QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 
 
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"COMMON SENSE" 
 
 APPLIED TO 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE 
 
 A STATEMENT OF THE REASONS WHICH JUSTIFY THE DEMAND 
 TO EXTEND THE SUFFRAGE TO WOMEN, WITH CON- 
 SIDERATION OF THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST SUCH 
 ENFRANCHISEMENT, AND WITH SPECIAL 
 REFERENCE TO THE ISSUES PRE- 
 SENTED TO THE NEW YORK 
 STATE CONVENTION 
 OF 1894 
 
 BY 
 
 MARY PUTNAM-JACOBI, M.D. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 27 W. Twenty-third Street 
 
 LONDON 
 24 Bedford Street, Strand 
 
 TCbe IRnichcrbocher ffiress 
 1894 
 
fit)\ 
 
 3*^3, 
 
 Copyright, 1894 ' . I'' 
 
 By G. p. PUTNAM'S 6^J^^ ' a JJA 
 
 Entered at Statione^' Hall^ London C/^ 
 
 Electrotyped, Printed and Bound by 
 
 Ube Iknicfeerbocftcr ipress, flew l^orl? 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. — Introductory i 
 
 II. — Evolution of Status of Women since 
 
 1848 16 
 
 III. — Imminence of Woman Suffrage . . 60 
 
 IV. — Existing Political Situation . . 67 
 
 V. — Arguments of Opponents • • • 93 
 
 VI. — Alleged Inexperience of Women . .126 
 
 VII. — Public Measures in which Woman may 
 
 BE Interested ..... 132 
 
 VIII. — The American Discovery. — Webster 
 
 AND Madison 141 
 
 IX. — The Existing Situation . . -151 
 
 Appendix 199 
 
 -i 1 /lono 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/commonsenseappliOOjacorich 
 
.BRA 
 
 Of THi 
 
 OF 
 
 "COMMON SENSE" APPLIED TO 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 
 
 " Who the author of this Production is, is wholly unnecessary to 
 the Public, as the object for attention is the Doctrine itself, not the 
 man. Yet it may not be unnecessary to say, — That he is unconnected 
 with any party, and under no sort of Influence, public or private, 
 but the influence of reason and principle." — Common Sense, Ad- 
 dressed to the Inhabitants of America, January lo, 1776. 
 
 " Not he is great who alters matter, but he who alters my state of 
 mind. " — Emerson, The American scholar. Phi Beta Kappa oration. 
 
 THE celebrated pamphlet from which — not 
 without audacity — we have borrowed our 
 title-page, is said to have been an important 
 factor in the formation of the public opinion, * 
 which six months later, decided to risk the 
 Revolutionary War. To-day is also a moment 
 for the formation of a public opinion, — opinion 
 on a question not less momentous, upon issues 
 even more far-reaching than those involved in 
 the famous quarrel of our ancestors with their 
 mother country. 
 
 * " This pamphlet, whose effect has never been equalled in literary 
 history. " — Works of Thomas Paine, Moncure Conway. 
 
2 ** Common Sense " applied to 
 
 " The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. 
 'T is not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a 
 kingdom, but of a continent of at least the eighth part of 
 the habitable globe. 'T is not the concern of a day, a 
 year, or an age ; posterity are virtually involved in the 
 contest, and will be more or less affected even to the end 
 of time, by the proceedings now." 
 
 " A situation similar to the present hath not happened 
 since the days of Noah until now." * 
 
 To-day, also, a change is proposed, not as a 
 despairing revolt against a really intolerable 
 oppression, or physical cruelty, but against 
 grievances only appreciable by those who have 
 already attained a fair measure of indepen- 
 dence. To-day, also, the demand for a share in 
 the sovereignty of the State is the expression, 
 on the part of those demanding, of a higher 
 degree of development than had previously 
 been attained, and of an imperious impulse 
 towards still further expansion, power, and 
 autonomy. 
 
 "Small islands not capable of protecting themselves 
 are the proper objects for government to take under their 
 care, but there is something absurd in supposing a conti- 
 nent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no in- 
 stance has nature made the satellite larger than the 
 primary planet." f 
 
 * Common Sense ^ pp. 84, 118. f Common Sense, p. 92. 
 
Woman Suffrage. 3 
 
 To-day, also, tlie protest, the declaration of 
 independence, does not receive the unanimous 
 support of the classes on whose behalf it is 
 made. There are Tories in the midst, and plau- 
 sible reasons are advanced even by women, 
 against the demand made for them, to be 
 allowed to " take, among the powers of the 
 earth, the separate and equal place to which the 
 laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle 
 them." 
 
 " Interested men who are not to be trusted, weak men 
 who cannot see, prejudiced men who will not see, and a 
 certain set of moderate men who think better of the 
 European world than it deserves, are those who espouse 
 the doctrine of reconciliation." * 
 
 And to-day, as in 1776, the demand to emerge 
 into political individuality, from a condition of 
 political non-existence, — the demand to become 
 recognized factors in the political life of the 
 State, implies, and also forebodes changes in the 
 social status of those demanding, which is of 
 far more consequence than any of the special 
 reasons which may be urged in support of the 
 demand. 
 
 " The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race 
 of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are 
 * Common Sense, p. 90. 
 
4 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a 
 few months. The reflection is awful, — and in this point 
 of view how trifling, how ridiculous do the little paltry 
 cavillings of a few weak and interested men appear, when 
 weighed against the business of a world." * 
 
 The modern position of women was inaugu- 
 rated by the Revolution of 1848. The Revolu- 
 tion of 1688 overthrew the doctrine of the 
 divine right of kings. The Revolution of 1793 
 dissolved the doctrine of the necessary and law- 
 ful supremacy of social classes. The Revolution 
 of 1848 asserted the human rights of' the indi- 
 vidual. In France the masses obtained equality 
 before the law in 1793; they did hot obtain 
 political equality for men until 1848. In Ger- 
 many, the political equality, temporarily gained, 
 was lost in the reaction, to be reacquired later, 
 so far as universal suffrage was concerned, with 
 the establishment of the German Empire. 
 
 In England, the great Reform Bill of 1832, 
 had preceded '48, and softened its shock,f which 
 expended itself in the Chartist movement, and 
 the monster petition to Parliament. Crossing 
 the Atlantic, the ebbing wave of the Revolu- 
 
 * Common Sense, p. ri8. 
 
 f Or perhaps precipitated, by the extensive disfranchisements of 
 the poorer classes, which the Bill, though reforming "rotten" 
 boroughs, brought about. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 5 
 
 tion found the political rights of men already 
 fairly secured ; the restrictions remaining upon 
 universal manhood suffrage slight : the force of 
 the wave expended itself upon the legal, social, 
 and political disabilities of women. 
 
 The way had been prepared for this special 
 direction of the Revolutionary movement, in a 
 remarkable manner. Already had begun the 
 intensification of the anti-slavery movement, 
 which had been initiated by the Quaker peti- 
 tion framed immediately after the adoption of 
 the Constitution ; and the New England Anti- 
 Slavery Society had been formed in 1832. 
 Two women, Lucretia Mott and Esther Moore, 
 were among the founders of this society, and 
 in 1840 were sent as delegates to an anti- 
 slavery convention in England. With these, 
 went Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose husband 
 was also a delegate. But the convention re- 
 fused to receive the female delegates, sent in 
 good faith by the American members, on the 
 ground that all public function for women was 
 " in defiance of God's ordination." 
 
 Whereupon William Lloyd Garrison refused 
 to take any part in the proceedings, and with- 
 drew to a seat in the galleries, where he re- 
 mained during the entire twelve days of the 
 
6 *' Common Sense " applied to 
 
 session. This was not the least service rendered 
 by this heroic man to the cause of consistency 
 and equal rights ! 
 
 The abolitionists in America felt more 
 rebuked by the action of their English brethren, 
 than fortified by Garrison's protest against 
 English discourtesy. They presently forbade 
 women to speak on their platforms, and Lucy 
 Stone was among the first to be so excluded. 
 They followed, but only for a few years, the 
 example of the churches, and secured the assist- 
 ance of women in work, as on the underground 
 railroad, while trying to exclude them from 
 publicity, responsibility, or honor. However, 
 after a few years this artificial division of labor 
 l)roke down ; women did speak for the slave in 
 public, but in so doing found arrayed against 
 themselves, not only England, but the American 
 church. The church was already arrayed 
 ascainst abolitionism in the interests of " har- 
 mony." * The " indecent " publicity of the 
 women abolitionists was a subordinate incident, 
 but it would serve as a handle for attack, and 
 was wielded manfully. The abolitionists were 
 declared to have set aside the laws of God 
 
 *"0 harmony!" M'ill exclaim some future Madame Roland; 
 " how many hypocrisies have been perpetrated in thy name ! " 
 
Woman Suffrage, 7 
 
 when they allowed women to speak in public ; 
 and by a pastoral letter, the Congregational 
 churches of Massachusetts were directed to de- 
 fend themselves against heresy, by closing their 
 doors against the innovators. The Methodists 
 denounced the Garrisonian societies as " no- 
 government, no-sabbath, no-church, no-bible, 
 no-marriage, women's rights societies." 
 
 Yet at the anti-slavery meetings no discussion 
 had ever taken place in regard to women ; every 
 one was entirely absorbed in the cause of the 
 slave. However, here, as often, it happened 
 that the instinct of the conservative saw farther 
 than the conscious intention of the radical 
 The practical demonstration of the capacity of 
 women to engage effectively, nobly, publicly 
 in such a great national enterprise as that then 
 initiated for the abolition of slavery, constituted 
 a far more powerful argument for the general 
 emancipation of the sex than the most elaborate 
 philosophical dissertation could have been. 
 
 However, so single-minded were these 
 women, so absorbed in the emancipation of 
 the slave from bondage, that they would 
 probably not have thought of their own 
 emancipation from restrictions, had it not been 
 for the unexpectedly unkind and ungenerous 
 
 :i 
 
8 '^Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 treatment which they received at the hands 
 of their friends. For the abolitionists ao^ain 
 tried to purge themselves of the contempt cast 
 upon them by the churches by submitting to 
 the one criticism which did not involve the 
 men of their party, and for two years the 
 voices of women were silenced.* 
 
 But who can silence the voice of woman 
 when she is determined to speak, and still less 
 when she really has something to say ? It is a 
 circumstance at once dramatic, piquant, and 
 almost comical, that the immediate motive for 
 the call to the first Woman's Rights Conven- 
 tion was not the pressure of the numerous per- 
 sonal, legal, and social disabilities which then 
 weighed so heavily upon women, but prohibi- 
 tion to speak, and to speak on behalf of the 
 slave. This fact at least furnished the electric 
 spark which fused together all the many ten- 
 dencies which had been long smouldering in 
 
 * In the same way the Methodists had forbidden the continuance 
 of the female preachers, at first allowed. Arguments may be drawn 
 for the discouragement of female oratory, far more plausible than 
 those based on a supposed but unrecorded " ordinance of God." 
 Yet if women's orations have often been disfigured by hysteric 
 excitability, or shallow sentimentality, or ignorant verbosity, the 
 names of Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Howe, 
 and Mrs Livermore, to mention no others, suffice to prove that the 
 woman orator can exist. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 9 
 
 secret. Perhaps they did not themselves know 
 that it was because the ideas of 1848 were in 
 the air, — were making the circuit of the globe, 
 — because on the eastern shore of the Atlantic 
 there had been a revolution in February and 
 an insurrection in June ; that in July, on the 
 western side, in New York State, at Seneca 
 Falls, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 
 and Susan B. Anthony called together the first 
 Woman's Rights Convention. The assertion is 
 not bombastic that there also was "' fired a shot 
 heard round the world ! " 
 
 " We fully believed," observed Antoinette 
 Blackwell the other day, " so soon as we saw 
 that woman's suffrage was right, every one 
 would soon see the same thing, and that in a 
 year or two, at farthest, it would be granted." 
 
 With such innocence and naivete did these 
 single-hearted women come into collision with 
 the entire organized system of traditions, beliefs, 
 prejudices, convictions, habits, laws, and cus- 
 toms which had hitherto existed from the 
 beginning of history down to the year of grace, 
 1848 ! No wonder the shock was great! The 
 marvel is that in it everything was not shivered 
 to splinters ! 
 
 History had ceased to exist for that American 
 
lo ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 decade ; for to all the living issues of the day, 
 history, like the Church and the State, seemed 
 to those in the van, to be either irrelevant or 
 hostile. To this very day the survivors of that 
 group of pioneer women retain an abstract w^ay 
 of stating their claim which, to modern ears, 
 sounds somewhat archaic. When we compare 
 the transparent simplicity of the arguments of 
 that time, with the painful erudition, the 
 elaborate research which European scholars 
 have accumulated on the subject of the Rights 
 of Women,* we seem to be comparing an out- 
 line drawing of Flaxman's, with a thickly de- 
 tailed painting of Rubens. I even, in imagina- 
 tion, am led to contrast the gentle savages of 
 Hispaniola dancing in the garb of Eden on the 
 sea-shorfe, where had just landed, in doublet 
 and ruff, the representatives of Spanish gran- 
 dees. 
 
 To-day a fine and certainly widely diffused 
 scorn prevails for doctrines of abstract Rights 
 and of claims based on them. Yet how can a 
 demand for Rights ever be formulated except 
 abstractly ? When did such a demand ever 
 seem " practical " or " useful " to the class mo- 
 
 * See, for instance, Laboulaye's Memoir with this title, recom- 
 pensed by the French Academy in 1842. 
 
Woman Suffrage, ii 
 
 > 
 nopolizing the Rights demanded ? What human 
 
 conception is more abstract, more finely abstract, 
 than that of Eights ? / What conception more 
 august, more mysterious in the power which it 
 presently discloses to subdue the most brutal 
 forces, to chain the most material oppositions, to 
 trample under foot the most obvious utilities ? 
 No matter what its philosophic basis, or what 
 its historic evolution, the conception of Right 
 at any given time dominates, quite apart from 
 either metaphysics or history. No one dares to 
 deny it, for the gist of every issue and the 
 heart of every conflict is the question : " On 
 which side does the Right lie, which both 
 sides claim ? " 
 
 In 1848 the party had arisen, small as a grain 
 of mustard seed, which had acquired a pro- 
 found distrust of all the authoritative dictates 
 of a society that was then engaged in defending 
 the lawfulness of American slavery. If this 
 were the authorized conception of Rights, then 
 the judgment of society was steeped in wrong, 
 and an appeal must be carried to a higher court. 
 The horrible mess of sophistry, cant, and mean- 
 ness with which was being sustained the na- 
 tional argument for slavery, inevitably loosened 
 confidence in public opinion. One almost uni- 
 
12 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 versal dictum was certainly wrong : there was 
 an almost indefinite possibility that any other 
 might be untrue. 
 
 The woman's movement began, therefore, 
 with that for the slave, in one common fact, — 
 a suddenly awakened but profound distrust of 
 all authority. 
 
 Soon further analogies appeared. To both 
 women and negroes were forbidden liberty of 
 action, except under such conditions as some 
 one else should impose. To both comfort was 
 possible, on condition of peaceful submission to 
 such restrictions as another's will should deem 
 best. The restrictions were extremely narrow 
 for the slave, while a much wider range was ac- 
 corded the woman ; but to neither was complete 
 self-determination permitted. All negroes and 
 all white women differed from white men, in 
 that their liberties were restrained by a greater 
 number of considerations than the one imposed 
 on men, — that, namely of not violating the lib- 
 erty of any one else. In this fundamental par- 
 ticular, therefore, the case of the women and the 
 negroes was identical, — it was the details only 
 which differed. The immense differences in 
 regard to practical details could not change the 
 identity of the fundamental facts. 
 
Woman Suffrage. 13 
 
 Then the question arose : — Ah ! mighty is the 
 age which asks a question !— By what right did 
 those who had the power impose restrictions on 
 those who had not? Who authorized them? 
 The women's credentials had been refused. 
 Who had given their credentials to those refus- 
 ing ? Why should the whole moral and physi- 
 cal force of society be enlisted to support their 
 monstrous claim ? Why should Federal troops 
 be employed to chase runaway slaves in the 
 streets of Boston ? Why should clergymen in 
 the pulpit be engaged to prescribe, with all the 
 thunders of Sinai, what the free white women of 
 America should or should not do ? 
 
 It is not a piece of turgid rhetoric which asso- 
 ciates these two piercing questions together. It 
 is a simple historic fact that they were so asso- 
 ciated ; that they came to the front together ; 
 that the demand of women for political rights 
 was made because their personal liberty had been 
 assailed — assailed at the moment that they had 
 begun to work to secure the personal liberty of 
 the slave. And in the shock of the unex- 
 pected assault, they had become suddenly aware 
 within what narrow bounds their own personal 
 liberties were really expected to maintain them- 
 selves. 
 
\ 
 
 14 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 And so the definite, the final conflict began. 
 The protest against political inequality, uttered 
 at Seneca Falls, fell back from the buttressed 
 fortress of existing political institutions like a 
 ball of feathers from a wall of adamant. Then 
 the women began a flank movement. They at- 
 tacked the laws, they pressed into industries, 
 they demanded education. Even before the 
 Woman's Rights Convention, Mrs. Stanton had 
 been working to secure independent property 
 rights for married women, and after seven years' 
 struggle the end was attained. Then began a 
 second struggle for personal rights in contracts 
 and business, and these also were secured after 
 a steady fight of twelve years. " They tell us 
 sometimes," said Mrs. Stanton at the great mass- 
 meeting in New York on the 7th of May, 
 " that if we had only kept quiet, all these desir- 
 able things would have come about of them- 
 selves. I am reminded of the Greek clown who, 
 having seen an archer bring down a flying bird, 
 remarked, sagely : ^ You might have saved your 
 arrow, for the bird would anyway have been 
 killed by the fall.' " 
 
 Since 1848 such changes have been effected 
 
 n the personal, industrial, legal, and educational 
 
 status of women, the revolution in public opin- 
 
Woman Suffrage, 
 
 ion about women has been so enormous, that ^ 
 there is no century, nor five nor ten centuries 
 of all preceding European history, which can 
 compare with it. Innumerable claims have been 
 satisfied which forty-six years ago were abso- 
 lutely disallowed. Innumerable arguments, 
 apparently as irrefutable as those of the English 
 bucolics frightened by Stephenson's locomotive, 
 have been refuted by Stephenson's own method 
 of laying down the railroad and letting the cars 
 run. Innumerable solemnities, based on "the 
 divinely ordained nature of things," " on the 
 eternal justice " of woman's position now and 
 forever, world without end, have passed to the 
 limbo of many other solemnities which sink to 
 rise no more. 
 
 " The part played in this discussion by a priori argu- 
 ments drawn from " the nature of things " and " eternal 
 justice," is alarming many sober-minded people as a speci- 
 men of the kind of thing to which female (?) legislators 
 would treat us." * 
 
 Let us contrast the position of women as it 
 existed in industry, in law, and in education 
 before 1848, and as it exists to-day. 
 
 * Evening Post, May 5, 1 894, 
 
11. 
 
 EVOLUTION OF STATUS OF WOMEN SINCE 1848. 
 
 IN 1836 seven vocations only were open to 
 women. They were allowed to be teach- 
 ers, principally governesses ; seamstresses, dress- 
 makers, tailors, milliners, factory operatives, and 
 household servants. In 1884 women were 
 found employed in 354 subdivisions of indus- 
 tries. In 1892 Carroll Wright observes, "that 
 there are but few avenues of remunerative 
 employment which are not now open to 
 women." The United States census of 1880 
 records for the entire country 2,666,000 women 
 engaged in gainful occupations. This is about 
 one fifth the number of men whose occupations 
 are similarly classified. Owing to the imperfec- 
 tion of the census of 1890, it is impossible to 
 form an exact estimate to-day. But, with the 
 increased population, and in view of the fact 
 that the increase of women in industrial occupa- 
 tions has been proportionately much greater 
 than the increase in the population, the number 
 
 i6 
 
Woman Suffrage, 1 7 
 
 of working women to-day must be considerably 
 over three million. 
 
 " The entrance of women into the industrial field was 
 assured, when, between 1760 and 1770, the factory system 
 of labor displaced the hand-labor system." * 
 
 Three new ideas about women have become 
 gradually, but irresistibly, established by the 
 fact of their widespread participation in modern 
 industry. 
 
 1st. That women are not universally sup- 
 ported by men, but, in very considerable num- 
 bers, support themselves all their lives ; in still 
 larger numbers support themselves for many 
 years of their lives, perhaps the largest part ; 
 and also very frequently support also, in whole 
 or in part, their children or other relatives. 
 Impossible, therefore, to continue to look upon 
 women as a universally dependent class. This, 
 indeed, would never have been possible if the 
 true significance of the work of woman had 
 been recognized, when the textile and almost 
 all other industries were carried on under the 
 domestic roof. But women were then said not 
 to contribute to production, but to be supported 
 entirely by men, — merely because these indi- 
 
 * Carroll Wright, Forum, July, 1892. 
 
1 8 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 vidually furnished the raw material for their 
 industry ; and because the work performed was 
 part of the ordinary domestic labor of the 
 household. 
 
 " There is no distinction in character between the work 
 of the baker who provides bread for a family, and that 
 of a cook who boils potatoes." * 
 
 2d. That the work of women, now so fre- 
 quently and evidently non-domestic, could no 
 longer be considered as something done exclu- 
 sively in the personal service of father or hus- 
 band ; it had become a recognized and important 
 factor in the wealth of the State. From the 
 moment of such recognition began to be under- 
 mined the theory which assumed that women 
 only existed within their families, and had no 
 direct relations with the State. 
 
 3d. That the individual protection of the 
 man or men in the family was quite insufficient 
 to shield the woman industrial in the various 
 exigencies to which her employment gave rise. 
 If laws were needed to defend the personal 
 rights of any workman, laws were needed to 
 defend women. But further, it could not fail 
 to be observed that laws for the proper defence 
 
 * Marshall, Principles of Economics, pp. 117-11Q. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 19 
 
 of men possessed of political rights were more 
 easily obtained and more surely enforced than 
 were analogous laws for women. Recent and 
 vivid experience had demonstrated the steady 
 improvement in the condition of the working- 
 man which coincided with, and was somewhat 
 proportioned to, his share in political privilege, 
 — his power to make his wants known with a 
 certain degree of authority. Impossible not to 
 inquire why similar improvement should not 
 follow the extension of political rights to work- 
 ing-women. 
 
 Though facts generate ideas, they do not 
 affect social movements until the ideas about 
 facts have chansred. From 1760 and the Ark- 
 Wright spinning-Jenny, women, for good or ill, 
 left their homes and passed into the factories. 
 But until 1848 their earnings did not belong to 
 themselves, at least not if they were married, 
 which it was their normal condition to be. 
 Hence the whole significance of the industrial 
 situation remained veiled until, from another 
 quarter, had been effected a revolution in the 
 leo:al status of women. 
 
 It is not necessary to weight these few pages 
 with even an allusion to such elaborate re- 
 searches on the property rights and legal status 
 
20 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 of women as won for Laboulaye the recompense 
 of the French Academy. It suffices to recall 
 the well-known dictum of Blackstone that, 
 according to the Common Law of England, " the 
 personality of the married woman [the femme 
 convert] was entirely merged in that of her 
 husband." 
 
 " From the very beginning of history, woman appears 
 everywhere in a state of complete subordination. 
 Law . . . sanctions the subjection of woman. At 
 Rome — legislating for the universe — this tenet is formu- 
 lated in the harshest terms. Christianity does little to 
 alter woman's position ; the Canon Law cannot forgive 
 her the seduction of Adam. ' Adam was beguiled by 
 Eve, not Eve by Adam. It is just that woman should 
 take as her ruler him whom she incited to sin, that he 
 may not fall a second time through female levity.' — 
 Decret. ii. The barbarian society which rises in the place 
 of the Greco-Roman world, founded as it was on force, 
 showed no greater willingness to recognize the personal- 
 ity of woman : her legal status is here one of perpetual 
 tutelage." * 
 
 Blackstone claimed that the disabilities which 
 the wife lies under were for the most part in- 
 tended for her protection and benefit, " so great 
 a favorite is the female sex with the laws of 
 England." f 
 
 * Ostrogorski, Rights of Women, 1893. f i Comin., 4, p. 445. 
 
 Q 
 
Woman Suffrage, 21 
 
 Let us enumerate tlie proofs of such favorit- 
 ism. 
 
 For the better protection of the woman, the 
 husband was forbidden to chastise his wife 
 with a stick bigger than his own thumb. 
 
 For her better support, all the property of 
 the wife, real and personal, was handed over 
 to the absolute control of the husband; all 
 rents, profits, and income from lands ; all stocks, 
 bonds, plate, and furniture ; the jewelry given 
 in girlhood by a mother ; the very silver mug 
 which had been the gift of the sponsors in bap- 
 tism. 
 
 For her greater security, or that of this same 
 property, a woman was prohibited from making 
 a will; in many instances from serving as a 
 witness ; could give no power of attorney ; make 
 no contract ; neither sue nor be sued ; nor en- 
 gage in any business on her own account. 
 
 For her safer maintenance, it was provided 
 that any money she might earn must pass to her 
 husband, who had liberty to withdraw her 
 deposits at the savings-bank, even to find means 
 with which to purchase his liquor, or pay his 
 gambling debts. 
 
 For the better satisfaction of her maternal 
 instincts, the mother was obliged to leave her 
 
22 ^^ Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 child absolutely within the control of its father, 
 if he chose to recognize it as his own ; the 
 mother was only certainly able to care for, 
 educate, apprentice, or otherwise dispose of her 
 child, if it had been born out of wedlock, and 
 the father had deserted it. Only the child of a 
 slave followed the condition of its mother, — and 
 such child always did, so that the father was 
 freed from all inconvenient responsibility for 
 his illegitimate children, either white or black. 
 And to more securely hedge with respect 
 female honor and chastity, a father was al- 
 lowed to sue the seducer of his daughter for 
 the money value of her services to him as a ser- 
 vant. 
 
 It was in the winter of 1848 — the winter im- 
 mediately following the Revolution and the 
 ly Seneca Falls Convention — that the first steps 
 I \ were taken in that series of legislative enact- 
 \/inents which has finally placed the women of 
 the State of New York on a full legal equality 
 with men. It is unnecessary to enumerate the 
 successive steps, of which the last was no earlier 
 than 1862. The important fact is that to-day 
 a married woman has as complete control over 
 X her own property as \h^femme sole ; is not liable 
 for her husband's debts, unless by her own free 
 
Woman Suffrage. 23 
 
 will ; can administer and devise her real estate 
 and personal belongings; can make contracts 
 even with her own husband; can enforce the 
 absence of even ante-nuptial contracts with him ; 
 can sue and be sued ; can engage in any busi- 
 ness, and control her own earnings; is joint' 
 guardian of her child with its father ; can for- 
 bid such education, religious or otherwise, as 
 she disapproves ; can forbid such apprenticeship 
 as she deems unsuitable ; and, in a word, has 
 become an equal person in her own family, and 
 joint ruler in her own house. 
 
 Comments upon these new laws often seem 
 to imply that their value lay in securing better 
 pecuniary provision for women. But such an 
 interpretation would be always inadequate, 
 sometimes contradictory to the facts, and al- 
 ways far below the real dignity of their sig- 
 nificance. 
 
 " The taking up arms merely to enforce the repeal of 
 a pecuniary law, seems as unwarrantable, and is as repug- 
 nant to the feelings, as the taking up arms to enforce 
 obedience thereto."* 
 
 A woman, charged with the responsibility of 
 her own estate, might indeed often fail to ad- 
 
 * Common Sense, p. ii8. 
 
24 '^Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 minister it as well as trustees would have done ; 
 or would make a will less reasonable than could 
 have been planned by her husband. The prop- 
 erty of heiresses could be secured by marriage 
 settlements so as to be safe from the reckless- 
 ness or untouched by the business embarrass- 
 ments of husbands. Indeed the security of the 
 property was liable to be in direct proportion 
 to its amount, as that amount was often in in- 
 verse proportion to the energy and necessity of 
 the woman possessing it. The hardworking 
 washerwoman, driven to work to save herself 
 and children from starvation, had no security 
 for her little earnings; the heiress could be 
 saved by the foresight of her father from the 
 consequences of either her husband's vices or 
 her own inexperience. The change which in- 
 creased the power of the poor woman, lessened 
 if anything the special privilege of the rich, 
 and tended to equalize their respective condi- 
 tions by throwing each woman on her own 
 resources and own responsibility. This was 
 the great thing accomplished: the personality 
 of the woman was distinctly disengaged, recog- 
 nized, and established before the law on equal 
 terms with that of the man. For her who had 
 been hitherto thoroughly protected, whose cir- 
 
Woman Suffrage, 25 
 
 cumstances were entirely favorable, whose 
 enervating education had unfitted her for acts 
 of independent judgment and for positions of 
 grave responsibility, — ^in a word, for the typical 
 woman of the pathetic novel, the new law may 
 be said to have imposed a burden considerably 
 greater than that now dreaded by some of the 
 opponents of equal suffrage. But for all others 
 it was a boon, a conquest, whose ideal effects 
 are only at this moment beginning to be thor- 
 oughly felt and apprehended. The difference 
 between equal rights to children, property, 
 and independence, guaranteed by law, and priv- 
 ileges accorded by courtesy, or even affection, 
 is precisely the difference between the position 
 of the freeman and the serf, and affects at last 
 not only the tangible matters which may or 
 may not come into dispute, but the intangible 
 moral atmosphere which surrounds each indi- 
 vidual during every hour of his life. 
 
 " In the present state of America ... we are 
 without . . . any other mode of power than what is 
 founded on and granted by courtesy." * 
 
 I have used the word serf instead of slave, so 
 as to avoid the appearance of exaggeration, in 
 
 * Common Sense, p. 126. 
 
26 " Common Sense " applied to 
 
 speaking of the legal disabilities of women, 
 which were removed between 1848 and 1862. 
 
 Yet this peculiar status of married women 
 really combined the disabilities of both serf and 
 slave. Like the former, she did not own land, 
 or any other property ; she was attached to it. 
 And, like the slave, she might slave from dawn 
 to dusk, yet have no right to a farthing of the 
 products of her own labor ; no equivalent, in- 
 deed, except a claim for a maintenance whose 
 details should be determined by a master. The 
 fact was concealed by the social habits and man- 
 ners which had become modified, as usual, in 
 advance of the law. But the fact remained, and 
 was disclosed as soon as looked for, that in the 
 eye of the law the married white woman in the 
 North was as devoid of personality as the Afri- 
 can slave in the South. 
 
 Thus a second line of thought and inquiry 
 led straight to the same startling conclusion as 
 had already been reached by the abolitionists 
 along a somewhat different route. A class of 
 people who were not allowed to be persons, 
 were found to have existed on the north of 
 Mason and Dixon's line, as well as on the south. 
 The first measure to establish the personality of 
 the woman, coincided with the opening of the 
 ^struggle for the negro, and was carried largely 
 
Woman Suffrage. 27 
 
 by the efforts of the same people as were work- 
 ing for him. The final step was taken by the 
 laws of 1862, 1878, 1884, and 1887, nearly all 
 enacted long after the passage of the Fourteenth 
 and Fifteenth Amendments. Yet, in a large 
 historic grouping it may be averred that the 
 same epoch conferred the gift of personality 
 upon the married woman of New York and 
 upon the slave of South Carolina. 
 
 This is the real meaning of the great reform 
 legislation for women of the State of New York. 
 
 Thus again, not through rhetorical exagger- 
 ation, but through the line of sequence of historic 
 fact, are we led to find in the political emancipa- 
 tion of the negroes a substantial precedent for the 
 political emancipation of women, — because justi- 
 fied by the same ideal necessity. From many 
 points of view, it certainly seemed most absurd 
 to invite to a share in the Popular Sovereignty a 
 million negroes only just emancipated from two 
 hundred years of bondage, — and who, moreover, 
 had not themselves dreamed of demanding 
 more than their personal liberty, their " forty 
 acres and a mule." 
 
 " The unpatriotic remonstrants are willing to sacrifice 
 justice and every principle of self-government to a 
 masterly inactivity and blissful self -content." * 
 * Rochester Herald, May 4, 1894. 
 
^ 
 
 28 " Common Sense " applied to 
 
 Nevertheless the heroic measure embodied in 
 the Fifteenth Amendment was absolutely neces- 
 sary in order to convince the former masters 
 that their former chattels had really become 
 men. Possession of personal liberty, personal 
 equality before the law, would not have sufficed 
 to drive home the conviction. 
 
 When, turning from the negro, we begin to 
 speak of the women, we rise out of an atmosphere 
 absolutely black, into one which is only gray — 
 sometimes a very light gray — or even ashes of 
 roses. Nevertheless, for the women it is — as 
 for the slave it would have been true, that, in 
 the absence of political right, legal emancipation 
 has not sufficed to bring them to a condition 
 of full personality in the social estimate. The 
 very horror so often expressed, or thinly veiled 
 under more polite expression, at the possibility 
 that the will of women, as exerted through their 
 votes, might occasionally prevail, is sufficient 
 proof of this. Even American women are not 
 felt to be persons in the same sense as the male 
 immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Rus- 
 sian Jews, — not to speak of Italians, Germans, 
 and the masters of all of us — the Irish ! 
 
 " Let us sum up South Dakota. The total vote was 
 70,000, of whom 30,000 were foreigners — Scandinavians, 
 
Woman Suffrage, 29 
 
 Swedes, Norwegians, Russians, — all classes. Of the 
 American-born men, 24,000 voted yes (for the woman- 
 suffrage amendment), and 16,000 voted no. But the 
 30,000 foreigners* vote was added to the 16,000, and that 
 made a tremendous majority against us."* 
 
 It remains to correct two errors of interpre- 
 tation. 
 
 It is often asserted that the legislation of 
 1848 rectified certain grave "wrongs" which 
 women had hitherto suffered. Not a few people 
 argue, that, since the " legal wrongs " of women 
 have been so effectually remedied without the 
 suffrage, suffrage for women is superfluous, and 
 should, therefore, be neither asked nor accorded. 
 
 But these laws embodied no "wrongs" to 
 women, except in so far as it could be considered 
 a wrong to deny her personality. The laws 
 which were abolished, had been enacted under 
 the more or less honest belief that a woman 
 could never attain the measure of a full-grown 
 adult personality ; was permanently in the con- 
 dition of a child, and therefore really required 
 a guardian, protector, and champion. That the 
 guardian might profit by his ward, and the 
 champion be only too well protected by the 
 fortune of his protegee, was a trifling incident 
 easily overlooked. 
 
 * Susan B. Anthony. Speech at Leavenworth, May 4, 1894. 
 
30 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 The legal independence of unmarried women 
 was regarded as a real misfortune, and to be 
 made as nominal as possible by various contriv- 
 ances of trustees and other guardianship. In 
 any case, it was agreed to consider spinsterhood 
 as an abnormality of small proportions and small 
 consequence, something like an extra finger or 
 two on the body, presumably of temporary 
 duration, and never of any social significance. 
 
 The theory of championship only slowly 
 faded away with the recession of the ages of 
 physical violence, where the need of a cham- 
 pion was plausible ; or rather it began to fade a 
 good many centuries after this plausibility had 
 vanished. It then gradually dawned on the 
 social consciousness — or, more specifically, it was 
 driven into the understandings of the New York 
 Legislature by the strenuous efiforts of Mrs. 
 Stanton, Miss Anthony, and their fellow suf- 
 fragists — that women were, after all, persons, and 
 that the obliteration or merging of their person- 
 ality inflicted on them a wrong, greater than 
 any benefit which could accrue from entrusting 
 the management of their property to more ex- 
 perienced hands than their own. 
 
 By another error of interpretation, certain 
 laws which remain on the Statute Book, or 
 
Woman Suffrage, 3 1 
 
 whicb have been recently added, have been 
 considered so peculiarly favorable to v^omen, 
 that they are thought to prove a legislative ten- 
 dency to grant special immunities to women so 
 long as these consent to remain unenfranchised. 
 The fear has been expressed, that these '^ im- 
 munities " and " privileges " would be forfeited 
 were the franchise conferred. And this fear 
 has actually been advanced as an argument — as 
 the basis of protest against the equal suffrage. 
 
 The laws cited are : the dower right of wives 
 in the real estate of their husbands; the re- 
 quirement of the wife's signature to deeds of 
 purchase or sale of real estate executed by the 
 husband, while the wife is at liberty, unchecked, 
 to dispose of her own property. 
 
 Those "dower rights" are founded on the claim 
 of a wife to maintenance for herself and the 
 children she has borne, to the extent of secur-- 
 ing a home for them. Through the veto power 
 on a sale vested in her, the wife mav, when 
 necessary, be enabled to guard and save the in- 
 heritance of her children. A woman's legal 
 claim for maintenance as a wife lies within very 
 narrow limits, and it is just that it should do so. 
 Only as a mother can such claim be preferred 
 with either justice or dignity ; and here it 
 
32 ** Common Sense " applied to 
 
 should often be far larger than is, in the great 
 majority of cases in practical life, really admit- 
 ted. As there is no reason why a wife should 
 ever " maintain " her husband, so there is no rea- 
 son now why she should not dispose of her 
 property as she please. 
 
 The laws which, after long struggle and oc- 
 casional repeal, finally accorded to the mother 
 equal rights with the father over the child, have 
 a special significance which we believe has been 
 hitherto overlooked. 
 
 " In i860 an equal guardianship over the children was 
 accorded to husband and wife. But in 1862 this law 
 was repealed, and a man's widow was no longer allowed 
 to be ipso facto guardian of her own children. In 187 1, 
 however, the Surrogate was allowed to appoint guardians, 
 as hitherto only the Supreme Court had been able to do ; 
 and under this law, the custody of minor children is 
 commonly awarded to the mother." * 
 
 This group of laws, which forbids a father to 
 educate or apprentice his child without the con- 
 sent of the mother, and which gives to the 
 mother equal guardianship over the child during 
 the life, and practically complete guardianship 
 after the death of the father, is a reflex, most 
 unconsciously to the lawgivers, of a great physio- 
 
 * Laws of the State of New York Affecting Women. Suffrage 
 Leaflets, Committee nth Assembly District. 
 
Woman Suffrage. 33 
 
 logical discovery. Until 1827 it liad been always 
 supposed that the mother had no essential share 
 in the formation of the child's organism. It was 
 supposed that the mother's body only furnished 
 the soil upon which the embryo, exclusively 
 generated by the father, might develop ; that 
 her blood yielded nutriment, but that no essen- 
 tial elements of the new being were derived 
 from her. In 1827 Von Baer discovered the 
 ovule, the reproductive cell of the maternal 
 organism, and demonstrated that its protoplasm 
 contributed at least one half to the tissues of the 
 embryo. From this moment was established 
 the theory of equal maternal inheiitance for the 
 child, and, as a necessary correlative, an equality 
 of control over the child for the mother. 
 
 Thus does the Idea, born in obscurity and 
 solitude, descend slowly from its far-off lonely 
 heights, and finally take possession of the world ! 
 
 There is a third group of laws, where the al- 
 leged " favoritism " is an acknowledgment either 
 of the inferior physical strength of women, or of 
 her unequal position as compared with fellow- 
 workers who are allowed to defend their in- 
 terests through the ballot. Under the first 
 heading comes, very obviously, the " immunity " 
 of a woman from an order of sheriff or officer 
 
34 ''Common Sense''' applied to 
 
 of the peace to assist in quelling a disturbance 
 or in making an arrest ; from the obligation to 
 take up arms in defence of law and authority ; 
 also the limits placed on the liability of arrest 
 of women for civil or criminal suits. The fac- 
 tory laws, framed for the protection of women, 
 and which so often fail to do so, have a triple 
 significance. They propose to defend the class 
 of industrials who have no political representa- 
 tion ; to protect the sex incapable of physical 
 self-assertion ; and finally, and more especially, 
 to save from ruinous exhaustion the mothers 
 who must bear and rear for the State thousands 
 of its citizens. The ninety years' struggle, 
 (beginning in England in 1802), which has 
 been needed to enact and partially enforce these 
 factory laws ; the stubborn resistance which, in 
 New York State, has been offered to all pro- 
 posals to submit to the operation of such laws 
 tlie masses of female industrials outside of fac- 
 tories, as in retail stores, and who also need 
 such protection, — all indicate the extreme diffi- 
 culty of securing protection for any class of 
 people who have not either directly, by the 
 ballot, or indirectly through its strengthening 
 educational influence, been put in a position to 
 protect themselves. 
 
Woman Suffrage. 35 
 
 There is finally one law about which a great 
 deal has been said in recent current debates, 
 which cannot be referred to any of the three 
 foregoing classes. This is the law obliging men 
 who cannot offer especial excuse to serve once 
 a year on juries. The opponents to equal suf- 
 frage have constantly cited woman's present 
 exemption from this citizen duty as a proof of 
 her favored position ; while the friends of the 
 suffrage have usually been content to reply that 
 woman might be made exempt by special legis? 
 lation, and that, as a matter of fact, after some 
 trial, women had been so exempted in Wyoming! ^ 
 
 I think this reply is both feeble and fallaS 
 cious. Certainly if women claim to exercise 
 the functions of sovereignty, they must be pre- 
 pared to assume a fair share of the public duties 
 of citizenship. Precisely because they must be 
 exempted from military and constable duty, 
 where they would be of no use, should women be 
 expected to hold themselves in readiness to ful- 
 fil such functions as those of jurors, which 
 demand only the minimum amount of physical 
 strength, and which appeal chiefly to reason, 
 judgment, and fidelity. As the- court-rooms are 
 habitually thronged all day with women who 
 do nothing but idle in them, and it has not yet 
 
36 ^^ Common Se7ise'' applied to 
 
 been proposed to send such women to the sanc- 
 tity of their own homes, by either decree of 
 law or force of police, some other reason than 
 physical infirmity must be found to exclude 
 women from the jurors' box. The plausible 
 reasons are two : First, that women are not 
 sufficiently trained in the art of reasoning to 
 follow an argument, and their minds have not 
 such calibre that their judgment can be relied 
 upon. Secondly, that it would be indecorous 
 and unseemly to shut up together women and 
 men jurors, strangers to each other, coming from 
 different ranks of society, yet compelled for 
 hours, days, or even weeks to remain closely 
 associated together; talking, arguing together, 
 trying to persuade each other, or submitting to 
 be persuaded. The vision of jury duty which 
 very naturally rises in the mind at the sugges- 
 tion that women might be called to engage in 
 it, concentrates in itself all the objection, in all 
 its intensity, that can be raised or felt to the 
 participation of women in responsible public 
 affairs. In this one illustration is concentrated 
 all objection based on the immemorable dis- 
 trust of female intelligence, and all due to the 
 immemorable conventions of female decorum. 
 Yet, precisely because these objections are very 
 
Woman Suffrage, 3 7 
 
 old, may it be suspected that they are beginning 
 to be somewhat worn out. 
 
 For the jury, as for the ballot, the level of the 
 average qualification renders absurd the assump- 
 tion that there are not already thousands of 
 women, educated and clear-headed, at least as 
 fitted for a jury as the men who are now im- 
 panelled. Jury duty, properly prepared for 
 and honestly performed, would itself constitute 
 a most valuable training for women, intellectu 
 ally, morally, and socially. For them, as for the^ 
 Athenian people in the days of Pericles, who] 
 first made the observation, the performance o 
 jury duty is one of the best methods of becom 
 ing practically acquainted with the laws of th( 
 State. It has been shown that M^omen phy 
 sicians were useful, because women patient^ 
 abounded. Similarly, if women are now called 
 into court as clients, witnesses, accused, and 
 spectators, it is impossible to maintain that law- 
 suits and contested rights do not concern women. 
 The Anglo-Saxon jury — differing in that from 
 the Athenian — was simply a body of witnesses 
 to fact ; and women — whose testimony in cer- 
 tain asres and countries has not been admitted 
 as legal evidence — are now permitted to so tes- 
 tify. From this permission to that of judging 
 
38 ^^ Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 testimony ; from the witness-stand to the jury- 
 box, is, literally, but a step. 
 
 The objection in regard to decorum is at once 
 more subtle and more powerful, for a given 
 standard of decorum constitutes an all-pervading 
 mental atmosphere, whose influence is as diffi- 
 cult to escape as to controvert. It can only be 
 outgrown as ideals of decorum become modi- 
 fied, or as different methods become devised in 
 order to realize the same ideals. In this specific 
 problem of jurors, no matter what degree of 
 separation between the male and female mem- 
 bers might be provided, some degree of associa- 
 tion is necessitated by the very nature of the 
 jurors' duty, which involves mutual and some^ 
 times protracted and heated discussion. Doubt- 
 less the association together of men and women 
 in such discussion has only become possible at 
 the present day, when manners have become 
 sufficiently softened, and the habit of decorous 
 commingling of the sexes has been sufficiently 
 well established. But, these conditions being 
 premised, as who can doubt, the situation lia% 
 become possible ; and it is easy to foresee many 
 special advantages that would soon acci'ii.* to 
 such mixed juries, where a group of honest 
 men and women were united for the high pur 
 
Woman Suffrage, 39 
 
 pose of securing justice. The admission to the 
 jury of immoral persons of either sex could 
 only be due to remissness in challenging ; as it 
 is already customary to exclude persons whose 
 character can be called in question. 
 
 The numerous causes for exemption now ad- 
 mitted for men would be certainly paralleled for 
 women, but they would not always be identicah 
 Men are now more often excused for business ; 
 women would more often be excused on the plea 
 of ill-health. Of course, the special plea of 
 family cares with young children would rule 
 out thousands of women during a certain num- 
 ber of years of their lives. These same women, 
 however, would often make valuable jurors, 
 when their nurseries had emptied and their chil- 
 dren were grown up. 
 
 Even more conspicuous and wide-reaching 
 than the changes in the industrial and legal 
 status of women, are the changes which since 
 1848 have been effected in the educational op- 
 portunities accessible to the female sex. 
 
 Within twenty years from the landing of the 
 Pilgrims at Plymouth, the foundation of the 
 free-school system was laid, but not for girls. 
 For nearly a century and a half the girls had no 
 education beyond what they might pick up at 
 
40 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 home or by the aid of a minister. In 1771 girls 
 were admitted, for the first time, to the common 
 schools at Hartford, Conn., and there taught 
 reading, writing, spelling, and the catechism. 
 The boys studied the first four rules of arithme- 
 tic, but to these mysteries the girls had no 
 access. When at last they were allowed to 
 stiidy arithmetic, they were limited to ad- 
 dition, and forbidden to consider the other three 
 rules. In 1790, at Newburyport, a proposition 
 to provide schools for girls was put aside with- 
 out action by the town. In 1804, female chil- 
 dren over nine years of age were allowed to at- 
 tend school between six and eight in the morn- 
 ing, and on Thursday afternoon. Not till 1836 
 did the school committee deem that one female 
 grammar school should be kept open through- 
 out the year. One taxpayer objected to this 
 decision, and applied for an injunction, bringing 
 out Judge Shaw's celebrated opinion on that 
 point.* 
 
 In the law of 1789, the expression "- master 
 and mistress " recognizes women as teachers for 
 
 the first time.f Hitherto women so employed 
 
 • 
 
 * The above and many following details are taken from the most 
 interesting monograph by Mary Eastman, in Woman's Work in 
 America. Henry Holt, 1891. 
 
 f Significant date — that of the foundation of the American Consti- 
 tution ! 
 
Woman Suffrage, 41 
 
 could not legally collect their wages ; the re- 
 ceipt of their dues depended upon the honor of 
 their employers. 
 
 ** They were without other mode of power than what 
 is founded on and granted by courtesy." 
 
 Although excluded from common schools, or 
 receiving only the scantiest instructions in them, 
 girls began in the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury to be provided with private academies and 
 seminaries; and finally, in 1821, Mrs. Willard 
 succeeded in establishing the famous Troy Sem- 
 inary, the first institution for girls that ap- 
 proached the level of a high-school. 
 
 In 1825 an attempt was made to establish a 
 city high-school for girls in Boston, but the 
 school w^as closed at the end of a year, because 
 such a large number of girls entered, and stayed 
 so long that " no funds of any city could en- 
 dure the expense." For girls, that is — for the 
 boys' English high-school had been supported 
 for four years, and the Latin school during 
 nearly two centuries, out of the public funds, 
 and without protest from the citizens. 
 
 In 1852 a Normal school for girls was estab- 
 lished in Massachusetts ; in 1878 the girls' Latin 
 school; and in 1888 one hundred and ninety- 
 eight cities and towns in the State supported 
 
42 ''^Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 high-schools, most of which were co-educational. 
 The Mount Holyoke Seminary, the immediate 
 successor to that at Troy, was opened in 1837 
 by Miss Lyon, in spite of the opposition of the 
 clergy. 
 
 "You see that the measure has utterly failed. Let this 
 page of Divine Providence be attentively considered in 
 relation to this matter ! " * 
 
 In the West, Oberlin College began its work 
 in 1833 ; Antioch in 1853 ; and throughout the 
 Western States, the universities, founded upon 
 the land funds created by the ordinance of 
 1787, began to admit women between 1861 and 
 1871 ; all organized since the latter date have 
 started out as co-educational institutions, f In 
 New York State, after the foundation of Ti'oy 
 Seminary, there was no new institution until 
 .1865, when the Vassar College was opened at 
 Poughkeepsie. By 1890, Vassar had conferred 
 a degree upon eight hundred or nine hundred 
 graduates. Smith College was founded at 
 Northampton, Mass., in 1868; Wellesley in 
 1875 ; Bryn Mawr, in Pennsylvania, in 1885. 
 But in 1872 women were admitted on the same 
 
 * Cited by Miss Eastman, loc. cU. 
 
 f Woman's Work in America : Education in Western States. 
 May Wright Sewall. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 43 
 
 terms with men to the Cornell State University ; 
 in 1879 touched upon Harvard, through the 
 intermediary of the "annex"; in 1889 entered 
 the post-graduate courses of the University of 
 Pennsylvania ; and in the same year, Barnard 
 College was formally opened, in close associa- 
 tion with Columbia. The Massachusetts Insti- 
 tute of Technology has received women since 
 1883 ; and women were admitted to the post- 
 graduate courses at Yale about ten years later. 
 
 In the Southern States, opportunities for first- 
 class university education hardly exist for wo- 
 men. Yet there are in the South one hundred 
 and fifty institutions holding the nominal grade 
 of college, which are authorized by Legislature 
 to confer degrees upon women. At the Johns 
 Hopkins University of Baltimore no woman 
 has yet been admitted to the faculty of arts ; 
 but, in reverse of the usual order, the medical 
 school has been thrown open to women, in order 
 to be able to utilize the munificent donation* 
 made by a woman on this condition, and which 
 alone enabled the school to be founded. 
 
 Nor has the educational movement for wo- 
 men been confined J;o the United States. All 
 over Europe except in Germany, and, with 
 
 * $500,000 given by Miss Garrett. 
 
44 ** Common Sense " applied to 
 
 capricious exceptions, in Russia, tlie universities 
 have been open to women. In England special 
 colleges for women have been established at 
 Cambridge and Oxford, affording the same in- 
 struction and conferring equivalent degrees to 
 those given at the university itself . Since 1872 
 four thousand women have received degrees 
 from the University of London, and everywhere 
 that the opportunity has been afforded to com- 
 pete, the women have carried off, in proportion 
 to their numbers, a larger share of honors than 
 men. 
 
 The professional education of women is, for 
 the purpose of this pamphlet, the most impor- 
 tant of the w^hole, because marking most dis- 
 tinctly a revolution in ideas. Although untrue 
 in fact, it was conceivable, that even university 
 education might be regarded as destined exclu- 
 sively to embellish women as ladies ; as Latin 
 had been taught in England only for the pur- 
 pose of " finishing " a gentleman. 
 
 Horace Mann had said in 1836 that the se- 
 cluded life to which women were naturally 
 destined, especially required the resources of a 
 liberal education for its emWellishment and dis- 
 traction. The enunciation of this truth, which 
 to-day seems so innocent and obvious, was, how- 
 
Woman Suffrage, 45 
 
 ever, a radical innovation upon the views 
 hitherto held. 
 
 " II n'est pas bien honnete, et pour beaucoup de causes, 
 Qu'une femme etudie et sache tant de choses. 
 
 Nos peres, sur ce point, etaient gens bien senses, 
 Qui disaient qu'une femme en sait toujours assez 
 Quand la capacite de son esprit se hausse, 
 A connaitre un pourpoint d'avec un haut-de-chausse." * 
 
 But when the education received by girls, 
 began to be turned to practical account, the 
 innovation became more decided. 
 
 Of the four professions into which, so far, 
 women have entered for the purpose of earning 
 their livings — teaching, medicine, law, and 
 journalism, — the first was the earliest invaded 
 and has always, from the beginning, been the 
 most thronged. To the initiative of two women 
 teachers, Emma Willard and Mary Lyon, had 
 been indeed due the earliest steps in the move- 
 ment to secure any real education for women. 
 The positions of governess, half nurse and half 
 companion, had been long established in Europe, 
 among wealthy families, and imported to a 
 limited extent into this country. But the sys- 
 tematic training of women for teaching as a 
 
 * Les Femmes Savantes, Act II., Scene VII. 
 
46 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 profession, the establishment for them of Nor- 
 mal Schools, their installation by the thousand 
 in charge of the public schools of the entire 
 country, — this marked a transition as great as 
 would be effected by transforming a private 
 lacquey into a public official. 
 
 The census of 1880 records over 100,000 
 women as teachers, in the public schools of 
 the country. 
 
 The census of 1890 is too imperfect for classi- 
 fied occupations. 
 
 The public-school teachers are public officials 
 in a double sense. They train the children, 
 boys as well as girls, who are to become citizens 
 of the State. They are themselves marshalled, 
 superintended, and governed by officers who 
 have been elected by the voters of the State at 
 regular occasions appointed for the exercise of 
 functions of sovereignty. The more developed 
 becomes the science and art of pedagogy, the 
 more does the profession of teaching become a 
 matter of expertise, and the successful teacher 
 a person of trained and proved capacity. Such 
 capacity may often be intellectually superior to 
 that of the administrative capacity required in 
 the elected officials ; and is avowedly superior 
 to that of the average voter who elects them. 
 
Woman Suffrage. .47 
 
 Yet the female teachers have no vote. For this 
 very reason they are habitually excluded from the 
 upper positions with the larger salaries, and are 
 officially excluded from aspiring to the admin- 
 istrative positions only obtainable by election. 
 
 Here is a pyramid resting on its weakest part, 
 standing absolutely topsy-turvy. Not only this 
 army of teachers, but all other women, presum- 
 ably attached by special affiliations to the schools, 
 and unquestionably profoundly interested in the 
 children taught, are largely forbidden to exer- 
 cise either supervision or control over either the 
 instruction, or the fortunes of those who instruct. 
 In twelve States of the Union, the light of 
 school suffrage has, after long controversy, been 
 conceded to women. In the State of New 
 York, however, though permitted in some 
 localities to vote for School Trustees, women 
 have, by the decision of the Supreme Court, 
 handed down in January, 1894, been pro- 
 nounced unable to vote for School Commis- 
 sioner, until they shall have been relieved of 
 their disability through a constitutional amend- 
 ment. 
 
 This decision has precipitated the movement 
 to obtain from the constitutional convention now 
 in session, an amendment which shall rectify 
 
48 " Common Sense " applied to 
 
 the disturbed balance of things, and enable wo- 
 men to vote, whenever they have a wish to ex- 
 press, and a legitimate interest to defend ; an 
 amendment which may put an end to the con- 
 fusion of ideas which engenders injustice, and 
 to a confusion of responsibilities which invites 
 neglect. 
 
 Useless to say with tentative conservatism, 
 " To women the child and the training of the 
 child and the schooling of the child, and 
 therefore, School Suffrage." In the immense 
 cities of Brooklyn and New York, even the 
 limited right to vote for school trustees does 
 not exist, — for the ward trustees are appointed 
 through local elections, and the Board of Edu- 
 cation is nominated by the Mayor. The ap- 
 propriations for the schools, the expenditures 
 of these appropriations, to which taxation on 
 property owned by women contributes in large 
 proportion, are decided by Boards of Estimate 
 and other officials, with whose selection not a 
 mother in these vast populations has a word to 
 say. 
 
 Yet it is more logical for the State of New 
 York to declare women unable to elect School 
 commissioners until they shall have been 
 clothed with full rights of sovereignty, than 
 
Woman Suffrage. 49 
 
 it is for Massachusetts to pronounce women 
 fit to vote for school officials but unfit to vote 
 for any one else. 
 
 The decision of the Supreme Court, like the 
 ship-money levied in the inland county of 
 Hampshire, has served, we rejDeat, to precipitate 
 a discussion so radical, that it will not cease 
 until the irresistible claims of logic are satisfied. 
 Nor will such satisfaction be, as has been as- 
 serted, " too French " in its completeness. It 
 will fully continue the English march of 
 thought we cherish as our own, which 
 
 " Broadens slowly down from precedent to precedent." 
 
 The profession of medicine was thrown open 
 to women when, in 1849, the year following 
 the Revolution, and the Woman's Rights Con 
 vention, and the passage of the Married Wo-' 
 man's Property Bill, New York State for th( * 
 first time, at Geneva, conferred a medicai 
 diploma on a woman, Elizabeth BlackwelA 
 She was, or rather became, the sister-in-law of 
 Lucy Stone ; and the work of these two women, 
 the one in medicine, the other for equal suf- 
 frage, constituted the two necessary halves of 
 one idea. If all women were to claim such 
 substantial equality with men, as was implied 
 
50 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 in equality of political right, it was essential 
 that some women should prove themselves 
 to be capable of work which involved the high- 
 est intellectual and social responsibilities. 
 
 It was an arduous task for the women of 
 fifty years ago, starting from the low level of 
 the education which had up to that time been 
 alone accessible to them, to show any capacity, 
 or even the dimmest insight into the great intel- 
 lectual province of medicine. But the difficulty 
 of the task was immensely magnified by the 
 intense hostility aroused in the profession 
 against the admission of women to its ranks. 
 The history of this acrimonious controversy is 
 that of a pitched battle, whose echoes have 
 hardly yet died away. 
 
 " So all day long the noise of battle rolled, 
 Among the mountains by the winter sea." 
 
 " Those accustomed to value ideas according to their 
 intrinsic power, as shown by their originality and fruitful 
 result, should admit that there was real grandeur in this 
 thought ; the thought that the entire sex might be lifted 
 upon a higher intellectual plane by means of a practical 
 work, for which at the moment not half a dozen people 
 in America discerned the oppportunity." * 
 
 Nothing is more intrinsically remote from 
 
 political rights and interests than the sphere of 
 
 * " Women in Medicine," WomerCs Work in America^ p. 150. 
 
Woman Suffrage. 5 1 
 
 medicine; yet, because political equality im- 
 plies average equality between the sexes, and 
 admission to an intellectual profession concedes 
 the possibility of even intellectual superiority 
 among women, the arguments by which this 
 admission was opposed and retarded are identi- 
 cal with many of those to-day advanced against 
 woman suffrage. It is true that detailed argu- 
 ment on a legitimate basis soon broke down, 
 and resolutions were substituted which declared 
 the views of the Supreme Being in regard to 
 female physicians. But such substitution is 
 paralleled in our time also. In 1871, at the 
 American Medical Association, an Illinois doc- 
 tor asked very solemnly whether " the time had 
 come, by deliberate action to open the door and 
 welcome the female portion of the community, 
 not only into our profession, but into all profes- 
 sions. Do we desire this time ever to come ? 
 Is there any difference in the sexes? Were 
 they designed for any different spheres ? Are 
 we to heed the law plainly imprinted on the 
 human race, — or are we, as a body, to yield to 
 the popular breeze of the times, and say it 
 must come, and therefore we will do it?" 
 Apparently that is exactly what this august 
 body finally did do. 
 
52 ''Commo7i Sense'' applied to 
 
 Therefore the friends of equal rights for 
 women must not feel too discouraged when, 
 nearly twenty-five years later, in a somewhat 
 different sphere, another note of warning was 
 raised with equal piety and solemnity. (?) 
 
 " Another matter which lies deeply imbedded in the 
 entire Scriptural record, is the essential disparity of the 
 two sexes. . . . The intention of Scripture is clear 
 from the method in which it handles representatives of 
 the womanly sex. . . . Any civilization that trans- 
 forms or tends to transform a woman into the female 
 duplicate of a man, is a false civilization. [Yet] you 
 would have no logical warrant for deciding that because 
 the Virgin Mary does not seem to have turned over the 
 miraculous babe into the clumsy keeping of Joseph in 
 order to get opportunity to skip to the polls, therefore 
 mothers of our own era and city are morally restrained 
 from oscillating between the crib and the ballot-box." * 
 
 At the present day women are members of 
 medical societies of the highest rank all over 
 the United States ; support three large schools 
 of their own and several lesser ones ; are ad- 
 mitted to the medical schools of all the Western 
 State Universities ; and in the East to the 
 school of the Johns Hopkins University. 
 Women - have graduated from these schools to 
 
 * Rev, Dr. Parkhurst, sermon preached May 13, 1894. Tribune^ 
 May 14th. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 53 
 
 the number of several thousand, practise all^ 
 over the United States, study with varying, 
 degrees of freedom in hundreds of hospitals, and} 
 conduct seven of their own. The legal status' 
 of women in medicine is absolutely the same a^ 
 that of men ; they are eligible for all State! 
 appointments, fill official positions on health 
 boards, in prisons, and reformatories, and — by 
 special legislation recently enacted in several 
 States, including New York — are specifically 
 ordered for appointment in female insane 
 asylums. Their expert testimony, already ac- 
 cepted by life-insurance companies, is recog- 
 nized in law courts. And by a special amend- 
 ment to a New York law of 1893, judges are 
 empowered to order the physical examinations 
 of female contestants by w^omen physicians, 
 who are then said to be clothed with "quasi- 
 judicial functions." 
 
 The admission of women to the profession of 
 law does not indicate the attainment of any 
 higher intellectual standard than is implied 
 by their introduction into medicine, but it has 
 a special significance of its own. Medicine, 
 though recognized, employed, and to some 
 extent controlled by the State, remains chiefly 
 a matter of private, and at most of social, con- 
 
54 ^^ Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 cern. But it is different with law. In 1883 
 the Supreme Court of Italy decided that " the 
 function of advocate constituted something 
 imore than a profession ; it was a kind of public 
 and necessary office ; and, to admit women to 
 the Bar, was required a formal test declaring 
 women capable of holding all offices and all 
 ppointments, both public and civil." ^ 
 
 In 1888 the court at Brussels decided in the 
 ame way, " that a woman could only be an 
 dvocate, if she is capable of filling the office of 
 judge." 
 
 " Oh, wise young judge, how I 6o honour thee ! " 
 
 "In conclusion the Procureur-General de- 
 clared that in the present state of legislation 
 and opinion, women could neither hold the title 
 nor exercise the profession of advocate, and 
 that on the day when they were admitted to 
 the Bar, there would be an end to the indepen- 
 dence and dignity of the Bar." f 
 
 Notwithstanding these recent and learned 
 opinions pronounced by the Supreme Courts of 
 two great European countries, the various States 
 of the American Union, after a certain amount 
 
 * Rights of Women, Ostrogorski, 1893, p. 144. 
 f Ostrogorski, he. eit., p. 146. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 55 
 
 of controversy over specific demands for admis- 
 sion, have generally pronounced women eligible 
 for the profession. " When the law courts re- 
 sisted, legislature intervened in favor of 
 women. Special laws authorizing them to prac- 
 tise as advocates were adopted in the following 
 States: California (Constitution), Illinois (1881), 
 Iowa (1882), Massachusetts, Minnesota (1881), 
 New York (1886), Ohio (1879), Wisconsin 
 (1878), Massachusetts (1882). Last in import- 
 ance, though not in order of time, a federal law, 
 adopted February 13, 1879, has given women 
 access to the Bar of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States." * 
 
 In other spheres woman's practical work has 
 much antedated its own official recognition. 
 In law the State has gone faster in admitting 
 women to the Bar than they in pressing forward 
 to come in. The close association of legal occu- 
 pations with political rights, the intimate connec- 
 tions between the law and its administration, 
 and the political structure of society, should 
 both explain and justify this rational delay. 
 Possibly women may always remain rari nantes 
 in this profession, to which no such special calls 
 for them exist as in the profession of medi- 
 
 * Ostrogorski, loc. cit,, p. 159. 
 
56 ^^ Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 cine. But there is an intrinsic absurdity in the 
 active practice of law by women who do not 
 possess the ballot : there is too glaring a contra- 
 diction in the proposal to admit women advo- 
 cates to plead in the same court-room whence 
 women jurors are excluded. Italy and Bel- 
 gium have been logical in pointing out this 
 inconsistency. If the United States has over- 
 looked it, we may accept the fact as an indica- 
 tion of another fact of which the judges of even 
 the Supreme Court seem to be unconscious, that 
 the day of women's political enfranchisement is 
 near at hand, — is standing at the door. 
 
 Upon the profession of journalism it is un- 
 necessary to dwell at length. The extensive 
 admission of women into this profession is sig- 
 nificant, not to the extent to which journalism 
 touches upon literature, for the point of contact 
 is very slight, but to the modern position of 
 the daily press as a powerful factor in mould- 
 ing public opinion. 
 
 In a society where government is founded 
 upon and conducted by public opinion, in the 
 profession which stands almost as closely allied 
 to this, as do laws to political institutions, 
 women are admitted — women throng. 
 
 Their opportunities for rising are limited 
 
Woman Suffrage, 57 
 
 chiefly by their ability. Their ability is ener- 
 vated, not only by other causes, but by the 
 remoteness from actual affairs proper to an 
 unenfranchised, a politically alien class. Still, in 
 journalism, there the women are, there they seem 
 destined to stay ; there, in small ways, so mul- 
 tiple as almost to become an equivalent for 
 ways larger and fewer, they exercise a public 
 influence. How is it possible much longer for 
 the new right to remain unattended by its co- 
 relative responsibility ? 
 
 " The authority of Great Britain over this country is a 
 form of government which, sooner or later, must have an 
 end." * 
 
 Government has established special and en- 
 tirely new relations with women along all the 
 lines of new work above described. It has pro- 
 tected women operatives by factory laws ; it has 
 accorded women in business, rights in contracts 
 and personal rights hitherto withheld. It has 
 enforced the admittance of women to all public 
 institutions for education, from the primary 
 school to the State University ; it has entrusted 
 public education and the training of citizens 
 chiefly to women ; it has legalized the position 
 
 * Common Sense, p. 84. 
 
58 ^'Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 of women in the learned professions ; and it has 
 thrown open to women a large number of 
 official positions and salaried employments. 
 Seven thousand women are to-day employed 
 in the various administration offices at Washi 
 ington, where, however, it is deemed necessar} 
 even by their friends, to keep for them a certain 
 inferiority of position or salary, lest their places 
 should be claimed by voters. This close rela 
 tion of women to appointed official position 
 brings them within a stone's throw of elected 
 official position, — certainly within a step oi 
 the position of sharing in the election. 
 
 " The civil-service law practically went into effect in 
 1883. The report for 1884 stated that while the 'law' 
 made no distinction on account of sex, the * appointing 
 power * had thus far used its discretion in the selection 
 from the list of eligibles of less than one-sixth as many 
 women as men, although a larger proportion of female than 
 male competitors passed. . . . In the year 1891-92 
 the number of women appointed in certain departments 
 showed a proportion of women to men of a little more 
 than I in 3, a very decided gain for women. This re- 
 markable increase in the number of women appointed 
 and promoted is mainly explained by the extension of the 
 merit system at the civil-service examinations throughout 
 the country : a higher general average of marks is scored 
 by women than by men, except in the more difficult 
 technical examinations. ... In the tabulated record 
 
Woman Suffrage, 5 9 
 
 from January, 1886, to June, 1892, the women were only 
 12 ^ of the number examined, yet 77 ^ of them passed, 
 as against some 60 ^fL of the men. The civil-service com- 
 mission closes its report with the remark that these 
 records show when women in the public service have a 
 fair and even chance with men, they win their full share 
 of the more lucrative and responsible positions." * 
 * Evening Post, J%g^, 
 
III. 
 
 IMMTN-ENCE OF W0:MAN SUFFEAGE. 
 
 THIS fourfold strand of circumstance, this 
 fourfold revolution in the industrial, 
 legal, educational, and governmental position 
 of women, has entirely changed the existing 
 situation from that when the argument for 
 equal suffrage was first outlined. Then the 
 argument was sketched on thin and rarefied 
 air ; now it is embedded in solidities of accom- 
 plished fact. Then it only appealed to those 
 whose ears were attuned to the finer vibrations 
 beyond the diapasons of ordinary thought; 
 to-day it is enforced by the practical exigencies 
 of every-day life. Then it only based itself on 
 the abstract principles dear to the elect souls, — 
 among the great and good of all ages* ; to-day 
 the Thought has descended from the empyrean, 
 it has taken flesh, it has become incarnate 
 among the prosaic possibilities of men. It was 
 
 * " And for company the great and good of all ages." — Emerson 
 in the A merican Scholar. 
 
 60 
 
Woman Suffrage, 6i 
 
 a Thought ; it has become an imminent Fact. 
 It was a Right ; it has become an Expediency. 
 It was born a heavenly body of abstract Truth ; 
 it has become an earthly body of social and 
 political Institution. 
 
 " The propriety of woman suffrage in some 
 form or other is no longer a question of purely 
 speculative interest. In England for nearly 
 twenty years municipal suffrage has been en- 
 joyed by unmarried women who are property 
 holders. In Utah Territory, since its organiza- 
 tion, women have, until recently, been entitled 
 to vote, and are now deprived of that power by . 
 act of Congress for reasons only of local and 
 not of general application. In Wyoming Terr 
 ritory and Washington Territory woman suA 
 frage has been an assured success, and only the 
 constitutionality and not the wisdom of the lam^^ 
 granting it has ever been questioned. In Kan-T^" 
 sas, with its population of nearly one million,l 
 women have been granted municipal suffrage 
 on the same terms with men, and at the elec- 
 tions held last spring voted in large numbers. 
 In New York and Maine similar bills have 
 within the year passed the Senate, though they 
 have been subsequently rejected by the House. 
 In our own (Massachusetts) Legislature a bill 
 

 62 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 granting municipal suffrage to women lias for 
 several years been favorably reported from the 
 committee, and has secured a large vote in 
 favor of its passage. Woman suffrage, what- 
 ever it may have been in the past, is to-day a/' 
 question of practical politics." * 
 
 It is a practical question in America, in Eng- 7 
 land, and the English colonies, among which 
 New Zealand has just taken the lead in grant- 
 ing full suffrage to women. It is not yet a 
 practical question in France, Germany, Austria, 
 or the Latin States on the Mediterranean. 
 Marked general inferiority of education ; nu- 
 merous restrictions on personal liberty, embody- 
 ing a rooted disbelief in the possibility that 
 commingling of the sexes can ever remain dec- 
 orous if once allowed to be free ; the persist- 
 ence of civil disabilities which in America, and 
 especially in the State of New York, would 
 appear like a double anachronism pertaining to 
 feudalism or to the Canon Law ; — all these cir- 
 cumstances combine to restrain the movement 
 for political rights for women, as yet, within 
 " the sphere of the ridiculous." f Napoleon 
 has said : " There is one thing that is not French, 
 
 * Woman and the Commonwealth; or, A Question of Expediency. 
 George Pellew, Boston, 1888. 
 f Ostrogorski, loc. cit. 
 
Woman Suffragt: 
 
 and that is that a woman can do what she 
 
 pleases." 
 
 " Some timid attempts made in the French Parliament 
 to do away with the restrictions on the civil capacity of 
 women have come to nothing. A Bill to grant women 
 the right to be witnesses to deeds and to be guardians, 
 though long since adopted by one of the two Chambers, 
 is still in abeyance. Other Bills, — as for example, pro- 
 posals for doing away with the prohibition of the quest 
 as to the fathership have no chance of being adopted * ; 
 there are too many lawyers in the French Chambers who 
 have been brought up in a superstitious and blunt respect 
 for the Code Napoleon." f 
 
 Notwithstanding the depression of women's 
 civil rights, and their absolute exclusion from 
 even the dream of political sphere, the women 
 of France engage more freely than anywhere 
 else in business and industry. In France, also, 
 if anywhere, is the personal influence of women 
 over men, both licit and illicit, most extensive, 
 most openly acknowledged, most often disas- 
 trous. The restrictions imposed upon women 
 by law, often read like a half-despairing attempt 
 on the part of men, to collectively revenge tEis 
 
 * This famous law on the Recherchd de la Paternity is, neverthe- 
 less, the object of constant witticisms among the French themselves. 
 " In this way," it has been said, " do Frenchmen bind themselves 
 together to support each other's children." 
 
 t Ostrogorski, loc cit. 
 
64 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 influence, whicli they find themselves unabje^ 
 individually, to resist. The punishment is in- 
 flicted at the point where disaster arises, — on 
 whatever involves, directly or remotely, special 
 relations of sex. In regard to property, the 
 unmarried woman inherits the equal rights of 
 the Koman law rather than, as in England, the 
 feudal disabilities of daughters and sisters. 
 But in marital rights, in the claims of unmarried 
 maternity, in everything pertaining to the per- 
 sonal dignity of the individual woman which 
 might tend to raise her to an equality with 
 man — here the law is pitiless and society cruel. 
 Strange, therefore, in view of these obvious 
 and well-known facts to hear an American 
 writer denounce the extension of political rights 
 to women, lest, in the ardor of political strife, 
 women should appeal to " the potency of femi- 
 nine charms, aided by feminine arts." The 
 woman " inside politics " will not fail to make 
 use of an influence so subtile and strong, and 
 of which the management is peculiarly suited 
 t(T her talents. When " woman is fairly ^ in- 
 side politics,' the sensation press will reap a 
 harvest of scandals more lucrative to itself than 
 profitable to public morals." * 
 
 * Francis Parkman, Some of the Reasons against Woman Suffrage. 
 
Woman Suffrage. 65 
 
 If experience can prove anything, it proves 
 tliBt the danger of illicit sex influences is, and 
 always has been, in inverse proportion to the 
 degree to which women approximated to equal- 
 ity with men, in social dignity and in opportu- 
 nity for public responsibility. The women of 
 the nation, or of the class, whose range of 
 thought and sphere of action is most nearly 
 reduced within the limits of sex relation, are 
 liable to become dangerous precisely in propor- 
 tion to the degree of such restriction. To the 
 Anglo-Saxon race seems to have been especially 
 committed the mission of securing and develop- 
 ing political freedom among men. Inadequate, 
 defective in many other spheres, in this it has 
 been invariably foremost and easily supreme. 
 Their women cannot fail to share, at least to some 
 extent, in the inherited instinct of the race and 
 in its especial and accumulated capacity. It is 
 among the nations of this race and its Scandi- 
 navian kindred that women have been and are 
 most free, and have enjoyed the most many- 
 sided development. The edict of the second 
 Brumaire, which dissolved the female clubs of 
 Paris, and sent hysteric termagants packing to 
 their homes, contains no more forecast for the 
 political possibilities of Anglo-Saxon women, 
 
66 Woman Suffrage, 
 
 than do the masculine hysterics of the entire 
 French Revolution forebode anything of the 
 political future of England or America. " Bon 
 chien ehasse de race." 
 
IV. 
 
 EISE OF CAPACITY OF WOMEN, FALL OF POLITICAL 
 DIGIQTY OF MEN. 
 
 AS in a mass of water into whicli a warm 
 current is let in below and slowly rises, 
 a cold and surface current as steadily descends ; 
 so, during the fateful fifty years whose history 
 in regard to women we have briefly indicated, 
 double currents have been setting — one upwards 
 and the other down. While the capacity of 
 women has been rising, the political dignity of 
 men has been falling, year by year. 
 
 Small need to recapitulate the successive 
 stages of this fall. Every one knows how the 
 franchise of the antique republics, at last ex- 
 tended to all the male inhabitants of the com- 
 monwealth except the slaves, was practically 
 annihilated with the establishment of the 
 Roman Empire, and how Charlemagne, late in 
 the ninth century, sought to recall the extinct 
 breath of antique liberty by initiating repre- 
 sentative assemblies. Representation grafted a 
 
 67 
 
68 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 fertile modern idea upon the direct popular 
 franchise, which alone was known to antiquity. 
 
 In all Anglo-Saxon communities, whether in 
 their Germanic homes or in England, self- 
 government appears at the very dawn of his- 
 tory. Among the Teutons, the affairs of the 
 "mark-moot," the "hundred," and the state 
 assembly were conducted by all the freemen of 
 the tribe. In the deliberation of the assembled 
 people, every man had an equal voice ; and it 
 was the custom for all to appear fully armed. * 
 After the Saxon conquest of Britain, the primi- 
 tive Teutonic village community represented a 
 settlement made up of eorls or nobles, ceorls or 
 simple freemen, landless men or laets, and 
 finally slaves. The two first classes alone pos- 
 sessed land, and in virtue of that possession were 
 alone entitled to political rights. In the " tun- 
 moot," or primitive township, which elected its 
 own officers and provided for the representa- 
 tion of its interests in the courts of the hundred 
 and the shire, appears the earliest English form 
 of the representative principle. 
 
 From the eorls and ceorls developed the en- 
 tire body of English freemen — on the one hand 
 the nobility, the thanes ; on the other the yeo- 
 
 * Tacitus. Germania. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 69 
 
 manry and untitled but land-owning common- 
 ers. All the political life of England has been 
 carried on by these two classes, alone articulate 
 in history, and so much so that it is easy to sup- 
 pose that no other class existed, and that politi- 
 cal rights were universal. But it is estimated 
 that at the time of the Norman Conquest two 
 thirds of the people of England belonged to the 
 unrepresented class of serfs and slaves. 
 
 " The runaway slave could be flogged, or, // a womatty 
 burned to death." * 
 
 All women were similarly deprived either of 
 the right to assemble in the primary caucus or 
 town-meetings, or of a voice in the selection of 
 representatives for the shire. But if in this 
 political privation they shared the destiny of the 
 " unfree," of the laets and slaves, and of the 
 debtors, criminals, foreigners, captives and pris- 
 oners of war, by which these luckless classes 
 were constantly being recruited, the women of 
 the higher classes at least were partially com- 
 pensated by sharing the special social considera- 
 tion accorded to the men of their own order. 
 What is of more importance for our present 
 purpose, the idea that women could share any 
 
 * Green, Short History of the English People, vol. i., p. 28. 
 
70 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 other consideration had as yet occurred to no- 
 body. Into a meeting of armed men, it would 
 have seemed absurd for women to intrude ; and 
 the questions raised at these primitive assemblies 
 were too simply and exclusively connected with 
 the " provision and defence " of the community 
 to suggest any advantage to be derived from the 
 counsels of women. 
 
 When the general assembly of the tribe had 
 shrunk to the aristocratic witenagemot of the 
 heptarchy — the selected councillors of the king, 
 the germ of the future House of Lords ; when 
 under Henry II. the National Council, prothal- 
 tus of the House of Commons, was definitely 
 organized, and summons issued regularly to 
 archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls, 
 barons, knights, and freeholders* — women were 
 still excluded, for the reason that they had 
 never before been admitted. At this period, 
 by the thirteenth century, and thence onwards, 
 society had become sufficiently complex, suf- 
 ficiently removed from the original nucleus of 
 exclusive concern for ^' provision and defence," 
 to have furnished many of the intrinsic reasons 
 for woman suffrage which exist to-day. But 
 
 * Origin and Growth cf English Constitution, Hannis Taylor, 
 1889, p. 289. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 71 
 
 memory of the primitive past still dominated 
 the actual time: the "dead man's mailed 
 hand " here, as in so many other directions, still 
 weighed heavily enough to control the situation. 
 
 The evolution of the situation illustrated the 
 proverb : who goes not forward, goes back. 
 Women did not only fail to participate in the 
 growing rights of national representation, but 
 they lost the feudal rights of individual petty 
 sovereignty, which many women in the upper 
 classes had formerly possessed. 
 
 " The condition of the landed estate predomi- 
 nated over the condition of the person, so that 
 the woman who held the fief had all the privi- 
 leges of the noble, vassal, or rather all the 
 rights of sovereignty : right to raise troops, coin 
 money, administer civil and criminal justice. 
 Her right in these respects was as absolute as 
 that of men. But these great rights of noble 
 women were gradually extinguished during the 
 fourteenth century." * 
 
 In characteristic agreement with the method 
 of dealing with the rights of women which has 
 generally prevailed, one right was saved for 
 them in the midst of this general lapse : in de- 
 
 * Laboulaye, Recherches sur la Condition Civil et Politique des 
 Femmes^ — Metfioir Couronn^, 1842, p. 442. 
 
72 " Common Sense " applied to 
 
 fault of male heirs, baronies were allowed to 
 descend to baronial heiresses, " who, although 
 they could not themselves sit in the king's coun- 
 cil, conveyed to their husbands the presumptive 
 right to receive his summons." * 
 
 '' The husbands even continued to sit after the death 
 of their wives as tenants by the curtesy." f 
 
 This custom, like a fashion designed for 
 velvet, which reproduces itself in fustian and 
 calico, subsequently extended from baronial 
 fiefs to the property of commoners, so that every 
 husband, though he might not sit in the king's 
 council, could still be " tenant by curtesy " of 
 the inheritance of his wife. 
 
 During this same thirteenth century, the 
 national assembly assumed a new type : that 
 of the " estate system," in which three classes 
 or orders of society, definitely established as 
 clergy, baronage, and commons, appeared in 
 person or by representatives. From that mo- 
 ment disappeared the last chance, had it ever 
 existed, for women to appear in such assemblies, 
 or to have a voice in choosing representatives to 
 them. The Assembly was intended to repre- 
 sent not individuals, but orders, estates ; and it 
 
 * Taylor, loc. cit., p. 436. f Hallam, vol. iii., p. 119. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 73 
 
 was plausible to assume that women were ade- 
 quately represented by the men of tlieir own 
 order ; or, when they belonged to unrepresented 
 classes, that women should share the political 
 exclusion of their men. This theory dominated 
 the entire system of English political thought 
 for six centuries, even beyond the moment of the 
 great Reform Bill of 1832. For that bill was 
 not planned to secure wider individual repre- 
 sentation — a plan which could hardly have been 
 practically devised previous to the Revolution 
 of 1848. The reform was simply intended to 
 rectify abuses occurring in borough and other 
 class representation, abuses which had grown 
 up, not through perversions of principle, but 
 through lapses of situation and changes of fact. 
 Before the fifteenth century, when the Parlia- 
 ment touched its first culminating point, women 
 had completely disappeared below the horizon 
 of public life. Coincidently, soon after this great 
 epoch, the liberties and prosperity of England 
 began to decline, and the condition of the people 
 to enter upon that insidious process of deteriora- 
 tion which was not to be arrested for more than 
 two centuries. When the lowest point of mate- 
 rial and political degradation, for the mass of the 
 people, had been reached at the beginning of 
 
74 ** Common Sense " applied to 
 
 the eighteenth century, the reaction set in ; and 
 by 1848, not only popular, but universal suffrage 
 had been established in France and in the 
 United States. Then came the civil war, and 
 at a bound, with a single stroke of the pen, the 
 emancipated slaves were endowed with equal 
 political rights. The farthest possible limit of 
 the franchise for men was then reached. For 
 the first time in the history of the world, all the 
 women of the State were rendered the political 
 inferiors of all the men in it and so remain. No 
 matter how well born, how intelligent, how 
 highly educated, how virtuous, how rich, how 
 refined, the women of to-day constitute a politi- 
 cal class below that of every man, no matter how 
 base born, how stupid, how ignorant, how vicious, 
 how poverty-stricken, how brutal. The pauper 
 in the almshouse may vote ; the lady who de- 
 votes her philanthropic thought to making that 
 almshouse habitable, may not. The tramp who 
 begs cold victuals in the kitchen may vote ; the 
 heiress who feeds him and endows universities 
 may not. The half civilized hordes pouring into 
 our country through the open gates of our sea- 
 port towns, the Indian if settled in severalty, the 
 negro on the cotton plantation, — all, now, or in a 
 few years, have a vote. But the white woman 
 
Woman Suffrage. 75 
 
 of purest blood, and who, in her own person, or 
 that of mother or grandmother, has helped to 
 sustain the courage of the Revolutionary war, to 
 fight the heroic battle of abolition, and to dress 
 the wounds of the Rebellion, — this woman must 
 keep silence. Legislatures are .distracted by 
 controversies over the means to secure the 
 "illiterate vote"; pasters are provided, and 
 symbols ; and in the meanwhile, all the women 
 — who embrace half the education, half the 
 virtue, and but a fraction of the illiteracy or 
 crime of the community — remain excluded from 
 the franchise, buried behind this dense cloud of 
 often besotted ignorance. 
 
 The above observations were made in the 
 address delivered before the Convention at the 
 New York hearing May 31, 1894 (see Appendix, 
 p. 210). On June 2d the following passages 
 appeared in an editorial of the Evening Post. 
 
 " One great cause of the woman-suffrage agitation is 
 the eagerness with which democracy has taken hold of 
 the machinery of government. . . . The work of gov- 
 ernment, which is, or ought to be, really a means only 
 towards human enjoyment and convenience, has come 
 to be considered one of the great ends of human exist- 
 ence. . . . The inordinate importance attached to 
 the business of governing, and the discredit heaped 
 on everybody who did not take part in it, have had 
 
76 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 the effect of filling the minds of men and women 
 with the idea that anybody who did not share in it was 
 robbed of a natural right bestowed on him or her by the 
 Creator. To this we owe the indiscriminate distribution 
 of the suffrage among all classes and conditions of males 
 in all democratic countries, and the growing disregard 
 of intelligence and character in admitting people to a 
 share in the management of public affairs. Nothing but 
 a feeling that each person held his right to the franchise 
 by the same title as his right to liberty or property, could 
 have caused or excused the tremendous rush of barbar- 
 ous men into the work of government during the past 
 fifty years. It was not unnatural that the women, seeing 
 this, and hearing on all sides that electing people to office 
 was one of the chief ends of man, and about the noblest 
 work in which he could engage, should have begun to 
 complain of their exclusion, and demand a fair share of 
 what men made so much of." 
 
 The author of the present pamphlet may be 
 
 " Who the author of this production is, is wholly un- 
 necessary to the public." 
 
 pardoned for a certain feeling of self-compla- 
 cency, that the Evening Post thus condescended, 
 in its editorial columns, to reply to the argument 
 of a public address, which its columns of ordi- 
 nary news had left entirely unnoticed. We trust 
 the Post would not consider disrespectful the 
 remark that, to the feminine ear, this reply bears 
 a marvellous resemblance to those conscious 
 
Woman Suffrage, jy 
 
 sophisms of tlie nursery, wherewith tender 
 mothers try to persuade their obstreperous 
 children to desist from snatching at the fragile 
 bric-a-brac which may have dazzled infantile 
 fancy. "No, no, Tommy, don't touch that; it 
 will hurt Tommy's pretty little hand ; see, it cuts 
 mamma ; it is an ugly thing anyhow ; mamma 
 won't have it standing there to bother Tommy ; 
 here, nurse, come and take it away and throw it 
 out of the window ; dear mamma does not want 
 Tommy to play with such an ugly old thing ! " 
 To whom comes, discreet, the nurse, conveys 
 away under her apron the discredited bauble ; 
 until such time as the child's attention may have 
 become sufficiently distracted by its own play- 
 things, to permit the replacement of the con- 
 tested toy in its old place of honor. 
 
 For that a place of honor, and none else, must 
 be held by that in human society which is con- 
 spicuous, foremost, supreme in its own sphere, 
 and which, in any sense, controls the actions and 
 determines the status of all the members of 
 society, no one knows better than the Evening 
 Post None better, than that the honor paid 
 to government is not a fancy of the " French 
 Rousseauites," * nor of Democracy, and that the 
 
 * After all, only Robespierre was distinctly a disciple of Rousseau. 
 
78 '^Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 Evening Post approximates strangely towards 
 the *^ anarchist idea " it condemns, in pretending, 
 at least in this argumentum adfoeminam, that 
 "government" is a matter of no consequence 
 anyhow. But if this be the case, why object to 
 the "rush of barbarous men" into it? Why 
 should not all cultivated and refined people of 
 both sexes content themselves with the reflec- 
 tion, that government is only a convenience, 
 that intellectual pursuits are more dignified than 
 politics, that afternoon teas are more elegant 
 assemblages than primaries, that the ideas that 
 mould public opiilion in the long run are greater 
 than the precepts that govern public actions at 
 short range, that the pure science of the labora- 
 tory is of far more real importance than the ap- 
 plied science of the WeeMy Tribune, that Goethe 
 pronounced the speculations of Lamarck of far 
 more consequence than the whole French Rev- 
 olution, that Aristotle was really greater than 
 Alexander, and Bacon and Shakespeare than 
 Elizabeth, and that it is a more agreeable and 
 humane way to spend one's evenings at home in 
 perusal of the Evening Post, than to shout one- 
 self hoarse either on the platform or in the 
 audience of mass-meetings collected to influence 
 the decisions of this low-down, no account, in- 
 
Woman Suffrage, 79 
 
 convenient convenience of a democratic govern- 
 ment ! 
 
 Why ? unless because, as Aristotle himself 
 remarked, even from the midst of his natural- 
 history museum, and surrounded by the exotic 
 gifts of Alexander, '^ Man is a political animal ! " 
 
 At the moment the idea of Representation 
 vras born into the world, came with it a twin, but 
 so imperfectly developed, so meagre and insigni- 
 ficant in appearance, it failed for ages to attract 
 any particular attention. This twin idea is, that 
 in a highly organized society, in a properly de- 
 veloped social organism, the function of govern- 
 ment has become, if it never were befoi-e, twofold 
 — not only to rule, but to represent. To give, 
 and with constantly increasing definiteness, pre- 
 cision and efficiency, articulate expression to all 
 the forces, needs, interests, wills, and thoughts of 
 all the elements of the body politic, which thus, 
 and thus only, become fully, because thus only 
 socially, alive. The conception of the spiritual 
 and secular arm, distinctly enunciated so long ago 
 in the Roman state, and since dominating Euro- 
 pean history, has, like most powerful social con- 
 ceptions, a profound physiological basis and anal- 
 ogy. This conception for the social organism, 
 bases itself, though unconsciously, on the fact 
 
8o ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 that in the individual organism the brain is at 
 once the organ of thought, and the organ of the 
 will, which executes the purpose of thought. 
 Further, that the thoughts generated during the 
 processes of the brain, reflect innumerable vital 
 actions sustained throughout the body, even to 
 its extreme periphery, and whose influence, 
 irradiated to the brain, initiates these same brain 
 processes. One of the latest dicta of neurological 
 science is, that in the mosaic of the brain cortex, 
 the entire body is represented. 
 
 Although the representative function of gov- 
 ernment only began to be distinctly recognized 
 when our Saxon ancestors began to send dele- 
 gates from their " tun-moot " to their " hundred " 
 and " shire " ; yet in a, vague but still most im- 
 pressive way, the function of representation was 
 discerned even in the Oriental monarchies which 
 greet us at the dawn of history. To this was 
 due the very majesty of the great king, — of 
 Rameses, of Nebuchadnezzar, of Xerxes. In 
 his personality was mysteriously concentrated 
 all the personalities of vast empires — Scythian, 
 Bactrian, Assyrian, Elamite, Arab, Copt; Nine- 
 veh, Babylon, Susa, Thebes, and Memphis, — all 
 fused together, until a tremendous quintessence 
 of vital force could be distilled through the 
 
Woman Suffrage, 8i 
 
 body and soul of the man, whose physical 
 organs bore a superficial resemblance to those 
 of the slave who stood behind the throne. 
 Hence this physical appearance was rejected 
 as an illusion of sense — just as in later ages 
 devout Catholics rejected the physical aspect of 
 the blessed bread and wine, and saw in these 
 the veritable body and blood of Christ. 
 
 To a properly developed social imagination, 
 the social organs, through whose medium is 
 manifested the collective force and vital action 
 of a great people, should be invested with no 
 less sublime dignity than that which humanity 
 has always, (and not only since New York began 
 to hold parlor meetings for suffrage) invested 
 its rulers and kings. We are in a period of 
 temporary eclipse of faith ; and so content to 
 despise indiscriminately, our symbols, our rulers, 
 and even the representatives of ourselves. But 
 man lives by faith and cannot long live without it. 
 
 At present, the view of government which 
 the Evening Post (but only for the present pur- 
 pose) advocates, leads directly to many of the 
 very evils which the Evening Post is constantly 
 expending most strenuous energies to combat. 
 Because the idea of sovereignty has become de- 
 tached from all previously admitted attributes 
 
82 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 of sovereignty, is no longer necessarily associ- 
 ated with any insignia of intrinsic power, the 
 conception of sovereignty itself has become lax, 
 feeble, confused. 
 
 Sovereignty, divided into a million fragments, 
 seems illusory, worthless. " Absurd," women are 
 told, " to struggle for the right of suffrage, when 
 that means nothing. You might as well pine 
 for the privilege of riding in a crowded omni- 
 bus, when you already have the right of driving 
 in your comfortable carriage. The right to rule 
 yourselves ! No one rules himself, much less 
 any one else. What personal influence may be 
 exerted by tongue or pen, can be done by the 
 unenfranchised full as well as by those who pos- 
 sess the illusory privilege of the ballot. I, w^ho 
 am legally entitled to vote, do not vote half the 
 time. What, then, do you want to vote for ? " 
 
 " No one rules ! " Yet, according to the dic- 
 tum of a master in political thought, the first 
 question to be decided in any community is: 
 Where rests the Sovereign Power ? The answer, 
 according to the theory of a democratic society, 
 is : With Public Opinion. According to the 
 theory of a Republic, the sovereignty lies, with 
 such Public Opinion as shall prove itself, through 
 superior virtue and intelligence, to be not only 
 
Woman Suffrage, 83 
 
 the best, but the strongest. For intelligence 
 must be stronger than ignorance, and virtue 
 than vice, wherever free play is really allowed 
 to each. 
 
 This is the answer according to theory. The 
 answer according to fact must be that the 
 Sovereign Power rests upon physical force. 
 Otherwise it would be incomprehensible that 
 Power, thus defined, should remain confined to 
 the sex whose only universal superiority lay in 
 physical force ; and that the sex which admit- 
 tedly possessed in abundance the attributes of 
 intelligence and virtue should be excluded from 
 all share in the Sovereign Power. 
 
 This cynical answer has indeed been given; 
 given, mirabih dictu, even by clergymen, by 
 those whose profession dictates the constant 
 exaltation of mental over physical qualification 
 for the Sovereignty. 
 
 Nevertheless, not only the answer is not true, 
 but, what is more important for our purpose, 
 no one really believes that in modern societies 
 it is true. Every one knows that physical force 
 is at present the servant, and not, if it has ever 
 been, the master of intelligence. If, with the 
 advent of manhood suffrage, apparently unintel- 
 ligent masses often obtain supreme control, it 
 
84 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 can only be because intelligence has either abdi- 
 cated or declined. The control is not at all due 
 to the possession of a vast amount of latent 
 physical force, which by itself is as useless as 
 the river, which is as yet unturned into the 
 mill race. 
 
 Who abdicates, but those who call the privi- 
 lege of the ballot illusory ? 
 
 The complex contradictions in the present 
 distributions of Sovereign Power are further 
 intensified by the vulgarization of the general 
 ideal. It is one thing to say, " Some men shall 
 rule," quite another to declare, " All men shall 
 rule," and that in virtue of the most primitive, 
 the most rudimentary attribute they possess, 
 that namely of sex. If the original contempt 
 for masses of men has ever diminished, and the 
 conception of mankind been ennobled, it is be- 
 cause, upon the primitive animal foundation, 
 human imagination has built a fair structure of 
 mental and moral attribute and possibility, and 
 habitually deal^ with that. This indeed is no 
 new thing to do ; for it was to this moral man 
 that Pericles addressed his funeral oration ; and 
 of whom Lincoln thought in his speech at 
 Gettysburg. 
 
 Of this moral man, women — the sex hitherto 
 
Woman Suffrage. 85 
 
 so despised — are now recognized to constitute 
 an integral part. It is useless therefore to 
 attempt to throw them out by an appeal to the 
 primitive conditions of a physical force, to 
 which no one appeals for any other purpose. 
 
 It is forgotten to-day that, until to-day, the 
 incapacity of women for the suffrage was attrib- 
 uted, not merely to their deficiency in physical 
 force, but to the profound mental and moral 
 inferiority of her entire nature. Whether this 
 theory was ultimately derived from the natural 
 contempt of the primitive savage for every one 
 whom he could knock down ; or whether, as the 
 Canon Law asserts, it is the natural punish- 
 ment for the seduction of Adam by Eve, and 
 the expression of the subsequent natural indig- 
 nation of the human race, which owes to the 
 same fact its existence and its fall ; certain it 
 is that this theory has prevailed throughout 
 Christendom down to the second half of the 
 nineteenth century, and is only just beginning 
 to wane in its force and in its extraordinary 
 practical efficiency. 
 
 During the long ages of class rule, which are 
 just beginning to cease, only one form of sov- 
 ereignty has been assigned to all men — that, 
 namely, over all women. Upon these feeble 
 
86 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 and inferior companions all men were permitted 
 to avenge the indignities they suffered from so 
 many men to whom they were forced to sub- 
 mit. To-day, when all men rule, and diffused 
 self-government has abolished the old divisions 
 between the governing classes and the governed, 
 only one class remains over whom all men can ex- 
 ercise sovereignty — namely, the women. Hence 
 a shuddering dread runs through society at the 
 proposal to also abolish this last refuge of facile 
 domination. 
 
 " Shall man make over to woman half of the sovereign 
 power which has hitherto been his, and which, if he 
 chooses, he can keep ? . „ . It is incumbent on the 
 present holders of power, before abdicating, to consider 
 whether in the common interest their abdication is to 
 be desired."* 
 
 Mr. Goldwin Smith, like Mr. Francis Park- 
 man, writes as an historian, a closet student, 
 easily affected by abstract terms and general 
 ideas. In these pages we ourselves have also 
 greatly affected general ideas ; and have enun- 
 ciated a claim to a share in the sovereignty, in 
 very much the same spirit as Mr. Smith urges 
 men not to " abdicate." Let us, however, now 
 
 * Goldwin Smith, Woman Suffrage. Essays on Questions of the 
 Day, 1893. 
 
Woman Suffrage, Z"] 
 
 descend, where neither of these eminent his- 
 torians really ever deigns to descend, into the 
 arena of practical issues and daily life, and 
 inquire in what sense men would "abdicate 
 their sovereignty " if women also voted. 
 
 Whether we take a township of a thousand 
 voters electing a school commissioner, or a city 
 electing its mayor, or the whole country voting 
 for President, — the principle is the same ; so we 
 may keep to the convenience of the smaller 
 numbers. 
 
 Suppose when the men had voted alone, 300 
 had decided for candidate A, and 700 for B, 
 who was therefore elected. On the next occa- 
 sion, say in 1895, a thousand women had, in 
 the same locality, been added to the electorate. 
 The 700 men, plus 500 women, vote on this 
 occasion for B ; 300 men and 500 women vote 
 for A. As before, B is elected, and the 700 
 men, in the second case as in the first, secure 
 their choice. In what way then could they be 
 said to have." abdicated the sovereignty?" 
 
 Take another combination. In a third elec- 
 tion 700 of the women unite with the 700 men ; 
 and the combination, being the majority, again 
 carries its candidate, only more women have the 
 satisfaction of succeeding than when they had 
 
88 ''Common Sense''' applied to 
 
 divided equally between the successful and the 
 unsuccessful parties. In another possibility, 
 800 women might unite with only 400, or even 
 300 men, and the 1100 total would be victorious 
 over the remaining 900 of the electorate, where 
 the beaten party would contain a majority of 
 the male voters (700), and a minority of the 
 female (200). This is the occasion so much 
 dreaded, in which the men would seem to have 
 been overpowered by a female vote. 
 
 Evidently the occasion would only recur from 
 time to time, among the infinite number of 
 possible combinations, and could no more be 
 considered the rule than a throw of double 
 sixes on dice. And when it does occur, where is 
 the harm ? Why the anticipation of such insuf- 
 ferable humiliation at this special combination 
 of persons ? This would not be avowed if the 
 thousand new voters added to the town were 
 Swedes, as might be the case in Wisconsin ; or 
 Hungarians, as in some mining settlement of 
 Pennsylvania: or Irish, as easily happens in 
 New York. There is only one supposition that 
 can explain the sentiment of horror which the 
 mere suggestion of this occasional electoi'al 
 combination undoubtedly inspires many people : 
 it is that they have not learned to think of 
 
Woman Suffrage. 89 
 
 women Sispersotis. The addition of their vote 
 does not seem to them the addition of so many 
 more hundred or thousand people to the voting 
 list ; but of a " feminine element," an incalculable 
 quantity, something unknown, mysterious, and 
 with which, at all events, it would be horribly 
 " unmanly " to be associated. Like the valiant 
 husband retreated under the bed, the represen- 
 tative of this class of thinkers declares, " While 
 I have the spirit of a man in me, I will not 
 come out and submit to this outrage ! " 
 
 But, from the moment that women have been 
 made persons before the law, it is illegal to 
 treat them otherwise. It is really a breach of 
 the law to depress them from the status of so 
 many other people, to that of vague elemental 
 forces. 
 
 Nevertheless, this is done all the time. Re- 
 formers, deeply concerned for minority repre- 
 sentation, as is just, and bewailing the crudities 
 of representative government in its infancy, 
 dwell on the woes of the democrats who never 
 get heard in Vermont, and of the republicans 
 who are silenced in South Carolina. But for 
 the women who may not be heard anywhere, 
 and who, forbidden to speak, cease in innu- 
 merable directions to know how to think, — for 
 
QO *' Common Sense " applied to 
 
 these the sensitive reformers feel neither sym- 
 pathy nor concern. And why ? Because women 
 are not to them persons. 
 
 It may be said, for it has been said, that the 
 objection to seeing a vote of 700 men overcome 
 by a coalition of 300 men with 800 women, lies in 
 the fact that the defeated minority knows, if it 
 had a free hand and was allowed to use fisticuffs, 
 it could pound into a jelly a majority composed 
 so largely of women. It would feel, therefore, 
 sullen, restive, and justly indignant, that it 
 should be prohibited from using this power 
 and obliged to submit to a merely nominal 
 force and supremacy. For " there is no force 
 behind the votes of women." 
 
 But is it only in such an hypothetical case 
 that a minority would know it could, if allowed 
 to resort to physical force, shiver to fragments 
 the majority ? The burly brakeman in railroad 
 strikes would probably, in a fair hand-to-hand 
 encounter, be much bested over all the stock- 
 holders of the road, — weakened, not only be- 
 cause they included women in their midst, but also 
 by sedentary habits and predominantly indoor 
 occupations. Why do they not try this way of 
 settling their diJfficulties ? Why do not the 
 classes in England who still remain entirely un- 
 
Woman Suffrage. 91 
 
 represented, but with whom rests so much phys- 
 ical strength, drop their fists into the balance, 
 as Brennus his sword, and cut short the futile, 
 womanish, discussion ? 
 
 The answer is really in every one's mouth. It 
 is not that it cannot be done, but that, on the 
 whole, people are all agreed that it is best it 
 should not be done. It is not that physical 
 force is respected less, but that mental force 
 is respected more. Once the feudal baron, un- 
 able to sign his name, laughed at the sw^ordless 
 clerk. To-day the laugh has changed, and 
 while it is permissible not to be a skilled ath- 
 lete, it is everywhere considered a disgrace to 
 sign with a mark, everywhere, that is, except 
 when exercising the functions of popular sover- 
 eignty at the polls. 
 
 We note these things not because we ourselves 
 have any dislike for fighting, or any contempt for 
 physical force, or any belief that in its absence, 
 and in default of the joyous courage born of 
 tense muscles and well knit bones, any State 
 could survive. But merely because, in the nat- 
 ural development of societies from primitive be- 
 ginnings to modern complexities, many things 
 have been added to the primitive nucleus; and 
 these complicate all decisions, and transfer the 
 
92 Woman Suffrage, 
 
 idea of power to many other forces besides those 
 which inspire a blow. 
 
 It is not, therefore, "abdication of sover- 
 eignty " which is proposed, demanded, or to be 
 dreaded in extending the suffrage to women. 
 It is simply the association of women with men, 
 for such functions of sovereignty as they are 
 able to exercise, and whose dissociation from 
 some others has for precedent a similar dissoci- 
 ation among the functions of the complex mod- 
 ern State. 
 
 "One of the features of a 'revolutionary era is the 
 prevalence of a feeble facility of abdication. The hold- 
 ers of power, however natural and legitimate it may be, 
 are too ready to resign it on the first demand. . . . 
 The nerves of authority are shaken by the failure of con- 
 viction." * 
 
 ♦Goldwin Smith, loc. cit., p. 185. 
 
AEGIIMENTS OF OPPOKENTS. 
 
 MR. SMITH cannot be said to fail to show 
 how the admission of women to the elec- 
 torate would cause the ^'abdication" of men, 
 for he does not even try. Rather does he jump 
 about with grave excitement from one point 
 to another, mixing many things, all accessible 
 things, together, until he has concocted a veritable 
 ollapodrida, 2i2yotpourri of an argument, whose de- 
 tails are a wonderful collection of unrelated parts. 
 The problem offered is to show why, in a repre- 
 sentative system based on the double principle 
 that all the intellisrence in the State shall be en- 
 listed for its welfare, and all the weakness in the 
 State represented for its own defence, women, 
 being often intelligent, often weak, and always 
 persons in the community, should not also be 
 represented. To show that they should not, 
 Mr. Smith tells us : " That sexual revolution 
 must have its limitation if the human race is to 
 continue." "That the movement in favor of 
 
 93 
 
/ 
 
 94 ''Common Sense" applied to 
 
 woman suffrage is part of a general attempt to 
 change the relations between the sexes." 
 "That laws passed by the woman's vote will 
 be felt to have no force behind them." " That 
 the transfer of power from the military to the 
 unmilitary sex involves national emasculation." 
 " That a man who prized his home would pro- 
 test against any proposal to give the family 
 more than one vote." " That women are not a 
 class but a sex, with class interests throughout 
 the scale identical with those of the man, — 
 and effectually represented by the male vote." 
 " That women as a sex have no wrongs which 
 male legislatures cannot be expected to redress, 
 so it is not necessary, to obtain redress, that 
 there shall be an abdication by man of the sov- 
 ereign power." "That women are (unfortu- 
 nately) already admitted to professions of medi- 
 cine, law, and teaching; to male universities, to 
 government clerkships, thus depriving of a place 
 many worthy men who would otherwise support 
 them in marriage." " That if some women are 
 underpaid, time will redress the injustice, which 
 after all is not extensive, since a needlewoman 
 has a light trade and could not be paid like a 
 stevedore, and the gains of prima donnas are 
 enormous." " That punishment for marital infi- 
 
Woman Suffrage, 95 
 
 delity must be more severe on the woman be- 
 cause she brings an adulterine child into the 
 family." '' That unenfranchised women are not 
 nearly as ill off as were American slaves." 
 "That wife-beating is sometimes justified by the 
 unspared husband-nagging which had preceded 
 it." "That divorce should not be made too 
 easy." " That marriage is a restraint imposed 
 on the passions of the man for the benefit of 
 the woman, . . . and woman would not be 
 benefited by its abolition." "That Shelley 
 was a brute to Harriet, and Mr. Mill infatuated 
 by his hallucination about the surpassing genius 
 of Mrs. Mill." " That in the earliest stages of 
 civilization the family was socially, legally, and 
 politically a unit." " That Mill's calm nature is 
 betrayed into violence in his denunciation of the 
 present institution of marriage, . . . and no 
 woman could regard with complacency a female 
 spiritualist installed beside her hearth." " That 
 some of the champions of women aim to make 
 them independent of marriage." " That a passion 
 for emulating the male sex has taken possession 
 of some women, as women under the Roman Em- 
 peror began to play the gladiator when other 
 excitements were exhausted." "That women 
 cannot be both the helpmate and complement 
 
g6 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 of man, and at the same time his rival and com- 
 petitor/' " That writing Greek or Latin has not 
 been very useful to the generality of male stu- 
 dents, and would be therefore useless to women." 
 "That St. Paul ratifies the unity of the family, 
 the authority of its head, and the female need 
 of that headship." "In this movement of 
 sexual revolution, the family is practically 
 threatened with dissolution." " Woman, if she 
 becomes a man, will be a weaker man, — yet 
 must be prepared to resign her privileges as a 
 woman." " In an age of flabby sentiment and 
 servile worship of change, we have had enough 
 of weak and precipitate abdications. To one 
 of them we owe the catastrophe of the French 
 revolution." 
 
 At this catastrophe, as a good place to stop, 
 let us draw breath. We have cited Mr. Smith's 
 arguments running, but exactly in the order in 
 which he presents them, and nearly always in his 
 exact words. These multifarious statements 
 may be good ; they may be w^arranted ; they 
 may show just such a range of miscellaneous in- 
 formation as is to be expected from a writer 
 and professor of history ; they may have all the 
 philosophic calm from which Mill was betrayed, 
 and all the poetic fervor which failed to exon- 
 
Woman Suffrage, 97 
 
 erate Shelley ; but in the name of all the 
 syllogisms of logic, what have they to do with 
 the case? Not the flowers which bloom in 
 the spring, tra-la, would seem to be more 
 irrelevant. 
 
 Mr. Smith observes that Mr. Mill's writings 
 on the subjection of women are to be studied in 
 the light afforded by his autobiography. Simi- 
 larly, in estimating this remarkable contribution 
 to the questions of the day, it is fair to remem- 
 ber the vehemence with which Mr. Smith has 
 written against the principle of Home Rule for 
 Ireland ; and the fact that, though professor of 
 history at Cornell, he is reported to have had 
 nothing but sneers for the admission of women 
 students to his classes. Mr. Smith does not 
 come to the discussion of the Political E-ights of 
 Women with a cool and unbiassed mind. But, 
 as no one else does, nor perhaps can, this is 
 hardly a reproach. 
 
 It is noticeable that, throughout the diatribe 
 — for it is this rather than a discussion, — Mr. 
 Smith brings no political reasons to bear on a 
 question of political right. He does not even 
 note the special incongruity of the admission to 
 the legal profession of women who are still des- 
 titute of political rights and of any share in the 
 
98 ** Common Sense " applied to 
 
 government of the country. He plants himself 
 squarely on the basis of Sex Instinct. He talks 
 exactly like the blustering husband (how many 
 thousands of them there are !), who declares his 
 wife's expression of opinion in regard to Tom- 
 my's schooling or the behavior of the coachman, 
 an invasion of his own prerogative as head of 
 the house. The comparison is most literal, for 
 over and over again through the essay does Mr. 
 Smith affirm, that to permit women to express, 
 through the ballot, their opinion in regard to 
 the management of schools, or the behavior of 
 officials, is to demand that " man hand over the 
 government to her," (p. 218). Under the in- 
 spiration of a (possibly recent) perusal of 
 Taine's Ancien Itegime^ Mr. Smith sees, in the 
 willingness of American men to consider fairly 
 this new application of the principles of demo- 
 cratic government, only a repetition of the fatu- 
 ous cowardice with which French noblemen 
 handed over their chateaus to a KevolutioHary 
 mob. 
 
 Reading these solemn references to sex rela- 
 tions, and marriage, and adultery, and divorce, 
 and Shelley, and Roman gladiators, it is difficult 
 to escape a feeling of bewilderment, almost of 
 vertigo. Do sex relations depend upon acts of 
 
Woman Suffrage, 99 
 
 Parliament or constitutional amendments ? Can 
 women marry a ballot, or embrace tbe franchise, 
 otherwise than by a questionable figure of 
 speech ? Must adultery and infanticide neces- 
 sarily be favored by the decisions of female 
 jurors ? Is divorce legislation, as arranged by 
 the exclusive wisdom of men, now so satisfactory, 
 that women — who must perforce be involved in 
 every case — should always modestly refrain 
 from attempting amendment ? 
 
 This entire class of considerations, however 
 irrelevant to the issue, may be grouped together, 
 and considered together, because, to a large 
 class of minds — the rudest, quite as much as 
 those of Mr. Smith's cultivation — they are the 
 considerations which do come to the front 
 whenever Equal Rights are suggested. 
 
 The reason is that men, accustomed to think 
 of men as possessing sex attributes and other 
 things besides, are accustomed to think of 
 women as having sex, and nothing else. Against 
 this immense and insolent assumption, it is true 
 that the women of this century, and most em- 
 phatically the women of this latter half of it, 
 have revolted. Their demand for equality does 
 not mean a claim to be considered equal in 
 power or achievement, except or until facts may, 
 
TOO '^Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 iu the individual cases, demonstrate such equal- 
 ity. No one imagines that, by voting, the female 
 industrial, who does less work, can secure the 
 same pay as the man who does more ; but only 
 that, indirectly, but soon, she will secure equal 
 pay when she does the same work, and better 
 pay when she does better, — which is not now 
 the case. No one believes that, through exercise 
 of the franchise, the female teacher, physician, 
 artist, or wiiter, will be made the equal of their 
 male compeers, whenever they cannot approxi- 
 mate to them by other agencies. It would not 
 even be supposed possible that the act of cast- 
 ing a vote in New York would, of itself, enable 
 a female essayist to compete with Mr. Smith in 
 Toronto. But what is imagined, claimed, and 
 very seriously demanded, is, that women be 
 recognized as human beings, with a range of 
 faculties and activities co-extensive vnth that of 
 men, whatever may be the difference in the 
 powers within this range. The sex relations of 
 women as lovers, as wives, as mothers, remain 
 absolutely untouched, certainly unimpaired, by 
 the demand to extend beyond these. What is 
 impaired, is not the sex relation nor sex con- 
 dition, but the social disabilities, the personal 
 and social subordination, the condition of 
 
Woman Suffrage. loi 
 
 political non-existence, which have been foisted 
 upon that sex condition. Because the strength 
 of the wife is on the average less than that of 
 the husband, it does not follow that it is in- 
 decorous for a wife to sit down to eat »at the 
 same table with her husband. Yet that until 
 rather recently was the custom among the 
 peasantry of Central Europe. Because the 
 father of a child owes protection to its mother, 
 and both are morally bound to be faithful in the 
 marriage bond, is not a reason to assert that the 
 wife and daughters in a family should have no 
 voice in public affairs, while husband and sons 
 had. Because Mrs. Smith is (we hope) a help- 
 meet, comfort, and complement to Mr. Smith, it 
 does not follow that she may not be a rival and 
 competitor with Mr. Jones. Indeed, arguing on 
 general principles, we should suppose that Mr. 
 Smith would, in re Jones, prefer that situation 
 rather than the other one. In modern times, and 
 outside of Oneida Communities, it is usually ex- 
 pected that a woman's relations with her hus- 
 band should not be the type of, but the em- 
 phatic contrast to, her relations with every other 
 man. If not, how can marriage be such a 
 " beneficial restraint " as Mr. Smith declares it to 
 be ? But if this be the case, what is the use of 
 
I02 ^^ Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 talking about marriage, when we are talking 
 about voting ? Do all the men who " prize 
 their homes " insist that the whole family shall 
 have only one opinion ? But if multiple opin- 
 ions, why not multiple votes ? Ah, because, re- 
 plies Mr. Smith (we presume), a discussion over 
 a breakfast table is harmless — it leads to noth- 
 ing. Romola may call Tito a treacherous man, 
 but he retains the whip hand, and reminds her, 
 " the envoys are gone, the library sold, and you 
 are my wife." But a vote is an efficient force, 
 it tends to accomplish something. That may 
 be something I don't like ; imagine, then, the 
 humiliation of seeing that brought about by a 
 woman ! There it is ao-ain — the humiliation ! 
 If one thousand men vote against me, I submit, 
 and bide my turn ; but if seven hundred men 
 and three hundred women carry a measure, it is 
 intolerable. "Laws passed by the woman's 
 vote would be felt to have no force behind 
 them." Not even the force of all the men who 
 agreed with them or with whom they agreed ? 
 But if effective assertion of female opinion in 
 public — possibly remote — affairs be so galling 
 to the masculine pride of the men who " prize 
 their homes," how have they been able to toler- 
 ate the loss of the practical domestic sovereignty 
 
Woman Suffrage, 1 03 
 
 whose delights were so much more tangible and 
 appreciable? "One thing is not French," said 
 Napoleon — "that a woman should do as she 
 pleases." But nowadays she does pretty much 
 as she pleases, yet men do not seem ill content. 
 A woman comes and goes to her own house, 
 and, in New York State at least, her husband 
 does not suspect her of a rendezvous, even if she 
 be occasionally late to dinner. She is not for- 
 bidden to learn to read and write lest she cor- 
 respond with lovers ; she is not restricted to any 
 household employment she can contrive to get 
 any one else to carry on for her ; she can go to 
 college though unmarried, and though married 
 she may make a will ; she can select her own 
 church, and defy her husband's sentiments on 
 infant baptism ; she can keep her own check- 
 book, no matter whence she obtains her funds, 
 from father, husband, or her own exertions ; she 
 can occupy her own time in her own way, think 
 her own thoughts, express her own wishes, 
 carry out her own plans — indeed, do such a 
 number of things all out of her own head as 
 must be perfectly maddening to the scholars 
 deeply impressed with the "female need of 
 headship." tempora ! mores ! Times have 
 changed, and we with them. 
 
I04 ^^ Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 " Quem enim Romanorum pudet uxorem ducere in 
 convivium ? Aut cujusnon mater-familias primum locum 
 tenet aedium atque in celeb ritate versatur ? Quod multo 
 fit aliter in Graecia." * 
 
 Can it be possible that Mr. Smith is unaware 
 of this domestic revolution which has been thus 
 effected under his very nose ? He does not com- 
 plain of things as they are, but only as they might 
 be ; he cannot, therefore, be anxious that domes- 
 tic authority has already in any way declined. 
 There are households whose female members 
 have a way of getting their own way with mar- 
 vellous facility by the simple process of never 
 talking back to the tall talk of the master of 
 the house. He does the talking and lays down 
 the law — in the theory ; they attend to- the 
 practice. Is there some such occult reason lurk- 
 ing for Mr. Smith also among the res angustas 
 dom% that he continues to imagine the dreadful 
 time is coming, and does not see that it has 
 already come ? If he can tolerate the present 
 freedom of thought and life which law, custom, 
 and public opinion to-day secure to his wife and 
 daughter, why does he feel so badly, so terribly, 
 at a remote possibility that their vote should 
 one day affect the selection of the Governor for 
 
 * Cornelius Nepos, Prsefatio. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 105 
 
 Canada, or be counted in among the agencies 
 which should decide the foreign policy for 
 Hawaii? If the shoe does not pinch, why 
 should the mantle ? 
 
 If the " transfer of power from the military to 
 the un military sex involve national emascula- 
 tion," and the right to representation implies 
 such " transfer of power," how can a peaceful 
 historian venture to vote ? Who proposes to 
 " transfer " anything ? The big boy is on the 
 sofa, the little sister uncomfortably on the 
 ground. Because after a while she clambers to 
 a seat, and persuades him to resist his primitive 
 manly impulse to kick her down, it does not 
 follow that lie is displaced. If a youth and a 
 maiden walking through a field are attacked by 
 a bull, it is not customary to suppose that her 
 presence will compel him to run away. It is 
 rather expected it would act as an additional 
 incentive, if needs be, to make him fight. 
 
 This idea that masculine work cannot proceed 
 if there is any woman around ; or that, though 
 she may be innocuous while looking on, she 
 must fatally " lower the standard " if she takes 
 a hand at it herself, is very funny but very old. 
 It has, indeed, an air of venerable senility. In 
 the last fifty years how often it has been de- 
 
io6 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 clared, with all the pathos of menaced vested 
 interests, that even the diplomas already con- 
 ferred upon men vrould become worthless were 
 women subsequently admitted to the learned 
 institution which had conferred them. If men 
 cannot maintain their standard in war or learn- 
 ing, or anything else, when the women speak, 
 why is it so much easier when they are silent, 
 yet stay around pretty much the same ? Mr. 
 Smith and many others seem to imagine that a 
 boy studies his Latin lesson in one way if he is 
 all alone in a room, in another way if a girl sits 
 down with her dictionary at the other side of 
 the table ; that the farmers' sons at Cornell 
 will show depth of thought over their historical 
 lectures while shut up with each other, but only 
 " shallow quickness " if contaminated by the 
 presence of girls. Women cannot take up an 
 occupation, they can only "invade a sphere." 
 Their passion for emulating the male sex is 
 such that they are threatening to deprive some 
 energetic members of it of their surest chance 
 of making a living by getting possession of 
 government clerkships. Roman women, if 
 Juvenal be correct, fought as gladiators. 
 American women, if Gold win Smith be well 
 informed, count Treasury notes, and are thus 
 
Woman Suffrage, 107 
 
 made independent of marriage. In the mean- 
 while, the friend * of poor women, who secured 
 them this avenue of employment, purposely- 
 kept their salaries low, that men with votes 
 should not be tempted to claim their places. 
 
 In a general upheaval the things which were 
 at the bottom come ujd to the top. It is only 
 in moments of radical discussion like the pres- 
 ent, and when the possibility of a practical issue 
 excites the expectation and the temper, that 
 the really ugly facts and beliefs — whose atmos- 
 phere, unacknowledged, is affecting everybody 
 all the time — are brought distinctly into view. 
 It is then possible for a writer who ought to 
 know better, to denounce the thoroughly Anglo- 
 Saxon movement for the extension of equal 
 rights as a " sexual revolution threatening the 
 family with dissolution, and turning woman 
 into a weaker man." 
 
 This is equivalent to admitting that it is 
 owing to the great predominance of purely sex 
 ideas about women that they have hitherto 
 been restricted to unequal rights. That families 
 cannot be held together on any basis of inter- 
 familial justice, equality, affection, and funda- 
 mental instinct, but must dissolve, not when the 
 
 * General Spinner. 
 
io8 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 P atria Potestas ceases, but when the recognized 
 equality of women begins. That the ^' differen- 
 tiation of the sexes," which lends such a charm 
 to life, merely means the permanent mainten- 
 ance of such inequality of horizon and opportu- 
 nity as shall always leave women at some disad- 
 vantage, provide that they are always less well 
 equipped for their work, and less well paid, and 
 increase the chances that this work will always 
 be rather less well done. That yet the differ- 
 ences between men and women are so small 
 that they will entirely disappear the instant 
 the one great difference of position is abolished, 
 whereby men in private or in public are always 
 expected to order, bully, or command ; the 
 women always to submit, shrink, and obey. 
 The pleasure of life will be gone when there is 
 no one left to boss ! All the feminine charm, all 
 the womanly grace, all the bewitchment, all the 
 dear delight, that from the beginning of time 
 men have been ascribing to women, does not lie 
 in them, but outside of them ; it is not a potency, 
 it is a situation ; it is not a natural force, it is a 
 political contrivance ; it has not been celebrated 
 in poetry and song because men love women, 
 but only because men love to order women 
 around ! What a mournful disillusion ! 
 
Woman Suffrage, 109 
 
 Are there, however, no real and serious ob- 
 jections to woman suffrage ? It is impossible 
 to take Mr. Smith seriously. But in the discus- 
 sions which have animated New York during 
 these April days, 
 
 " Their flag to April's breeze unfurled," 
 
 serious and fair-minded men have occasionally 
 brought forward considerations, which serve at 
 least to explain the historic situation ; the long 
 exclusion of women from political rights ; and 
 the bewildered hesitation now felt when they 
 claim them. 
 
 The following concise statement briefly sums 
 up the argument."^ 
 
 " By division of labor between human mates, 
 the centre of activity for the female is the nest, 
 where she works, apart from other mated 
 females, supreme unto herself as to the ways 
 and means of her duties. For the male, how- 
 ever, the centre of activity is the common field 
 where he works in industrial relation with his 
 fellow-males. 
 
 <' In gregarious animals generally this indus- 
 trial relation between the males begets concert 
 of action for mutual advantage. 
 
 * The Philosophy of It. Edward Curtis, M.D. — Private com- 
 munication. 
 
no ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 " With civilized man such concert of action 
 takes the form of an association, wherein certain 
 members are detailed to devise rules and regula- 
 tions for the common weal of the workers ; 
 others, etc. . . . Such association grown 
 from simple beginnings to the complex organiza- 
 tion known as The State, is thus, primordially 
 and essentially, an organization of the males, hy 
 the males, ybr the masculine function of provi- 
 sion and defence of the family. . . . Females 
 cannot claim an equal voice in the aifairs of 
 such an organization on the plea of ^ equal 
 rights for all.' 
 
 " ^ Equal rights for all 'is an ellipsis for 
 equal rights in the same thing, for all the simi- 
 larly conditioned as to the thing. 
 
 " Women never have to defend^ and only are 
 called upon to provide if they are in the abnor- 
 mal condition of lacking or having lost a 
 natural male protector. 
 
 " In the councils of the community's providers 
 and defenders, the normally conditioned woman 
 can have no right to any voice at all ; and no 
 claim for an impossible partial voice can be 
 entered for the abnormal few. 
 
 " Nor yet on the ground of obvious benefit to 
 the community : for (it would be absurd that) 
 
Woman Suffrage, 1 1 1 
 
 men in the conduct of their self-imposed task 
 for the provision and defence of the family 
 should be obliged to abide as much by the 
 opinions of their female mates as their own : — 
 since these would be the opinions of the inex- 
 perienced, the irresponsible, and the organically 
 diiferent." 
 
 Here is the whole thing in a nutshell. Men 
 support women, at least " in normal conditions," 
 as an equivalent for the prehistoric service of 
 keeping off wild beasts, knocking down fellow- 
 men, and bringing home to the family roast 
 the toothsome antelope or succulent bear. All 
 public affairs, including the government which 
 supervises and defends them, develop from 
 the group of events which began to happen 
 outside the cave : all private affairs continue 
 the incidents that occurred within. The sex 
 line is drawn along eternal division of the Ins 
 and the Outs ; only, to be accui-ate, the names 
 should usually be reversed, and the situation 
 turned outside-in. 
 
 Because the foregoing statement is most ab- 
 stract in character, and philosophic in form, it 
 is not therefore a true presentation of existing 
 circumstances. To use the Comtean phrase, 
 while reasoning about men is now generally 
 
1 12 '^Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 sustained on a basis of positive thought, the 
 reasoning about women scarcely ever emerges 
 from the stage of theology or metaphysics. Mr. 
 Goldwin Smith confounds into one abstract sex 
 relation, the relations of a wife with, her hus- 
 band, of a female clerk w^ith her employer, of a 
 saleswoman witli the dry -goods dealer, of a fac- 
 tory operative with the manufacturer, of a 
 school teacher with the school board, of a pupil 
 with her professor, of a student at a co-educa- 
 tional university with her fellow — in a word, 
 all the conceivable social relations which misjht 
 be established by any woman in the community, 
 with any man in it. Similarly, though less 
 crudely. Dr. Curtis substitutes a generalization 
 of the facts of " nesting " and " mating," as ob- 
 served in natural history, for the historic facts 
 of human society. Like the antique theories 
 about necessarily circular orbits of heavenly 
 bodies, this generalization is entirely congruous 
 with itself ; but — with nothing else. Natu- 
 ral history, with all its limitations, stands 
 at one end of this argument ; but an indefinitely 
 multiplied personal experience is at the other. 
 In Dr. Curtis' Philosophy of It^ this double 
 standpoint is described with equal clearness 
 and force. The concluding sentence seems to 
 
Woman Suffrage. 1 1 3 
 
 break out almost involuntarily from the depths 
 of a very precious personal experience, and as 
 such cannot fail to appeal to thousands who 
 may be fortunate enough to share the like. 
 
 Still, a personal experience, though multiplied 
 a thousand-fold, is not necessarily a philosophic 
 generalization. 
 
 When vi^e remember the thousands of men 
 throughout the State who every morning leave 
 their homes to go forth to their work until 
 evening; who reap hay in the broiling sun; or 
 guide the energies of mighty steam-engines; 
 or plod through the mazes of intricate business ; 
 or who bear any of the multitudinous burdens 
 of arduous, responsible, or monotonous toil: 
 when we remember the visions that follow 
 these men all day long, of wife and children 
 at home, nested in cosy nooks, or rambling 
 through pleasant places, sheltered, protected, 
 provided for by the brain and arm which are 
 laboring in their behalf — when we think of 
 these things, and of the pictures of the situa- 
 tion which arise so readily to the mind at its 
 suggestion, we may wonder much less at the 
 influence which is, coincidently, usually drawn. 
 
 " Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper. 
 Thy head, thy sovereign ; one that cares for thee 
 
114 " Common Sense " applied to 
 
 And for thy maintenance ; commits his body 
 To painful labor, both by sea and land ; 
 To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, 
 Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe." 
 
 Nevertheless, closer scrutioy will find flaws 
 in this plausible theory — flaws at every angle. 
 The audience who listened to Katherine's mis- 
 chievous eloquence knew its flaw very well; 
 Petruchio had come "to wive it wealthily in 
 Padua ; " and an American public cannot easily 
 forget that with us, either property earned or 
 property inherited is no longer admitted to be 
 the basis of representation. This has been the 
 English theory ; but it is not ours. 
 
 " Lord Palmerston said, that those who have no prop- 
 erty ought not to be the persons to direct the legislation 
 applicable to those who have property."* 
 
 "We no longer think it desirable to give political 
 representation to wealth, or to anything but persons. 
 We have become thoroughly democratic, but our great- 
 grandfathers had not." f 
 
 The primitive savage claimed to " support his 
 wife," and inserted a promise to do so in his 
 marriage ceremony. What he meant was that 
 
 * Hansard's Debates, vol. 153, col. 771. Quoted by Cox, English 
 Reform Bills, p. 16. 
 f Fiske, Critical Period of American History, p. 257. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 115 
 
 hQ would bring home game for lier to cook, and 
 make srarments out of the skins. He counted 
 the hunting as work, and the cooking as mere 
 play — a conception which the estimate of later 
 ages has exactly reversed. 
 
 Considering that all the industries of the 
 world have developed out of the household 
 labors of women, it is an odd ^'philosophy" 
 which assumes that women have been habitu-^ 
 ally "supported" in idleness by men. From 
 the virtuous woman of Solomon to Lydia, the 
 merchant of Tyrian dye; from the guild mis- 
 tresses of England to the factory girls of Low- 
 ell, everywhere and always we find women at 
 work. Their work has lacked formal social 
 recognition, which is the very thing to-day com- 
 plained of ; it has been blotted out by such phrases 
 as, "The man ^supports' his mate," and, "the 
 male mates combine for provision and defence." 
 But at most, and for the most time, obviously, 
 the man has simply brought home to his wife 
 the raw material for her industry. 
 
 Not for the first time to-day, but to-day un- 
 questionably, and on a large scale, women have 
 moreover crossed the threshold of the home — 
 or " nest " — and entered the " gainful occupa- 
 tions" classified in the census. As already 
 
ii6 '^Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 shown, there are in the United States to-day at 
 least three million women so classified, and in 
 1880, 360,000 of these were in the State of New 
 York. This is one eighth of the total female 
 population, as estimated in 1890. 
 
 In Europe 4,000,000 women are employed in factory- 
 labor alone, and economists say, " we could not possibly 
 do without them." 
 
 Although no general statistics exist on the 
 civil status of women so engaged, Carroll 
 Wright's interesting researches in twenty cities 
 found among 17,000 working women 15,88'? 
 single women, 1038 widows, and 745 married 
 or 4 ^ of the whole. But widows were 6 ^ of th( 
 whole, so that those who had passed under th( 
 protection of a mate were, taken together, lOfoo.] 
 all these working women, — fairly representative 
 of the whole. These numbers do not include 
 either factory operatives or professional women. 
 
 Diffused through the entire community, and 
 varied by the marriage relations and episodic 
 " support " of shorter or longer duration, these 
 women and their work are apt to make as little 
 impression on the imagination of the community 
 as did the large artisan vote in England, before 
 it was discovered in 1866. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 1 1 7 
 
 " These artisans, forming 26 ^ of the borough constitu- 
 ents, kept the secret so well, their votes were so devoid 
 of any traceable consequence, they had all this power of 
 shaking our institutions and so obstinately persisted in 
 not doing it, that now these gentlemen are quite alarmed, 
 and recoil in terror from the abyss into which they have 
 not fallen, . . 26 ^ concentrated would be a consider- 
 able representation ; but 26 ^ diffused may be almost the 
 same as none at all."* 
 
 This is true for the average imagination, but 
 is no longer permissible when we are consider- 
 ing the philosophy of it, which is bound to 
 account for everything. Rude empiricism may, 
 but philosophy may not, stigmatize as " ab- 
 normal " 360,000 or 3,000,000 women ; simply 
 because wrens, sparrows, and polygamic hens 
 seem always to get provided with mates. Apart 
 from its inaccuracy, it is rather cruel to affix 
 this stigma of "abnormality" upon unmarried 
 women, even those who remain unmarried all 
 their lives, who are fortunately very much in 
 the minority. It is surely enough to be obliged, 
 in a crooked world, to remain denied the pos- 
 session of husband and children, but these 
 women must also suffer the depressing influence 
 of a stigma, of being counted organically 
 wrong in the scheme of things. Is it not 
 
 * John Stuart Mill, Hansard, vol. 182, col. 1256. 
 
ii8 '''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 enough that one set of faculties are denied ex- 
 pansion, but all must be compressed and shriv- 
 elled through inaction? On the other hand, 
 apart from cruelty and inaccuracy, this theory 
 of the "abnormal" is highly unphilosophical, 
 since the test of the norm is not derived from 
 human society, but from something else. Since 
 this society, under almost all known circum- 
 stances, always does contain a varying minority 
 of unmated adults of both sexes, why is it not 
 fair to conchide that this circumstance, though 
 exceptional in a lesser social organism, is really 
 essential to the larger one of human beings? 
 
 What is the proof of organic fitness, except 
 constancy of organ, and proved and permanent 
 utility of function ? Both conditions obtain 
 for celibates in human society, and for celibate 
 women far more than for celibate men. 
 
 If we turn from abstractions, and appeal to 
 the senses, which are "at short range so des- 
 potic," let the thoughtful observer enter the 
 city cars at any time between seven and nine 
 every morning, and study the throng of women, 
 young and old, who also are going out to their 
 labor until evening — the clerks, typewriters, 
 stenographers, saleswomen, book-keepers, cash- 
 iers, later the teachers ; or let him stand at a busy 
 
Woman Suffrage, 1 1 9 
 
 corner on Broadway at six in the evening, and 
 watch the crowds pouring out from the retail 
 stores,* the binderies, printing establishments, 
 newspaper offices; or let him, either morning 
 or evening, try to visit the ling of ferries 
 encircling the city, and analyze into their com- 
 ponent sexes the vast crowds pouring in and 
 out from the suburbs ; or, at some railway 
 station at a factory town, watch the operatives 
 disembarking from the train for their day's 
 work ; — after a single day of such inspection, the 
 observer, if thoughtful and attentive, would find 
 it hard to get away from the vivid impression, 
 hard to believe that any women remained at 
 home to sew and dust and sweep or mind the 
 babies. And, to his imagination, the " women of 
 leisure " would disappear as completely as, in 
 the United States, the men of leisure are w^iped 
 out of the national census. 
 
 If the refusal of the sovereignty to women 
 were really due to the fact that they did no 
 work and had male protectors to work for them, 
 like queen bees, then whenever they did work, 
 or had no male protectors, the right of franchise 
 should logically have been accorded. This has 
 
 * There are 1400 women employed in one Sixth Avenue store 
 alone, in all its departments. 
 
I20 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 never been done. The grant of municipal fran- 
 chise to spinsters and widows in England is 
 not made to them, but to the property they 
 may happen to hold, since it is only when they 
 have property that they are supposed to need 
 protection, and the absence of a male protector 
 to be inconvenient. No women could have 
 worked harder, and more obviously on a level 
 with their men, in respect of endurance, courage, 
 and heroism, and even intelligence, than the 
 wives of the colonists who founded this coun- 
 try. Yet no one dreamed of according a share 
 in the crown to those who so valiantly held up 
 their end of the cross. The act of shooting 
 Indians from a stockade seemed to our fore- 
 fathers, as to our contemporaries, so meritorious, 
 that it deserved all the sovereignty it could 
 get. The acts of nursing families through the 
 small-pox, of bearing famine, or grinding the 
 scanty corn, seemed too trifling for social recog- 
 nition. 
 
 The contrasting circumstances of the women 
 who, for the moment, live at ease in New York 
 to-day, bring no contrast in their political status. 
 Where sovereignty is, as has for centuries gen- 
 erally been the case, associated witli wealth, 
 rank, and leisure, women are excluded because 
 
Woman Suffrage, 121 
 
 they were considered fit only for drudgery. 
 When, through the widening of the franchise, 
 the balance of power tends to shift to those who 
 w^ork, the women are again excluded, on the 
 ground that they do not work hard enough ! 
 Ccdum non animum mutant ! 
 
 Then is forgotten for women what is so em- 
 phatically remembered in regard to men — that 
 the development of civilization in increasing ac- 
 tivities increases the number of activities which 
 are occupied with other objects than getting a liv- 
 ing. As a man's fortune increases, his wife, who 
 at first perhaps did all her own housework, is 
 enabled to hire servants, and busy herself with 
 ^* social duties." Substitute the words "public," 
 " political," for " social " affairs, and a situation 
 is defined wherein an educated, energetic, intel- 
 ligent leisure class is encouraged to devote its 
 energies to the discussion of innumerable prob- 
 lems, quite remote from its own support, which 
 is secured, or from its own defence — which is not 
 endangered. The leisure class, which arises in 
 every community so soon as enough wealth has 
 accumulated to support it, is the equivalent on 
 the large social scale for the woman of leisure, 
 whose energies, released from drudge r}^, are 
 liberated for finer, yet not less strenuous and 
 
122 ''Common Sense"' applied to 
 
 useful activities by the wealth of her individual 
 family. 
 
 Notwithstanding the " support " afforded, and 
 which has seemed to men so liberal, a standing 
 complaint of women, since they have acquired 
 articulate utterance, has always been their pov- 
 erty; complaint for some purposes, preferred 
 more emphatically by married women than by 
 those who earn their own living. In all coun- 
 tries but America, undowered women have ex- 
 perienced much difficulty in finding mates, who, 
 in marrying a dowry, were certainly relieved — 
 as in the case of Petruchio — of much of the 
 burden of " support." Then the inheritance, 
 even in America, has passed Avith little reserve 
 into the hands of the husband, who certainly 
 was thereby relieved of much of the necessity 
 of combining with other " mates " for the " pro- 
 vision " of their respective families. Then, 
 when women had no inheritance, they were 
 (and are) supposed to marry for a livelihood, 
 and the bare livelihood being accorded," they 
 were not expected to ask for anything else. 
 Attempts at combination among women for any 
 purpose have been constantly blocked by their 
 inability to put their hands in their pockets to 
 meet any expenses, inasmuch as social activities 
 
Woman Suffrage, 123 
 
 were not counted among the necessities of exist- 
 ence comprised under the term " livelihood." 
 
 The withdrawal of household industries into 
 larger spheres, the consequent liberation of the 
 practical energies of thousands of women, which 
 until very recently would have thus been en- 
 tirely absorbed, the awakened consciousness of 
 the inconvenience of pecuniary dependence, the 
 re-arrangements of the entire field of labor con- 
 stantly going on, has already greatly quickened 
 the industrial capacity of girls, unmarried 
 women, and widows. The movement is destined 
 to affect the condition of married women also ; 
 it has already begun to do so, it will do so in- 
 creasingly in the future, as work is increasingly 
 recognized to be the normal, and not the ab- 
 normal, condition of human beings. 
 
 We think the foregoing considerations should 
 considerably qualify the presumed impertinence 
 of women's " interference " with the public 
 affairs, which have, as Dr. Curtis succinctly 
 shows, developed out of primitive combinations 
 for " provision." Certainly at no time could 
 women be less vitally interested in these than 
 men, especially on Dr. Curtis' showing, for who 
 can be more concerned about provision than 
 those who are to be fed ? " Inexperience " is 
 
124 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 alleged as a reason for rejecting tlie counsels of 
 women in sucli matters. Sometimes there is some- 
 thing in this excuse, since it is naturally difficult 
 for any class of people to become experienced in 
 matters which they are forcibly prevented from 
 having anything to do with. At other times, 
 however, the special experience of even the '^nest- 
 ing " woman may be t)f value in the councils of 
 valiant man. For instance, if the primitive com- 
 munity were discussing an improvement in stone 
 arrow-heads, it is possible that the female mem- 
 bers could add little to the discussion — at least, 
 on the unlikely assumption that they were not 
 in the habit of ever taking a hand in shooting 
 for themselves. But if the discussion hap- 
 pened to turn on the time of the year most 
 favorable for hunting, these same women, if 
 permitted to speak, might have suggested, from 
 their own observation, that at certain seasons 
 slaughter of the does would risk extermination 
 of the game. So, many ages later, when English 
 manufacturers were torturing women and young 
 children to death in factories, their own hus- 
 bands and fathers aiding, it is conceivable, had 
 the natural instincts and faculties of the mill- 
 owners' wives had free play, they might have 
 suggested that under this system the race could 
 
Woman Suffrage, 125 
 
 be exterminated or fatally degenerated. But the 
 English lady — trained, if not bound, to her 
 " nest " — was as mute as her prehistoric ances- 
 tress, who watched by the camp-fire while the 
 braves chattered at a distance. 
 
VI. 
 
 ALLEGED INEXPERIENCE OF WOMEN. 
 
 PLAUSIBLE as is the theory which limits 
 "interference" in public affairs to those 
 who may claim some experience in them, no one 
 who attentively considers the conduct of even 
 modern States will venture to assert that this 
 theory is realized in practice. Indeed, it never 
 has been so realized. The suggestion that peo- 
 ple should undertake to learn something about 
 things before they undertook to dogmatize or to 
 act in reference to them is a daring innovation on 
 all established precedent. It is not only in Tam- 
 many-ridden 'New York that expert knowledge 
 seems at a discount, — they donH do these things 
 any better in France, nor in England. Herbert 
 Spencer ridicules the House of Commons for 
 paying more attention to the knowledge its 
 members may have of Horace, than of sanitary 
 engineering, even those to whom may be en- 
 trusted the work requiring engineering experts. 
 
 126 
 
/ 
 
 Woman Suffrage, 127 
 
 And if an institution undertakes not two functions, 
 but a score, — if a government, whose office it is to defend 
 citizens against aggressors, foreign and domestic ; en- 
 gages also to disseminate Christianity, to administer 
 charity, to teach children their lessons, to adjust prices 
 of food, to inspect coal-mines, to arrange cab-fares, to 
 look into people's stink-traps, to vaccinate their children, 
 to send out emigrants, to prescribe hours of labor, to ex- 
 amine lodging-houses, to test the knowledge of mercan- 
 tile captains, to provide public libraries, to read and 
 authorize dramas, to inspect passenger-ships, to see that 
 small dwellings are supplied with water, to regulate end- 
 less things, from a banker's issues down to the boat-fares 
 on the Serpentine, — it is not manifest that its primary duty 
 must be ill discharged in proportion to the multiplicity 
 of affairs it busies itself with ? " * 
 
 A 
 
 Women are not necessarily so " inexpe- 
 rienced" that their advice would always be 
 an intrusion. 
 
 From the moment it has been accepted as 
 important that the entire body of the State 
 should be actively alive, alert, and capable ; and 
 that the education of a few dozen experts would 
 not meet the exigencies of the case ; from the 
 
 * Herbert Spencer, Essay on Over -Legislation^ 1871, p. 94. This 
 satirical enumeration is guided by Mr. Spencer's favorite dogma of 
 opposition to all State interference. For our purpose the list is more 
 interesting as indicating how various are the functions assumed by the 
 modern State, — how impossible to reason concerning them exclusively 
 from the model of the primitive tribe. 
 
128 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 moment that public work became so multifarious 
 tbat the community does not by any means yet 
 furnish a sum total of intelligence adequate to its 
 requirements, — from that moment it became evi- 
 dent that in every direction much work must be 
 undertaken which would be badly done. It 
 would be absurd, however, to pretend that it 
 was less well done now than formerly. Knowl- 
 edge and expertise have not been banished from 
 the world by democracy, but may be said to 
 have obtained, for the first time, a place of public 
 power, proportioned to the vastness of public 
 needs. The filthy cholera pilgrims at Mecca 
 have become the occasion of researches involv- 
 ing intellectual processes as subtle and refined 
 as went to the construction of Plato's Dior 
 logues. 
 
 To such new expertise women also can be 
 trained. /They are by no means necessarily so 
 " inexperienced," that their advice would be an 
 "intrusion " on the counsels of the State.) Mr. 
 Spencer shows this incidentally in reference to 
 the Family Colonization Loan Society, which 
 Mrs. Chisholm conducted side by side with the 
 Emigration Board. "Under the government 
 management hundreds of emigrants die of fever 
 from close packing, and with its licence vessels 
 
Woman Suffrage, 129 
 
 sail which are the homes of fraud, brutality, 
 tyranny, and obscenity. Under the woman's, 
 better accommodation than ever before is pro- 
 vided ; it does not demoralize by promiscuous 
 crowding, but improve by mild discipline ; it 
 does not pauperize by charity, but encourages 
 providence ; it does not increase our taxes, but 
 is self-supporting. The State is beaten by a 
 woman ! " * 
 
 So great is the present differentiation of the 
 functions of " provision " and " defence," that 
 we do not expect the same group of people to 
 concern themselves about both. Merchants 
 attend to one, soldiers to the other. The last 
 improbability of war is supposed to have been 
 reached when a people has been characterized 
 as a " nation of shopkeepers." 
 ' How, then, can the personal incapacity of 
 women for " defence " constitute sufficient 
 ground to exclude them from all interest, voice, 
 and power in public affairs ? Is the Chamber 
 of Commerce identical with the Brooklyn Navy 
 Yard ? Is the Produce Exchange manned by 
 officers from West Point? This question of 
 "defence" — so constantly occurring in this 
 discussion — is scarcely ever adjusted to the 
 
 * Loc. cit., p. 79. 
 
130 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 methods of making or declaring war which are 
 actually adopted in the United States of 
 America. A New England town meeting does 
 not declare war like the Athenian Ecclesia. 
 Even in the Roman Republic, decisions of peace 
 and war were not left to popular assemblies or 
 popular vote ; not even to the will of consuls 
 or commanders of armies. The fateful choice 
 rested exclusively with the Senate. AVith us, 
 every one knows, who stops to think, that the 
 proclamation of war, the ratification of peace, 
 are functions reserved for the Senate and Presi- 
 dent of the United States, and removed from 
 the control of even the State governments. At 
 what point, therefore, except through the forma- 
 tion of public opinion, could the popular vote 
 of women influence any decision for war? The 
 presence of a few women in the United States 
 Senate is, indeed, a theoretic possibility, but so 
 very remote it need scarcely enter into the 
 present discussion. 
 
 By the "intrusion of inexperienced women 
 into the councils of the State," is probably 
 meant, however, the exertion of such influence 
 as may be brought to bear upon legislature 
 through elections, and upon administration, 
 through a share in administrative appoint- 
 
Woman Suffrage, 131 
 
 ments. Legislation and civil administration 
 which do not directly decide any question of 
 war, and but few questions of industry, do un- 
 doubtedly exercise much indirect influence on 
 both. The public opinion behind them in a 
 free state does, if possible, still more, and one of 
 the most immediate and direct results of woman 
 suffrage would be a great increase in the contri- 
 bution of woman to the formation of public 
 opinion. 
 
 Granted ; but in what way can it then be 
 shown, that the questions so submitted to legis- 
 latures, administrations, or public opinion — 
 whether of peace or war ; whether of industry, 
 commerce, social regulations or public morals ; 
 whether material or spiritual — do not concern 
 women, do not naturally interest women, do not 
 fall within the competence of women exactly to 
 the extent to which they concern, interest, or 
 may be discussed by corresponding bodies of 
 men? 
 
VII. 
 
 PUBLIC MEASUEES IN WHICH WOMEN MAY BE 
 INTERESTED. 
 
 TAKE any series of measures as concrete 
 examples : the Missouri Compromise, the 
 election of Lincoln, the election of Mayuard, the 
 New York Speedway Bill. 
 
 Not one of these measures could be said to 
 stand in any tangible relation with the function 
 of men to provide for either the support or the 
 defence of their respective families. The Mis- 
 souri Compromise was not brought to popular 
 vote, but decided by Congress, under the more 
 or less remote influence of public opinion, as ex- 
 pressed by the elections of Congressmen, and 
 through the public press while congressional de- 
 bate was going on. Through no other agencies 
 could the popular opinion in the matter make 
 itself felt. Does Dr. Curtis mean, that a well 
 bred American husband should say to his wife, 
 "You have no right to have any opinion on 
 
 132 
 
Woman Suffrage, 133 
 
 this matter, because I pay our rent, gas, and 
 coal bills " ? He would have the right, and 
 the laws of the State of New York would 
 support him in insisting upon it, to say that, 
 as he is responsible for the house rent, his 
 wife must agree to live where his judgment 
 decides is the best place to make money. But 
 what law, or (present) custom, admits that the 
 same circumstance gives him a right to control 
 his wife's opinion ? But if this may not be con- 
 trolled, why may it not be expressed, and ex- 
 pressed effectively, in the only way in which it 
 can be effective, — through the ballot ? The grav- 
 est consequence of denying the right to an effec- 
 tive opinion is, that this denial soon at/raphies 
 the power to form a just opinion. The greatest 
 importance of democracy, the attribute that 
 brings it into line with the most abstract theory 
 of general evolution, is its power to develop 
 power in the masses upon whom it has been 
 conferred. To the democratic constitution of 
 Kleisthenes the Athenians owed at once their 
 triumph in the Persian wars, and the intellectual 
 splendor of their age of Pericles. 
 
 The popular will was much more distinctly 
 and directly expressed in the election of Lincoln, 
 and, as every one knew at the time, this momen- 
 
134 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 tous occasion not only decided the choice of an 
 individual, but practically accepted the chal- 
 lenge to civil war. This is the only moment in 
 American history, from the settlement of James- 
 town or the landing of the Pilgrims, where a 
 popular election has involved such a decision, 
 or met any such severe and sharply defined 
 crisis. It would have been therefore a much 
 more practical test of the propriety of a woman 
 vote on questions involving war, than most of 
 the elections which occurred during the Mis- 
 souri Compromise controversy. 
 
 In this momentous decision, can it be sug- 
 gested that women were not equally concerned 
 and interested with men ? Can it even be main- 
 tained that there were not thousands as w^ell 
 informed on the questions at issue as the men 
 who cast their ballots on that November day, 
 1860? Did the women who followed their hus- 
 bands to Kansas, in that mighty Free Soil emi- 
 gration, know nothing about it ? Did the wo- 
 men who for thirty years had sustained a full 
 half of the abolition agitation, know nothing 
 about it ? And what should have prevented 
 every woman from knowing about it in Novem- 
 ber, as every one through the length and breadth 
 of the land did in April, — except the laws and 
 
Woman Suffrage. 135 
 
 customs which, by forcibly excluding them 
 from participation in political affairs, as forci- 
 bly condemned them to apathy on great and 
 public questions ? 
 
 The election of Maynardin 1893 might, from 
 one point of view, be considered to turn upon 
 questions too technical for any but lawyers to 
 understand. It was, however, thrown upon 
 public notice in such a way that it became 
 a question of public morals. Have women no 
 interest in public morals ? Because their hus- 
 bands may remain, in New England phrase, 
 "good providers," undei' various situations of 
 public demoralization, from that of the Tweed 
 Ring to that of the Second Empire, need women 
 take no thought of the moral standard of the 
 community ? Are those Kentucky women to 
 blaihe who have been exerting themselves to 
 defeat Bi-eckinridge ? Are they " meddling " 
 with what does not belong to them ? 
 
 And finally, minute in its scope as compared 
 with the mighty piece of legislation which 
 headed our list, the Speedway Bill is yet espe- 
 cially interesting as an example of municipal 
 concern. Did women have no interest in that ? 
 If the Park was not for women and children 
 for whom was it intended ? Why then should 
 
136 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 they not have been permitted to join, even more 
 directly than they did, in the successful effort to 
 resist the shameless, though petty depredation ? 
 
 A remark stands ready at hand, in reply to 
 all that has just been said. All these measures 
 were carried out by men, v^ithout the aid of 
 women. What advantage then would it have 
 been for them to have lent or rather intruded 
 their aid ? The Missouri Compromise was made ; 
 the Missouri Compromise was repealed ; Lincoln 
 was elected and re-elected ; the little Speed- 
 way ferment formed and subsided. The women 
 were never " in it " ; but what was the harm ? 
 If women were unintelligent or indifferent in 
 these matters, the less they had to do with them 
 the better. If they were intelligent enough to 
 sit at home and think them all out for them- 
 selves, they could only applaud the succesl^ of 
 the exertions of their " mates " and ^' providers." 
 " Qui fecit per aliitm, fecit per se^ 
 
 The trouble is that, under such adjustment, 
 the women, precisely like men in similar circum- 
 stances, who have no chance to do*, acquire no 
 power to think, and the power to think is the 
 ultimate though unconscious aim of all demo- 
 cratic activities. In a democratic republic, the 
 Public Life is the visible expression of the Man 
 
Woman Suffrage, 137 
 
 thinking, to whom each individual man must 
 incessantly return. ^'Cut off from that, the 
 farmer becomes the plough, the sailor the rope, 
 the thinker the bookworm " *; the woman, we 
 might add, the sex. This is the meaning of our 
 American State. It is not merely a congeries 
 of households, whose male representatives cross 
 their thresholds in the morning to find some- 
 thing to eat for their families, and pay taxes to 
 maintain the police. It is a vast, real, living 
 organism, with most complex functions, most 
 subtle yet mighty vital processes, most glorious 
 of vital powers. 
 
 " Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant 
 nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and 
 stroking her invincible locks : methinks I see her as 
 an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her un- 
 dazzled eyes at the full midday beam ; . . . while 
 the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with 
 those also that love the twilight, flutter about amazed 
 at what she means." f 
 
 This organism cannot be constructed like a 
 brick wall, in segments of caste or class, adjacent, 
 superposed according to long traditions of place 
 or etiquette of precedence. Its elements must 
 be individual cells, grouping themselves into 
 
 * Emerson, American Scholar. f Areopagitica. 
 
138 ^^ Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 organs according to their individual affinities 
 and capacities — tlie microscopic function of 
 each, ennobled by its relationship to the whole ; 
 the healthful activity of the whole, insured by 
 the punctual action of these parts. 
 
 Confessedly, in embracing in this conception 
 women, we do introduce a change ; a change 
 which, though in itself purely ideal, underlies 
 all the practical issues now in dispute. In this 
 essentially modern conception, women also are 
 brought into direct relations with the State, in- 
 dependent of their " mates " or their " brood." 
 Yet is this audacious proceeding justified by 
 one simple fact — women already stand in this 
 relation. 
 
 It is probably on this account that Mr. Gold- 
 win Smith declares that woman suffrage aims 
 at such a " sexual revolution " as must cause 
 the " dissolution of the family." The suffrage 
 claim does not aim at this : it seeks only to 
 formulate, recognize, and define the revolution 
 already effected, yet which leaves the family 
 intact. The P atria Potestas is gond; a man has 
 lost, first, the right to kill his own son ; then 
 the right to order the marriage of his daughter ; 
 then the right to absorb the property of his 
 wife. Nevertheless, he survives, and the family, 
 
Woman SMffrazeT^'^^S^S Mib, ^ \ 39 
 
 shorn of its portentous rights, bids fair in Amer- 
 ica to remain the happiest of all conceivable 
 natural institutions; more profound than soci- 
 ety, so immeasurably deeper than politics, that 
 the fortunate wife, daughter, or sister is puz- 
 zled when the two are mentioned in the same 
 breath. 
 
 A natural institution reposes on the facts of 
 nature, and is limited by them. When the 
 natural right of women to maintenance is 
 based on maternity, not only firmly, but exclu- 
 sively, many practical consequences will gradu- 
 ally ensue. Women married at thirty, and 
 liable to be left widows between forty and 
 fifty, will not consider their entire lives summed 
 up within fifteen years; will prepare for self- 
 support and other activities both before and 
 after. Still more so the women who never 
 marry. Childless women will recognize that 
 their pecuniary dependence on their husbands 
 rests on an entirely different basis from that of 
 mothers. In many cases they would choose 
 that such dependence should not exist at all. 
 In others the tendency, now alleged to be so 
 widespread, to avoid maternity would be 
 checked ; as in the ancient cruel times when a 
 woman could be divorced for childlessness. 
 
140 Woman Suffrage, 
 
 Maternity itself will be recognized to be 
 though in one aspect so intensely personal, yet 
 in another, a social function, with the very 
 widest social consequences. Thus it is pre- 
 cisely the relation in which begins that " close 
 association with her mate," which is supposed 
 to exclude the woman from all social associa- 
 tion, which, more philosphically understood, 
 cannot fail to bring women into the widest, 
 most fundamental, and most direct relation 
 with the State. 
 
 Representative government did not originate 
 in America ; but, for modern times, individual 
 representation did. The division into the Three 
 Estates, to which allusion has already been 
 made, as affected in the middle of the thir- 
 teenth century, completed the transformation, 
 gradually carried on during preceding centu- 
 ries, of the basis of representation from individ- 
 uals, to that of classes, groups, orders, interests, 
 organizations. This conception of representation 
 has become so profoundly imbedded in the 
 English mind, that a franchise reposing on a 
 manhood basis does, almost to this very day, 
 seem to Englishmen too " monotonous," or too 
 "French!" 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE AMEEICAN DISCOVERY — WEBSTER AISTD 
 MADISON. 
 
 THE Three Estates were never organized in 
 America : tlie general equality of social 
 conditions forbade. Yet the theory and practice 
 of individual representation, of manhood suffrage, 
 did not arise simply in this historic situation. 
 It is logically traceable to a great new Idea, 
 which is literally at the very central core of the 
 American Union, and without which that Fed- 
 eral Union could never have been founded. 
 The discovery of this "brand new idea," as it 
 was at first called, solved the apparently insolu- 
 ble difficulty of co-adjusting State governments 
 with a national existence. The discovery is 
 that the national government should act upon 
 individuals, and not on States, 
 
 **In February, 1783, Pelatiah Webster published at 
 Philadelphia a tract, in which he advocated a national 
 assembly with power, not only to enact the laws, but to 
 
 141 
 
142 '^Common Sense " applied to 
 
 enforce them on individuals as well as on States. A year 
 later this tract was followed by another of the same tenor 
 by Noah Webster, in which he proposed ' a new system of 
 government which should act, not on the States, but 
 directly on individuals.' " * 
 
 So great was tlie force of this idea that it not 
 only made the American Union, but it swept 
 the dwelling of the new republic clean of the 
 vast conglomerate of groups and institutions, 
 which in England everywhere intervene be- 
 tween the State and the individual. The com- 
 plicated balance of franchise rights, which in 
 England still persists in the midst of nearly 
 universal suffrage, and which justifies itself by 
 historic inheritance, could not have existed on 
 this continent, where the idea of the individual 
 had become necessary and fundamental. If 
 State governments were not to interpose be- 
 tween the National Power and the men of 
 the State, certainly no lesser organization of 
 class or caste, or family, or association with 
 savings banks, or universities, or poor-rates, 
 or "ancient rights" could do'so. The "com- 
 pound householder " and the laborious discus- 
 sions and mathematical calculations to which he 
 
 * Madison Papers^ vol. ii., p. 708, quoted by Hannis Taylor, 
 loc, cit. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 143 
 
 gave rise, * must always have been as impos- 
 sible in the United States as a reanimated 
 megatherium. We believe that much of the 
 " straightness and lucidity," which Matthew 
 Arnold attributes to the American mind, is due 
 exactly tcTthe fact that at the moment of the birth 
 of the American Nation, a straight path was made 
 right from the Central Power to the ultimate 
 units of the State, and no deviations were per- 
 mitted through interposed organizations, ready 
 to encrust and complicate with every year of time. 
 Ennobled by this direct radiation from the Cen- 
 tral Power, each unit became a man, and each 
 man a unit. The need of " making a voter out 
 of a man " by long and intricate and gradual 
 process was abolished in advance. Manhood 
 suffrage in America may seem to result, his- 
 torically, from the general average equality of 
 social conditions among the inhabitants of the 
 thirteen States. But it may also be deduced as 
 a philosophical necessity from the Idea of Indi- 
 vidualism, which became the core of the Fed- 
 eral Union. 
 
 This idea, at first suggested only for men, 
 has, little by little, spread to women also. In 
 law, the family, the father, the husband, no 
 
 *In the English debates on the Reform Bills for 1 866-1 867. 
 
144 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 longer intervenes between the woman and the 
 State ; no organization complicates the direct 
 relation. ^.Women pay their own taxes, both 
 State and Federal : direct, when these are im- 
 posed ; indirect, whenever they are supporting 
 themselves and buying commodities. * They ap- 
 pear in the law courts in their own persons, not 
 by the intermediary of husband, guardian, or 
 trustees. They are directly liable for all the 
 engagements they may enter into in their own 
 names, and their contracts will be enforced 
 directly by the State upon them or upon which- 
 ever party in their contract may be delinquent. 
 Only when, in incurring household expenses, or 
 personal expenses while at the head of a married 
 family, and when they are therefore presumed 
 to act as the agents of their husbands, are 
 women in New York placed in any different 
 relation with the State from men. 
 
 Thus, women are really recognized as individ- 
 uals, in the same way as men ; so that the pres- 
 sure to obtain all individual rights for those 
 who already have all individjial liabilities and 
 responsibilities, is so logical as to become well, 
 nigh irresistible. In a second and more symbolic 
 sense, the modern, American, New York indi- 
 vidualism of women has a peculiarly interesting 
 
Woman Suffrage, 145 
 
 significance. The habit of thought, which has 
 removed men from the grasp of lesser groups 
 and organizations and brought their personali- 
 ties into immediate relation with the State; 
 and not only with the domiciliary State, but 
 with the whole Federal Union, and this not 
 successively, but simultaneously ; so that a man 
 is at the same moment a citizen of New York 
 and an American ; this same conception, en- 
 dorsed by actual fact, justifies the emancipation 
 of women from their exclusive classification 
 within the limits of the family, and declares 
 that while they are members of that, they are, 
 coincidently, members, citizens of the State. 
 
 But this view reverses the entire Roman-law 
 view of the status of women. Therefore, ac- 
 cording to Goldwin Smith (and some others), it 
 determines the "dissolution of the family." 
 Be it noted, however, that the suffrage — ^which 
 has not yet been conferred — is not responsible 
 for these pangs of dissolution, and the latter, 
 moreover, do not seem to be the pangs of 
 death ! 
 
 Though the suffrage be not the cause of this 
 change, it is certainly irresistibly suggested as 
 the immediate sequence. A direct relation with 
 the State as a unit, in a State where such direct 
 
146 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 relation everywhere, and always, over vast 
 ranges of territory and througli enormous 
 masses of population, carries with it political 
 representation and political rights, — how can it 
 fail to do so in this case also ? Women have 
 hitherto been deprived of political right and 
 representation, precisely for the reason Dr. 
 Curtis alleges : the State was constituted ex- 
 clusively by the men outside a certain pale, 
 and dealt with those within almost exclusively 
 through the intermediary of the others. This 
 being no longer the case, and many illusions 
 having been destroyed as to the reality of pre- 
 viously alleged representation and protection, 
 no excuse remains for longer deferring the right 
 of representation accorded to other units of the 
 American Union. 
 
 When the theory of individualism has once 
 been realized fully in fact, women would lose 
 that tendency " to work apart from other mated 
 females." which Dr. Curtis, no less than Goethe 
 recognizes. 
 
 Dr. Curtis has defined this tetidency and its 
 cause with admirable terseness and precision ; 
 he has failed, however, to show why it should 
 be considered admirable. Indubitably it lies 
 at the root of the entire anti-suffrage movement 
 
Woman Suffrage. i^.y 
 
 among women, of whom large numbers liave 
 never been accustomed to think of themselves 
 as "gregarious animals, capable of concerted 
 action for mutual advantage." To what is fe- 
 male jealousy due, so far as it is a mental habit 
 and not justified by the occasion, except the deep- 
 rooted instinct which contemplates all women 
 exclusively from their possible relation to some 
 one man ? In this way, at present, is often 
 curtailed the usefulness of much philanthropic 
 exertion among women, the effectiveness of 
 many advisory boards. The women on these 
 boards, like to advise men, who are not thereby 
 seriously embarrassed, but they make little effort 
 to establish a situation in which their advice 
 could be carried out by other women. Like 
 the anxious housewife, who avoids engaging a 
 competent housekeeper, lest her comeliness prove 
 too attractive to the master of the house, they 
 often prefer to do it all themselves, or to leave 
 it undone. 
 
 Admirable in its conception as was the State 
 Charities Aid Association, there is a striking 
 contrast between the efficiency of its initial 
 work, the reformation of Bellevue Hospital, 
 and anything, for instance, which has been 
 effected on the Islands. In the first case the 
 
148 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 reform was re-enforced by a fruitful new idea,— 
 a Training School for Nurses was established, — 
 / the first in the country. By this a new sphere 
 / of action was opened to women, who rushed 
 into it ; their ambition, self-interest, and enthu- 
 siasm were enlisted to carry out the work which 
 had been planned. The result was an unquali- 
 fied success. Where elsewhere has such a 
 success been scored ? 
 
 That women themselves offer a field, a large 
 field, a field as large as half the population of 
 the world for the activities of women, seems to 
 be one of the youngest ideas of recorded time. 
 That women can be the pupils, patients, clients, 
 and customers of women, as well as their ser- 
 vants and patronized objects of charity, is just 
 beginning to be suspected. Following along 
 this line of thought, it is easy to foresee women 
 as captains in industry as well as beneficiaries, 
 interesting themselves to ameliorate the lot of 
 women industrials, who have become something 
 else to them than only the employees of their 
 own husbands or fathers. It is tasy to foresee 
 women, in their political relations with the 
 State, undertaking to guide and influence the 
 action of other women, who also hold political 
 relations with the State, but whose relative. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 149 
 
 personal or social dependence persists. They 
 may begin in their own kitchens ; they may end 
 by creating political forces which shall often 
 serve to counterpoise the votes of ignorant or 
 interested men. 
 
 " Equal rights for all is only equal rights in 
 the same thing for all the similarly conditioned 
 as to the same thing." True, and the " same 
 thing " is vital representation in a social organ- 
 ism where all elements, whose wants, ideas, and 
 will are not represented, are only socially half 
 alive. The " similarly conditioned " are, in our 
 existing situation, any adult male who is of sane 
 mind and not an actual inmate of a penal insti- 
 tution. Among these are thousands, most " in- 
 experienced" in regard to the questions they 
 help more or less to decide ; thousands who are 
 " irresponsible, since under no circumstances 
 would they be required to enforce the measures 
 that might be decided upon by their advice ; " 
 and " different," if not " organically," yet so 
 markedly, in nationality, inheritance, education, 
 training, intelligence, circumstance, and point 
 of view, that the mental differences between 
 the American man and his wife shrink to 
 nothing in comparison. 
 
 And whatever peevish carpers may assert, it 
 
1 50 Woman Suffrage, 
 
 is not true that tlie equal political representa- 
 tion of this vast mass of the inexperienced, the 
 irresponsible, and the different has worked 
 badly ; has not indeed worked better than any 
 other system hitherto devised. The system 
 simply removes previous shackles, opens un- 
 bounded opportunity to all forces to contend 
 together in the public arena until the strongest 
 prevail. Vice gets no more chance than under 
 any other system. But if poverty, ignorance, 
 and vulgarity have more " show," nothing is 
 done to detract from the natural force of wealth, 
 knowledge, and refinement. If the force of 
 these decline, if their rightful superiority abate, 
 it is from internal decay, not from external 
 pressure; and the remedy must be found in 
 forces deeper than political system. Our 
 scholars in politics do not at present write 
 the Areopagitica ; but the times are perchance 
 not strenuous enough to engender such high 
 thought. 
 
 In this interregnum of lax and facile time, 
 the one new, great, powerful thought that has 
 moved swiftly to the front, is that of the 
 enfranchisement of women. 
 
 Let the thought achieve its own realization. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE EXISTING SITUATION. 
 
 AFTEE. all, it is not a theory but a situation 
 which confronts us. What is it ? 
 In New York State, according to the census 
 of 1890, there is a total population of 5,997,853, 
 of which 3,020,960 are female ; 2,976,893 are 
 male. The proportion of women to men in 
 the State is, therefore, as 1-^ to 1, or sensibly 
 equal. The slight excess (44,067) of female 
 population in the State is counterbalanced for 
 the whole United States by an excess of males. 
 For the whole country there are 32,067,880 
 males and 30,554,370 females ; an excess of 
 males of 1,513,510. This excess is mainly due 
 to immigration ; since, for many past decades, 
 the female immigrants from Europe have been 
 annually less than the number of males. At 
 the last count, June 30, 1893, there had been 
 during the preceding year only four females to 
 eleven males among the immigrants." "^ In the 
 
 * statistics Bearing on Equal Suffrage, Adele M. Fielde. Suffrage 
 Leaflets, nth Assembly District Committee. 
 
 151 
 
152 '^Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 State of New York, whicli alone concerns us, 
 tlie men of voting age numbered 1,769,649. As 
 the total female population was sensibly equal 
 to the male, being only -gig- in excess ; it may be 
 assumed that there are an equal number of 
 women of voting age. 
 
 This number of the total female population, 
 in round numbers, three million, corresponds 
 pretty closely with the number of women in the 
 entire country engaged in " gainful occupa- 
 tions." The imperfect census of 1890 gives 
 no tables of occupations. But the census of 
 1880 gives the number of women in all classes 
 of occupations as 2,647,157, a number which has 
 certainly increased to over three million in the 
 jlast fourteen years. In 1779, in the middle year 
 pf the Kevolutionary War, the white population 
 k the United States was about 2,175,000.* 
 This number, two and one half million, seems 
 to mark the point at which an impulse for inde- 
 pendence becomes urgent if not irresistible. 
 
 The proposal to enfranchise (in round num- 
 bers) 1,500,000 persons in a totai adult popula- 
 tion of three million, invites the inquiry : 
 
 1st. What precedents exist for such a measure 
 of enfranchisement ? 
 
 * Fiske, Critical Period of American History, p. I02. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 153 
 
 2d. To what extent would the new voters be 
 homogeneous with the old, or to what extent 
 would their heterogeneity constitute a disturb- 
 ing element ? 
 
 3d. What special circumstances of religion, 
 nationality, social condition, or civil status 
 would require consideration in respect to such 
 newly enfranchised persons ? 
 
 4th. What circumstances connected with 
 their previously unenfranchised condition could 
 be presumed to be influential after enfranchise- 
 ment? 
 
 5th. Whether, apart from the general advan- 
 tage of public representation — now firmly 
 recognized as a general principle in every 
 modern State, — any special advantages would be 
 likely to arise from the enfranchisement of the 
 particular class now claiming the suffrage. 
 
 In discussions on Woman Suffrage, the pre- 
 cedents alleged are usually those of Wyoming] 
 and Colorado, where full suffrage for womei 
 now exists; New Zealand, where full parlia- 
 mentary suffrage has just been granted t( 
 women ; municipal suffrage, as it exists in Eng^ 
 land, Canada, and Kansas ; or school suffrage,] 
 as it exists in twenty-three States of the Ameri- 
 can Union. 
 
154 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 The important facts about the suffrage in 
 Wyoming, Colorado, and New Zealand are: 
 1st. That the suffrage is there complete, and not 
 partial. It does not differentiate women from 
 other voters, and in the American States pre- 
 supposes no property or other special qualifica- 
 tions, such as are associated with school suffrage. 
 2d. Under these circumstances, during the 
 twenty-five years the franchise has been exer- 
 cised in Wyoming, and at the single elections held 
 under it in Colorado and New Zealand, — the 
 woman vote has been called out very fully. In 
 the recently enfranchised States, the enthusiasm, 
 at least on this one occasion, has been immense. 
 3d. The extremely sparse population of Wyo- 
 ming, which could not fairly be said to justify 
 its admission as a State, is said to throw its case 
 out of comparison with a much more thickly 
 populated State, as New York. Yet for the 
 philosophers who are always endeavoring to 
 study the woman question in outline, in type, 
 in primitive beginnings, the relative simplicity 
 of this situation should render it as valuable 
 as village communities and town meetings have 
 been found by the student of political evolution. 
 
 4th. In one respect, contradictory reports have 
 reached us from Wyoming, or more specifically 
 
Woman Suffrage. 155 
 
 from Cheyenne. It has been asserted that in 
 cities still bearing the imprint of mining towns, 
 the proportion of women of the courtesan class 
 Avas relatively large, and that their vote had 
 been handled by interested election agents, — in 
 the same way as the Italian vote in New York 
 is handled by the padrone. If this be true, this 
 section of the Wyoming vote must be simply 
 compared with the Italian and other controlled 
 vote in New York ; — a form of rude and primi- 
 tive suffrage, that constitutes a sort of survival 
 of antique forms in the midst of civilization, and 
 cannot but be destined to disappear. It is sim- 
 ply impossible to compare this vote with the vote 
 of women of any other class, — and even if it 
 were true that all such women voted, their total 
 number in the city of New York is not regis- 
 tered as more than 40,000, out of a total popu- 
 lation of between 1,500,000 and 2,000,000. 
 
 In another place, the argument from this 
 special possibility — which so strangely jostles 
 upon sentimental arguments of such a precisely 
 opposite character, — has been considered from 
 another point of view. At this place we can 
 note, notwithstanding the hysteric excitement 
 which has been displayed in some quarters in 
 regard to this topic, that other information de- 
 
156 ^^ Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 clares tlie alleged reports are not true. The 
 wholesome law which compels every one to regis- 
 ter at a certain time before voting, acts as a 
 deterrent upon those, and especially upon 
 women, who do not wish their names or calling 
 to be forced into publicity. This fact is itself 
 sufficient to meet the immediate apprehension. 
 The changes in the entire situation which the 
 future may bring about are too remote, and the 
 considerations involved too delicate and com- 
 plex for present discussion. 
 
 Certainly, however, if any attitude of mind 
 can be considered fantastic, it is that by which 
 a professedly sober man can call himself " out- 
 raged " at the thought that a woman of his 
 family should deposit a vote at the polls the 
 moment before or after a woman of this " class " 
 might by chance have done the same. This 
 form of social " contamination " is certainly 
 most attenuated. 
 
 5th. The situation in Colorado was specialized 
 by the insertion of woman-suffrage " planks " in 
 the platforms of the county conventions, by the 
 Republicans and also the Populist party. In 
 New York State no such party endorsement of 
 woman suffrage has ever been obtained, and on 
 that account Miss Anthony seems to think that 
 
Woman Suffrage, 157 
 
 New York cannot be carried in its favor. How- 
 ever, in 1892, the New York State Legislature, 
 at that time with a Democratic majority, not 
 only brought to its third reading a bill in favor 
 of woman suffrage, but carried it through the 
 Assembly. Under the circumstances such a 
 vote could only be looked upon as a declaration 
 of opinion ; but as such it was certainly sig- 
 nificant. 
 
 6th. One other fact from Colorado is very 
 interesting. As soon as the constitutional 
 amendment had been carried, and the first 
 election held, women, having "received their 
 baptism of fire," began, all over the country, to 
 organize clubs for the serious study of political 
 institutions. Is it on record that any other class 
 of newly enfranchised voters ever did the same ? 
 
 In New Zealand, the remarkable fact of the 
 election was that the women, having been en- 
 franchised by one party, voted chiefly for th( 
 candidate of the other. 
 
 This same independence was also shown a1 
 the first municipal elections held in Kansas. T( 
 the women's vote was largely due the defeat of th( 
 Populists and the Republican victory, althougl 
 the Populists had been mainly instrumental i] 
 the enfranchisement of women. Several noted 
 
158 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 but undesirable "leaders," among others Mrs. 
 Lease, were " snowed under " by the vote of the 
 women. 
 
 Nothing could be of better augury for the 
 future of woman suffrage than indications of its 
 andependence of political parties. Whatever be 
 the function of parties in a system of represen- 
 tative government, it is evident that much of 
 ' their machinery is excessively clumsy ; much of 
 their action requires to be supplemented by 
 Sother than strict party motives. The assump- 
 Vion that any one party is always right, even on 
 issues other than that in which it originated, is 
 theoretically absurd. Party allegiance must 
 usually, in modern times, vnth their nicely com- 
 plex issues, be a matter of expediency, and may 
 be usefully traversed by many other expedien- 
 cies, such as voters less trained to party disci- 
 pline would be most likely to suggest. 
 
 Municipal suffrage in England and Canada 
 constitutes very little precedent for our proposed 
 situation. 
 
 " In the northern countries of the Germanic world, the 
 communal right . . . accepts, as the qualification, 
 possession of real property, without regard to the per- 
 son. . . . Property has become the exclusive basis 
 of the right, the personality of the owner is completely 
 disregarded, the difference between the sexes is thence- 
 
Woman Suffrage, 159 
 
 forth an idle distinction. Among Germans, Anglo- 
 Saxons, Scandinavians, where communal right has a real 
 as opposed to a personal basis, woman is admitted to the 
 enjoyment of it. . . . Therefore, while granting the 
 communal right to women (as well as to companies and 
 corporations), by virtue of their property right, care has 
 been taken to limit it to that sphere of local self-govern- 
 ment which is devoid of all political character, and con- 
 cerned chiefly with the administration of the economic 
 interests of the place. . . . 
 
 " In 1888, women rate-payers were included among the 
 electors to the county councils, but were not considered 
 eligible for election." * 
 
 This obstinate restriction of franchise right 
 to property, ingeniously enucleates the cardinal, 
 vital value of the suffrage. Such franchise does 
 not enhance — it depresses the dignity of the 
 human unit who exercises it, not in virtue of 
 himself, but of the non-human thing to which 
 he is appended. The value in the development 
 of the effective force of persons of these local, 
 communal, municipal rights of suffrage seems to 
 increase the nearer we mount to their orio^in. 
 When land ownership meant freedom, and the 
 landless were dependent cultivators, laets,f and 
 slaves, the vote of the freeman was a sign of 
 
 * Ostrogorski, loc. cit. pp. 90 and loi, 
 
 t Kemble, Saxons in England, quoted by Hannis Taylor, loc, cit, 
 p. 126. 
 
1 6o '* Common Sense " applied to 
 
 personal dignity, as well as property. Now that 
 there are freemen who do not own land — free- 
 men who have more political rights than some 
 of the persons (the women) who do own land, 
 — the vote accorded to such possession has been 
 emptied of half its value. The refusal to extend 
 Parliamentary suffrage to women who are pos- 
 sessed of municipal suffrage, does not mean, as 
 Americans are apt to suppose, that women are 
 counted able to judge about the small concerns 
 of a town, but not about Imperial issues. It 
 means that women are still not counted able to 
 exercise an independent judgment at all, and, 
 therefore, are to remain counted out when this 
 is called for ; but that the property to which they 
 happen to belong, and which requires represen- 
 tation, must not be deprived of this on account 
 of an entangling female alliance. 
 
 This is the very antipodes of the Democratic 
 doctrine, perhaps also somewhat excessive, that 
 a man requires representation so much that he 
 must not be deprived of it on account of the 
 accident of being unable to read and write. 
 
 Absurd doctrine, from some points of view. 
 Yet what other has ever been able to secure for 
 every one the opportunity to learn how to read 
 and write ? 
 
Woman Suffrage, i6i 
 
 For the above reasons, it is plain that the 
 proposal often broached, indeed submitted, to 
 many of our State Legislatures to confer mu- 
 nicipal suffrage upon women as a partial and 
 tentative measure, is based on a misapprehen- 
 sion of English precedent. Municipal suffrage 
 in Kansas demands no property qualification, 
 and its exercise therefore does not differ in the 
 least from that required in a Presidential elec- 
 tion. On the other hand, as the municipal con- 
 cerns of New York and other large cities offer 
 at present the most complex and perplexing 
 problems with which the present time has to 
 grapple, municipal suffrage is not the simplest 
 task to be learned first, but precisely the most 
 difficult and most arduous. The "vote that 
 comes down to the Harlem River " now often 
 serves to correct the local aberrations of the 
 New York vote. Such correction would be 
 needed as much for the vote of women as of 
 men. 
 
 School suffrage is a form of partial suffrage 
 which might, much more rationally than mu- 
 nicipal suffrage, be used as a preliminary tenta- 
 tive form of enfranchisement, where a prelimi- 
 nary experiment were deemed essential. It 
 necessitates very properly either some educa- 
 
1 62 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 tional and some property qualification, or some 
 special relation to the children going to school. 
 The pertinence of the influence of women in 
 school matters is to-day so generally admitted, 
 the mental change since 1821 is so enormous, 
 that men generally say : " Yes, women should 
 vote for school officers, and be elected to School 
 Boards " ; and women continually sign petitions 
 for this privilege, till startled by the discovery 
 that it also means something else. It means, 
 however, in the State of New York, according to 
 the decision of its Supreme Court, that women 
 can only enjoy this privilege thoroughly if 
 empowered by constitutional amendment to 
 vote for all officers as well as for School Com- 
 missioner. 
 
 Further, in the great cities of New York and 
 Brooklyn, where the Mayor appoints the Boards 
 of Education, and the School Trustees are ap- 
 pointed by them, the only way in which women 
 can effectively reach the schools is by sharing 
 in the election for Mayor. 
 
 Twenty-three States other than New York 
 have conferred school suffrage upon women. 
 The right is so new, the mental habits of women 
 and capacity for collective action have been as 
 yet so little tested, that little can be learned 
 
Woman Suffrage, 163 
 
 about tlie effect of women's voting from the his- 
 tory of school suffrage. Complaints of apathy, 
 of special parsimony on the part of women tax- 
 payers, of lack of initiative in the improvement 
 of education, are easily made. Sometimes such 
 complaints are well founded and incidental to 
 a transition state of things. Quite as often they 
 are radically unjust, and overlook tangible in- 
 stances of valuable aid rendered by women to 
 the schools, to schooling, or to the action of offi- 
 cials. 
 
 Because women should be, from their natural 
 relations and from the extent to which the busi- 
 ness of teaching has fallen into their hands, 
 peculiarly interested in school government and 
 administration, it does not follow that under 
 hitherto existing conditions they have had op- 
 portunities to receive the requisite training even 
 for theoretic thought. When it comes to practi- 
 cal action they are blocked at every step by the 
 circumstances of their political restrictions. How 
 can women attempt to remedy the often dis- 
 graceful material conditions of New York 
 schools, * when they have nothing to do with 
 taxation (except to pay their own taxes), and 
 
 * The Evening Post, April 2, 1894, article headed "Condition of 
 the Schools ; Shocking Effects of what the Mayor Calls Economy." 
 
164 ^^ Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 not the slightest influence with the Boards of 
 Estimate and Apportionment? How may 
 women increase the efficiency of teachers, dis- 
 pirited by unequal salaries and cowed by ma- 
 chine rule, when they confront the immovable 
 determination in all public administrations to ac- 
 cord for the same grade of work higher salaries 
 to voters than to non- voters ? 
 
 How can women serve, even through the 
 courtesy of appointment, on New York School 
 Boards, when, having gained a footing, they are 
 promptly swept away again by the decision of 
 a new Mayor, who has his own views on the 
 " place for women " ? What is wisdom in con- 
 servative London may, without appeal, be pro- 
 nounced nonsense in New York. 
 
 The real precedent for the enfranchisement of 
 New York women is hardly ever recognized to 
 be such — we mean the extensions of the fran- 
 chise effected in England by the Reform Bills 
 of 1832, 1867, and 1884. 
 
 A certain class of people enslaved to appear- 
 
 " The moral law rules the world : but at short range the 
 senses are despotic." 
 
 ances, always cowering before the huge wave of 
 advancing democracy, like children before the 
 
Woman Suffrage, 165 
 
 surf on the seashore, — are apt to say : " Democ- 
 racy, once let loose, proceeds inevitably from 
 bad to worse to a final culmination (?) of imbe- 
 cile unfitness. All weak, ignorant, and incom- 
 petent men have already been added to the 
 electorate, at least in France, Germany, and 
 America. It is proposed now to take the lowest 
 step of all and admit women." 
 
 Here is another central grappling knot of the 
 discussion : We deny, utterly and in toto, that 
 the extension of suffrage to women implies a 
 general step downwards in competency. In the 
 language of the English debates of 1867, what 
 is demanded is Twt a further vertical extension, 
 but simply a lateral extension along the lines of 
 all existing classes. So long as it was assumed 
 in theory, and often true in fact, that every 
 woman was necessarily the inferior of every 
 man in her family — father, brother, husband, 
 son — in intelligence, education, judgment, 
 strength of character, woman suffrage might 
 seem indeed to constitute a vertical extension 
 downwards, a distinct lowering of the franchise 
 in dignity and efficiency. Exclusion from the 
 franchise has been marvellously effective in 
 perpetuating the reasons which might seem to 
 justify such exclusion. But this is not more 
 
1 66 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 true of women than of every class permanently- 
 excluded from share in the Sovereignty. Com- 
 pare the desperately degraded populace of 
 England at the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century with the English freemen of the tenth 
 and eleventh centuries, or even with the upper 
 class of " landless " men, who came so near the 
 franchise that the acquisition of a few acres 
 sufficed to acquire the suffrage. 
 
 " I have shown that from the earliest recorded annals, 
 through nearly three centuries, the condition of the 
 English laborer was that of plenty and hope, — that from 
 perfectly intelligible causes it sunk within a century to 
 so low a level as to make the workmen practically help- 
 less. . . . The first half of the eighteenth century 
 was still far below the level of the fifteenth." * 
 
 The class relations of women have compen- 
 sated to a certain extent the disabilities of their 
 sex condition. 
 
 This is why Dr. Curtis writes eloquently : 
 
 " It must be proved that, in spite of generous law- 
 making for women, there still lurks in the heart of the 
 average citizen an innate savage longing to harass and 
 oppress the mother that gave him being, the wife whom 
 he invites to share his home, and the daughter whose 
 sweet devotion is the very sunshine of his life ! " 
 
 * Thorold Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages, 1884, p. 522. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 167 
 
 Even in a time most remote from our own 
 epoch of softened manners, it may be presumed 
 that the legislation and customs which did op- 
 press and harass women, did not originate in 
 any " innate savage longing " on the part of men 
 to do so. It was shaped by no harsher senti- 
 ment than contempt ; and remained for so many 
 years unmodified, for no more definite reasons 
 than forgetf ulness of the wrongs of an unobtru- 
 sive people, or illusions, which made many of 
 these wrongs seem rights. 
 
 So great a favorite of the English law is the female 
 
 sex ! 
 
 " Admitting," observes Mr. Pellew, " that for 
 some reason or other the Legislature has per- 
 formed many ^good works for women,' it does 
 not follow that the present system of indirect 
 representation has been a success. Can it be 
 said that it was not until 1874 (in Massachu- 
 setts), that it was right to prohibit a husband 
 who had deserted his wife from imposing any 
 restraint on her personal liberty ? " 
 
 Admitting freely, that in every social class 
 women have shared abundantly in the material 
 advantages and the social position which have 
 been won by the struggles of their " mates," it 
 
1 68 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 remains true that until the present century 
 women have been left in a condition of mental 
 degradation, which, for mental purposes, may- 
 be very accurately compared with the material 
 degradation of the disfranchised English 
 laborer. We do not speak of exceptions, but 
 of the vast mass of women as compared with 
 the vast mass of men of their own class and 
 families. 
 
 " Women may be inferior beings," writes Sydney Smith, 
 "but there really seems to be no reason why a woman of 
 forty should always be as ignorant as a boy of twelve." 
 
 " Of women no less than of men it is true that politi- 
 cal dependence fosters ignorance and cowardice, and 
 that independence of thought and inquiry is fostered by 
 political independence. It is a legitimate deduction from 
 the history of slaves, of serfs, and of all dependent peo- 
 ple, to conclude that it is the absence of the suffrage that 
 keeps so many women, to such a degree, ' ill-educated, 
 bullied, cowardly, bigoted, and empty-headed.' " * 
 
 The claim for Woman Suffrage simply empha- 
 sizes, endorses, and ratifies the movement of ex- 
 tension of actual value, along lateral class lines, 
 which industrial, legal, and educational move- 
 ments have already thoroughly begun. It de- 
 nies that women to-day constitute a universally 
 " weak and dependent class " ; just as it was 
 
 * George Pellew, loc. cit., p. 36. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 169 
 
 denied in 1867 that English artisans, though 
 living in houses of only seven pounds' rental 
 value, must necessarily be drunkards and ready 
 to sell their votes. 
 
 " Every man will admit that since the Reform Bill (of 
 1832) great progress in knowledge and capacity has been 
 make by the working-classes. . . . Can you say that 
 there are not persons below the class of ten-pounds 
 thoroughly fitted for the suffrage, perfectly capable of 
 judgment?"* 
 
 Nothing could more vividly illustrate the 
 power of the idea, at once so stubborn and so 
 primitive, which supposes that personalities 
 may be adequately measured and defined by 
 classes, than the debates on the English Re- 
 form Bills. It was actually necessary to point 
 out that any of the tests proposed — the forty- 
 shilling freehold of Henry VI., or the payment 
 of poor-rates, or the payment of a given rental, 
 or even the possession of a bank book — were all 
 purely artificial tests, and involved no principle 
 whatever ; " that sometimes * drunkards, spend- 
 thrifts, sluggards, vagrants, and profligates' 
 lived in very good houses, and paid their rents 
 and rates regularly." f 
 
 * Cox, loc. cit. f Cox, loc. cit.^ p. 122. 
 
170 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 " Lord Robert Montagu said that the principle under 
 which our liberties have taken root and grown up, is the 
 theory that representation ought to depend on the posses- 
 sion of property ; that land ought to be represented ; 
 because no stability nor permanence can be expected 
 unless the electors have something at stake." * 
 
 This stubborn adhesion to lines of class, no 
 matter how irrelevant to the purpose the basis 
 of classification, is evidently a survival of the 
 still more antique idea of caste. Equal rights 
 were initiated at Kome, when privilege of prop- 
 erty superseded privilege of birth; since the 
 opportunity to acquire property was open, but 
 the privilege of birth irreversibly closed. In 
 its turn political privilege of property has been 
 found oppressive, and its claims gradually re- 
 laxed. 
 
 " As men^ those below the ten-pound line could have 
 nothing to say ; only as having money ; and the acquisition 
 of money and other value, was constantly being retarded 
 by the fact that they were considered of less value than 
 other men." 
 
 This for men. But for women is still reiterated 
 and re-enforced the oldest, the most irreversible 
 privilege of birth imaginable — the privileges of 
 those born to one sex — over those who have been 
 born to another. 
 
 * Cox, loc. cit. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 171 
 
 Riglits of Roman patricians, of Athenian 
 eupatridse, of Saxon thanes, of Norman nobles, 
 of English whigs, even of ten-pound house- 
 holders, have all been abrogated, or at least 
 their supremacy abated. Only the one primi- 
 tive right, the right of a circumstance of birth, 
 which has been repudiated in such innumerable 
 grants of other rights — this alone is maintained, 
 because the persons wronged by it are unable 
 to assert their own claims by force of arms, but 
 must appeal to the reason and equity of those 
 in power ! 
 
 But to what else did the disfranchised classes 
 of England appeal, in 1832, in 1867, and in 1884 ? 
 Did they resort to arms ? Did they excite — did 
 they even threaten revolution ? The peaceful 
 triumph of their cause is an unerring harbin- 
 ger of the success of the woman's similar 
 claim. Their case is not indeed exactly identi- 
 cal ; but it is so closely analogous, that it is both 
 fair and safe to reason from one to the other. 
 
 " A section of the press deprecated the ruinous effects 
 of democracy in language which, read again after the 
 Reform Bill of 1867, seems preposterous." * 
 
 "The great legislative and administrative period — per- 
 haps the greatest in our annals — will be the history of 
 
 * Cox, loc. cit. 
 
172 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 emancipation, political, social, moral, and intellectual. I 
 consider my career as beginning with the Reform Act of 
 1832."* 
 
 The special contrast which the general en- 
 franchisement of women in New York would 
 offer to the English Eeform Bills lies in the 
 absolute numbers which would be involved. 
 In England, Lord EusselFs Bill of 1860 pro- 
 posed the addition of only 248,000 persons to 
 the electorate. In 1865 it was found that, in 
 England and Wales, 488,920 persons were then 
 entitled to vote. Of these, 128,603, or 26 per 
 cent., maintained themselves by daily manual 
 labor — were mechanics and artisans. Mr. Glad- 
 stone estimated that at that date the aggregate 
 income of the working classes constituted -f-^ of 
 the total income of the country, and " yet they 
 were put off with \ of the electoral power." 
 The various detailed reforms proposed would 
 add 400,000 persons to the electorate. 
 
 This number was almost equal to that of the 
 whole number of voters already existing. In 
 other words, the proposed bill of 1865 (which 
 failed to become a law) would have almost 
 "doubled the vote." By the bills of 1867 and 
 
 * Gladstone, letter to Midlothian Liberals, cited in Evening Post^ 
 March 27, 1894. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 173 
 
 1884 the number of voters previous to 1865 
 has been quadrupled. (Cox). 
 
 In the State of New York, with a voting 
 population of 1,500,000, the addition of 1,500,- 
 000 would also double the vote. But it would 
 do no more. And as, whatever our other diffi- 
 culties have been, New York has experienced 
 no more difficulty in handling and counting 
 1,500,000 votes than England had in casting 
 500,000, it may be presumed that with us 
 3,000,000 votes could be managed as easily as 
 the 3,000,000 of the United Kingdom.* Further, 
 the addition of women's votes would increase 
 the proportion of the native, to that of the 
 foreign, vote. In the State the total native-born 
 population is 4,426,803, the foreign born 1,769,- 
 649, or three times as many natives as aliens. 
 There are 56,000 more native-born white females 
 than native-born white males. They outnum- 
 ber the foreign-born females by 1,430,345 
 throughout the State, and by 109,687 through- 
 out the city.* 
 
 It has been constantly asserted during this 
 year's suffrage campaign that the enfranchise- 
 ment of women would only " double the exist- 
 
 * Taylor, loc. cit., p. 6i6. 
 f Adele Fielde, loc. cit. 
 
1 74 ** Common Sense " applied to 
 
 ing vote ; and what was needed was to improve 
 tlie quality, not increase the quantity, of the 
 vote.""^ The Reform Bills of conservative 
 England did exactly that — they " doubled the 
 vote," and in the teeth of a frantic opposition 
 which " protested " against an " increase in the 
 quantity without security for improvement in 
 the quality of the vote." 
 
 One of the great bugbears in England was 
 the dread of a "monotonous constituency, a 
 constituency whose predominant opinions would 
 be identical, who would return to Parliament 
 members holding the same ideas, the same 
 opinions, the same sentiments." f 
 
 The same objection has been urged against 
 the woman's vote, and even by members of the 
 Massachusetts Senate. Because among public 
 questions, the liquor question touches upon the 
 interests of women, even while unenfranchised, 
 it is assumed that they would think of nothing 
 else, even after their admission to the general 
 range of political discussion would have given 
 them many other subjects for reflection. 
 
 On the other hand, the various differences 
 which exist between the character or mental 
 
 * Protest of Brooklyn anti-suffragists, 
 f Disraeli, Debates, 1865, cited by Cox. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 175 
 
 habit of women and of men, are alleged as 
 liable to introduce dangerous confusion in a 
 " mixed " electorate. 
 
 Such confusion has been foreboded by Gold- 
 win Smith and others from " mixed colleges " ; 
 but the foreboding has remained as unsub- 
 stantial as an unpleasant morning dream. 
 Certainly no American at this fin du siecle can 
 venture to assert " homogeneity " is an essential 
 condition of prosperous political life. Should 
 he do so, he must in the same breath condemn 
 his country, with brief delay, to overwhelming 
 political disaster. Such a commingling of na- 
 tionalities, races, languages, religions, traditions, 
 habits, ideas, sentiments, and opinions, was 
 never before known in any State. Under the 
 Roman Empire these co-existed with each 
 other, but only to a minimum extent co- 
 operated to influence the Sovereignty of the 
 State. Here they do both. This situation 
 could only exist in a State both mighty, and 
 entirely free. 
 
 The assertion that in such a heterogeneously 
 composed community the addition of women 
 voters would add a "disturbing element," is 
 something like saying that a few thousand 
 india-rubber balls dropped upon the moon 
 
176 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 would reverse the present relations of gravita- 
 tion between that satellite and the earth. 
 
 However, to the extent to which it may be 
 desirable to diminish the influence of the 
 foreign conglomerate of nationalities and reli- 
 gions, the woman's vote is to be desired, since, 
 as shown above, it would, at this time, increase 
 the preponderance of the native vote ; even, if 
 that also be thought imjDortant, of the Protes- 
 tant vote. 
 
 The peculiarity of the position of women is, 
 and it is unique for any new class of voters, 
 that they are not homogeneous with each other, 
 but are so with the men among whom they live. 
 Although some peculiarities of sex and training 
 would emphasize in them certain tendencies of 
 thought and action in preference to others, they 
 would bring no distinctive ideas into the arena, 
 but only those which were already common 
 property of one or the other masculine group. 
 The admission therefore would combine the 
 advantages of both a homogeneous and a hetero- 
 geneous franchise, and at the same time would 
 be free from the disadvantasres of either. 
 
 The fourth question we have suggested may 
 be presumed to especially refer to the ignorance 
 of women, and to the lack of independence 
 usually attributed to their sex. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 177 
 
 The "anti-suffragists" of the drawing-rooms 
 of Brooklyn and Albany have been ready to 
 believe that when men objected to the female 
 vote because it would increase the ** ignorant 
 vote," they only meant the ignorance of the 
 maid servants in their kitchens, or of the fe- 
 male immigrants at Castle Garden. We women 
 are under no such illusion. We are fully aware 
 that this objection is a widely diffused convic- 
 tion, sometimes expressed learnedly, sometimes 
 elegantly, sometimes with extreme politeness 
 and consideration, but always substantially 
 identical with the offhand opinion of the aver- 
 age voter, who with feet on the mantelpiece, 
 and hat well set on the back of his head, jerks 
 his five-cent cigar out of his mouth long enough 
 to ejaculate, " What do women know about 
 politics, anyhow ? " and then resumes his study 
 of the sporting columns of the newspaper. 
 
 There is the ignorance of the educated woman 
 and the ignorance of the ignorant woman, and 
 they deserve a little different consideration. 
 
 The ignorance of otherwise educated women 
 in regard to current politics certainly proves 
 nothing against their intelligence. In the 
 absence of any practical motive for acquiring 
 information, 'such women could only study cur- 
 rent politics in the same way as they would 
 
178 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 study the structure of early Anglo-Saxon 
 societies, or the village communities of the 
 ancient Aryans; and some women have done 
 this very thing. But they were necessarily 
 those possessed of that surplus of intellectual 
 activity, which remains to a few people, and 
 unfortunately only a few, after all practical 
 functions of intelligence had been fulfilled. 
 What women would do with the practical 
 duties of political life, did these once devolve 
 upon them, must be judged by the intelligence 
 and efficiency with which they discharge the 
 duties they already assume. That those duties 
 are already multifarious and responsible no one 
 to-day would deny ; and that women do acquit 
 themselves of these responsibilities with intel- 
 ligence and fidelity, no one at present ventures 
 to dispute. Nothing can be much more fantas- 
 tic than the idea that the new political duty 
 would add itself to those already assumed as a 
 " burden." Who ever can seriously make such 
 an assertion must speak from the bewilderment 
 of some troubled dream; a vision of Vathek, 
 where crowds of female shapes pace to and fro 
 in halls of Eblis, with hands on their palpi- 
 tating hearts, engaged at once in scrubbing, 
 cooking, sewing, teaching, talking, nursing the 
 
Woman Suffrage, 179 
 
 measles, and pouring afternoon teas, chattering 
 at tlie opera, shopping at Macy's, writing mid- 
 night copy for New York newspapers, studying 
 the McKinley bill, Tlie Wealth of Nations, and 
 Mr. Atkinson's economic charts, following the 
 investigations of the Lexow Committee and the 
 inquiry into the sugar schedule, and conscien- 
 tiously making up their minds in advance how 
 they are going to vote for the next Presidential 
 candidate, who has not yet been nominated ! 
 
 The reasons that the alarm engendered by 
 this vision is irrational, is that the vision itself is 
 absurd, as it proves itself to be the moment its 
 details are translated into masculine conditions. 
 When people are doing one thing they are not 
 doing another ; when they engage in matters of 
 larger concern they discover some way of con- 
 densing and handling more effectively affairs of 
 lesser scope ; where they require practical in- 
 formation for practical purposes, they divert, if 
 necessary, some energies previously hitherto en- 
 gaged in theoretical pursuits, and constituting a 
 reserve force. Specifically, when women, newly 
 enfranchised, should require either knowledge 
 or advice in regard to voting, in addition to 
 what they would require for themselves, they 
 could, and would, follow the injunctions of St. 
 
i8o ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 Paul to women admitted to the new sj)liere 
 and new responsibilities of the Christian church, 
 " ask their husbands at home." 
 
 After all, the most important effect of the 
 suffrage is psychological. The permanent con- 
 sciousness of power for effective action, the 
 knowledge that their own thoughts have an 
 equal chance with those of any other person, in 
 being carried out by one's own will ; this is what 
 has always rendered the men of a free state 
 so energetic, so acutely intelligent, so powerful. 
 The influence of environment is only beginning 
 to-day to be philosophically appreciated. It is 
 just beginning to be suspected that the widely 
 diffused ignorance of women is not a necessary 
 organic peculiarity, but explicable by the fact 
 that until recently they were forbidden to learn 
 anything. Similarly we may inquire whether 
 much of the observed practical feebleness of wo- 
 men, even in carrying out the thoughts they may 
 have justly conceived, is not due to the social 
 customs which, in such multiple directions, for- 
 bid their will to have any effect. The brain is 
 not only the origin of activities, it is a result of 
 them. "When Laura Bridgman lost the power 
 to see and hear, the part of her brain containing 
 organs for sight and hearing atrophied, while 
 
Woman Suffrage. i8i 
 
 the central convolutions, controlling the faculty 
 of touch, developed out of all ordinary propor- 
 tion. Life lies beyond the organs of life, but 
 follows their shrinkage or expansion. 
 
 The ignorance of the ignorant women differs 
 in no wise from that of ignorant men, except 
 that it would be plausibly more amenable to 
 legitimate influence. 
 
 We have already suggested that, with the 
 overthrow of the boundary walls which now, 
 theoretically and practically, tend to confine the 
 interests of women to their respective " nests," 
 and to isolate them from class interests in 
 women, broad channels would be open for the 
 overflow of the practical social enthusiasm so 
 characteristic of women. In this direction we 
 especially look for an answer to the fifth ques- 
 tion we have raised, concerning the special 
 public advantage which might result from the 
 enfranchisement of women. We believe it 
 would cause the liberation of innumerable 
 molecular forces, which would disseminate them- 
 selves in all directions as civilizing agencies, 
 acting upon small groups of people. Missionary 
 w^ork, Chinese Sunday-schools, blanket clubs, 
 picnic festivals to raise money for the conversion 
 of the heathen — the energies expended in such 
 
1 82 ''Commo7i Se7ise'' applied to 
 
 enterprises could be collected, raised, intensified, 
 immensely fructified for good, when turned in 
 the direction of instructing masses of ignorant 
 women how to vote, so that the men chosen as 
 policemen on their street, and the aldermen of 
 their ward, and the police justices of their j)re- 
 cinct, should be competent, honest, and honor- 
 able. Incidentally to such electioneering work, 
 what other instruction would come ; what ad- 
 vantage from the commingling of classes on the 
 true common ground of the public welfare 
 where they can mingle ; what enlightenment in 
 regard to self-interests; what improvement in 
 modes of living ; what general uplifting of life ! 
 That there would be no voting en masse at 
 the dictate of party leaders, no submission to 
 interested influence, no need, under the most 
 stringent ballot laws, of perpetual vigilance 
 against corruption and fraud, it would be absurd 
 to deny. But these needs already exist; every 
 motive for combating the evils peculiar to 
 democratic societies, and which have succeeded 
 to the evils of aristocratic societies, is fully 
 aroused. The lateral extension of the franchise 
 by the woman vote offers many suggestions of 
 new resources against these old evils, and sug- 
 gests no new evil itself. Numbers will be 
 
Woman Suffrage. 183 
 
 changed, and not proportions. He tliat is 
 righteous will be righteous still, and possibly 
 the converse will not be quite true. As before, 
 in the words of Frederick Douglas, " we must 
 trust all the knowledge of the community to 
 take care of its ignorance, and all the virtue to 
 take care of its vice." 
 
 Most interesting as a proof that the enfran- 
 chisement of women is simply an inevitable 
 deduction from democratic principles, and irre- 
 sistibly suggested by the actual conditions of 
 our democratic republic, is the frequent recur- 
 rence of argument against woman suffrage, 
 which turns out to be only argument in thin 
 disguise against democracy. From much of the 
 random talk which has flashed to and fro 
 'during this eventful spring, it might be inferred 
 that plans had been submitted to the Constitu- 
 tional Convention to change the government of 
 our State to an aristocracy, or even to that most 
 odious system of all — an oligarchy. It might 
 be supposed that New York men and women 
 had been invited to express their preference for 
 the continuance of the existing system of social 
 polity, where every one is represented, and the 
 most energetic come to the front and finally rule ; 
 or rather for some system disinterred from the 
 
184 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 sepulctres of bygone centuries. Yet the only 
 proposition for disfrancliisement which has ac- 
 tually been submitted to the Convention came 
 associated with the amendment to enfranchise 
 women. In proposing this, Mr. Deane of 
 Rochester also proposed " to disfranchise voters 
 convicted of bribery." 
 
 Measures for disfranchisement are by no 
 means unprecedented in Anglo-Saxon history. 
 " The first recorded was passed in the eighth 
 year of Henry VI., and limited the suffrage not 
 only to freeholders, but to such of them as 
 ^ have free lands or tenements to the value of 
 forty shillings, by the year at least, above all 
 charges.' This was equivalent to a modern real 
 property qualification of from thirty to forty 
 pounds' annual value. It was never enlarged 
 from the time of its imposition until the enact- 
 ment of the Reform Bill of 1832. The 
 same reactionary spirit which, before the 
 close of the middle ages, thus brought about 
 the disfranchisement of the landless freemen 
 and the lesser freeholders within the shires, also 
 impressed itself upon the municipal electoral 
 system, producing a still more sweeping restric- 
 tion of the franchise in the cities and towns. A 
 persistent process of encroachment (on popular 
 
Woman Suffrage, 185 
 
 liberties) was inaugurated by the Tudors and 
 pursued by the Stuarts ; and, under its influence, 
 the English representative system ceased to be 
 representative. ... Of six hundred and 
 fifty-eight members of the Lower House re- 
 turned in 1816, four hundred and eighty-seven 
 were the nominees of the government, and two 
 hundred and sixty-seven private patrons, — one 
 hundred and forty-four of the last-named being 
 members of the House of Lords." * 
 
 Even the great Reform Bill of 1832, which 
 transferred the control of the House of Com- 
 mons from the landed aristocracy to the Eng- 
 lish middle classes, involved measures of dis- 
 franchisement co-relative with those which en- 
 franchised newly developed interests. Fifty-six 
 rotten boroughs of less than two thousand in- 
 habitants were entirely disfranchised; thirty- 
 two members were taken away from thirty-two 
 boroughs having less than four thousand in- 
 habitants. 
 
 In the United States, two measures of dis- 
 franchisement are already on record. The first 
 was enacted in New Jersey, in 1807, and ex- 
 cluded from the suffrage the women property- 
 holders who had hitherto voted. 
 
 * Hannis Taylor, loc. cit., p. 613. 
 
1 86 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 " Nothing can be a greater mockery of this inalienable 
 right of suffrage than to suffer it to be exercised by per- 
 sons (women) who do not pretend to any judgment on 
 the subject." * 
 
 The second measure was enacted most recent- 
 ly, and is embodied in the new State constitu- 
 tion of Mississippi, which now demands an 
 educational qualification for the suffrage. The 
 measure is intended to exclude from votino; as 
 many negroes as possible ; but in doing this a 
 considerable number of white men are also dis- 
 franchised. 
 
 Thus it is absurd to declare, as has frequently 
 been done, that the disfranchisement of classes 
 once in possession of the suffrage is impossible. 
 It has been accomplished, and not infrequently ; 
 and, moreover, as an entirely peaceable measure, 
 costing no bloodshed. The question involved 
 is not practicability, but advisability. And 
 certainly the history of England, from Henry VI. 
 to William IV., does not show that "the en- 
 croachments " on the liberties of the people, in 
 the interests of wealth and power, have proved 
 anything but disastrous. 
 
 The desirable modifications of popular suf- 
 
 * Errors and Omissions of the Constitution of New Jersey, Em- 
 mons, Trenton, 1779. (Quoted in History Woman Suffrage, vol. i., 
 p. 45I-) 
 
Woman Suffrage, 187 
 
 frage are not those which would annihilate, but 
 which would educate, train, and refine this, 
 and through more delicate and flexible adapta- 
 tion of its present crude machinery render the 
 suffrage more really representative. Real 
 democracy is still in its infancy. The educa- 
 tion of the (popular) Prince has hardly as yet 
 advanced beyond the stage where ministers roll 
 balls upon the floor for his amusement. The 
 Dauphin has not yet found his Fenelon, nor 
 Rasselas his sage. So little, however, does the 
 enfranchisement of women stand in the way of the 
 necessary education and evolution of democracy, 
 that it is the fundamental contradiction to 
 accepted ideas involved in the exclusion of 
 women from the electorate, which is really one 
 of the great stumbling-blocks in the way of 
 reform. While half the adult, reasonable, im- 
 portant, influential, and interesting part of the 
 population remains individually unrepresented, 
 the importance of political representation wanes 
 in popular appreciation. The crimes of usurpa- 
 tion of sovereignty, of defeating the poj)ular 
 will, of establishing the odious dominion of an 
 oligarchy under the rule of the party boss — all 
 cease to seem odious or to deserve any strenuous 
 resistance, condemnation, or punishment. In a 
 
1 88 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 State where education is free and so generally 
 sought after that compulsion is only occasionally 
 and locally required, illiteracy is a factor almost 
 negligeable, and of annually decreasing impor- 
 tance. To-day, as always, it is not the mass of 
 the poor, but the combinations of the rich that 
 menace the State; not the labor organizations, 
 but the millionaire trusts which corrupt legisla- 
 tures and administrations; not the workmen, 
 for whose employment the community appro- 
 priates a million dollars, but the officials who 
 squander or misappropriate the appropriation. 
 We may almost add — it is not the uninstructed 
 men who, on the confines of the civilization of 
 the community, sell their votes, who are chiefly 
 dangerous, but the instructed and adroitly intel- 
 ligent men from the midst, who buy them ; and 
 the other men, absorbed in private business or 
 political speculation, who wink at the process, 
 or fail to devise measures for its arrest. 
 
 On the 31st of May, the woman suffrage peti- 
 tion from New York was endorsed by leaders 
 of labor organizations, representing 100,000 
 men. It is easy to assert, from within the stiff- 
 necked ranks of our metropolitan bourgeoisie, 
 that such endorsements forbode the utilization, 
 through pressure, threat, or purchase, of a new 
 
Woman Suffrage, 1 89 
 
 contingent of feeble and dependent voters, to 
 be massed according to party calculations, or to 
 further schemes of hair-brained socialism. But 
 the truth is, for those who desire the truth, — 
 that such endorsements mean the distinct per- 
 ception of and danger to the interests of work- 
 ing men, of the unequal position of the great 
 masses in their midst of working women. In 
 the most obvious manner, and over and over 
 again, has the readiness of women to accept 
 lesser pay for the same work, undermined the 
 strength of the combinations formed to secure 
 a larger share of profits to labor. It would be 
 ridiculous to pretend that political equality 
 would enable women to earn as much as men 
 wherever an actual inferiority in physical or 
 mental strength compelled them to earn less. 
 But in such cases the competition of women 
 with men would do no harm, whereas now it is 
 often as ruinous to men as their inability to 
 command equal pay for equal work is injurious 
 to themselves. 
 
 The existence and definite articulation of 
 "Labor Questions," at which so many sneer, — 
 simply marks the final transformation of the 
 social system of militarism, into that of indus- 
 trialism. It indicates that work is no longer 
 
IQO ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 held to be a mere incident in the social life of a 
 community, whose serious business consisted in 
 war, hunting, diplomacy, and conversation ; but 
 that in the social estimate as well as in fact, 
 the productive forces of the community occu- 
 pied the same relation to the life of the State, 
 as the nutritive forces of the bodily organism to 
 the individual life. That being thus fundamental 
 to all social activities, and supporting all social 
 existence, these nutritive forces of productive in- 
 dustry deserved all social respect ; being indeed 
 only justly subordinate to such social organs as 
 correspond to the nerves, muscles, and brain of 
 the animal body. 
 
 The share of women in political rights and 
 life — imperfect, or deferred, or abrogated during 
 the predominance of militarism — has become 
 natural, has become inevitable, with the advent 
 of industrialism, in which they so largely share. 
 Useless therefore to assert the need of delaying 
 enfranchisement to some other epoch of whose 
 nature or occurrence no one has as yet the 
 faintest conception. 
 
 Thus the precise advantages to the community 
 to be anticipated from the enfranchisement of 
 women, are to be inferred by any one capable of 
 reasoning on the subject, from the entire trend 
 
Woman Suffrage. 191 
 
 of our argument which is now drawing to a 
 close. It is not women, but men, and the 
 heroic men of many generations, who have 
 decided that a claim for Rights must, in the 
 nature of things, antedate demonstrations of 
 utility. If the highest utility in a democratic 
 State be the development to the utmost of all 
 the capacities of all its members ; if the State 
 suffers when energies, which might be usefully 
 applied, are repressed, crippled, or allowed to 
 rust ; if interests suffer, when entrusted for their 
 defence to any one but those directly concerned 
 in them ; if public morals suffer when the funda- 
 mental ideas of a given social order are tra- 
 versed by conventions inconsistent with such 
 ideas ; if public ideals suffer when sovereign 
 power, which should plainly devolve upon the 
 highest attributes, is accorded to the lowest ; — if 
 all this be true, it is superfluous to try to show 
 further that the enfranchisement of women 
 would redound to the welfare of the Empire 
 State. It is in this State, and almost in this 
 alone, where may be discerned such steady line 
 of historic sequence in the social advancement 
 of women, as leads directly towards their po- 
 litical emancipation. Let the augury be fulfilled, 
 and the line of march carried to its logical 
 conclusion ! 
 
192 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 The remarkable phenomenon recently exhibi- 
 ted of the active opposition of women to such 
 enfranchisement is, though interesting as a psy- 
 chological and social phenomenon, of very little 
 other significance. The extreme ignorance of 
 the subject shown in the written protests ; the 
 naive unconsciousness of the real reasons in- 
 fluencing much of the masculine protest, are 
 natural to the inexperience of people who 
 begin to talk volubly about what they them- 
 selves profess to have hardly ever thought. 
 The gist of the opposition lies chiefly in the 
 dread of innovation, which is a natural instinct 
 with women, — an instinct intensified, moreover, 
 by innumerable forces of tradition, training, 
 and environment. Opposition to what is new, 
 necessarily subsides so soon as the new has 
 become the customary. The idea that the 
 women who have shown so much public 
 activity in voting against the suffrage petition, 
 would refuse to go to the polls to defeat any 
 other measure they might be opposed to, is 
 evidently absurd. " The immense difficulty in 
 democracies," it has been said, " lies in calling 
 out the vote." Let the women try their hand ! 
 
 "At present writing, the signatures to the suffrage 
 petition number 300,000 ; the one anti-suffrage petition 
 is signed by only 6000 persons." 
 
Woman Suffrage, 193 
 
 The same publicists who have recently dep- 
 recated the popular desire to share in the 
 sovereignty, and attributed it to a mania for 
 "too much government," have, on other occa- 
 sions, laid great stress on the difficulty of 
 managing the masses of a huge electorate, whose 
 members are so apt to be apathetic at elections. 
 The apathy may be taken as a measure, among 
 other things, of the influence of women, neces- 
 sarily apathetic in regard to affairs from which 
 they are excluded, and in a position to infect 
 their " mates " with their own indifference. Our 
 naturalization laws are based on the postulate, 
 that the presence in the State of a vast mass of 
 aliens, indifferent to public affairs, and concen- 
 trated on their private interests, is a standing 
 menace to the public welfare. Why does not 
 the postulate apply to women, whose influence 
 is so much more extensive, subtle, and direct ? 
 
 Arguments to postpone the enfranchisement 
 of women are advanced by many who admit 
 the theoretical justice and expediency of the 
 measure. It is as difficult to detect any solid 
 grounds for such arguments as to estimate the 
 density of a morning mist. 
 
 " Among many arguments I have heard, the following 
 seems the most general, viz. : that had this rupture 
 happened forty or fifty years hence, instead of now, the 
 
194 ''Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 continent would have been more able to have shaken off 
 the dependence. To which I reply, that our military 
 ability at this time arises from the experience gained in 
 the last war, and which in forty or fifty years' time would 
 be totally extinct." * 
 
 Although the general evolution of women's 
 condition during the last half century, and 
 which puts them to-day in a position to claim 
 political rights, cannot be compared in its effect 
 with that of the French and Indian War ; yet, 
 in a certain sense, such comparison may be 
 made with the share sustained by women in 
 the anti-slavery struggle and the Civil War. 
 Ground was gained then which since has 
 been rather lost than further gained. We 
 are constantly being told of the temporary 
 " wave of the woman movement " which swept 
 over the country coincidently with abolition- 
 ism and teetotalism, and the Graham-bread gos- 
 pel, and a host of other " isms." Because the 
 Bloomer dress did not prevail (the gods were 
 good !), it is readily assumed that the movement 
 for human rights ended with the Fifteenth 
 Amendment. 
 
 We are at present at the slack of the tide, no 
 longer at the flood. Perhaps, however, already 
 the ebb has begun to change ! 
 
 * Comi7ion Sense ^ p. 115. 
 
Woman Suffrage, 195 
 
 Let us at all events steadfastly resist the 
 specious advice tendered from other quarters, to 
 postpone our claim and wait till every one else 
 has been served ; wait, like poor Miss Flite, for 
 the judgment which is likely only to come with 
 the day of judgment. To wait till municipal 
 politics are purified, minority representation 
 secured, democracy grown from its crude begin- 
 nings; till illiteracy has ceased to exist; till 
 venal votes have ceased to be bought q,nd sold ; 
 till Catholics have ceased to struggle for the 
 schools ; till Protestants have ceased to imitate 
 the bigotry of sixteenth century Catholics ; till 
 political rings have been dissolved; till the 
 power of boss rule has been broken ; till the 
 liquor question has been eliminated from poli- 
 tics ; till the Kepublican party has been raised 
 to the level of Alexander Hamilton, and the 
 Democratic party left at no lower eminence 
 than Thomas Jefferson ! 
 
 Is not this to say that political rights may be 
 demanded only when political life shall have 
 ceased to exist ? 
 
 And now, lest the preceding pages may seem 
 (as we hope,) to savor somewhat strongly of the 
 passionate partisan flavor of their famous proto- 
 type, let us calm them down and close them in 
 
196 '^Common Sense'' applied to 
 
 with the calm, pallid, bloodless, and therefore 
 (we again hope,) utterly unobjectionable con- 
 clusions of a famous modern philosopher. 
 
 " Thus it has been shown that the rights of 
 women must stand or fall with those of men, 
 derived as they are from the same authority, 
 involved in the same axiom, demonstrated by 
 the same argument. That the law of equal 
 freedom applies alike to both sexes has been 
 further »proved by the fact that any other hy- 
 pothesis involves us in inextricable difficulties. 
 The idea that the rights of women are not 
 equal to those of men has been abandoned as 
 akin to the Eastern dogma that women have no 
 souls. The position at present held by the 
 weaker sex is of necessity a wrong one, seeing 
 that the same selfishness which vitiates our po- 
 litical institutions must inevitably vitiate our 
 domestic ones also. Proof has been given that 
 the attitudes of mastery on the one side, and 
 submission on the other, are essentially at 
 variance with that refined sentiment which 
 should subsist between husband and wife. The 
 argument that married life would be imprac- 
 ticable under any other arrangement has been 
 met by pointing out how the relationship of 
 equality must become possible as fast as its 
 
Woman Suffrage, 197 
 
 justness is recognized. And lastly, it has been 
 shown that the objections commonly raised 
 against giving political power to women are 
 founded on notions and prejudices that will not 
 bear examination." * 
 
 " See ! we might say, there is a general consciousness, 
 a permanent Common Sense, independent indeed of 
 each one of us, but with which we are, each one of us, 
 in communication." \ 
 
 * Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, 1871, p. 191. "The Rights of 
 Women." 
 
 t Walter Pater, Plato and Platonism, p. 135. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 ADDRESS ON BEHALF OF THE WOMEN OF THE CITY OF 
 NEW YORK 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 COMMITTEE ON SUFFRAGE OF THE STATE CONSTITU- 
 TIONAL CONVENTION, 
 
 May 31, 1894. 
 
 • Gentlemen : It is with a deep sense of the momen- 
 tous importance of our errand that we present ourselves 
 before you on this occasion. Never in the history of the 
 world has a greater question been submitted to a delib- 
 erative body for discussion than that which we now pray 
 you to consider. Other conventions, in this and other 
 lands, have framed constitutions for a State, have laid 
 down laws for a people, have enfranchised social classes, 
 have even called entire nations into being. But we 
 ask you to consider that part of the State about which 
 constitutions have been silent ; to enfranchise a class so 
 immense that it constitutes the full half of all social 
 classes ; to call into political existence a vital half of 
 the nation, which hitherto, though personally, socially, 
 and legally recognized, has been, politically, non-exist- 
 ent. Although we are only entitled to speak, and you 
 
 199 
 
200 Appendix, 
 
 authorized to reply for a single State, it is certain that 
 the enfranchisement of women in the State of New York 
 would necessarily be followed, after no great lapse of 
 time, by similar measures in all the other States of the 
 Union. And further, as manhood suffrage in America 
 has set an example which Europe has felt herself con- 
 strained to follow, so it is certain that the irresistible 
 tendency to equalization of conditions among civilized 
 nations would compel imitation in this particular also. 
 And thus the enfranchisement of women in America 
 would be the signal for the enfranchisement of women 
 throughout the civilized world. 
 
 Momentous as would be this change, and far-reach- 
 ing its consequences, it implies no sudden shock or 
 overturning of establishMjorder, such as has attended 
 potitical changes of far less importance and significance. 
 We are well aware that this Convention is no revolu-- 
 tionary tribunal assembled to sap the foundations, or to 
 overthrow the structure, of existing society. But the 
 wise foresight which has imbedded in our State Consti- 
 tution the provision for its own amendment every quar- 
 ter of a century, admits by implication that in course of 
 time, and in the orderly evolution of complex modern 
 societies, new conditions are liable to arise, sufficiently 
 serious to demand the modification of even our funda- 
 mental organic law. Such new conditions have arisen 
 in the status of women. 
 
 Since 1846, when was framed the Constitution under 
 which this State has since lived, immense changes have 
 been effected in the industrial, legal, and educational 
 status of women. The tremendous influence of un- 
 trammelled liberty of thought, in America, has brought 
 
Appendix, 201 
 
 about, not only an unrivalled degree of liberty for men, 
 but a degree of personal liberty for women hitherto un- 
 paralleled. The trem endous _agtiyity_of_jndustri al ex- 
 pansion, has drawn wo men into the v ortex, of industriaU 
 lifey ^o tha t they have become important and recognized 
 factors in the wealth of the State. 
 
 In 1840, only half a dozen forms^of employment other 
 than household labor were open to women. In 1884 
 they were found employed in three hundred and fifty- 
 four subdivisions of industries catalogued in the census. 
 In 1892, it has been shown that there are few lines of^ 
 remunerative employment not open to women. Th^ 
 United States Census of 1880 showed more than two am 
 a half million women engaged in gainful employmentsj 
 And of these over 360,000 were so engaged in the Stat< 
 of New York. 
 
 We believe that a proper study of the facts of history 
 shows that women have never been — as is sometimes 
 asserted — a dependent class ; that even when confined 
 to household labors, their work has been of a char- 
 acter and importance to as justly demand recognition by 
 the State, as that of work carried on in the wholesale 
 factories. In the great department of agricultural em- 
 ployments, that constitutes an entire fourth of all the 
 industries enumerated on the census, the wives of the 
 farmers bear a full share of the work of the farm, even 
 though their work is not catalogued among the gainful 
 occupations. Even when the men who furnish the raw 
 material for their industry are the men of their own 
 family — their fathers, husbands, or brothers, — the women 
 who prepare the food, who make the clothing, and who 
 keep in order the habitation of the men of the State, 
 
 f 
 
202 Appendix, 
 
 should be justly reckoned among its productive laborers, 
 and not, as is commonly the case, assumed to be idlers, 
 dependent on the bounty of relatives. When, however, 
 the women, from choice or necessity, cross the threshold 
 of their homes, and engage in distinctly non-domestic 
 employments, no further illusion is possible as to their 
 position. They have entered the ranks of industrial 
 producers, have become independent contributors 
 towards the wealth of the community, and are so recog- 
 nized on the census. From this moment their distinct 
 recognition as individuals by the State, as units in its 
 body politic, entitled to an equal place with all other 
 units discharging the same or equivalent functions, be- 
 comes an imperative necessity, a demand to be formu- 
 lated alike by expediency, by justice, and by common 
 sense. In a republican industrial community, those to 
 whom such equal recognition is refused, fall out of the 
 ranks of citizens, or never enter them. Whatever may 
 be the personal privileges of their lot, whatever the legal 
 protection accorded to their earnings, the public status 
 of such a class remains strictly that of aliens. At 
 the present moment this vast and constantly growing 
 army of women industrials constitutes an alien class. 
 The privation for this class of political right to 
 defend its interests is only masked, but not compen- 
 sated by its numerous inter-relations with those who 
 have rights. The menace offered to the harmonious 
 equilibrium of the State, by the presence in it of this 
 alien class, is concealed by the peculiar physical weak- 
 ness of its members, which renders them incapable of 
 physical violence. But a menace may lie in a poison or 
 a narcotic, as well as in a blow. Where — as in a demo- 
 
Appendix, 203 
 
 cratic society is the case — it is necessary for every one 
 to be alert, vigilant, intensely awake, the apathy of aliens, 
 the indifference of aliens, the inability of aliens to unite 
 for the common good, is as dangerous as a dead-weight 
 clogging the wheels of delicate machinery. Women 
 industrials contribute to the wealth of the State, yet 
 often, through their relative helplessness, embarrass the 
 progress of their fellow-producers. Conscious of their 
 individual weakness, and ignorant of their strength in 
 combination, they are constantly liable to weaken the 
 strength of combinations made by those stronger than 
 themselves. Weakness kills force, for force can suffer 
 and die, but weakness desires to live. Innocent Deli- 
 lahs, the working women are often employed by the 
 Philistines to undermine the strength of the Labor Sam- 
 soTL^As perpetual minors, they should be entitled to 
 protection from the State. But the State is no foster- 
 mother ; it only protects those who can protect them- 
 Iselves ; and its last stretch of courtesy is reached when 
 it has put every one in a position to energetically demand 
 and secure their own protection. 
 
 It is not as industrials alone that women to-day occupy 
 impQrta,nt relations to the wealth of the State. _Thev are 
 large holders of property, acquired either through their 
 own exertions, through gift,"ihrough marital right, or by 
 inheritance. It is estimated that throughout the State 
 women hold property in their own name to the amount 
 of at least five hundred millions of dollars. In the little 
 city of Rochester alone they pay taxes on twenty-nine 
 millions ; in the city of Brooklyn on a hundred and 
 three millions, — or twenty-two per cent, of all the tax- 
 able property of the city. 
 
204 Appendix, 
 
 On this immense property women pay taxes, and yet 
 remain unrepresented in the legislatures that apportion 
 the taxation. It is not necessary to remind this Conven- 
 tion that from the beginning of history the question of 
 taxation has constituted a continually recurring griev- 
 ance. The equitable adjustment of taxation is one of 
 the surest indications that a government is just and a 
 people prosperous. The insistent demand of Anglo- 
 Saxon people on both sides of the Atlantic, that no gov- 
 ernment shall tax a people, but that the people alone, 
 through their representatives, shall tax themselves, has 
 been a chief influence in securing for these peoples free- 
 dom, limitless expansion, and power. The only reason 
 that it has been deemed just to tax women without rep- 
 resentation is that, until very recently, women — that is 
 at least those holding the normal position of their sex in 
 marriage — have not really possessed their own property ; 
 they have not been, in the eye of the law, persons. 
 
 Two years after the session of the Constitutional Con- 
 vention in 1846, the Legislature of the State of New 
 York, urged by the representations of Mrs. Stanton and 
 other women working for suffrage, did for women in 
 regard to the law the very thing we now pray this Con- 
 vention to secure the means of doing in regard to 
 political status — it made married women persons. The 
 women, whose personality up to that precise date had 
 been, in the language of the Common Law, " merged in 
 that of their husbands," were then disengaged as distinct 
 individuals. By a series of enactments extending from 
 1848 to 1862, a married woman became entitled to hold 
 her property instead of being held by it : to administer 
 it, to bequeath it by will, contract for it, to sue and be 
 
Appendix, 205 
 
 sued — in her own name, — to assume, in fact, all the re- 
 sponsibilities towards herself, her inheritance, her earn- 
 ings, and finally her children, which belonged to a woman 
 who had no husband to represent her, or to a man 
 entitled, in law and in politics, to represent himself. 
 
 This Convention is thronged with lawyers, among the 
 ablest in the State. We know that of all classes of men 
 in the community, lawyers, from the very nature of their 
 preoccupations and habitual lines of thought, must be 
 the most conservative. Yet we appeal to them, as best 
 fitted to answer, whether any change of statute or con- 
 stitutional law, except those which emancipated slaves, 
 could effect, or could imply, so complete a revolution in 
 ideas, could determine so great a change in status, as 
 that which made of women who had been legally 
 non-existent, persons^ with full legal and individual 
 responsibilities ? 
 
 It will be as logical for this Convention to complete 
 the legislation of 1848 by now equalizing the political 
 rights of women, as it was for the French Revolution of 
 1848 to confer political rights upon the men who had 
 become equal before the law in 1793. 
 
 The industrial work of women, the possession of inher- 
 ited wealth, the legal emancipation, and enforced assump- 
 tion of responsibility,would all have been inadequate with- 
 out correlative improvement in the education of women. 
 So rapid has been this improvement, so generally is now 
 accepted the claim of women to the highest education, 
 that it is often forgotten in how recent times women 
 were refused access to even the lowest. Less than a 
 hundred years ago, in this State and in New England, 
 girls were excluded from even the elementary public 
 
2o6 Appendix, 
 
 schools ; or, when admitted, untaught even in arithme- 
 tic ; or, when this began to be conceded, allowed to 
 learn addition, but forbidden to proceed to the three 
 other rules. Not until 182 1 was a high school open for 
 women, and that was at Troy, New York. 
 
 This State has taken the lead, not only in legislation 
 for women, but in the education of women. In 1865 the 
 first institution claiming to confer collegiate instruction 
 was founded by Matthew Vassar at Poughkeepsie. Up 
 to 1890, nine hundred graduates had left this one insti- 
 tution. In 1872, women were admitted to the great 
 Cornell State University at Ithaca. In 1875, a New 
 York millionaire made his initial gift of $250,000 for the 
 residence of women students at Cornell. In 1889, Bar- 
 nard College received its official sanction and grant of 
 affiliation from the Trustees of Columbia College — one 
 of the oldest universities in the United States, — and in 
 1893 a class of girls thence received their academic 
 diplomas together with the Columbia students. 
 
 In 1849 the first woman physician, Elizabeth Black- 
 well, received her diploma at Geneva. The first hos- 
 pital in the world to be conducted by women physicians, 
 the New York Infirmary, was founded by Elizabeth 
 Blackwell in 1857, and its Medical College secured a 
 legal charter from the State in 1867. The great medical 
 societies of the county and State of New York were 
 almost the first to officially recognize women physicians, 
 and put an end to an arduous struggle for equal rights, 
 which resembles point by point that which is now going 
 on to secure equal political rights. Nor have the activi- 
 ties of educated women been confined to this one sphere 
 of professional or public work. The Normal Schools of 
 
Appendix, 207 
 
 Albany, New York, and Oswego have trained several 
 generations of teachers, to whose hands is now mainly- 
 entrusted the primary and secondary education of the 
 youth of both sexes throughout the State. Through the 
 public press women share in increasing numbers and 
 with increasing influence in moulding public opinion. 
 During the civil war the women of this State were 
 among the foremost in the patriotic work of aiding, 
 encouraging, and practically caring for the soldiers of 
 our armies. A New York woman and veteran philan- 
 thropist, Abby Hopper Gibbs, directed hospitals on the 
 Potomac. The Sanitary Commission originated in a 
 parlor conference called by a New York woman. Dr. 
 Elizabeth Blackwell, and during four years consumed 
 the energies of hundreds of New York women under the 
 lead of one whose name is historic — Louisa Lee Schuyler. 
 
 In 1873 a group of New York ladies, headed by Miss 
 Schuyler, organized the State Charities Aid Association, 
 and inaugurated reform in the administration of the 
 hospitals, almshouses, prisons, and insane asylums 
 throughout the State. In 1876, in partial recognition of 
 the value of this work, Governor Tilden appointed one 
 of the members of the Association — Josephine Shaw 
 Lowell — as a member of the State Board of Charities, 
 the first official appointment ever made to a woman in 
 this State. In 1887 the Mayor of the City of New York 
 appointed two women to serve on the School Board ; 
 and in 1892 a large number of women were sent as 
 official delegates from New York to the Woman's Board 
 of the World's Fair. 
 
 In perfectly natural sequence to all these manifesta- 
 tions of professional and social activity on the part of 
 
2o8 Appendix, 
 
 women, and as a possibly unconscious recognition of the 
 value of this activity for the welfare of the State, the 
 Legislature in 1888 threw open to women the profession 
 of law. This is the profession whose exercise stands so 
 closely related to political prerogative that, in both 
 Italy and Belgium, women, though admitted to medi- 
 cine, have been recently refused admission to the bar, 
 on the ground that they must be disqualified for this 
 profession so long as they remained deprived of political 
 rights. 
 
 In the State of New York the necessity for the fran- 
 chise as an indispensable preliminary to the exercise of 
 public functions presumed to be suitable for women, 
 has been judicially affirmed in another connection. The 
 Supreme Court, late in the year 1893, decided that the 
 law passed in. 1880 permitting women to vote for School 
 Commissioner was unconstitutional, and that women 
 could not exercise an influence nor have a voice in the 
 public schooling of their own children, until they should 
 have been empowered to do so by means of a constitu- 
 tional amendment. 
 
 This decision has become the incident to precipitate 
 the whole discussion of woman suffrage within the range 
 of immediate practical issues. We believe that future 
 ages will class it with that famous levy of illegal ship- 
 money, whose resistance by John Hampden laid the 
 modern foundation for the liberties of England. 
 
 It was impossible, in face of the immense evolution of 
 the status of women, personal, industrial, legal, educa- 
 tional, and social, not to suggest their practical partici- 
 pation in one affair which so immediately concerns 
 women, namely, the schooling of children. In New 
 
Appendix, 209 
 
 York City alone are over three thousand female teachers. 
 It seemed impossible to hold longer to the doctrine that 
 where so many women had been deemed capable of the 
 expert work involved in teaching, none should be quali- 
 fied, none should have the right to a voice in the selec- 
 tion of the officers who were to superintend the teaching. 
 Yet this contradiction, deemed impossible by the 
 universal common-sense of the community, has been 
 pronounced entrenched in all the authority of the law 
 by the Supreme Court. And it is very well that it 
 should be so. The contradiction which pronounces unfit 
 to vote, the women who have been solemnly ordained fit 
 to teach, is hardly more flagrant than that now embodied 
 in the laws of . twelve States of the Union, which 
 declares that women may elect officers to the school 
 board, but may not exercise any other right of suffrage. 
 
 It is in the line of march which the thought of this 
 State has pursued for the last fifty years to declare that 
 all exercise of public function, — all expression of pub- 
 lic choice — is an act of sovereignty, and can only be 
 performed by those who have been empowered for such 
 acts. 
 
 The issue is thus most distinctly, most authoritatively 
 stated. At the very moment that the women of this 
 State have reached a degree of development, have de- 
 monstrated a social capacity, absolutely unknown until 
 the present half century ; at the very moment when, co- 
 incidently, the enlargement of the franchise has brought 
 into the electorate classes also hitherto unknown; that 
 same moment is chosen in which to reduce women to a 
 degree of political inferiority which is also absolutely 
 unprecedented. 
 
2IO Appendix, 
 
 No political experiment is more recent, has had so far 
 a shorter span of duration, than that of universal man- 
 hood suffrage. Only little by little have been abolished 
 the restrictions of church membership, of education, and 
 of modest property qualification, which formerly pre- 
 vailed throughout the United States. The farthest limit 
 of possible extension of masculine franchise was reached 
 when, at the close of the Civil War, the right of suffrage 
 was bestowed on the newly emancipated slaves. 
 
 Until, practically, to-day the inequalities of political 
 rights have been along lines of social class distinction. 
 The well-born, the powerful, the educated, the rich, 
 have ruled. The poor, the ignorant, the helpless have 
 submitted. Macaulay declares that the upper and middle 
 orders are the natural representatives of the human race. 
 Whether advisably or not, it is they who have been the 
 representatives. Thus it has happened that women, 
 though unenfranchised, and submitted to the personal 
 sovereignty of the men of their own families and own 
 class, have enjoyed superiority to and even actual supre- 
 macy over thousands of men in lower classes. But 
 to-day, for the first time, classes have been indistinguish- 
 ably fused ; all previous lines of cleavage have been 
 consolidated into one great line of demarcation, which 
 makes a political class out of a sex. For the first time, 
 all political right, privilege, and power reposes undis- 
 guisedly on the one brutal fact of sex, unsupported, un- 
 tempered, unalloyed by any attribute of education, any 
 justification of intelligence, any glamour of wealth, any 
 prestige of birth, any insignia of actual power. For the 
 first time, all women, no matter how well born, how well 
 educated, how intelligent, how rich, how serviceable to 
 
Appe7idix, 2 1 1 
 
 the State, have been rendered the political inferiors of 
 men, no matter how base-born, how poverty-stricken, 
 how ignorant, how vicious, how brutal. The pauper in 
 the almshouse may vote, the lady who devotes herself to 
 getting that almshouse made habitable may not. The 
 tramp who begs cold victuals in the kitchen may vote ; 
 the heiress who feeds him, and endows a university may 
 not. Communities are agitated and Legislatures con- 
 vulsed to devise means to secure the right of suffrage to 
 the illiterate voter. And the writers, journalists, physi- 
 cians, teachers, the wives and daughters and the com- 
 panions of the best educated men in the State, are left 
 in silence ; blotted out, swamped, obliterated behind this 
 cloud of often besotted ignorance. To-day, the immi- 
 grants pouring in through the open gates of our seaport 
 towns — the Indian when settled in severalty, — the negro 
 hardly emancipated from the degradation of two hun- 
 dred years of slavery, — may all share in the Sovereignty 
 of the State. The white woman — the American woman, 
 — the woman in whose veins runs the blood of those heroic 
 colonists who founded our country, of those women 
 who helped to sustain the courage of their husbands in 
 the Revolutionary War ; the woman who may have 
 given the flower of her youth and health in the service 
 of our Civil War — this woman is excluded. To-day 
 women constitute the only class of sane people excluded 
 from the franchise, the only class deprived of political 
 representation, except the tribal Indians and the Chinese. 
 Sirs : We dare to assert that this is a monstrous 
 anomaly; and further, though commonly supposed to 
 continue an immemorable tradition, is really an im- 
 mense innovation on all systems of hitherto existing 
 
2 1 2 Appendix, 
 
 order. It is an anomaly which of itself suffices to ex- 
 plain much of the dangerous vulgarization of political 
 ideal which has lately been noticed among us, — much of 
 the fashionable contempt which is beginning to be ex- 
 pressed for Popular Sovereignty. It is possible for a 
 Sovereign to have defects, vices, and yet retain respect. 
 But the suspicion of a base birth, or an illegitimate ori- 
 gin, suffices to cover him with ignominy. Until now, 
 the exclusion of women from the Sovereignty has been 
 justified by the fear that their immense inferiority would 
 infuse a contemptible weakness into the body politic. 
 But to-day, the one form of strength of which women 
 are deprived, is the very form which has ceased to be es- 
 sential for the purpose. Necessary for pugilistic con- 
 tests, which are forbidden by law, it is irrelevant to the 
 qualifications of those who either administer or vote for 
 a government founded on opinion. Conversely, the 
 form of strength which is so greatly needed in the 
 counsels of the Republic, " the reason firm, the temper- 
 ate will, endurance, foresight, patience, skill," are ad- 
 judged by the highest authority to be the natural dower 
 of thousands of women. Where, then, does the legiti- 
 macy of the Sovereignty lie, — with the thousands who 
 have the power without the necessary qualification, or 
 with those other thousands who have the qualifications 
 but are forcibly excluded from the power ? 
 
 So lax in these facile days has become the conception 
 of power, so loose and confused the Idea of Sovereignty, 
 that we are often advised not to press our claim, because 
 it really makes no difference who rules. Because, it is 
 said, in a democracy, sovereignty is so minutely subdi- 
 vided that the infinitesimal crumbs which fall to each 
 
Appendix, 213 
 
 man's portion are not worth scrambling for. But we re- 
 fuse to think of the Republic as a barnyard filled with 
 insignificant fowl! If the right to rule has been removed 
 from certain men on account of their inadequacy, it has 
 been transferred to Man, and to such part of the human 
 race as can by their strength of soul make good its claim 
 to such lofty right. Of such humanity we are a part. 
 And while among those to whom at present is exclu- 
 sively entrusted the power are thousands, admitted on all 
 sides to be unworthy of it, there are among us thousands 
 of women intrinsically fitted for those functions of citi- 
 zenship which can only by an eclipse of political faith 
 be despised. 
 
 Capacity to bear arms, in fulfilment of military duty, 
 is not, in the State of New York, reckoned among the 
 necessary qualifications of voters. Nor indeed has such 
 capacity ever sufficed to confer a share in the sover- 
 eignty. The feudal knights of the middle ages exer- 
 cised some sort of suffrage, — but the men-at-arms who fol- 
 lowed them to battle did not. The Duke of Cambridge, 
 Commander-in-chief of the British Army, has — like his 
 predecessors for six hundred years, been able to vote. 
 But, until the other day, the men who make up the army 
 and do the fighting had no vote, and many of them 
 are still unenfranchised. Even in France and Germany, 
 where for a few years universal manhood suffrage has 
 existed, and universal military duty has been revived, 
 the right of suffrage and the duty of bearing arms are 
 not coterminous. There, as here, men over forty-five, 
 the only sons of widows, teachers, clergymen, physicians, 
 men affected with slight bodily infirmities, are exempt 
 from military duty in the field, but are not therefore 
 
214 Appendix, 
 
 deprived of the right of suffrage at home. In our State, 
 even the universal training for arms is dispensed with ; 
 no conscription exists ; and the only occasion on which 
 men can be actually compelled to fight, is in the case 
 of a war of such magnitude as necessitates a draft in 
 excess of the contingents furnished by volunteers. In the 
 entire course of our history, since the landing of the 
 Pilgrims or the settlement of New York, such a war has 
 arisen once ! 
 
 We do not live in the midst of an armed camp like 
 France and Germany ; we, like our English kindred, 
 reserve our war forces for the day when they shall be 
 really needed. During the interval, we are an industrial 
 community, with a government of the people, for the 
 people, and by the people, a government professedly and 
 actually founded on Public Opinion. The will of the 
 majority rules, for the time being, not because, as has been 
 crudely asserted, it possesses the power, by brute force, 
 to compel the minority to obey its behests ; but be- 
 cause, after ages of strife, it has been found more con- 
 venient, more equitable, more conducive to the welfare 
 of the State, that the minority should submit, until, 
 through argument and persuasion, they shall have been 
 able to win over the majority. 
 
 Now that this stage in the evolution of modern 
 societies has been reached, it has become possible for 
 women to demand their share also in the expression of 
 the Public Opinion which is to rule. They could not 
 claim this while it was necessary to defend opinions by 
 arms ; but this is no longer either necessary or expected. 
 They could not even claim a place among the authorized 
 factors of Public Opinion, so long as, in the universal 
 
Appendix, 215 
 
 judgment of the world, women had no opinions, and 
 could have none worth having. But this is no longer 
 believed. The moment therefore has at last arrived 
 when, in an Industrial Society, whose conflicts have be- 
 come those of ideas, and whose arts the arts of peace, 
 women may, with equal justice and decorum, come for- 
 ward to claim a place among the other powers of the 
 earth. Should war actually arise, the fact that the 
 political action of women had been added to that of the 
 non-combatant forces of society, could surely do nothing 
 to weaken the strength of the forces which were actually 
 enlisted to fight. 
 
 We do not admit that exemption from military duty 
 is a concession of courtesy, for which women should be 
 so grateful as to refrain from asking for anything else. 
 The military functions performed by men, and so often 
 perverted to most atrocious uses, have never been more 
 than the equivalent for the function of child-bearing im- 
 posed by nature upon women. It is not a fanciful nor 
 sentimental, it is an exact and just equivalence. The ' 
 man who exposes his life in battle, can do no more than 
 his mother did in the hour she bore him. And the func- 
 tions of maternity persist, and will persist to the end of 
 time, — while the calls to arms are becoming so faint and 
 rare that, three times since the Revolutionary War, an 
 entire generation of men has grown up without having 
 heard them. 
 
 If children are desired in households to make the 
 happiness of their parents, none the less are they needed 
 in the State of which they are to become the citizens. 
 Those therefore who bear and rear them do most cer- 
 tainly perform a social function, and one of transcendental 
 
2 1 6 Appendix, 
 
 importance. All social events, all political action, con- 
 verge ultimately upon these households and affect these 
 children. How then can it be fitting, that such political 
 action, framed as we know it to be by the dictates of 
 Public Opinion, should remain officially uninfluenced by 
 the mothers of the State ? How can it be just that those 
 mothers themselves remain within the body politic as 
 aliens, their will unrepresented, their personalities non- 
 existent ? To affirm that this is of no consequence, to pre- 
 tend that these women are virtually represented because 
 laws protect their property, and because they may be 
 defended against personal violence, is simply to recur to 
 the state of opinion which prevailed when the person- 
 ality of the married women was, in truth, merged, abso- 
 lutely submerged, before the law. Before 1848, the 
 affirmation was logical and consistent. To-day it is in- 
 consistent, — a futile anachronism. 
 
 To-day is certainly favorable to the treatment of 
 women with kindness, consideration, and even respect. 
 The moment is, however, less propitious to the discus- 
 sion of their rights, for all interest in the question of 
 rights seems, for the moment, to have flagged. For the 
 first time in a hundred and fifty years there is a lull in 
 the mighty series of conflicts which have been waging 
 so successfully to secure human rights. The lull in the 
 interest is chiefly due to the success of the struggle. So 
 many rights have been conquered that it seems to many 
 as if all had been gained. Worse, — because some roseate 
 hopes have been disappointed, — we are sometimes told 
 that nothing has been gained. We are sometimes told 
 that democracy is a failure ; that universal suffrage is a 
 curse ; that the very conception of Rights, conception 
 
Appendix, 2 1 7 
 
 the most powerful, the most majestic, the most awful 
 which has ever dominated the world, is a mere abstrac- 
 tion, as useless as bodiless ; a schoolboy sophism, a 
 schoolgirl metaphor concocted to conceal a vacuum 
 of thought. A little further, and we shall be told that 
 our Revolutionary War was sordid ; that the French 
 Revolution was the clamor of a drunken mob ; that the 
 Revolution of 1848 was a mere paradox of metaphysi- 
 cians ; and the emancipation of American slaves a 
 gigantic mistake due to the blind recklessness of a 
 victorious party ! 
 
 When the thoughts of men have for the moment so 
 generally declined to this dull level, it is well that they 
 should have been suddenly uplifted again by the high 
 errand of this Convention. The moment has again 
 recurred when the people must preoccupy themselves 
 with the fundamental doctrines on which repose the 
 entire framework of their social structure. It is then 
 seen, and will be seen again every quarter of a century, 
 that there is nothing more fundamental in a given social 
 order than its conception of Rights. What is the right 
 thing to be done ? whose rights may have been de- 
 frauded ; how rights may in the future be better main- 
 tained ; — these are the very questions which are to absorb 
 the energies and preoccupy the gravest thought of this 
 deliberative body throughout the summer. 
 
 Our Constitutional Conventions only meet once in 
 twenty years ; but the problem of Rights is of no such 
 intermittent recurrence. It recurs all the time, — daily ; 
 it is involved in every transaction effected between hu- 
 man beings, at home or abroad, in business or in poli- 
 tics, in national issues, in municipal difficulties, in 
 
2 1 8 Appendix. 
 
 family dissensions. Rules for the solution of this 
 problem are expounded every week in the churches, 
 and laid down every day in the law courts. No per- 
 sonal or social ideal is possible without a conception of 
 rights, and every lofty character manifests its superiority 
 to the herd, by the clearness with which it recognizes the 
 existence of rights, and by the unflinching tenacity with 
 which it insists upon their maintenance. 
 
 Hence the danger, the vast and subtle danger, of so 
 educating one half the population of a free State, that 
 it has no vivid conception of Rights. Why should we 
 wonder at the low tone which habitually prevails at 
 present in relation to public affairs, when the women 
 who stand as guardians at the fountain sources and 
 household shrines of thought are trained to believe that 
 there are no Rights, but only Privileges, Expediences, 
 Immunities ? Can those who cower before the public 
 ridicule which greets the enunciation of the Rights of 
 Women ; who are habituated to stifle generous impulses 
 for their own larger freedom at the authoritative dicta- 
 tion of the men they see in power, — can such women be 
 relied upon to nerve the nation's heart for generous 
 deeds ? 
 
 When the question of women's right to a direct share 
 in the popular sovereignty had not been raised ; when 
 political rights were restricted to certain social classes, 
 proudly tenacious of their privileges, it was then pos- 
 sible for women also to share the pride, and, uncon- 
 scious of their individual subordination, to lend the 
 strength of their influence to inspiring their men. It 
 was possible for Volumnia to calm the blind fury of 
 Coriolanus ; it was possible for Cornelia to train the 
 
Appendix, 2 1 9 
 
 patriotic fervor of the Gracchi. But this time has 
 past. For good or for ill, the question of the Rights of 
 Women has been raised, and will not down. It has 
 taken its place among the claims of all disenfranchised 
 classes, and will not be excluded. If any question of 
 rights be fundamental, this also is fundamental. If con- 
 fusion of ideas and apathy be ever-dangerous, here also 
 it is disastrous. 
 
 It is easy to assert, it is impossible to prove that we 
 sophistically pervert the principles of democratic govern- 
 ment when we claim that these apply to our case also. 
 It is easy to say in two breaths — for it has been reiter- 
 ated in one — that women's right to the suffrage is not 
 implied in democracy, and that democracy, after fifty 
 years of trial has proved such a failure, that its princi- 
 ples must now, in any case, be abjured. How can 
 democracy prove other than a failure when the citizens 
 of a free State cease to believe in it ! How can the illi- 
 terate vote become other than a danger when the edu- 
 cated voter abstains from exercising over it his just and 
 natural ascendancy ? How can political affairs move 
 among large issues, if the only ideas which are abroad, 
 which are respected, are fatally small? What other 
 alternative is there to Public Right, but Private Greed ? 
 If it be only a question of supposed expediences, — what 
 can seem more expedient to every man than to fill his 
 own pocket, accumulate his own illicit fortune, — and 
 retreat to whence he had never emerged, — the under- 
 ground cellar of his private life ? 
 
 Thus it is that, although we believe our demand to be 
 fully in accord with public utility, and to meet some of 
 the most serious wants of the time, we should be false to 
 
2 20 Appendix, 
 
 our trust did we rest this claim primarily upon expe- 
 diency. We hope to show that the concession of suffrage 
 to woman will be practically useful in innumerable direc- 
 tions ; but we should unworthily belittle our case did we 
 seek to introduce it on the ground that it could be made 
 subservient to anything else. We demand the suffrage 
 as a Right — not in a metaphysical sense, — but because 
 we do fulfil all the essential conditions which the State 
 has proclaimed necessary to qualify for the electorate. 
 We demand it, because to-day, and not a thousand years 
 ago, — because in the State of New York, and not in 
 France or Germany or Austria, — women are recognized 
 by law and custom to be persons, and to possess intel- 
 ligence entirely equal to the average intelligence of those 
 who already exercise the suffrage. We demand it, on no 
 new principle, but on the double principle which runs 
 through all our institutions, namely : that all the intel- 
 ligence in the State must be enlisted for its welfare, and 
 that all the weakness in the community must be repre- 
 sented for its own defence. There are women among 
 us of intelligence, of wealth, of leisure, of high charac- 
 ter, who only demand the opportunity to serve the 
 State nobly, as they have already shown their ability to 
 promote the welfare of the community in public affairs. 
 And there are other women among us — hard-working, 
 patient, industrious, — who require the suffrage, and the 
 opportunities of the suffrage, and the immense practical 
 education of the suffrage, to enable them to better ad- 
 vance the interests of their own affairs. And there are 
 poor and weak women among us, defenceless except so 
 far as they may be touched by an occasional enthusiasm 
 of philanthropy, who require the status of a definite 
 
Appendix, 221 
 
 representation — a medium through which they can make 
 their wants known — which shall do for them, as the 
 suffrage alone has been able to do for other masses of 
 the poor and weak : give them means to defend them- 
 selves, enable them to take the initial step in rising out 
 of otherwise easily-forgotten misery.' In a community 
 where the definition of a social unit is the person who 
 casts one vote, every one who casts no vote is reckoned 
 as less than a unit, — and hence suffers in the social esti- 
 mate and in her own. Her power for work is lessened, 
 and its recompense correlatively diminished. 
 
 It is to these same poor and working women that ob- 
 jection is most often made when we demand equal suf- 
 frage, and when we embrace in our demand all classes 
 of women, — because the suffrage is now exercised by all 
 classes of men. It is said that these women, adding an 
 inherent weakness of sex to the weaknesses of ignorance 
 and poverty, will be, even more than the men of their 
 families, subject to corrupt influence, liable to be in- 
 duced to sell their votes to the party, or even to the pri- 
 vate agents, who will offer the highest price for them. 
 It is even whispered that there is, in large cities, a class 
 of women, whose names dare not be mentioned out loud, 
 who would be solidly voted by the police, — and that 
 therefore all the honest and virtuous women of the State 
 must remain disfranchised ! Was ever covert insult 
 so distinctly offered to American womanhood ! 
 
 It has been proposed, on other occasions, to accord 
 special legal recognition to these unfortunate women : to 
 subject them to a slavery even more stringent than that 
 in which they are now bound : to record their names 
 upon the municipal archives, not in order that their 
 
222 Appendix, 
 
 defencelessness might be represented, but so that the 
 men who are their accomplices in degradation might be 
 protected. Other women, from the shelter of happy 
 and honored homes, have successfully resisted this ini- 
 quitous proposal, and no such archaic infamy as yet 
 stains the legislature of this State. But do not these 
 facts, does not the prompt reference to such conditions, 
 the moment a demand arises for political freedom, and 
 political representation for women, itself indicate the 
 ultimate outcome, the last and darkest effect, of the 
 general social inequality of women ? 
 
 We fully believe that the great reason why the lot of 
 masses of toiling women is so miserable, is because on 
 the one hand women have never been accustomed to 
 band together for self-development and self-protection ; 
 and on the other hand, because women enjoying personal 
 protection have not been accustomed to think of the 
 affairs of masses of women and children as their especial 
 concern. The assumption still holds in theory, though 
 daily contradicted by facts, — that all the concerns of 
 women are adequately provided for by the solicitude of 
 their own families. Yet it is perfectly well known, that 
 society was obliged to enact laws to protect the women 
 and children working in factories ; not only against the 
 greed of the employers of the so-called enlightened 
 classes, but against the brutal insistence of the husbands 
 and fathers who tried to work them to death. 
 
 In theory, women are always protected at home. In 
 fact, laws are constantly being required for their special 
 protection. Why is it desirable to leave such legal or 
 social protection to be secured, if at all, by tedious and 
 roundabout methods, — through petitions, and through 
 
Appendix, 223 
 
 the efforts of other people, whose warmest enthusiasm 
 can hardly ever equal the energy of those who speak for 
 themselves ? Why should not the women have the right 
 to speak for themselves, and by their own mouths to 
 make their own wants known ? 
 
 Herein lies the true solution of the problem of the 
 illiterate vote. The influence of the women who are 
 now busily engaged in civilizing the hordes of uncivilized 
 people in our midst, will be utilized, not only to kindle 
 the lagging interest of the men of their own class, but 
 to so guide ignorant women voters, that they could be 
 made to counterbalance, when necessary, the votes of 
 ignorant and interested men. Here is a broad channel 
 for the missionary enthusiasm of women, now too often 
 allowed to run to waste in the sands of foreign heathen- 
 dom. Success in such direction is rendered possible by 
 the secrecy of the ballot, which the persistent efforts of 
 public-spirited men have secured. Every effort to im- 
 prove the purity of the ballot facilitates the participa- 
 tion of women in the suffrage. It is an omen of splendid 
 augury that this very Committee before which our amend- 
 ment is brought, is also charged with the grave duty of 
 devising measures for the better protection of the ballot. 
 We could ask no better introduction to the voters of 
 this State for the cause of Equal Suffrage, than such 
 intimate, such inseparable association with the cause of 
 Purity of the Suffrage. 
 
 In bringing this cause of Equal Suffrage before this 
 Convention, we are supported by the approval of thou- 
 sands of men and women, who join us, because they be- 
 lieve either that the demand is just, or that it is timely, 
 or that it is favorable to their own interests, or that it is 
 
2 24 Appendix, 
 
 ultimately conducive to the best interests of the State. 
 Confessedly, however, the demand does not receive 
 unanimous support. Did it do so, it would be irresistible, 
 while we are aware that the success of our petition is 
 trembling in the balance. But a unanimous demand 
 for anything would also be unprecedented to the point 
 of the miraculous. 
 
 Not all who fail to support us are to be counted among 
 our really obstinate opponents. There are many who 
 applaud the participation of women in public affairs, 
 but who maintain that they have done such good work 
 without the ballot, it is useless to confer this upon them. 
 This view is too inconsistent to deserve commentary. 
 More solid is the objection of those who distinctly dis- 
 like the participation of women in public affairs. There 
 are thousands who still maintain the immemorable tradi- 
 tion, that the world is destined to remain forever divided 
 into two great classes — the men to go out in the world, 
 the women to stay at home within the house. These 
 confound the historic origin of conditions with the per- 
 manent law of conditions. They are so pleased with 
 women in their differentiation from men, that they dread 
 any change which may seem to approximate them to 
 men. To apply to the case of women, the same ideas of 
 Rights, the same measure of liberties, the same rules for 
 activities, which they accept for men, seems to such 
 minds almost blasphemous, and revolting alike to the 
 most elementary instinct, and to the most obvious com- 
 mon sense. 
 
 We certainly do claim, however, that women, however 
 physically different, are, mentally and morally, not essen- 
 tially different from men. That the differences in 
 
Appendix, 225 
 
 faculty which exist are in degree and quantity, and not 
 in kind. That it is the overwhelming preoccupation 
 with physical, to the exclusion of mental conditions, 
 which has led to such a solid system of beliefs about 
 women, as the last half century, through multiple prac- 
 tical experience, has shown, very simply, to be untrue. 
 The distance to-day between the estimate of women in 
 the minds of those who oppose and those who favor 
 their enfranchisement is infinitesimal, as compared with 
 the distance which has been traversed on the subject by 
 the minds of all men since 1846. 
 
 There are some undesirable peculiarities about women, 
 due to special conditions of circumstance, training, and 
 environment, which would tend to disappear where 
 changes in such environments were conducive to the 
 greater development of strength. This, indeed, is the 
 fundamental reason for desiring such changes ; since no 
 living creature or class of creatures can have a more 
 fundamental desire than the just desire to grow, to be- 
 come more effective in whatever is given them to do. 
 There are other peculiarities about women which are, 
 on the contrary, most desirable to conserve, and which 
 nature cannot fail to conserve, and even intensify, with 
 every increase in development and opportunity. All 
 such qualities originate in and centre round the func- 
 tion of maternity — the special relations of women to 
 their children, the special protection due to the mother 
 from the father of their children, and which justifies a 
 correlative degree of individual subordination. The laws 
 of New York, as they stand to-day, establish with great 
 clearness these complex relations of women. Women 
 are accorded their individual rights and responsibilities 
 
226 Appendix, 
 
 as persons ; and the right and responsibility to guard 
 the persons and the inheritance of their children ; they 
 are given a right to maintenance to the extent to which 
 their own industrial capacity is lessened by the care of 
 their children ; and in view of this, they are constrained 
 to follow the domicile of their husbands so long as he 
 acquits himself of his own responsibility. 
 
 We do believe that this special relation of women to 
 children, in which the heart of the world has always felt 
 there was something sacred, serves to impress upon 
 women certain tendencies, to endow them with certain 
 virtues which not only contribute to the charm which 
 their anxious friends fear might be destroyed, but which 
 will render them of special value in public affairs. Their 
 conservatism, their economy, their horror of waste, their 
 interest in personal character, the very simplicity of 
 their judgment, their preoccupation with direct and 
 living issues, are all qualities generated by the special 
 circumstances which have surrounded women, and must 
 continue to surround them. These can not be broken 
 down by the fact of sharing the suffrage, for they lie far 
 deeper than any political condition ; they exist in the 
 very nature of things. 
 
 A single phrase, often, but none too often repeated, 
 sums up this aspect of the case. To the extent to which 
 women resemble men, they require the same liberties ; 
 to the extent to which they differ, they require their own 
 representation, and the State requires their special in- 
 fluence. Under the new, the extremely new regime of 
 universal manhood suffrage, the State has become like a 
 mining camp on the frontier. We claim that it should be 
 re-constituted as a household, where, if man is at the 
 
Appendix, 227 
 
 head, for the protection and the defence, woman shall 
 have her equal place as the mother, the daughter, the 
 caretaker, the administrator, the conserver. We do not 
 propose, after all, to change the existing sphere of 
 women. Political status reflects and sanctions social 
 change — it cannot create it. Political activities may be- 
 come an occupation — but not political rights. How 
 many women would engage in politics were they so em- 
 powered — how many would accept office, were they 
 elected, it is impossible to foresee, and it is absolutely 
 useless to discuss. We are not here to seek privileges for 
 a few — but equal opportunity for all. We are not here 
 to demand the maximum responsibilities in the gift of 
 the State, but only the minimum rights. If women en- 
 gage to-day in a hundred pursuits outside their house- 
 holds, it is not the suffrage which is the cause of this, 
 for they do not possess the suffrage. The same causes, 
 industrial and intellectual, which have led to a social 
 expansion which is almost a revolution, will continue to 
 operate ; but the suffrage, while it will not weaken, can 
 hardly intensify their influence. Women will not be sent 
 into a new place by possession of the ballot. Like men, 
 they will vote in the places where they already stand — in 
 the mart, the factory, the place of business ; but also in 
 the schoolroom, the library, the hospital, and — far more 
 oftei! than all — in the household. If, in capacity, taste, 
 and opportunity, women have in this half century, ap- 
 proximated towards the capacities of men, it is not in 
 order to be men that they now desire to vote. It is 
 because they are — and are fully satisfied to be — women. 
 Because they are women, and yielding, and ready to 
 give way to others, the friends of this cause have been 
 
2 28 Appendix, 
 
 beset, not only by its opponents, but by many half- 
 hearted friends. " Your demand is just," these say, " but 
 it should not be made at this time. The times are too 
 critical ; there are too many things must be done first. 
 Municipal politics must be purified ; minority represen- 
 tation must be secured ; democracy must grow from its 
 first crude beginnings ; illiteracy must cease to exist ; 
 venal votes must cease to be bought and sold ; Catholics 
 must cease to struggle for the schools ; Protestants must 
 cease to imitate the bigotry of sixteenth-century Catho- 
 lics ; political rings must be dissolved ; the power of boss 
 rule broken ; the liquor question eliminated from poli- 
 tics ; the Republican party be raised to the level of 
 Alexander Hamilton, and the Democrats left at no lower 
 eminence than that of Thomas Jefferson. When all these 
 things shall come or shall have been accomplished — 
 then, and not till then, may women, who really entertain 
 a just and patriotic concern for the public weal, prefer 
 their claim, and modestly demand the suffrage." 
 
 Is not this to say that political rights may be demanded 
 only when political life shall have ceased to exist ? 
 
 This request to delay — this specious appeal to the dis- 
 interestedness of women — is the same dangerous com- 
 pliment proffered in 1867 by Horace Greeley on behalf 
 of the negro, and a few years ago by Mr. Gladstone to 
 the women of England on behalf of Home Rule, 
 
 Who, entrenched in an accorded privilege, ever re- 
 garded the claims of those outside as other than unim- 
 portant, insignificant, visionary ? We are told now that 
 the common sense and love of justice of all civilized 
 countries applaud all efforts to secure for women their 
 individual public rights ; to remove from these all previ- 
 
Appendix, 229 
 
 ous restriction ; but that legislators still obstinately and 
 justly refuse the concession of political rights. But fifty 
 years ago these legal and other public rights were every- 
 where refused with the same obstinacy, and with exactly 
 the same arguments. 
 
 No social sphere is more remote from political life 
 than that of medicine ; and none, it might be imagined, 
 more appropriate to women. Yet, in all the European 
 countries of two hemispheres, language was racked to 
 find words, and science tortured to find arguments suf- 
 ficiently abusive to condemn the proposal to allow women 
 to minister to children and to the sick of their own sex. 
 We are perfectly well aware that industrial and profes- 
 sional competition are entirely different matters from 
 Popular Sovereignty. But when we find the same instincts 
 aroused, the same opposition excited, the same argu- 
 ments advanced, and the same determination manifested, 
 by trades unions to exclude women from trades ; by 
 learned societies to exclude them from professions ; by 
 universities to exclude them from learning ; and by 
 voters to exclude them from the polls, we cannot avoid 
 asking whether the difference in the cases is not balanced 
 by the identity in the mental attitude of the opponents. 
 
 The time to press the demand for a right is that when 
 some one has been found to voice the demand. Since 
 1848 there have not been lacking women — women like 
 Mrs. Stanton and Lucy Stone — who passed from aboli- 
 tion conventions to the Legislatures of their own States, 
 there to urge the claims of equal suffrage. There have 
 not been lacking women who have worked as persist- 
 ently, — and, in comparison with the opportunities 
 afforded, as greatly, — for the enfranchisement of their 
 
230 Appendix, 
 
 sex, as O'Connell worked for the liberties of Ireland, or 
 Mazzini for those of Italy. 
 
 All the reforms in the legal position of women, and 
 much of their educational advancement, have been due 
 to the impulse given by the women who were working 
 for the suffrage ; and to them also is indirectly due 
 much of the industrial emancipation. 
 
 Still, all women do not demand the suffrage. AVe are 
 sometimes told that the thousands of women who do 
 want the suffrage must wait until those who are now 
 indifferent, or even hostile, can be converted from their 
 position. 
 
 Gentlemen, we declare that theory is preposterous. It 
 is true that the exercise of an independent sovereignty 
 necessitates the demonstration of a very considerable 
 amount of independence. A rebel state that cannot 
 break its own blockade may not call upon a foreign 
 power to move from its neutrality to do so. But the 
 demand for equal suffrage is in nowise analogous to a 
 claim for independent sovereignty. It is rather analo- 
 gous to the claim to the protection of existing laws, 
 which any group of people, or even a single person may 
 make, who believes himself to have been wronged in 
 sentiment, person, or property. Claims for the enforce- 
 ment of existing laws, for the application to new cases 
 of principles embodied in previous laws, for the amend- 
 ment of existing institutions, are never preferred by the 
 whole community, or an entire class, or the majority of 
 a class, or even by a large minority. The bugbear that 
 women in voting would always band together as a class, 
 should be sufficiently dissipated by the fact that even 
 now, when a most distinctly class issue is presented — 
 
Appendix, 231 
 
 since it affects the disabilities of all women, — women are 
 not a unit in their opinion upon it. So great is the men- 
 tal isolation engendered in a class politically non-exis- 
 tent, that many women profess even now never to have 
 thought of the franchise. Others, educated in a lifetime 
 of indifference to public affairs, remain absolutely indif- 
 ferent. Others, accustomed to defer to masculine opin- 
 ion, submit at the first breath of ridicule from masculine 
 friends. Others, believing themselves independent 
 thinkers, yet fall an easy prey to the first sophism spread 
 for innocent and unwary feet. Others, sincerely 
 alarmed at any innovation of existing order, content 
 with their own lives and with things as they are, shrink 
 from the suggestion of change, and dread the unknown. 
 Others, with the instinct for public activities and intel- 
 lectual interests already satisfied, do not imagine how 
 political privilege could improve their own situation, 
 and fail to inquire whether it could improve that of 
 other women. Others are not ashamed to feel and ex- 
 press all the concentrated bitterness of aversion to equal 
 rights, establishing common bonds between themselves 
 and social inferiors, which privileged classes have always 
 expressed when called upon to extend, to share the Sov- 
 ereignty. Men have resisted the demand for the en- 
 franchisement of other men ; it is no miracle, therefore, 
 \that women resist a similar demand for women. 
 
 There have always been found individuals ready to 
 uphold the claims of a social class to which they either 
 belonged or wished to be thought to belong, and this 
 even at the expense of their own permanent interests. 
 Professional men were found in France to uphold 
 Guizot in refusing a vote to the professions. The poor 
 
232 Appendix, 
 
 white laborers of the South sustained the planters in 
 defending slavery, the institution which condemned 
 labor to ignominy. 
 
 We believe that the suffrage is in the ultimate interests 
 of all women, as it has been of all men ; but we do not 
 expect all women, just now, to see this. If they did so 
 even now, after fifty years' discussion, the benumbing 
 mental effect of political non-existence would be less 
 demonstrated than it is. 
 
 The opposition to initiative is neither unprecedented 
 nor inexplicable, nor of any special significance. Such 
 opposition necessarily disappears with the necessity for 
 initiative. We have never doubted the natural conserva- 
 tism of women ; on the contrary, we have insisted upon 
 it ; and the marvel is, that in the teeth of this immense 
 conservative instinct and training, so many thousands of 
 women do now demand the apparent innovation of the 
 ballot. But similarly the Church, which fifty years ago 
 was a unit in denouncing the public work of women — 
 even for the slave, — is now divided in its counsels. If, in 
 this Capitol of the State, the Church frowns on our claim, 
 in the metropolis, in New York, this claim has received 
 the eloquent and outspoken support of the clergy of all 
 denominations, and few have openly opposed us. 
 
 The unequal feeling among women and their spiritual 
 advisers in regard to the franchise, would have this effect 
 — that enfranchisement, though sudden in its enactment, 
 would be gradual in its operation. Enfranchisement is 
 not a conscription, a draft. Voting is not compulsory 
 upon men, nor has any one at present proposed to make 
 it so. Evidently, therefore, it is absurd to imagine that 
 the duty of the vote would be compulsory upon women. 
 
Appendix, ■ 233 
 
 The possession of the suffrage is needed to complete the 
 education for the suffrage. The enfranchisement con- 
 fers an opportunity. Those who are already prepared, 
 would embrace this at once ; those who were not would 
 delay until, by slow degrees, their souls had warmed to 
 the temperature of the time. 
 
 But suppose, it is urged, that the votes of some women, 
 ignorant, weak, and intrinsically indifferent unless in- 
 fluenced by hope of private gain, were bought up by the 
 leaders of a party, who would thus secure an unfair ad- 
 vantage over the other party whose women declined to 
 vote ? The first remedy is simple, and would then be near 
 at hand : call out the vote of such other women. Indif- 
 ference would be converted into enthusiasm, so soon as 
 a practical issue were to be met. And such issues, by 
 our annual elections, are not raised oftener than once a 
 year. The second remedy is also near at hand, or rather 
 the necessity for it is, and is the urgent question of the 
 hour, and before this very Convention, this very Com- 
 mittee. Render corrupt voting impossible : prevent, for 
 the salvation of the Republic, the purchase of the venal 
 ballot ! Though it be secretly whispered, it dare not be 
 openly affirmed and recorded in the legislation of the 
 State, that a demand for franchise was refused because 
 corruption at the polls had become a recognized, a per- 
 manently tolerated institution ! 
 
 Gentlemen, we commend our great question to your most 
 serious, earnest, and thoughtful deliberation. We refuse 
 to believe, as it has been basely reported to us, that the 
 members of this Convention of this committee have come 
 to this deliberation with minds already prejudiced, or 
 irreversibly set in one direction. The mental attitude 
 
2 34 • Appendix, 
 
 which could be successfully challenged at the jury panel 
 drawn to decide the pettiest wrong of the humblest citizen, 
 cannot be that which is assumed, which is openly paraded 
 by those to whom is committed the great rights of so 
 many thousands, who are not the humblest. It is im- 
 possible that you should toss aside our claim, as the mere 
 whim of a few irresponsible cranks, when already the 
 petitions in its support number over 289,000 names. 
 When were such petitions ever before presented in this 
 Assembly Chamber ? This is not a question like that of the 
 Prohibition proposal, obviously unfit for place in a dis- 
 cussion on constitutional reform. Questions concerning 
 the electorate belong here, and belong nowhere else, for 
 they concern the fundamental organic law. Do not give 
 to this question less thought than has been elsewhere 
 bestowed upon proposals to extend the franchise. You 
 are not obliged to thread the imbecile intricacies that 
 clogged the English Reform Bills : in our more fortunate 
 country, the problem may be worked out on broad and 
 simple lines. And in seeking the suffrage for women, we 
 do not propose to lower the franchise ; we are asking for 
 lateral, not vertical extension ; we shall not even oppose 
 such restrictions on the franchise as more extended ex- 
 perience may decide to be suitable ; we only demand 
 that such restriction be placed on some other basis than 
 that of sex. 
 
 This is a question for American men to settle with 
 American women, and on American principles. We 
 pray you, therefore, do not allow the issue to be confused 
 by any foreign sentimentalism, by any mediaeval and 
 inherited prejudice, out of consonance with the well 
 established social polity of this State. 
 
Appendix. 235 
 
 We pray you, further, do not allow your decisions to be 
 complicated by calculations of supposed party interest. 
 This is not and cannot be a party question, for the 
 women whom you may help to enfranchise, will belong 
 to no separate party. Whatever the independence of 
 their individual judgment on individual questions, and 
 which is to be desired, their party affiliations will neces- 
 sarily be those of their fathers, brothers, and husbands. 
 They do not wish to enter political life pledged by ties 
 of inconvenient gratitude to any one party. Rather, free 
 from entangling alliances, they aim to secure the open- 
 hearted and generous support of the best, the most 
 far-sighted, the most patriotic among every party now 
 represented in the State. 
 
 Finally, gentlemen, we are aware that with you does 
 not rest the final responsibility of this great question. It 
 is, indeed, a question too momentous to be decided by a 
 body of two hundred men, however wise, and learned, 
 and patriotic ; you do not assume to so decide it ; your 
 mandate is not entrusted to you for that purpose. 
 
 Qualifications for the franchise, for the dignity of full 
 citizenship, for a right to share in the Sovereignty, can 
 only be decided by the whole people who are already 
 Sovereign. Bring this question, we entreat you, before 
 them ; let it be discussed for the next five months, not 
 only in your councils, but throughout the length and 
 breadth of the State — in its cities, its villages, its hamlets, 
 its farms. Let it be discussed in families ; let the hus- 
 band inquire of the wife, and the son of the mother, and 
 the brother of the sister, how they would prefer the vote 
 to be cast, whether for or against this amendment. Then 
 only can be fully known the deliberate opinions, at this 
 
236 Appendix, 
 
 time, of the voters of the State, and of the women also. 
 To submit this question to the people, does not irrevoca- 
 bly engage the responsibility of the Convention. To 
 refuse to submit it, is to assume the responsibility of de- 
 ciding the whole question without the vote of the people. 
 We are aware that in 1867 this question was buried by 
 an adverse Convention ; but we also remember that the 
 people subsequently buried all the work of the entire 
 Convention at the polls. 
 
 Should in November a popular vote be taken, then, 
 whether the decision prove favorable, as in Wyoming and 
 Colorado, or adverse, as in Rhode Island and South 
 Dakota, we shall bow, as is inevitable, to the popular 
 will ; we shall withdraw, and bide our time for another 
 twenty years, when once more we, or our survivors or 
 our successors, will present themselves before a new 
 Constitutional Convention, to prefer — and then success- 
 fully — our claim. _ 
 
 M. P. J. 
 
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