desire for sex-preser- vation) and insures woman's lasting allegiance to aristocratic institutions. The greatest misfortune that ever befel American women was that their colonies broke away from English rule, for they must always desert their native land, kith and kin, and live under a foreign flag in order to gain the super- ior sex-recognition which a republic denies them. In every aristocracy large numbers of women always have greater power, authority, and op- portunity than the vast majority of men, but in a democracy (even with the ballot) no class of women will ever possess authority, oppor-j tunity, or power higher than its lowest classes 89 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN of males. I grant that woman generally has not grown in aristocracies as she should have done but there is nothing inherent in such in- stitutions to prevent her growth; her condition therein is like the grain of wheat buried for thousands of years with a mummy, grain which grows and blossoms when the necessary condi- tions are furnished. But woman's condition in a republic is like that of a grain of sand, which can never grow and blossom, whatever condition may be furnished, as it has no inherent germi- nating qualities. I feel sure no one can look into these matters as deeply as I have done, without deciding that there is no government which gives woman such scope for her ambition as an aristocracy; for differentiation, that law of all-enduring pro- gress, growth and aspiration, is the inherent law of European monarchies. I beg you never to let anybody persuade you to believe that it is the comparative youth of the American Republic which causes these dispar- agements, for this is not true. (Voices: "So, sol") New Zealand, and West Australia are 90 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN young enough to be its great grand-children, and yet women therein enjoy not only all the rights, privileges, liberties political, legal, civil and social of women in the oldest communities, but they enjoy as well all the distinctions, hon- ours, recognitions, favours, glories and powers. The true reasons are that New Zealand and West Australia are the arteries of an aristoc- racy; and that every republic is inherently a masculine monopoly, as dangerous to woman's future as the Upas tree to life. (Cheers and prolonged applause.) THE SIMILARITY OF THE THREE "ISMS" I have striven to show you woman's position in a democracy because you had already right- fully agreed, before you ever saw me, that its conception of our sex would be preserved, should your ideas of society prevail. As your ideals are emanations from republicanism, I know that you ladies are either socialists or anarchists. I have not presumed to ask which, nor shall I do 91 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN so, but I think I have rightfully surmised that you lean toward anarchism. I have never for an instant thought you were the especial devotees of republics, but I have gone minutely into such government to prove to you that the promises held forth to our sex by theoretic institutions cannot be relied on. (A voice: "And I believe you are correct!") Socialism only claims to be the economic com- plement of democracy and every thinker con- cedes that beyond democracy there is only anarchy. If you will reason all this out you will see how absolutely correct are these asser- tions and how close to republicanism are anarchy and socialism or that it would be impossible to go six inches beyond a republic without en- countering socialism, and that a foot farther on you must inevitably meet anarchism. Or, as Josiah Strong, a most popular American writer, says, "Beyond republicanism there is only an- archism," and nobody is mad enough to attempt to contradict him. I read very hurriedly (never expecting to quote the same at the time) several years ago, 92 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN an article in a review which asserted that the American Republic is the sire of both socialism and anarchism. The author claimed that he knew these three "isms" in their correct connotation, could correctly define each, was thoroughly con- versant with the teachings of all, and that it was on account of his intimate acquaintance with them that he so readily traced their kinship. He farther said, "I know that anarchism would destroy all powers of government and that socialism would multiply its powers; but these three 'isms,' although they differ upon minor points, have aims which are one and would unite to repel a common foe." He proved his asser- tions by showing how the American Republic, hiding behind the Monroe Doctrine, repelled and resisted the establishment of monarchies in South America and gave constant protection to the anarchies therein and farther that even the most radical socialists agree that the republican drill has to make only one more turn when it will penetrate the socialistic strata." He said, more- over, "It is generally supposed that Prodhoun was the earliest modern philosophic anarchist, REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN but this is a mistake. It was Thomas Jefferson, the author of the American Declaration of Inde- pendence (which is the very keystone of the re- publican arch and without which the entire structure would fall) and he preceded both Prodhoun and Fourrier or Owen (founders of Socialism) from a fourth to a half of a century. Thomas Jefferson was the very first to enunciate an ideal of political society which is anarchy pure and simple, and there has never been any other definition given of it. He indicated the goal of all government and law as a social order in which there would be no government, no laws upon Statute Books, and wherein every citizen would be a self -governed unit. The real found- ers of the Republic believed that the true work of society is to do away with any government, and although they believed this, they founded a government which in every respect, except one, (and this is provided for) was a socialistic com- munity and all that socialism claims as its ideal." But it is entirely immaterial whether you be- lieve all this or not. The study of a republic will, I feel sure, convince you that our sex can- 94 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN not rely upon the promises held forth by theo- retic institutions. To my mind any woman who, after thoroughly studying a republic, can de- lude herself into believing that either socialism or anarchism will be more scrupulous in keeping its promises to our sex than it has been, is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum ; she fails to remem- ber "the apple does not fall far from the tree." As I wanted to convince you like conditions will always produce like results, I felt that by demonstrating the characteristics of a republic, I could clearly show you what our sex may ex- pect from either socialism or anarchism. I felt that an acquaintance with democracy would cure you forever of a belief in the masses of men, of faith in their mental or moral capa- bilities, and of trust in their unselfish friendship for your sex. I felt that when I got through with democracy you would have just as little faith left in theoretic institutions as as well as I have. (Laughter.) That you would agree with me "the game is not worth the candle," and that you would detect that the pet you seek is of the identical species as that caught by republi- 95 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN can women the Vulture, instead of the Bird of Paradise. Anarchism is the greatest delusion and the most impractical scheme of society ever ad- vanced, and one that cannot possibly endure until countless centuries have evolved semi-angels or beings who are as much higher than men, as men are higher than monkeys. It fails to note that well-working institutions cannot be formed out of ill-working humanity, and that the nature of the aggregate cannot be better than the average of its units. While "mere men" continue to exist, anarchism could only mean, for women, chaos and absolute terrorism. The results of socialism (which means having to live under a centralized officialism, holding in its hands the entire resources of the community and having behind it whatever amount of force it found requisite to carry out its decrees) would be an unendurable slavery. Such a consolidated organization would be absolutely irresistible and the result would be a despotism exceeding any so far experienced by our sex. Socialism and anarchism are only dreams 96 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN phantoms of the imagination. Their castles of happiness and content, of virtue and unselfish- ness would dissolve like the similar visions of republicanism, on awakening to real life and the practical experience of earth. (Cheers.) I can speak more feelingly, and may I say, more understandingly, on these subjects than al- most any person who might have addressed you, for, it was an illustrious kinsman of mine* who wrote the first distinctively American verse ever written to prove that a republic is the noblest, most unselfish, purest government on earth. And a great-grandmother of mine believed as devoutly in republicanism as some people do to-day in socialism or anarchism; her grand- father wrote her from England (during the *Joel Barlow (born 1755), considered by his biogra- phers to be one of the few versatile men among the greater figures of the post-revolutionary times. His prose writings contributed largely to the success of republicanism in America and France. His verse it was which first gave American poetry a standing in Europe. He was the first American cosmopolite, and he twice used his great influence successfully to avert foreign wars from his country. (See any standard English or American Encyclopedia.) 97 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN American Revolution, at the time when the American Colonies were freeing themselves from British rule) urging her to be loyal to the Moth- er Country, telling her that democracy was a chimera which meant for women a loss of the dis- tinction they possessed as subjects of a mon- archy, without giving them any corresponding advantages in exchange But she, poor mis- taken woman, reasoned that institutions founded upon such expressed terms of fraternity, equal- ity and freedom, could not go wrong, and wom- an's position therein could only be ideal. She argued that men who were willing to cross the valley and shadow of death to establish such lofty principles would found a government as solid as the Rock of Ages, and one whose jus- tice would only be a little lower than that of Paradise. Yet, you have seen the disastrous results of all these high-flown theories for wom- en, and in far less time than I have taken to tell you of them, I could prove to you that they have been equally disastrous for men but, I have promised to only speak of our own sex and I must not digress. 98 KEPUBLICS vs. WOMAN Now, let us go back and again examine the republic and see more of its traits in order to better grasp what women would realize from either socialism or anarchism and to know how far our sex can rely upon theoretic promises. I will begin my illustrations by repeating detached portions of the "American Declaration of Inde- pendence," "Bill of Rights," and "The Consti- tution," as written by the very founders of the American Republic and which give the first utterances. "We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all human beings are created equal"; "that just governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed" ; "that taxation without representation is tyranny"; yet that government has during its entire his- tory taxed women without representation, gov- erned and ruled without her consent, and has punished, imprisoned, tried, and fined her for attempting to put these principles into prac- tice. That constitution guaranteed a trial "by jury of one's peers," yet woman was not allowed a jury of her peers, and at times was refused a jury at all; then it further guaranteed "no Bill 99 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN of Attainder should ever be passed" yet it attainted all the women of the nation by placing the word "male" into that very same Constitu- tion, and thereby made sex a crime and with that one word it wiped away and utterly de- stroyed for American women every right their sex had gained for centuries. Could promises and practices be farther apart? Could theory and result be farther asunder? Have socialists or anarchists made more devout or alluring promises to our sex? Believe me, the result will be the same to women whenever theories are established. (Voices: "True! true!") Every political speech ever uttered at every political meeting ever held in the Republic, and every politician who has ever publicly spoken them, has given vent to these exact words (dif- ferently arranged each time, of course, to be more effective.) "Ours is the only nation builded on freedom, bulwarked by justice, and guided by the higher sense of right. Wherever oppression, injustice, or despotism weigh upon any people, they turn their eyes to this land of 100 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN freedom. Our Republic is the politico-religious handmaid of Providence it is a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night, and a beacon of light at all times to the liberty-loving people of the entire globe." (A voice: "Are they not modest?" Laughter.) "Ours is the only flag in all the world on which is written in reality Liberty and Equality the grandest words in all the language of men! All who stand be- neath our flag are free the rights of all are equal and no privileges are accorded to one citi- zen above another. Our 'Declaration of Inde- pendence' announces the sublime truth that all power comes from the people and it makes every citizen a sovereign. The principle that all hu- man beings are created equal and should have equal rights is never disputed in this land of liberty, (A voice: "Oh, no, never!") this home of the free, this country of the brave." (Continued laughter.) "For the first time in all the ages there is perfect political equality for all beneath the one flag, for our forefathers, thank God, made the * Stars and Stripes'* wide *The American flag. 101 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN enough to cover us all alike. The cry of ex- pediency has bulwarked all tyrants and despots, but no cry born of expediency is ever allowed in America to take the place of our fundamental demands of equality and freedom. For this is the only nation which has had the courage to prove that the ballot box is the focus of all other rights, and that it is the Palladium, the safe- guard of all liberty. We are all equal here in the ballot that right which is the preservative of all rights, and all have the same right to self- government." (Shrieks of laughter.) Thank you, ladies, for your cheers and peals of laughter they convince me you now see the absurdity, vanity and hyprocrisy of it all. For I have shown you there are millions of women in the Republic who have no voice in the laws that govern them, have no self-government, have not a vote that right which is declared to be the preservative of all rights. Think of men having the audacity to make such assertions in a government where millions of women have no more political rights than the wild beasts of the forest; in a government 102 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN where millions of women are denied self-govern- ment, or the capacity for self-government; and which only contemplates their dependence and vassalage ! I have repeated those bombastic republican speeches to show you the absolute meaningless- ness of theoretic preachings; to convince you of the difference between such promises and ac- tions ; to prove to you the difference between such principles and practice; and to persuade you to believe that woman should not venture to lean upon such slender reeds. Believe me, for women to raise their hands against aristocracries is a piece of folly so great that in reality it becomes a crime. I beg you to hesitate before hopelessly allying yourselves to socialism or anarchism to first ask yourselves if you are willing to abandon conditions which have given some women powers, honours, distinc- tions (thus establishing a standard of respect for all women), and thereby to retrace your steps to the semi-barbarous position assigned to all women by the first of these theoretic institutions (the republic) to be largely tried, and which 103 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN foreshadows the other two (socialism and an- archism) ; to ask yourselves if you are willing to encourage conditions which will forever strip the imperial purple from every member of your sex, which will forever force every woman to abdicate a throne, which will forever snatch all sceptres of power from the hands of all femin- inity, which will forever rob every member of your sex of rank, eminence and authority, and which in exchange will make all women serfs to the lowest orders of manhood ; to ask yourselves if you are willing to aid in establishing institu- tions which this republican precedent proves will inevitably proclaim their contempt for wom- an and will repudiate their every promise to her when they gain power. I beg you to re- member that what is promised in weakness is always forgotten in power. That should never be lost sight of. Then ask yourselves if the first of these theoretic institutions, a republic is more just to woman, more charitable to her in any manner, more honest toward her interests, than an aristocracy; if within its jurisdiction 104 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN the rights, privileges, liberties, reputations of our sex are more safely guarded than within the jurisdiction of monarchy. Then ask yourself what republicanism has done for woman compared with what mon- archy has done, where are its equal testimo- nials? Where are the names of women hon- oured in its public history? Where are its pub- lic monuments to such? Where are its equal evidences of regard for the distinctions, powers, favours, and glories of our sex? And immediately thereafter please remember that "beyond republicanism there is only an- archy." And I beg you never to forget what you yourselves had rightfully agreed upon be- fore I ever spoke to you viz. : that "a de- mocracy foreshadows the future of our sex in socialism and anarchism." You have naturally believed that the suffer- ings women endure in defence of socialism and ^anarchism would cause the founders thereof, should they prevail, to honour our sex accord- ingly. But remember what women suffered in l America: They first endured th^ 105 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN agonies and the perils of the deep to get there, then they stood the fires of the Indians, their ar- rows, rapes and tortures ; they bore all the mis- eries, anxieties, and privations of life in a sav- age land upon a new Continent ; they submitted to ostracism by English officialism, and to all the hells of warfare with a mighty nation cold, hunger, and often death. But the founders of the Republic ignored and ostracised the very women who had suffered and struggled at their sides. Under its very flag, which a woman first made and unfurled to the heavens, they did not recognize her equal rights; in its very govern- ment which woman had helped to establish, they did not grant her equal liberty. The discovery of the very continent upon which they estab- lished their theories was due to a woman,* and yet they made her sex captive therein. A wom- an could be Queen and could occupy the very zenith and pinnacle of all power in the govern- ment to which these women had belonged yet they stripped power from every member of her sex and made all bond-women to the lowest "Isabella of Spain. 106 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN races and orders of manhood. The male found- ers of the Republic gained for themselves fame, and these same men left the women founders thereof to lie in unmarked, unhonoured, unvis- ited graves. And such is the fate which awaits our sex in socialistic or anarchistic communities, for theorists generally know no other definition of gratitude than that given by Talleyrand: "Gratitude is a lively sense of favour to come." You think because socialists and anarchists have made such explicit promises to women, that they must keep them, should their theories prevail. But did not their very precursor, a re- public, fight for seven long and bloody years to establish the principles "that all human beings are created equal"; that "political power is vested in the entire people," and for the absolute independence of the individual? Yet, the in- telligent tax-paying women who lived under its shadow were as sternly denied these things as ;were criminals and idiots. Did not their very harbinger, a republic, pledge its sacred honour and call upon all the 107 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN gods to witness that it would found a democ- racy? Yet, when woman asked admission there- in as a unit of power, she was unblushingly re- fused, and was told that it had established for her a government of force founded upon mili- tary capacity.* Did not their very predecessor, a republic, declare to all mankind that "taxation without representation is tyranny"; that "just govern- ments derive their power from the consent of the governed" ; that "it is a government of the peo- ple, for the people and by the people." Was not "equality for all, privileges for none" its own peculiar creed? Yet it taxed woman with- out representation; governed her without her consent, asked or implied ; and only regarded her as of the people for the purpose of taxing her, of hanging her, and of placing upon her every disability never such when its glories, rights, honours, or distinctions were to be allotted. *She was constantly told that she could not vote be- cause she could not fight. This requisite was not de- manded of men. And the Republic failed to appreciate that she crossed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death for it every time she gave a son to the State. 108 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN Did not their very forerunner, a republic, in the sight of the whole world, emblazon over its portals "Equality for all who enter here?" Yet it placed its brand of political infamy upon woman, slammed its gates of liberty upon her, and forced her to wander an eternal out- cast. Did not their very inciter, a republic, an- nounce to the people of the entire earth that "All human beings are created equal?" Yet it refused woman equal admission within its con- stitution, justice within its scope and power. Did not their very instigator, a republic, avow to all the hosts on high that individual representation and equality for all, would be its basic principles ? Yet it reduced our sex to a political degradation unparalleled either in Pa- gan or Christian history, and to a lower public rank and civic position than that of woman in any other form of Occidental government. ( Voices : "What a shame !" ) Socialism and anarchism also promise woman great things, but should either prevail it too would speedily say "I find it inexpedient to car- 109 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN ry out my pledges."* And woman would again be sacrificed upon the altar of an impossible theory. If you fail to realize that the fate of your 'republican sisters awaits you in socialistic or anarchistic societies, you know nothing of the nature of the masses of men; nothing of their want of esteem for women as a class ; nothing of their lack of real friendship for women as a sex; nothing of the difference between their promises before they gain power and their ac- tions afterward. Place not your faith in this trinity its promises are as easily broken as a piece of thread, and are not w r orth the paper they are written on. (A voice: "I would not now give a penny for a library full of such promises!" Ap- plause. ) *This is ever said to the American women who ask the Republic to live up to its teachings. Several years ago a couple of American States sub- mitted the question as to whether or not the women of these States should vote. Not a Socialist could be found who had voted in favor of it; and when asked why they had not voted to give women the vote declared that they did not consider it expedient to do so. 110 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN Pray ask yourselves how could woman en- force the pledges of socialism and anarchism more than she has been able to enforce the promises of democracy. (A voice: "She could not do it!") No, she could not. And believe me, if there had been no aristocracy in existence for woman in the Republic to refer to and hold up as a model* (which she has constantly done "throughout its entire history), nothing would have prevented her speedy enforcement therein back to primeval conditions. There can be no doubt if any one of these three "isms" controlled the world entirely, that woman would enter upon a night without star or dawn; that her future would lie in darkness, dumb and joyless forever; that her fate would soon be arbitrarily fixed by powers superior to all logic, to all justice. (Cries of "Bravo! Bravo!") I think I have shown you that republicanism is the stone at the sepulchre of liberty, and it is only logical for us to conclude that either *She has always called attention to the fact that a woman can be the head of an aristocracy. Ill REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN socialism or anarchism would prove a grave for womankind from which there could be no resur- rection. ( Applause. ) I again implore you to re-read the "Ameri- can Declaration of Independence," and com- pare its promises to woman with anything ever promised her by either socialists or anarchists. When you have finished you will declare that nothing ever written held forth such hope that it is the Ark of the Covenant, carrying all pledges of freedom and development that it is the chart and compass of all human rights and opportunities. And when you have had those reflections please remember at once and forever that it forged new fetters for your sex and that this is a warning as unmistakable as that the twilight announces the approaching of night. (Cheers.) And I think, taking all things into considera- tion, it is only rational in us to conclude that, should any one of these three theories of society generally prevail, nothing would await our sex except humiliation and ostracism; and that future womanhood would have b"t one aspira- REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN tion, the aspiration for insensibility, Nirvana. ("Hear! Hear!") I, a daughter of democracy, declare to you that these three "isms" are the enemies of wom- an's influence, power and hope; that they are the assassins of her rights, the destroyers of her opportunities, and the foes of her happiness. (A voice: "You are right ! You are right !") If you ladies are still determined to become the benefactors of women, I know no better way than for you to go forth and publicly teach them first, that what is promised in weakness is always forgotten in power; second, that na- tions whose shibboleths are liberty, equality, fraternity, more ruthlessly stamp out these prin- ciples for their sex than others; and third, that if they cease to succor republicanism, socialism, anarchism, the species will soon perish and will be unable therefore to bring misfortune upon their female descendants down through the cen- turies to come. 113 REASONS, FACTS AND FIGURES REASONS, FACTS AND FIGURES WHEN I resumed my seat there were cries of "Don't stop!" "Do go on!" When quiet was restored I was in- troduced to all the members of my audience, and was invited to stay for tea. It is to me gratifying to report that within two months after I made this address, my friend had married, and the other ladies had long since returned to their homes, declaring they would thereafter be loyal subjects to their respective sovereigns. I talked with them at times during several days. They told me they had been clan- destinely listening to speeches and reading books upon theories of society, until they were so fired! thereby, and had became so imbued with such teachings, that they were willing to endure all the risks and privations incident to their cir- culation ; and I caught them only in time to pre- vent their joining a secret alliance bent upon destroying aristocracies. Since the assassination of President McKJp- 117 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN ley by an anarchist, these ladies have all, without a single exception, again urged me so persist- ently to publish the speech I made to them, that I do so now in hopes of saving other women who are endorsing tenets which are so perilous to their sex. By far the greater part of the speech was extemporaneous, and had it not been for the "chief instigator," the very ringleader (the most prominent of that little gathering of wom- en) no verbatim report of it would have been preserved for she, being very suspicious of my motives in volunteering to address them, had a stenographic report made thereof, and it is this report which I publish (just as it was taken down, with the comments and criticisms thereon. ) When I made this speech, as I have before ex- plained, I was in a strange land, thousands of miles from home, and had to rely entirely upon memory for quotations, several of which I have not placed in quotation marks, nor ascribed to their authors (having forgotten in some cases who the authors were) and in several cases mak- ing free quotations, which of necessity are not 118 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN verbatim, although their meaning is not changed in the least. I had no assistance in gathering certain statistics and other data, except from that most invaluable little compendium of knowl- edge "The New York World Almanac," which I always carry with me. With the exception of a few things which I have since inserted, I pub- lish this speech practically in the impromptu and necessarily imperfect style in which it was spoken, fearing that if I polished, altered or changed it materially, it might lose the very something which was so convincing to that little gathering of ladies. At the same time I realize how much better it sounded than it reads, and that the most forcible part of every speech h lost to the readers thereof. I should like to save the women of Germany Who are deluded by the impractical promises of Socialism; of Russia, who are imperilled by the illusive promises of Nihilism or Anarchy; of Spain, Italy and Ireland, who are ensnared by the promises of Republicanism; and of South Africa, who resist the superior fate that awaits them as subjects of an Empire, 119 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN As "by their fruits ye shall know them" I urge the woman who believes in Anarchy to go to South America before trying to make con- verts to her beliefs. There she will see Anarchy as a daily experiment and in actual practice. If in three months she is not willing to live in any monarchy, and if she does not denounce the Mon- roe Doctrine for nurturing these vipers, I am the most mistaken person on earth. She will there find woman's position the lowest amongst any civilized people of the entire earth. And, as "by their fruits ye shall know them," I urge the woman who believes in either democ- racy or socialism to visit the Republic of the United States of North America, popularly called the "American Republic" (the country I live in) before trying to make converts to her beliefs. Let her first study its history and go back prior to its foundation. She will find that practically all the conditions of de- mocracy, and socialism were inherent in its in- stitutions. She will learn that the Republic bade fair to found an ideal society, and that no such opportunity will ever be given humanity 120 REPUBLICS w. WOMAN again to establish an Utopia; that the Repub- lic began upon a virgin soil, upon a new conti- nent ; that it was unhampered by traditions ; that there was no accumulated wealth; that the land was practically free to all; that there was abso- lute political, legal, commercial, educational, and business equality for all men therein; and that its constitution was the most grandiloquent in- strument ever written expressive of fraternity, equality, liberty, and justice. She will learn the founders of the Republic believed that wis- dom would sit in the Legislatures, justice in the Courts, and that all men would be controlled by liberty and love, by charity and justice; that they believed as every man would have the right to govern himself, as every man would be equal before the law, pauperism, crime, want, would disappear, and no man or class of men could ever arise therein to subjugate the masses. She will learn that the founders genuinely be- lieved that the Declaration of Independence "would lead to serene heights where dwell jus- tice and happiness, and where all that is fine in the soul of man would speedily grow and unfold 1*1! REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN thereunder into Divine loveliness." She would read a summary of the characters or character- istics of the people who settled America, and who were the real basis and origin of the Institutions. Julian Hawthorn writes: "The pilgrims came to America in obedience to a spiritual impulse, fend against all consideration of a material sort. They faced one another, man to man, and none desired any advantage over the rest. They had the instinct of order, but no craving for domin- ion. Whether religion, politics or industry were uppermost in their thoughts, their interests and aims were common. The soul was strong and mighty in those men, and to such a community the principle of each for all and all for each was a matter of course. They governed themselves, that is, they obeyed individually and collectively the dictates of justice, reason, and decency; and they chose administrators to carry out jobs given them in the common behoof. America was a socialistic community or an inevitable democ- racy." Yet she who investigates will find that this government (existing in a land thinly popu- 182 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN lated and of inexhaustible natural wealth) which a brief century ago was planned with all human prescience to be the home of the Free, where Liberty was to be supreme, where Justice was to be the only monarch, where Character was to be the only nobility, is to-day not only the most despotic and corrupt government in Christen- dom, but the one run in the interest of the few- est number of the people; that 62 per cent, of its wealth is owned by 1 per cent, of its popu- lation; that (in this nation of 80,000,000 peo- ple) less than 100 men control 51 per cent, of its wealth (the combined pirates of history were not equal to one of these) ; that the masses have placed over themselves as absolute and perpetual rulers (so long as the Republic endures) a handful of the most unscrupulous, arrogant, grasping, heartless brigands the world has ever known; that the masses have gained nothing in liberty, wealth, or independence, through a uni- versal ballot ; and that the advantages which they seem to have gained therefrom resulted entirely from the sparse population, salubrious climate, and inexhaustible natural resources of the coun- liEPUBLICS w. WOMAN try; that injustices, inequalities, corruptions ex- ist therein which would not be tolerated a day by an aristocracy ; that the penal code is its only standard of poh'tical morality ; that 99 per cent, of its politicians are leeches, barnacles, vam- pires, and that the personnel of its public men is far the lowest in Christendom; that, with exceptions so rare they but prove the rule, cul- tured and "honourable men are practically ex- cluded from any share in politics; that the Legislatures, both National and State, are com- binations of intrigue, corruption, despotism, prejudice, rapine and rascality; that no Chris- tian Ruler can so truthfully be called "Impera- tor" as its President ;* that its Government is as ruthless in conquest and dominion as Rome in the days of her greatest aggressiveness; that this nation, which was to be the world's exemplar of peace and mercy, is spending $400,000,000 annually upon war and its accoutrements and less than $200,000,000 upon education; that the personal liberty which everybody enjoys in an aristocracy, nobody possesses there, for there *Impersonal. 124s REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN is throughout the land a total disregard of indi- vidual rights; that the industrial problems, which are to benefit the masses, are not being solved there, but are being left to the aristocra- cies of Europe to solve; that its treatment of woman has been an unbroken infamy and treach- ery; that it has created no ideals to inspire or lift humanity no imperishable or immortal gems of poetry, prose, painting, sculpture, music, architecture, philosophy, or oratory ; and that its only sanctuary is "The Temple of Mammon," its only idol the "Golden Calf," for under the dogma of Democracy the spiritual of necessity dies, and the material only endures. She would plainly see that it has taken demo- cratic principles only a brief century to bring about these direful results for society, and that another century thereof would reduce the masses to a helplessness and hopelessness that they have not before known. She would implore all her sex to believe that only similar results could possibly befal society by the acceptance of either of the two theories (socialism and anarchism), and would beseech 125 REPUBLICS vs. WOMAN men to know that woman could expect nothing from any one of these three "isms" except a slow but inevitable suicide of her sex. 126 APPENDIX POLITICAL STATUS OF WOMEN THE RUSSIAN was the first govern- merit to grant any political recognition and rights to large numbers of women. SWEDEN in 1735 gave women tax-payers votes. FRANCE (a monarchy), about the year 1831, gave widows votes by proxy. This right the Republic took away from them. BRUNSWICK (Germany) in 1850 gave widows and unmarried women who owned prop- erty votes by proxy. PRUSSIA and WESTPHALIA in 1856 gave all women with property qualifications votes by proxy. GALICIA in 1866 gave women tax-payers votes by proxy the married women through their husbands, the unmarried through elected proxy. SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN (Germany) in 1867 gave all women of required property quali- fications votes by proxy. APPENDIX Since then the right to vote has been ex- tended in Norway, Sweden, Russia, England, Prussia and Austria; while municipal suffrage has been granted to women in England, Scot- land, Wales, Ireland, Norway and Canada; and complete suffrage to all women (numbering 1,500,000) in the Isle of Man, New Zealand, New South Wales, South Australia, West Aus- tralia, and Tasmania. The States of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho grant women full suffrage Wyoming, in 1890, being the first State in any re- public in the world to give women complete suffrage. In republics the right of women to vote lags far behind the right of women to vote in other civilized governments ; indeed it is to be doubted if any republic will ever grant women generally the right to vote. For example in a white popu- lation of 60,000,000 in the British Empire, 5,000,000 women have more liberal suffrage than have 500,000 women in the American Re- public of 80,000,000 people. And in a popula- tion of 60,000,000 people in the British Empire, 130 APPENDIX l,5UU,uOO woinen have fuller suffrage and great- er political power than have 150,000 women in the American Republic of 80,000,000 people. Within a given population of 160,000,000 people in European aristocracies, 10,000,000 women possess more liberal municipal suffrage than do 1,000,000 women in a combined popu- lation of republics of 160,000,000 people. The woman who seeks equality between the sexes makes the mistake of ber life in seeking such in a republic. Before the American government was es- tablished, women begged that this new gov- ernment should fulfil the promise of the Revolution, viz. : No taxation without individual representation. Mrs. Adams (the wife of a future President), wrote to her husband to the Continental Congress, imploring him to see to it that women were recognized by the Republic as units of power, and that the men be not given arbitrary power over women (which their having exclusive use of the ballot meant). And from Virginia and Maryland went protests from wom- en against women being excluded from political 131 APPENDIX power. The most famous of these women were : A sister of the famous General, R. H. Lee, and Miss Brent, of Maryland. Other educated Southern women, headed by Mrs. Brevard, of North Carolina, asked that the new government should give women political power. Miss Liv- ingston, a distant cousin of Philip Livingston (one of the signers of the American Declaration of Independence), a cultured Northern wom- an, wrote to the Philip Livingston mentioned that it would be a pity for the new government to succeed if it did not give women political recognition, as the women would, otherwise, oc- cupy a far lower position therein than they had previously held as subjects of England. She prophesied that political recognition not being granted to women they would, as time went on, constantly grow more helpless in the hands of their masters and rulers. She said that no wom- an on the American continent with an ounce of brains would have lifted her voice against Eng- lish supremacy if she had for a moment thought that the new government would ostracise and ignore her sex. APPENDIX THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE Although prior to 1776, when the American colonies were subject to England, the Americans were denied the right to send representatives to the English Parliament, the Colonies had local and municipal self-government. The Declara- tion of Independence starts out by asserting that all human beings are born equal and with inalienable rights to liberty; and that, to serve these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever a gov- ernment becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to abolish it. At the close the States declare they will carry these pledges into effect and for this end they aver "we mutually pledge our sacred honour." The government which was founded upon this document considers this same Declaration of Independence, when used by women an "in- 133 APPENDIX cendiary document." . The Republic offered, AS its only excuse for coming into being, that it meant to establish "equality for all," yet it is ever ready to brand as a traitress every wom- an therein who objects to being placed by it under the absolute and irresponsible despotism of millions of rulers. The Republic* was founded upon the principle that people have a right to overthrow a government based upon any other standard than liberty and equality for all its members yet it is ever ready to brand as a traitress every woman who objects to being placed by it upon the identical public plane she would occupy as a subject of Turkey. QUOTATIONS AND SUMMARIES (The following are quotations and summaries from the writings and speeches of noted Ameri- cans and others. A few of them being quoted from memory, may deviate slightly verbally from the original, but in no case is the sense altered or modified.) APPENDIX OPINIONS OF WOMEN The American Republic dishonours woman, and it should expect no woman to honour it. Mrs. Z. Wallace (Mother of General Lew Wal- lace). To the everlasting shame of the American Re- public, a delegation of ladies from the aristoc- racies of England, Russia, Sweden and Norway, appeared before its Congress, February, 1902, to implore it to pass a National enactment which would force the States of the Union to cease classing women politically with their criminals and lunatics, with their mental and moral out- casts. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, in introduc- ing the speakers, said : "Although I have always lived in this Republic, having been a resident of four different States, a tax-payer, and able to pass every qualification, I have never been per- mitted to vote for the smallest thing, and yet I have the privilege of introducing to the Ameri- can Congress a Russian woman who has voted in her country ever since she was twenty-one years of age." 135 APPENDIX Madam Freedland said: "Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen of the Congress In a country like Russia, with an absolute government, there is but little suffrage for either men or women, but what there is is equally shared by men and wom- en. We do not (men or women) vote for our Czars, but about all the municipal officers are elected by the votes of real-estate owners, regard- less of sex, and this is a far greater justice than is shown to American women. Russia has the most liberal laws in Europe regarding the civil capacity of her women. For centuries marriage has not changed the rights of a wife to her prop- erty; the husband has no legal right over the property of the wife, and the wife is in no re- spect under the husband's guardianship." Mrs. Ewald, of Sweden, said : "I stand before the legislative power of America, representing a country where women have voted since the seven- teenth century, and Swedish women voted before any man upon American soil ever voted. Our men granted votes to women without women ever requesting the same. The tax-payers of Sweden, irrespective of sex, can vote. Women have voted 136 APPENDIX since 1736 lor every office for which men vote on the same terms, except in the second chamber of the Riksdage." Mrs. Drewson, of Norway, said: "All women in Norway who pay taxes on an income of $100 a year have municipal suffrage upon exact terms as the men of that land." Mrs. Fenwick-Miller, of England, said: "Women have the municipal suffrage in Eng- land upon the same qualifications as men." Mrs. Goldstein, of Australia, said: "Women have full suffrage in New Zealand, West and South Australia, and the Isle of Man, in the British Empire, and municipal suffrage in Can- ada, England, Ireland and Scotland." These ladies then pleaded with the Congres- sional Committee (which had been appointed not to listen to any of their speeches) to grant the rights to American women upon the like terms and conditions upon which Congress had granted such rights to the negro men of the land. "English women have a much greater oppor- tunity than their American sisters to engage in 137 APPENDIX public and political affairs. The English wom- an occupies nearly all her working hours with meetings and functions of various kinds, many of them of a semi-public nature. In politics the influence of English women is direct, whereas it is so limited among American women as to be inappreciable." Mrs. Cornwallis-West. NEED FOR REFORM I call the attention of the Legislature to the desirability of gradually extending the sphere in which the suffrage can be exercised by women. Message of President Roosevelt, when Gover- nor of New York. Man, who tramples on the rights of others, is the greatest stickler for his own. Liberty being feminine, modest man naturally imagines that, like everything else feminine, Liberty be- longs entirely and only to him. L. de V. Matthewman. Women in republics have no genuine public influence. Men flatter them into believing they have in order to keep them good, just as they 138 APPENDIX tell children about Kris Kringle to keep them good. A. Ranking. Woman has ever been the slave of slaves. I demand that she shall be free and placed upon an equality with man. Why should not men be decent enough in the management of politics of the country for women to mix with them? Let us give woman the opportunity to care for her- self since men are not decent enough to seek to care for her. R. G. Ingersoll. Woman stands in the position of the negro slave prior to his emancipation, she has no voice in her own government, nor in fixing the stand- ard by which she is governed and controlled. She is a dependent morally, mentally, financial- ly and physically. It is the height of ignorance to say that women control society and make the moral standards that govern it. They do noth- ing of the kind. Financial dependents and po- litical nonentities create no standards. They receive them ready made. The merest modicum of reason will supply the proof of this. No subject class ever yet made public opinion either for itself or for others. It always must reflect 139 APPENDIX the sentiments and opinions of its rulers. Who enacts the double standard of morals upon which all social sentiments rest? No sane or reason- able person claims it is woman-made. Woman is the mirror which reflects man-made pictures^ but she cannot be accused of being the creator of the original of the reflection. ... A sovereign race cannot be born of subject moth- ers. With an equal social, moral, financial and political status for men and women, surely the relations of the sexes will be sweet, noble, holy and pure; and there will be no ideal marriages until legally, morally and financially there sit at the hearthstone two equals. H. H. Gardner. THE THREE "!SMS" Anarchy is a symptom of disease, which dis- ease is democracy. G. Langtoft. There is nothing beyond Republicanism but Anarchism. Rev. Josiah Strong. The tendency of Socialism is more and more to ally itself with democracy; in fact it claims to be the economic complement of democracy. Encyclopedia Britannica. The natural outcome of republican govern- 140 APPENDIX merit is discontent, unrest, instability, finally revolution. Ex-Secretary of the Navy Her- bert. A democratic system of government is at the mercy of ignorance, caprice, passion, and above all, envy, which, Longfellow says, is the chief vice of republics. G. Langtoft. Socialism as a system has this radical diffi- culty It promises great results without an ade- quate cause. Why should people give all they possess into the hands of the community? If all men were angels or came again under some strictly absolute government, such as that of the Incas, or again under the influence of some wild revolution, such doctrines might overcome whole communities, as a cyclone does; but, un- less human nature be changed, they would, like the cyclone, lose their power soon, and old habits would return. Archbishop Corrigan. CONDITIONS IN AMERICA In America the "sovereign people" is fast be- coming a puppet which moves and speaks as wire-pullers determine; and while the forms of freedom are retained, the substance is practical- 141 APPENDIX ly lost. America proves that "paper constitu- tions" do not work as they are intended to work. Herbert Spencer. We boast of American freedom, yet, in what- ever walk of life we are, every man, woman and child of us pays tribute to the few enormously rich men here who control every avenue of trade. In the moment of the Nation's awakening to a full realization of the condition of American labour, the world's history will not furnish a scene of equal awfulness. Liberties in America have one by one been filched from the masses, and we are in reality no longer a free and in- dependent people. Francis A. Adams. If some new element is not introduced into America, the life of the Republic will soon ter- minate. Herbert Spencer. The immigration officers at the American ports continually hear the statements from working men that immigrants from England, Ireland, and all the northern countries of Eu- rope, had better remain at home, as the work- man there is comparatively better off than in America. The American Federationalist. APPENDIX The misgovernment of New York City is a fact known to the whole world. In Germany, England, Holland, Sweden, Belgium, and other European countries, city government is improv- ing constantly and rapidly. Councils, boards and officers are constantly of higher character and ability, and the comfort and welfare of the people are more and more the object of the solicitude and of the efforts of the officials. In America, on the contrary, our cities copy New York, and great cities like Chicago, Philadel- phia, St. Louis, Minneapolis and others, im- prove on her lessons (or in other words are even more corrupt than New York). Frank Moss. At present we have government by the or- ganization, for the organization, at the expense of the people. Instead of forces working for the liberty, prosperity and happiness of the people, we have corruption in root and branch of our municipal service a monstrous con- spiracy of loot, embracing every department of public life. Hon. John D. Crimmins. There have been bad governments of many sorts and names, but the form of bad govern- 143 APPENDIX ment under which New York is ruled to-day is the worst of all it is a government of toughs. New York Sun, 1901. Our poor go to their tenements, where evil lurks in the darkness at every step, where innocence is murdered in babyhood, where mothers bemoan the birth of a daughter as a last misfortune, where virtue is sold into slavery, where the word home is a bitter mockery. A working man at Prof. Felix Adler's meeting in New York. The mismanagement of so many of our cities is the chief cause for speculation as to the permanency of the Republic. If Americans cannot govern themselves properly, how can they expect to govern others with justice? If they cannot see that even a street assessment is properly levied, or a police ordinance justly en- forced, what right have they to say anything about the destiny of the Filipinos or the future of the American sisterhood of nations? Ken- tucky Post. The fact is American liberty is found no- where outside of books. J. K. Henry. 144 APPENDIX Nowhere in the world is the line so rudely drawn between the rich and the poor, between the master and the menial, between the laborers and the idlers, as in America. Money is tyrant in this Republic as nowhere else, and men will do for money there what they will do for money nowhere else on earth. "America and the Americans." The liquor business is the greatest single fac- tor in American politics. Prof. S. Rabb. In America men enter politics without know- ledge, education or character; they live sump- tuously by it, and they emerge from it rich. They adroitly organize a mart and votes are sold as shares to the highest bidder. The politi- cal morals of the nation are so blunt that it can be truthfully said they have no existence; and both commercially and socially young men are educated to esteem money and money only. They hourly see men of doubtful antecedents, vicious lives and brutal propensities, sought after and courted, not only politically, but in business, in the highest social circles, and in the home. They soon learn that nothing is so des- 145 APPENDIX picable as poverty, and that the Penal Code is the only standard of morality. A Diplomat. It is true that the problems of American de- mocracy in the Nineteenth Century have not been such as to have left the student in an op- timistic mood. The spirit of the age with its Niagara-like current, ever drawing the best strength and thought of the country into the whirlpool of business competition; the atmos- phere of politics, with miasmatic influence poisoning the conscience, relaxing the moral fibre of so many men in public life, and making itself felt in the lowering of the vital tone of the whole nation these conditions are not con- ducive to the development of the highest type of manhood among us. New York Evening Post. Politics have been so befouled in America that respectable men are with great difficulty found willing to wade through the mire, and only rascals are supposed to want offices. As a na- tion we have made wonderful material progress, but in moral integrity, in all that goes to make a nation really and permanently great, America 146 APPENDIX has retrograded. D. W. Miller, in the Cincin- nati Commercial-Tribune. The test of national prosperity is not in the multiplication of millionaires, but in the increase of independent freeholders who own their homes and call no man master. Judged by this stand- ard we dare not boast in America of industrial progress or social betterment. Henry B. Blockwell. America is to-day under the tyranny of a plutocracy, the most intolerable tyranny of which the mind can conceive. New York Jour- nal. America's coldness to the moral issues in- volved in politics combined with a world-wide reaction against democracy, makes it unlikely that any considerable portion of the American people will ever seriously bestir themselves again in the negroes' behalf. Never as to-day since the close of the Napoleonic wars has there been so little belief in self-government. Rev. Gar- rett, in the Atlantic Monthly. Assisting this movement to imperialism is a certain disappointment with representative, not 147 APPENDIX to say republican institutions. They have failed to answer the hopes of their advocates. In America the cost of government is constantly rising and politics are not growing in repute. Constituencies are becoming so enormous, the number of elective offices so great, and elections so frequent, that in despair we show a tendency to leave government in the hands of any one who will attend to it for us, and the stronger the hands the better. General Lloyd Bryce. The right of privacy does not exist in America. Such is the decision of our Court of Appeals in 1902. New York World. Our platforms are constructed for the pur- pose of vote catching and become apocryphal after the vote is counted. Memphis Commer- cial Appeal. New York is the most commercial city of a commercial age. Its very name is flat. What has it ever been noted for but its markets? Athens and Rome and Jerusalem carry with their names recollections of notable deeds, but the name of New York is insipid. What use is there for God in a land of idols? Felix Adler. 148 APPENDIX How long will it be before our public men become but a race of Medicean princes without the learning or the arts of Florence, and the Presidential chair itself a simple com- modity to be knocked down to the highest bid- der? Henry Watterson. PROFESSION VERSUS PRACTICE The pre-eminent significance of the Spanish- American War lies in the fact that it has un- covered the essential humbug of the Declara- tion of Independence, and has demonstrated to the world the pretence and insincerity of Ameri- ca's devotion thereto. There should now fol- low a cessation of vain and inconsistent prating over the "consent of the governed" and other such claptrap phrases of the demagogues that we are accustomed to declaim on patriotic oc- casions, and to incorporate into our political platforms for the purpose of catching votes. America is engaged in building an empire and is to-day more than ever an imperialistic nation. But the American will not admit that the basic principle of his empire is the domination of 149 APPENDIX force, ibr he has an inherent hostility to call- ing things by their right and truthful names. Professor Dickson, in the Arena. Atrocities in the Philippines Americans who shudder at reading of the cruelties of the Duke of Alva in the sixteenth century, tolerate the perpetration of equal atrocities under the American flag in this twentieth century. New York Herald. A country like the United States of America,j founded on a struggle of our Revolutionary fathers for liberty and independence, should never be at war except for the defence of its honour and integrity. Cincinnati Enquirer. I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn. The more you kill and burn, the better you will please me. Order of General Smith to his soldiers before they set out on an expedition. [The General was sent by the American gov- ernment to the Philippine Islands to instil Christianity into the natives.] They say Cuba is free and that we liberated her. Is Cuba free? I say no! She is simply , and the question is whether she is an- 150 APPENDIX nexed for freedom and independence or for plunder and oppression. America has been pro- lific in euphonious words while it grasped at material advantages. The fact that Cuba is calling out to us to-night in a voice of suppli- cation, instead of making a demand, proves she is not free that she is merely one of our territories. Hon. Wm. J. Bryan. I am opposed to the course of the American] government because it is steeped in cant and hypocrisy. There is something fine in the un- similated strength of a wild beast, but when a nation steals the soil from under your feet and enslaves you to its own uses, and in the mean- time prates of Christianity and civilization and benevolent intentions, it turns the stomach of an honest man. We have lied to Cuba point blank and misled the Filipinos. Yet we go on} bragging of our philanthropic work as if false- hood were bred in our bones. I am opposed to the American policy, it distracts our attention and our material resources from the problems which beset us at home. We should reform our- selves before we undertake to reform others, or 151 APPENDIX undertake to preach a crusade. How can we, with our slums, our lynchings, our race prob- lems, our labor questions how can we decently assume to teach mankind? Americans are the only civilized people who practise burning at the stake, and we wish to soften the manners of the isles of the sea ! Ernest Crosby. Among the consequences are America's dis- regard for the rights of free speech and press; censorship and suppression of news; the growth of military spirit with its glorification of brute force, and branding as traitors those who pro- test against such. Bolton Hall. The Declaration of Independence has become an "incendiary document" in the Philippine Islands, and an exponent of exploded eigh- teenth century ethics in America. Thomas El- mer Will. If to anyone such a forecast seems visionary, let him ask himself whether, a few years ago, he could have dreamed that the principles of the Declaration of Independence would be disre- garded and derided in America. Professor Goldwin Smith. 152 APPENDIX There would be no cause for surprise if Rou- mania should petition the Powers of Europe to use their influence to break up the habit of burn- ing negroes alive in the United States. Kansas City Star. The history of Hayti, since it began to work out its own destiny, is that of a steady reversion to heathen savagery. ... If a foreign Power should suggest that a refusal on our part to clean up Hayti or to let any one else attempt that Augean labor would be making the Monroe Doctrine a plea to justify the attitude of the dog in the manger, we really do not see what good answer we could return to such an expos- tulation. New York Times. UNPLEASANT CONTRASTS, The individual in England has greater *ree- dom of speech and action, and more privileges than the individual has in America. In Ameri- can cities there is an extent of petty officialism and dictation that the English people would not endure a day. The Philistine. 153 APPENDIX In America, the so-called "land of the free," our people (the Jews) find a worse tyranny than that from which they came, for to our former oppressors, our women at least, were sacred. Reported by Jacob A. Riis. "Mr. Maddison, secretary of the Ironfound- ers' Society of England, said the American iron- founders may turn out more product than the British workers, but this is at the cost of shorter lives, the average life of the British ironfound- er being fifty-four years, as against forty-four years for the American ironf ounder." "One difference between the Government of Great Britain and the Government of the United States is this: "The Government of Great Britain is really run in the interest of the public, financially and otherwise. "The Government of the United States, as everybody knows, is run largely in the interest of big financial concerns, trusts and corpora- tions." New York Journal. New York, with half the population of Lon- don, has 56 per cent, more murders in an aver- 154 APPENDIX age year. New York World Table of Statis- tics. When Mrs. Stanton called her first Woman's Convention in the Republic, the men had mis- represented (not represented) its women for nearly three-quarters of a century. The fol- lowing shows woman's exact status therein. "The American Government has never per- mitted any woman to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise. "It has compelled her to submit to laws in the formation of which she had no voice. "It has withheld from her rights which it gave to the most ignorant and degraded men both natives and foreigners. "Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leav- ing her without representation in the halls of legislation, it has oppressed her on all sides. "It has made her, if married, in the eyes of the law, civilly dead. "It has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns. 155 APPENDIX "It has made her morally an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with im- punity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obediance to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and pur- poses, her master the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty and to administer chastisement. "It has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes, and to whom the guardianship of the children shall be giv- en, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of woman the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands. "After depriving her of all rights as a mar- ried woman, if single and the owner of prop- erty, it has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it. "It has monopolized all the profitable em- ployments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration, 156 APPENDIX "It has closed against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction. In theology, medicine, and law she is not known. "It has denied her the facilities for obtaining thorough education all colleges being closed against her. "It has created a false public sentiment by sanctioning a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from Society are not only tol- erated but deemed of little account in men. "It has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah Himself, claiming it as its right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to Him. "It has endeavored, in every way it could do to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life." TRUSTS AND TARIFFS Such a condition as exists in America to-day, which allows a confederation of corporations to get a monopolv on any article of necessity, is 157 APPENDIX' not tolerated in any other country. McDer- mott (Member of Congress). The population of New York State (which is the richest in America) in 1898 was estimated at 7,000,000, so that on the face of the returns it is proven that one-third of the population of New York State are relative paupers and sub- sist on charity in some form or other. Russell, Statistician. No fact is more clear than that by means of America's protective tariff, the citizens of our Republic are being shamefully plundered in order that a few men may become all-powerful. The fact that a trust can afford to sell its steel $6 per ton less in Europe than it demands of our people is conclusive evidence that the tariff is no longer levied to protect labour, but to foster monopoly. The Arena. Through the American protective tariff all foreign competition is either greatly restricted or entirely prevented; but when in place of home competition we have an industrial mo- nopoly which permits those having control of it to dictate whatever prices they please, then 158 APPENDIX by the action of the Congress of the United States of America an entirely uncalled for and monstrous privilege is accorded to these combi- nations and they are given the right to plunder the American people at their will. Bostoij Herald. The people's alleged representatives are noth- ing more than the humble errand boys of the trusts. New York Journal. INSTANCES OF EQUALITY Plutocracy on the one side; proletariat on the other ; never in the world's history could this have arisen on such a scale as is now apparent in the American Republic. H. M. Hyndman, in Wilshire's Magazine. On every side (in America) there is an almost wanton display of luxury and splendour. Yet, poor, miserable beings that we are, we are not able to establish among ourselves a pure and decent civic government. Ex-Mayor A. S. Hewitt of New York. The Japanese woman is always treated with a respect, tenderness, and consideration, beyond the conception of the common people of Ameri- i!59 APPENDIX ca. History shows that of 123 Japanese sover- eigns, nine have been women. From ancient times the Custodian of the divine Regalia has always been a virgin priestess. The chairs of public and private schools are almost always occupied by women to the exclusion of our men. Chujiro Kochi of Japan. Besjuk (Besjukoofschtschina), Russia, is a state made up of seven villages which are run by women, as each is presided over by a mayor- ess; the whole being under the superintendence of a woman who acts as president. There are women magistrates, women politicians, women preachers, in fact, every capacity in the state is filled by women. Russian News Item. PROPHECIES America will prove to be the shortest-lived of the great nations in the annals of history; a Sphinx, a Parthenon, one ode of Sappho, one line of Homer, one stanza of Shakespeare, one verse of Goethe, one bar of Beethoven, one stroke of Phidias, one touch of Angelo would save it from eternal oblivion; but it will leave 160 APPENDIX behind only a collection of coins, for money is its only God. Money, money only is the God worshipped in America, not with secret rites, but brazenly adored in Congress, in the home, in the market, and in the halls of justice. An American ex-Diplomat. I can see frightened American capitalists sending their money to Canada, to England, to Germany, to Russia, for safe-keeping; I can see the holders of American securities in Europe literally dumping them back upon the American market; I can see these 80,000,000 Americans in such a turbulent death-struggle as will awe the world, even the world which still hears the re-echoing shrieks and groans of the French Revolution. Thank God, my friends of Europe, you and I will not be there to witness it. "The Americans." At no very distant day the enormous indus- trial combinations in America will result not only in financial ruin to those interested but to the entire country as well. Russell Sage, per- haps the greatest individual capitalist in the country (his wealth being estimated at $100,- 161 000,000), in a statement to the New York Journal, regarding gigantic combinations and the consolidation of great industries. The few American magnates, ten years hence, will regulate the wage scales of skilled and un- skilled labor in every department of life ; will set the price upon all raw material, thus bridling the producer; will put their own price upon manufactured products; will absolutely control the banks; will dictate all legislation in their own interests, thereby hampering the courts; will curb the press so as to silence free speech and eliminate the possibility of complaint by ownership of interest; will extend their ramifi- cations to State and National politics, and suc- cessful candidates will be chosen by them long before conventions are held. This is an unmis- takable outline of a true American picture which he who runs may read. David Dudley Lynch. WOMEN AND THE BALLOT I know no argument for refusing the ballot to women that is not equally applicable to men. In America we are far behind England and 162 APPENDIX other countries of Europe in this as well as other just and beneficial legislation. Rev. Father Thos. Sully. American men ask: "Are not our legislators fathers, husbands, brothers, sons and there- fore are not the interests of women perfectly safe in their hands?" This argument would have more force, were it not so obvious that every legal oppression under which women ever suffered was sanctioned and enforced by fathers, husbands, brothers and sons. Lucy Stone. There is one cause for dispensing with the labour of women by our government, and substi- tuting that of men for it, which has not been given by the authors of the scheme it is that women have no votes, and men have. This is the only reason. Philadelphia Ledger. (When thousands of women were turned out of em- ployment by the American government.) Not a majority of any class, even of men, ever demanded the franchise. It will be granted to women when the majority of men can be brought to see that it is as much a woman's right as a man's, and when political exigencies 163 APPENDIX will allow them to vote according to their con- victions. Ida Husted Harper, in the New York Sun. If women are fit to rule in monarchies it is difficult to say they are not qualified to vote in republics. Hon. H. B. Anthony, U. S. Senator from Rhode Island. The Minneapolis Times was among the large number that declared : "We take occasion again to say that we favor woman suffrage whenever women want it not before." But how many women must first want it? Must the minority be forever denied representation because the majority do not desire it? Is that logical? Is it fair? Is it in accordance with the spirit of a Republic? Another expression which occurred over and over again was: "Women do not vote where they have the ballot." The papers repeat this like a parrot. It is absolutely false, and the figures to prove this assertion have been given again and again. There can be only one true test, and that is to compare the vote of women with that of men, where both have exactly the 164 APPENDIX same electoral rights. The only four States where this can be done show uniformly a larger proportional vote of women than of men; and the statistics of Australia and New Zealand give the same result. Ida Husted Harper. There are fewer social problems to be solved in the equal suffrage States than in any other part of America, and the States which deny woman the ballot can all take lessons in political purity from those four Rocky Mountain States where representative government is given a truer interpretation than elsewhere on this con- tinent. Avery C. Moore. In Wyoming, where the longest trial has been given full suffrage for women in America, the Census and Statistical Bureaus show that there are, in proportion to the population, fewer di- vorces, fewer insane, fewer drunkards, a larger birthrate, fewer outcast women, and less illiter- acy than in any other State in the Republic. Women have used the ballot with an intelligence and self -helpfulness far in excess of their use by men anywhere in America. Judge Davis. 165 APPENDIX WORKING WOMEN We have in America to-day an army of 6,000,000 white women who are forced to slave for a bare living. These women are deserving of the protection of our Constitution, but they do not vote and cannot get it; and our men of America do not secure it to them. When people speak of the advanced position of American women, they speak of the few, of the golf -play- ing minority; but I speak of the 6,000,000 who toil even harder than men, of those who are dependent upon themselves, of those who are driven to prostitution or suicide. Francis A. Adams. Director of Charities Harrison R. Cooley has been looking into the condition of working women. In the report which he has prepared from personal investigation and observation he avers that he is grievously surprised at the re- sult. The Director says: "To those who are per- mitted to see it, the tragedy of our modern in- dustrial and social system is appalling. The 166 APPENDIX cruel and unjust conditions really cause a ruin and degradation of life a hundredfold more than the things reformers are most prone to at- tack." New York Times. It is proposed by the American Federation of Labor that Congress shall forbid the employ- ment of women in any government place. The avowed purpose of this is to "inaugurate a pre- cedent for the removal of women from the everyday walks of life, the relegation of her to the home." But what if a woman has no home? What if she has no husband, or one who fails or is too lazy to provide for her? Is she to starve or worse? What conceivable reason is there then why she should not use her abilities in providing for herself? The right of every human being to make the most and the best of his or her capabilities is as indis- putable as the right to breathe. New York World. The women and children in the mill villages support almost entirely the vast majority of the men in such localities in the North and South Carolinas and in Georgia. In their native APPENDIX haunts in the hills and mountains the women do practically all the work. From an article copied by the Literary Digest. MAN AND WOMAN Since human beings first appeared upon this earth of ours, the endless strife of man and woman has been carried on the man against the woman, the stronger against the weaker, the pursuer against the pursued. Through the thousands of centuries, woman has been and still is the prey of man. R. Pyke. All men respond to a freemasonry of sex, and against woman they stand solidly together; in- dividually they may be fond of some particular woman or even of some women, but their loyalty towards their own sex as a sex, ever and always above the female sex, is a fact not to be denied. For a woman to expect man to liberate her is as senseless and idiotic as it would be for mice to expect cats to voluntarily cease to prey upon them. Man is woman's natural enemy, her implacable foe, and she will ever be his prey. Woman as a sex can no more trust man as a 168 APPENDIX sex, than mice as a species can trust cats as a species. (There are numerous cases where cats are trained to live with certain mice without preying on them, but these individual friend- ships do not make those cats the friends of other mice.) Thousands of Frenchmen marry Ger- man women, yet they hate all Germans; thou- sands of Germans marry Frenchwomen, yet they hate all the French people. Affection for cer- tain members of a sex, race, nation or species does not in the least indicate friendship for the others of that kind; nor does affection for an individual indicate either esteem or friendship for even that same individual, else slave-masters would never have sold into cruel bondage to other slave-masters the very women for whom they had entertained the deepest affection women who had repeatedly borne them children. Each husband avows that he entertains the greatest loyalty for one woman as a proof of his loyalty to womankind. Alas, if the truth were told, not even five of them in any hun- dred would dare make an oath in support of their assertions. If woman ever has a free body and 169 APPENDIX free mind, chainless hands and fetterless brains it will be through the efforts of her own sex through the freemasonry of woman. Man, when he became more refined, removed his iron chains from woman's wrists, and replaced them with chains of gold; preferring a more beauti- ful slave; when he became more refined he also removed his bird from an iron cage and placed it in a delicate cage of gilt but he destroyed its liberty, its right, to soar as effectually in one cage as in the other, just as woman in his gold chains is as effectually his slave as she was in his chains of iron. Karla V. Janseen. Women receive far more control and consider- ation than they ought to have ; aristocracies pay far too much attention to women. I do not be- lieve women should be given any political rights, nor that they should receive other than the merest rudiments of education. Count Tolstoi, the leading anarchist of the world. No reasonable mind will question that if a certain degree of progress is made when only; one-half of a people are permitted to develop themselves mentally and physically up to their 170 APPENDIX highest possible culture, just twice that progress may be made when the other half is allowed equal advantages. It is a popular delusion that American women have many, if not the same privileges as men. The conservative man ex- claims, "We worship them as angels"; and thoughtless women of affluence, and less fa- vored women in humbler positions, bidding for masculine applause, respond, "We have all the rights we want." Gallantry is mistaken for justice, and soft soap for equity. Even these exist only on the surface. They compose the cream that rises to the top of polite society, and this is fed only to the handsome, rich, and other- wise fortunate; all below is skim milk, and this is dealt out sparingly and grudgingly to toiling women, unhappy wives, and to all, indeed, who most need sympathy and help. But let no man who suddenly awakens to this injustice, suppose in his arrogance that he can give woman her rights. The very fact that men talk of allow- ing women this or that liberty is evidence in itself that authority has been usurped. As well might a pickpocket talk of giving a porte-mon- 171 APPENDIX naie to somebody from whom he had clandes- tinely filched it. I tell you, reader, we men have no rights to give woman; she possesses natural- ly the same rights that we do. If she does not enjoy them, someone is a robber. Who is the thief? Let him moke restitution with the full understanding that he is entitled to neither re- ward nor thanks. With all her physical disa- bilities, as compared with man, woman can ac- complish more for herself and her sex in this competitive world without his sympathy and with her freedom, than she can without her free- dom and with his sympathy and support. But whether she can or not is none of our masculine business, nor have we any right to stand in the path of her progress to discuss the possible ef- fect upon society if she be allowed to pass. Here again might is interposed to trammel right. There can be no question of expe- diency where one of justice is involved. The establishment of impartial rules of justice can never overthrow a social system that is grounded in truth, nor imperil the per- f a true republic. Let it be impressed APPENDIX upon the minds of the rising generation that man holds his superior position wholly in conse- quence of his greater physical strength ; that the same brute force which made her a salable com- modity in the early history of the world, makes her the plaything and foot-ball of man to-day; and if our children in the light of the twentieth century century have any justice, any filial love, or, both being absent, any sense of shame, the time draws nigh when the world-wide oppres- sion of woman will exist only as a disgraceful blot on the pages of human history. Dr. Foote. We know how small a number of reigning queens history presents in comparison with that of kings, but a far larger proportion of them have shown talent for rule than kings ! It is re- markable how many of these queens have been distinguished by merits the most opposite to the conventional and imaginary character of women, they have been as much remarked for their firmness and rigour, as for their intelli- gence. John Stuart Mill. Of unhappy marriages, ninety-nine out of a hundred would have been happy had the 173 APPENDIX band brought to the contract as pure a senti- ment and as high a moral development as were brought by the woman. New York Journal. SOME IMPRESSIONS While I was deeply impressed with the tre- mendous energy cf the Americans, I fear their too rapid progress will experience a serious and disastrous setback in the very near future. They do too much business on borrowed capital ; there are too many weak banks there ; and a crash at the first untoward event is inevitable. Count Matsukala, Japanese Minister of Finance. America has outgrown the barbarism that argument can be answered by personal abuse less than any civilized country. Li Hung Chang. The greatest of Japanese philosophers says: "Humanity lives under many kinds of despot- ism, but the greatest of all is 'the will of the majority.' " For my part, when I feel the hand of power lie heavy on my brow, I care but little who oppresses me ; and I am not more disposed to pass 174 APPENDIX beneath the yoke because it is held out to me by the arms of a million men. De Tocqueville. It is a great advantage when tyranny has one head and one neck. What axe can relieve us from the tyranny of the majority? Lord Wemyss. Man has all the vices but not all the virtues of the beast. R. G. Ingersoll. The most important step Europe can take in the 20th century will be the partition of the American Republics by the powers of Europe. Americans cannot govern; all Americans con- fess it when they go to Europe, and all Euro- peans notice it when they go to the New World. G. B. Shaw. For out of the strife which woman Is passing through to-day A man that is more than human Will yet be born, I say. A man in whose pure spirit No dross of self will lurk, A man who is strong to cope with wrong, A man who is proud to work. I know he is coming, coming To help, to guide, to save, Though I hear no martial drumming, 175 APPENDIX And see no flags that wave. But the great soul travail of woman And the bold free thought unfurled Are heralds to say he is on the way, The coming man of the world. Ella Wheeler Wilcox. To begin with, in medias res, are men fair to women? The laws, which are made by men, the usages everything is calculated to cause men to reduce to a minimum the qualities, the intelligence and the influence of women. For instance, let a woman make a reputation in art or literature, and men begin to smile and shrug their shoulders; they dispute her talent. I maintain, without much fear for contradic- tion, that a woman, in order to succeed in a profession, must have ten times more talent than a man, inasmuch as a man will have friends and comrades to help him, and a woman only difficul- ties put in her way by man to surmount. Man receives encouragements from all sides. Why should not women get all this. Why, simply because man, being both "verdict" and "execution," has kept everything for himself. Women, perhaps unfortunately, cannot all 176 APPENDIX be intended to be mothers or spend their lives mending socks and attending to Spring house- cleaning ; such women, who have received a high education, may not feel inclined to be shopgirls,! lady's maids or cooks; if they feel that they have talent and can paint or write successfully, every man ought to give them a helping hand. Max O'Rell in New York American. "To-day exactly 13 men control the indus- trial and commercial life of America, and they aim at world conquest. Every citizen in the Republic is their subject and the public is pow- erless against their methods. They, the 13, also seek now to control the entire world." New York Herald, January 25, 1903. "To-day a dozen colossal fortunes own every line of transportation by lake or sea, every gold mine and every coal field, every railroad, and every Legislature and Electorate in America. It is the height of stupidity to say they will soon own all if not placed under control they al- ready own all, as any intelligent European sees. Such power is greater than any separate State APPENDIX in America it is greater than any National Government upon the Western Hemisphere. My heart quakes at the realization that Europe wastes its time fortifying against such puny enemies as socialism and anarchism, and re- mains in ignorance that this monster stalks to- wards its gate intending to devour it too!" M. Freedland. Commissioner Williams shows that immigra- tion from Germany, Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries is to-day almost as in- significant as was twenty years ago the immi- gration from Italy and Austria. Dr. Alexander P. Doyle says: "Americans live such rapid lives and set such a fast pace that to keep their wornout nerves at concert pitch they use strong alcoholic drink. Neu- rasthenia is a peculiarly American disease. The life in this country conduces to exhausted nervous systems, which require a different kind of beverage than the light wines and beer suit- able to the placid life of the average European. Here men drink liquids fifty, sixty and seventy per cent, alcoholic. 178 APPENDIX "In Europe, when men drink, they become happy, their hearts are filled with joy. In America intoxication makes man mad. He must use an ax on his wife or beat his child's brains out. That is because in Europe the beers and liquors are pure. In this country they are adulterated." UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 7Jan'58JF DEC 16 6 19701$ 370 -8P* DEPT. ICLF (N) LD 21-100m-ll,'49(B7146sl6)476 07117 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY