WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES BARON STOtJRNELLES DE CONSTANT I U , N V , ER , S T Y f CAL FORNIA SAN DIEGO 31822017184607 Central University Library University of California, San Diego Please Note: This item is subject to recall. Date Due Cl 39 (7/93) UCSD Lib. WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES I: WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES BY BARON D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY ESTELLE C. PORTER WITH A FOREWORD BY DAVID STARR JORDAN A. M. ROBERTSON STOCKTON STREET AT UNION SQUARE SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA MCMXII COPYRIGHT, 1912 BY A. M. ROBERTSON ress San 7ra*cUco NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR This essay originally appeared in La Revue, Paris, December 15, 1911, under the title of "La Femme aux Etats-Unis par D' Estournelles de Constant. ' ' The author has graciously authorized its translation by one of the members of the "French Club" at Stanford, before which Club he gave one of his most charming talks. E. C. P. Stanford University, May 10, 1912. PARIS, le Fevrier, 1912. Cher President et ami Bien entendu, j'autorise avec grand plahir la publi- cation de la traduction que Mademoiselle Estelle Porter a bien voulu faire de mon article sur les Femmes aux Etats Unis. Veuillez la remercier pour moi, Votre devoue, Monsieur le President Starr Jordan, Stanford University. FOREWORD BY DAVID STARR JORDAN FOREWORD HE author of this frank and charming essay on American women is one of the most con- spicuous and interesting per- sonalities in the Republic of France. Paul D' Estournelles de Constant, hereditary baron under the old regime, democratic senator from Sarthe under the new, advo- cate and jurist, athlete, automobilist, essay- ist, artist, orator, officer of the Legion of Honor, member of the two Hague Confer- ences, member of the International Court at the Hague, and President of the Society for International Conciliation, he has 11 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES touched life happily at many points. He was born in 1852 near La Fleche, in west- ern France, at the Castle of Creans, a stronghold of the eleventh century, on the banks of the Loire. A large part of the old castle stands, with its own moat, postern gate and donjon towers. The baron still entertains his friends in the old chateau most comfortably, but the demands of his library have led him to build a modern house in the neighboring garden. The ancestry of the D'Estournelles lies among the French nobility, the suffix * ' de Con- stant" being a reminiscence of some forefather's bold deeds on the walls of Constantinople. The baron was educated for the bar at the Lycee St. Louis le Grand, in Paris. Madame D'Estournelles was an American lady, once Miss Sedgwick, of Syracuse. A son, Arnaud D'Estournelles 12 FOREWORD de Constant has already made a worthy record as a geologist. The Baron early entered the diplomatic service, having been at London, Charge d' Affaires and Minister Plenipotentiary. Later he became deputy and since 1904, senator from his native district of Sarthe, in the old province of Maine. From the first, Baron D' Estournelles de Constant has been very active in the cause of Interna- tional Peace, taking an active part in all the conferences and congresses held to this end. In 1911 he made a tour of the United States, giving over a hundred addresses on International Peace. It was in this tour that he had the experiences related in this essay. Baron D' Estournelles de Constant is the author of many articles in magazines and reviews, both in French and English. 13 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES Among his larger works are " La Politique Frar^aise an Tunisie," " Les debuts d'Un Protectorat," " Les Congregations Relig- ieuses des Arabes," " Galathee," a trans- lation from the Greek, and " Pygmalion/' an adaptation, also from the Greek. Of late years, he has subordinated all other aspirations to his endeavors to estab- lish and maintain the peace of Europe. His highest honors are those of member- ship in the Hague Court and in the two Hague Conferences, with the presidency of the Society of "Conciliation Inter- nationale". He has succeeded fairly in convincing France that the wrong involved in the seizure of Alsace and Lorraine can- not be made right by force of arms. The way out lies in the recognition of the com- mon interests and common civilization of Germany and France. When these nations 14 FOREWORD cease to stand opposed to each other as rival military powers, ready to do each other any injustice the force of arms makes possible, then the two nations will emerge from mediaevalism into real civilization. The time must come when these nations will be not powers, but states or jurisdic- tions simply, as are the states of our republic. The French cantons of Alsace-Lorraine will then naturally adhere to France, the German to Germany, but there will, in either case, be no vital interests involved. The prosperity of the German people is in no way involved in the extension of her boundaries. The loss of these provinces in no way affects the prosperity of France. The justice and order which men find on one side of a boundary line will be equally present on the other. Already the common interests of commerce and education have 15 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES made the world very small. They have obliterated boundary lines. All civilized states are part of the " Unseen Empire " of Civilization. There can be no national calamity so great as that involved in modern war. And the sickness, moral and econ- omic, which war involves, is not confined to the belligerent nations. It spreads through- out the world and all right-minded men are losers. Only the armament builders, con- tractors, speculators, and ghouls can gain by any war. For all these reasons and many more which have been eloquently stated, D'Es- tournelles de Constant has consistently op- posed the piling up of useless armament in France, for the imaginary purpose of the 1 ' Control of the Mediterranean ". He has likewise opposed the concurrent piling up of war debt which has already reached, in 16 FOREWORD France, a figure ($6,000,000,000) which calls up the unpleasant vision of national bankruptcy. It suggested to Gambetta that the final end of armed peace in France would be "a beggar crouching by a bar- rack door ". One of the baron's constitu- ents in Sarthe has told this story in a local paper. It seems that years ago he bought for his mantel-piece a clock, very large, very showy, far too large for the mantel-piece, and moreover the clock would not go. Every day his wife congratulates him on his purchase. It is very costly and very useless, " but it gives us the ' grand air ' ". In the same way, the huge and costly, and also needless fleet of the Mediterranean gives ' * the grand air ' ' to France. But it will not go. Its engines are clogged by the load of debt. At the end of his essay the baron refers, 17 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES a bit contemptuously, to the " Inevitable War" between the United States and Japan. This war, and those who try to materialize it, certainly deserve contempt. But it is interesting to remember that the baron was in America just at a critical time, the period when appropriations for Dread- noughts were under consideration by Con- gress. There is no " Inevitable War" in America, at any other time of the year. "Japan" of the dockyard strategists exists only for appropriations' sake. In the early spring, and then only, the pasteboard sol- diers of the Mikado pop out from their boxes. There are 36,000 of these puppets, ready for war in Hawaii; 75,000 at Mag- dalena Bay. The rest are on the island of New Caledonia threatening, from a thous- and miles away, the British Commonwealth of Australia and the Dominion of New 18 FOREWORD Zealand. These creatures of military fancy have to be worked hard with scare head- lines to get an appropriation of a million dollars a day. But it can be done. The great journalists struggle on undaunted. We know to be sure, that the real Japan is busy with her own affairs and that she has her hands full with her obligations in Asia, that her people are about as eager for another war as those of San Francisco for another earthquake. But that does not discourage these intrepid warriors of the dockyard and the daily journal. The Pacific must have at least one bugaboo, when there are so many on the Atlantic. There is nothing available except Japan, and Japan it must be. The baron has recognized all this and is sure that there will be no war. We can go farther. Without the demand for appro- priations there would be no talk of war. 19 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES The women of the world in their un- questioning sacrificial heroism have been through all history the greatest sufferers from war. " Only a woman ", says Olive Schreiner, "knows what a man costs". The baron has made more than once a special appeal to the womanhood of the world, to use their influence against violence and against debt, and in favor of orderly and just methods of meeting foreign na- tions. To make the protests of women effective in public affairs, they must have the ballot. They must have a public voice as well as a voice at home. To this end, the baron, somewhat unexpectedly to him- self, became in California a convert to the principle of Equal Suffrage. The influence of women should be felt in public affairs in a natural way, and in accordance with orderly statutes. This is 20 FOREWORD part of the natural movement of democracy, the attitude which we call the spirit of the west. It will naturally spread from the regions where life is most abundant to re- gions where traditions are more definitely fixed. Our western states represent the youth of democracy, and in its insurgency, the great movements of civilization must begin. " The women have supported me ", the baron tells us, "I support them in my turn'*. And now we must leave him to tell his own story. DAVID STARR JORDAN. Stanford 'University, May 10, 1912. WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES BY BARON D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES N the East of the United States the problem of the co-education of the sexes is beginning to be discussed ; in the West it ap- pears to be clearly settled in the affirmative. At Stanford University, at Berkeley, and later at Salt Lake City and in Colorado, as also at Seattle and Chicago, I saw young people from eighteen to twenty years old, mingled together, forming an audience very attentive to new ideas. At the University of California, of which Dr. Benjamin Ide Wheeler is President, I spent an afternoon and evening and gave one of my principal 25 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES lectures. One could not wish for a more intelligent, homogeneous, or alert audience. At Stanford, where I spent an entire day with President David Starr Jordan, the students invited me to visit their houses and dormitories. They have the choice between two very different kinds of life ; some living in groups of twenty to twenty-five, in houses where they are their own masters, under the direction of one of their number, who has been elected President because of his fitness and merit. They work, play in the open air, exercise in athletic sports, sleep out of doors in all kinds of weather, and, in the evening, they assemble in the draw- ing room, always in a current of air, play, sing and amuse themselves. Others lead exactly the same life in a more spacious building, a dormitory, where they number several hundred, but are just as free. 26 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT Likewise the young women have their houses with their gardens, in groups, and also their independent dormitory. The houses of the young men and those of the young women are adjoining, intermingled, and one never hears of a scandal. The young girls go out every day, even in the evening, into the gardens, the street, the playgrounds; they play, ride horseback, always astride, and gallop with bare heads, just as they walk, without fearing anything, either the air, or the cold, or the heat, or the gaze of the passers-by. After I had given three or four lectures and had taken an automobile ride in the country around the University, the young women invited me to dine in one of their lodges. They had donned evening dress, light, pink or white, and it was a joy to see them so fresh, with their blonde or dark 27 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES hair, their blue or black eyes, smiling and confiding. An extraordinary thing! By the side of the two Japanese students who acted as butlers around this table blooming with youth, a tall young man, very gentle, very simple, an American, was serving also. He was a student serving of his own free will, such as you find everywhere in the Universities of the United States, among the young men who have no means to defray the expenses of their education. All this was so simply and naturally done, that one would have been a brute to venture a jest in this company by asking how such a paradox was possible. During the dinner, from time to time, the young women broke off the conversation, at an imperceptible signal from one of their number, and all together, without rising, sang a chorus, then 28 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT another, now gay, now sentimental or witty, but above all gay. Then they stopped, chatted, laughed, and sang again. This dinner appeared very short to me. Afterwards I went to see the young men who were waiting for me to the number of several hundred, and I spoke to them stand- ing in terrible draughts of air: their good, fresh faces were pleasant to see. All these young people were not thinking of evil. But how much more easily they can be misled, carried away! How necessary it is that they should be put on their guard, as much against their individual errors as against those of the government. Such is the fear that I have often expressed on leaving these young men and young women abandoned, so to speak, to their instincts alone. In the end, however, I asked my- self whether this education is not the surest 29 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES of safeguards and whether the use of liberty is not the best of precautions and discipline. Our French young people would be wrong in believing that the American education is only good for the muscles and nerves, and that, in all other respects, it forms ingenu- ous beings, incapable of getting over diffi- culties outside of their own country. No, it forms men and women who are every- where at home. Here is one proof of that among a thousand. Having returned to Paris, I was leaving my house one day to go to the Senate. It was the day before the National Fete, the 13th of July. I was late, as usual, when, in going downstairs, I col- lided with two tall young men in gray flannels and so manifestly Americans that I stopped at the same time they did. They were two Stanford students who had been present at my lectures and who were coming to pay 30 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT their respects to me in passing through the city. But they did not wish to inconveni- ence me. They were traveling very simply, on their bicycles, and had all but reached the end of their vacation. Divided between the cares that were awaiting me and the sympathy that I would have liked to show these youths, I had to confine myself to scribbling a word on my card to enable them to see the Review; then another word giv- ing them my address in Sarthe, with some brief directions in regard to the itinerary to be followed in order to make the journey there. Three days afterward I saw them arrive at La Fleche, like country neighbors ; and I observed that they did not speak French; by dint of amiability, simplicity and a good education they had found help everywhere; more than that, they had succeeded in pass- 31 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES ing through the crowd, the rows of police- men, and in securing, without tickets, a very good seat at the Review. They had seen the President of the Republic and the Ministers; had been present at the distri- bution of the flags and decorations; had thrilled at the strains of the Marseillaise and the Sambre-et-Meuse ; had cheered the air- ships; everybody had made way for them; they had found the heart of France. As soon as they arrived at my home, they were playing tennis, and went out on the river in a canoe, absolutely as they did in their own country, to the great joy of every- one, so that we did not want to let them go. Moreover, when on the following day a popular banquet called me to a neighboring village, they accompanied me and, still without speaking French, by the radiance of their vitality alone, they made themselves 32 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT so popular that one of them had to give a toast, which I translated, to the two sister Republics, to Washington and to La Fay- ette. It was a charming day for all, and one which enabled one to prove that the products of American civilization bear ex- portation with advantage. I will say as much concerning a young girl from Pittsburg, who, accompanying me and my children in the calls that I had to make in my automobile in several com- munes of my department, and speaking French, it is true, found the means, by her grace and simplicity, of pleasing everybody, peasants and workmen alike, to such a de- gree that the village band formed a circle around her in order to play a serenade, and asked her, as a souvenir, for copies of the photographs that she had taken of the fete. It is true that the young Americans who 33 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES decide to travel in Europe are among the most sociable of men ; they are even begin- ning to reproach themselves for their ignor- ance of foreign languages, which has been natural up to the present time; they can prove, in any case, that their independent education, far from separating them, brings them into closer touch with the rest of the world ; the same thing may be said of many other differences, which, at a superficial glance, would seem to be so many causes of incompatibility, but which are, on the contrary, connecting links or sources of mutual influence and of friendship between the new world and the old, France par- ticularly. People will raise the objection that I am yielding to a prejudice in favor of the Americans in pointing out the enviable progress that has been realized along so 34 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT many lines in the United States; the truth is that I learned the lesson of simplicity there. Above all, in the West, I have seen our old prejudices fall to the ground, and natural conceptions take their revenge on traditions of our old world that would have no sense in the new. Why not con- fess it? In traveling over the world I have remodeled my own education ; I have not been able to dispense with opening my eyes and ears; my travels, my life itself, are only a long road to Damascus. I have literally been taken by assault, invaded by problems which my prudence or my routine relegated to the second plane of my preoccupations. I struggled in vain. What could I do, for example, against the sudden and simultan- eous attack of all the women of California ? I suddenly had to take sides for or against them in one day's time. Who would have 35 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES told me before leaving France, that I, ""a diplomat, would wage a campaign, nay, more, that I would inaugurate the electoral campaign of the women of San Francisco for the franchise ! However, that is what took place. I did not surrender without resistance ; I spoke very frankly ; I was con- tradicted and questioned in several crowded meetings. I concealed nothing concerning the battle that was being fought between my good natural feelings and those which I have from my European education. This struggle lasted the entire week that I spent in California, without an instant* s respite; long distance telephones, day and night telegrams, messages, letters, calls, nothing was spared to induce me to use my influence. I had already practically pledged myself and they knew it. In many of the cities 36 D'ESTOTRNELLES DE CONSTANT of the United States, the newspapers had translated and spread abroad a lecture that I had given in Paris on "Women and Peace." All the efforts in favor of the weak, all the movements for emancipation, for help, for social amelioration are involved in the great primordial struggle against violence. You cannot promote the progress of the human race at the same time that you are seeking for its enslavement and destruction ; all that is connected ; you must be for or against force, for or against right; whether you wish it or not, every supporter of the cause of women is a pacificist, and vice versa ; and that is true especially in the United States, in new countries. There a place is assigned to the woman and the child, and the newer the country, the higher the place. The condition of woman has been bet- 37 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES tered with the march of civilization, with the march of the sun ; it reaches, therefore, its maximum of progress in the American Far- West, on the Pacific Coast. Such was, in substance, the argument which had pro- cured me the sympathy of many people, and the reason why I could not refuse to support San Francisco; but I perceived at once that this argument was too moderate. "You are too easy to satisfy," objected the American women ; they even added, * * We aren't as happy as you maintain we are." To this direct thrust that was dealt me by the president of one of the numerous meet- ings to which I had been invited, I replied without reserve, happily being used to pub- lic assemblies, " You have a right to protest from your point of view as suffragists; but I am right in congratulating you, even against your will, from my general point of 38 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT view. You complain, it is your right, but you are happy, mesdames, free, privileged. I am extremely sorry to have told you in an inopportune moment, that you are super- latively happy, compared with the women of other countries. Demand progress, well and good, in order that these other women may profit by it; they have greater need of it than you have." I spoke of my experi- ences as a traveler, of the life of the women in Eastern and Southern Europe. For an instant the audience, that, in all countries, likes to be opposed, appeared rebellious toward my argument. I had called for opposition ; I got all I wanted. One of the ladies present reminded me sharply that I doubtless brought prejudices from France, it being admitted that a French mother has not enough confidence in her daughter to let her go out alone in Paris. I then 39 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES answered by placing myself deliberately on the side of the French mothers, and by adding that no mother, no sincere friend of American young women would allow them to go out alone in the evening on our boulevards, not because of the bad Frenchmen, but because of the cos- mopolitan crowd that spends its money there. This said, I drew a picture, only too exact, of the exploitation of the young woman in all countries; I showed her defencelessness not only against the law, but also against the customs that must be modified before everything else. Peace was thus made between my audience and my- self, to such a degree that an old workman who did not know me except by the title of "Baron", which the American papers bestowed upon me beyond measure, began 40 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT to cry, "That's right. It's pleasant to see a human aristocrat ! ' ' But, when the ice was once broken, my embarrassment only changed in kind, as the discussion changed in tone. I speak of it because it was public and because the papers have given an account of it. One of the ladies began to speak and said, word for word: " Don't judge us by appearances. The French woman is less free than we are, perhaps; in reality she is happier." "Why?" "Because she is more highly respected by her husband. Our husbands and fathers give us all that we can desire, except their confidence. A French husband treats his wife as a friend, as a co-worker; an Ameri- can husband keeps her apart from his life. * ' You doubtless know what people say here of a French household, and how they 41 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES distinguish it from the others. * The Eng- lish husband goes ahead of his wife, the American wife goes ahead of her husband, the French man and wife go side by side.' ' To discuss such problems in a public meeting was new and embarrassing for me. I confined myself to saying that I knew many good, many admirable American fam- ilies, and that in regard to the others, if confidence is lacking, it will not be brought about by law. This confidence must be won. In order to make myself understood, I found nothing better than to describe the home of a French family, not that in which the wife copies her neighbor, who copies, in her turn, an Englishwoman who copies a fashion book. Let us take care not to generalize. There are inharmonious households everywhere, in France as in America, but I recognize 42 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT the fact with you, mesdames, that the French woman does not complain, does not demand the right of voting, and that, therefore, she seems more satisfied with her lot than you do. A French household, such as you find especially in the places un- known to travelers, is the model, the ideal of association and the real triumph of the woman, for it is her work. Only it is a work of long and inherited patience, a con- quest prepared by the education, the docil- ity, the sacrifice of the wife to the authority of her husband. This authority remains intact, there is the master stroke, but it never exists without control, without re- straint; the wife respects it, and in case of need strengthens it, but without ceasing to watch over it with a maternal solicitude. How many times have I stopped, in my native country of Sarthe, to observe one of 43 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES these model households, in a little town or on a farm. There, truly, the woman reigns, or rather the man reigns, but the woman watches; the man commands, the woman inspires. She effaces herself in order to devote herself to the humble tasks of the home. She takes upon herself the con- stantly recurring duties which one does not take into account, but which are indispen- sable in every day life, and performs them all that is done without anyone's observing it, as by the grace of the Holy Spirit. The husband, a cattle-dealer, for instance, gets into his wagon before daylight, to go see the farmers or make his purchases at one of the fairs of the country. Having risen before he did, his wife lights the fire and noiselessly prepares a meal; she goes and wakes up the stable boy or pours out the grain for the horse herself. She brushes 44 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT her husband's clothes and shoes, and in case of need helps him hitch up. He's off; she puts the room in order, the kitchen, the house, looks after the yard, the chicken roost, the barn, the stable. She dresses the children, gives them their breakfast, sends them off to school; she mends the linen, washes and irons, all the while talking, for she is not ill-tempered, and her husband will not be put out to learn what has taken place in the village, when he comes back. Between whiles she kills a chicken and a duck, plucks them, prepares them for the coming Sunday; she kneads the bread, heats the oven, makes a cake or gives her order to the baker; she makes her purchases at the grocery and butcher shop ; she does not forget the cellar either; it is she who will go down to hunt behind the faggots for the good bottle of white wine which her master 45 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES wishes to offer to the customer or the friend who comes back with him. It is she who receives us, clean and at ease, a smile on her lips, and who gives us a hearty welcome when I arrive with my friends. Without seeming to do so, she forgets nothing. It is she, also, who keeps the accounts, and the most striking thing about it is that while I know some women who scarcely know how to read, they do not make the mistake of a centime in the calculation of what they ought to receive from Peter, pay to Paul, advance to Louis, withhold from Charles, etc., etc. Often the husband, coming home from the market, is rather out of sorts, and nat- urally his bad humor falls upon the mistress. "It's your fault, you have forgotten this, you had told me that, you had given me a wrong impression ! " 46 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT The wife replies in her own way, and according to her lights. If there are wit- nesses, she is silent; she knows how to wait, she is politic; like Louis XI she dis- sembles; or perhaps she jokes, she takes nothing in a tragic way; she has seen many other similar occasions, and her mother too ; and her grandmother, likewise. She bursts out laughing, or else she furtively wipes away a tear; that depends en her tempera- ment and the circumstances. Now and then her husband has had difficulty in per- suading a customer; he has had to drink a glass of wine, two glasses of wine, a glass too much; she takes in the situation at the first glance and says nothing; she has pa- tience until the next day ... or else, if she is alone, she gets cross, and you don't know what may happen. Whatever happens, the next day she is 47 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES mistress of her own house, as on the day before, and her husband, grumbling all the while, secretly does her justice; she is his adviser, his friend, half of himself, his better half. Would you try then to replace this conjugal authority of the French wo- man by a political right? Are you sur- prised that she doesn't claim anything from the law? Besides, the right to vote is never claimed so much by the happy people in the world as by the others. It is demanded for the latter, and for that reason it is sacred. Oppose to the satisfaction of the happy wife, the suffering of all the miserable women reduced to the state of slaves, then the point of view is changed, and that is why I never have said a word to discourage the American women who are pleading the cause of their fellow creatures. My friends of the English Liberal party 48 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT have committed a great mistake, in my opinion, in combating the suffragettes, what- ever were the violences against which they have often been obliged to protect them- selves. By an inexplicable reactionary policy against the traditions of English public life, they have denied the women the right of discussing their demands; they have treated these claims with disdain. By according them only a portion of the consideration that all parties, in all countries, lavish upon the least respectable of electoral groups, they would have had the opportunity to play the leading role in this movement, they would not have come to this monstrosity, in Eng- land ! of classing women in a sort of inferior category of humanity. In the United States, no party has com- mitted the mistake of the English Liberals. President Roosevelt, himself, a partisan of 49 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES the strongest kind, has not declared himself against the cause of woman; he has been reserved, perhaps too much so, intrenching himself as " lukewarm. " Ardent or luke- warm, it doesn't make much difference, the sympathy of the public authorities cannot long be concealed in the face of the ques- tion of woman's suffrage, which forms an integral part of the great social, national and universal problem. This question has been put in the United States; it is being settled bit by bit, by partial victories which will finally form a whole. I had already a feeling of sympathy with it in consequence of my first trip to America, and felt much more strongly on the subject after my visit in the Scandinavian countries where ideas arise sooner than else- where ; but I now am convinced of it. My San Francisco experiences were only the 50 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT prelude to the initiation which awaited me afterwards, from state to state, where I was able to judge first the effort, then the work, of woman in the United States. Not that the American woman is superior to other women, but she has more freedom ; she is courageous like others, but courageous pub- licly, in order to serve her cause, while the European woman, more resigned, is brave only to endure. People laugh at the woman who demands the right to vote; they ridicule her, exactly as they have ridiculed all the defenders of the noblest causes, all the precursors, all the inventors, all the pioneers ; but they finally respect her all the more because they are ashamed of having made fun of her. I have heard the most futile women of the world admire, in spite of their sphere, the beauty of an immense procession which 51 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES they had seen pass like a vision beneath their windows, in New York. It was a manifestation in favor of woman's rights on a winter's day, in the mud, in the water. Thousands and thousands and thousands of women of all classes, of all ages, of all kinds, were following one another, march- ing together indistinguishably, forgetting their duties, their inequalities, their joys, their miseries, in order to aim only at a common end, to seek only for the emanci- pation of their sex, the right of acting, struggling, protesting and voting in the state as in the home. Tears rose in the eyes of those women who spoke to me thus, and whose souls had perhaps awakened that day; and they wondered at the courage the good women must have had whom they had recognized at the head of this crowd ; these women who exposed themselves not 52 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT only to the low jokes of the passers-by, but also to close contact with the worst unfor- tunates, and to association with half-crazy women who by their extravagance compro- mise the best of causes. I spoke with mothers, with women whose families I know are living in harmony, highly es- teemed. I told them my doubts, my fears, my prejudices. They listened to me with- out surprise, and replied: "We will tri- umph, because we deserve to triumph. You were present at the campaign for equal suf- frage in California ; that is only a final stage of the struggle. We have succeeded in many very important preliminary attacks. For example, in the State of Kansas the women take part in all the municipal elec- tions, as electors and as those eligible to office, and everybody, beginning with the tax-payers, is rejoicing over this moral pro- 53 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES gress. Many women are at the head of municipalities; many of their number are at the same time excellent mothers and ex- cellent mayors. "In almost half of the United States we have won the right to vote in educational matters, that is to say, the mothers as well as the fathers elect the school officers, the members of library boards, etc., etc., and no one complains; quite the contrary, in certain states you will see a woman elected to fill the office of Superintendent of Schools, and even a young woman. We have now the right to vote in matters of taxation, for or against certain expenses, for or against certain public works, so that the expenses incurred serve a real purpose and are not merely for the benefit of the contractors and their friends alone. "Moreover, one must not rate the pro- 54 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT gress of our cause only by these results, however brilliant they may be. One must see our means of action, our resources, our numbers, our organization, the superior men and women who support and direct us; one must also be acquainted with our history. It was not yesterday that we pro- tested against the narrow interpretation of your Declaration of the Rights of Man, and that we wished it to be applied, not accord- ing to the letter, but in its wholly human spirit, both to the woman and to the child. It was by the emancipation of the negroes that we tried out our forces. Our success brought to light the inadmissible paradox of our legal inferiority. Our assistance had been accepted, but, when the war was fin- isned, the right of voting was refused us. The slaves had been freed, but not the women ; we were relegated to the ranks of 55 criminals and lunatics; we were obliged to carry about everywhere these placards that you have seen, * Criminals, lunatics and women do not vote.' "We have succeeded admirably in mun- icipal affairs (and I do not speak of the active part women play in commercial and agricultural organizations); why and by what right should we stop there? * ' If you admit that it is to the interest of all the citizens of a city, both men and women, to unite to prevent, for example, the adulteration of milk and sugar, the foods that nourish our children, how can you prevent us, when we are once organ- ized as we shall soon be, from uniting to prevent the moral debasement of education, of national honor? How prevent us from uniting to struggle against the lies, the abuses, the corruptions that men support or 56 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT encourage because they are afraid to lay them bare? We are the majority, we are a force that has been used many times; it is not enough for us to exercise an influence, we want to exercise our power in action, in direct action. "We have let things go on too long, through timidity, convinced of our incapa- city and of your pretended superiority in the entire domain of public action; now we are awakened from this over-long dream. Without pride and without ambition, by the reality of facts, in the interest even of man, it is time to take from him an exclus- ive direction of affairs as bad for him as for us and for civilization. "The best men are in reality more timid than the women. They are afraid of the yellow press, afraid of scandal, afraid of extortion, afraid of new things, 57 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES afraid of truth; and, finally, their weakness assures the predominance of the worst ele- ments. This trio, the press, the politicians and the business men, without us, will end by dominating honest people. Under the pretext of not wanting to leave our firesides, we would finally abandon them to those who will destroy them. Never! it is for love of our homes, of our children, of our families, of our country, of liberty, in short, and of justice, that we have entered the campaign, and we shall win. "Now that's what you ought to under- stand. We cannot be victorious in any other way than by winning the right to vote. Once mistresses of the elections, we shall force the men to do for the nation as for the city what they are not doing now. "As to our homes, once more, don't worry; they will be the better guarded be- 58 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT cause we are protecting them both inside and out. By dint of remaining there de- fenceless, so many things have been taken from us that we must go out of the home to get them back. Our duty as wives and mothers is menaced if it has not as its sanc- tion a duty of control, and this duty of control is nothing without our right of intervention." To sum up, this movement in favor of woman's suffrage is a protest of weariness and morality against the masculine encroach- ments of politics on private life, conscience and individual liberty. Sometimes negative, this protest is exercised with unbelievable violence against alcoholism, for instance, as we shall see later; sometimes positive, in favor of public health, public parks, the games and education of children, the regu- lation of work, the protection of childhood. 59 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES It is no longer possible today to treat it with scorn. Governments ought to take notice of it, even in Europe. I most assuredly did not expect to assist in the campaign of the ladies of San Francisco. I joyfully take my share of responsibility in their triumph ; for you know that they have finally won the day. Today they have the right to vote and the right of being elected to office in the next legislative elections of the State of California. There are six states whose con- stitutions, amended by popular vote, allow women to vote. The State of Washington, by an unexpected stroke, had been dipos- sessed of this new right, but it was not long in regaining it. The six states having wo- man's suffrage are, together with California, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado and Washington. The five last-named being among the least populous of the United 60 D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT States, the accession of California, whose population alone (2,400,000) is nearly equal to that of the other five together (2,900,000) constitutes a result whose consequences are but half perceived. Another striking statement. The cities * ' where people amuse themselves ' ' , as you know, and particularly the great sea-ports, are naturally hostile to every reform tending to protect woman. The patrons of the bars, saloons and houses of ill-fame do not fall into these dreams. San Francisco, therefore, voted against the women accord- ing to the rule, to such an extent that, on the evening of the election, after the first returns, their defeat appeared to be crush- ing, and was telegraphed in advance all over the country. The next day the news- papers made ironical comments upon it. But the second day after the election the 61 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES returns from the rural precincts corrected the votes of the metropolis, and defeat was changed into victory. There is a lesson that will not be lost. The masses in which the woman is submerged are against her rising; the country, where she is mistress of the farm or the home, is for her. I have faithfully disclosed my unexpected participation in this great movement. Have I deviated from my program? No, assur- edly not; I have enlarged it. I have found new contests on my pathway, and I have not neglected them. All these protests have their weight; all these good wishes finally form a powerful combination of united interests which the force of cir- cumstances will bind together. Modern governments first denied and afterwards braved the force of public opinion; today they are deciding to recognize it, as soon as 62 D ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT this awakened opinion can make itself un- derstood. Let them take care. They have amassed against them, under the regime of armed peace, infinite protests, protests from the laboring masses, and from a great part of the commercial world. If they add to them those of the women to boot, that will excite too much unpopularity. The women have supported me, I sup- port them in my turn. Being the weaker, they are still more interested than the men in the maintenance of peace, and in the organization of justice. Wherever the fishers in troubled waters work to foment war or panic, the influence of the women may be depended upon to counterbalance them. That struck me especially in San Francisco, where the admirable progress of this rich country is too often in danger of being compromised by the enterprise of a 63 WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES few adventurers, and especially by the men- ace of the so-called, "Inevitable War," between the United States and Japan. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. tl!! REGIONAL L| BRARY FACILITY A 000 868 294 o