Part 11 (1/2)
She says: ”The s.e.x relations of women as lovers, as wives, as mothers, as daughters, remain untouched, certainly unimpaired, by the demand to extend beyond these. What is impaired is not the s.e.x relation, nor s.e.x condition, but the social disabilities, the personal and social subordination, the condition of political non-existence, which have been foisted upon that s.e.x condition.”
The repeated demand to ”extend beyond” the s.e.x relations of either s.e.x _is_ a demand to touch those relations, and whether it is a demand to impair them depends upon the question whether it is true that disabilities and subordination have been foisted upon the s.e.x conditions. In olden times they were. Men were subject to social disabilities, personal and social subordination, and political non-existence. It followed that women were also in the same subjection. As men threw off the yoke, the s.e.x relations began to a.s.sume their natural position. Man was the protector, woman the protected. In the natural relations, the protector is at the service of the protected, and that is the state of things to-day. In order to be preserved in bodily, mental, and spiritual freedom, woman must yield with grace to the hand that serves her. In order to protect, man must see to it that this freedom he has won is kept sacred and inviolable. He cannot be at once a tyrant and a guard. This freedom removes from woman all disabilities save those of s.e.x. The question then is, can all the intelligence and all the weakness of women be represented for their own welfare and their own defence, by the same methods as those by which men attain that end, and yet leave these fundamental s.e.x relations untouched and unimpaired?
The Suffrage leaders did not expect or intend to leave them untouched, or unimpaired, if complete change was impairment. In the ”History” they say: ”It is often asked if political equality--would not arouse antagonism between the s.e.xes? If it could be proved that men and women had been harmonious in all ages and countries, and that women were happy and satisfied in their slavery, we might hesitate in proposing any change whatever; but the apathy, the helpless, hopeless resignation of a subject cla.s.s, cannot be called happiness. A woman growing up under American ideas of liberty in government and religion cannot brook any disability based on s.e.x alone, without a deep feeling of antagonism with the power that creates it.”
Dr. Jacobi says: ”Manhood Suffrage in America may seem to result, historically, 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 Individualism, which became the core of the Federal Union. This idea, at first suggested only for men, has, little by little, spread to women also.”
Individualism, in the sense of personal moral responsibility, became the core, first of the Hebrew Theocracy, and last of the American National life. But that republicanism which has come to rest on s.e.x distinction is the combined result of Individualism and Authority. Suffrage discussion for years has turned upon the idea of Individualism _versus_ Authority.
In a government like ours, where all the intelligence and all the weakness _are_ represented for their own welfare and defence, authority must to a certain extent hold a stern hand over individualism, because freedom for all means license for not a single one, be it man or woman. Mrs. f.a.n.n.y Ames says: ”Any argument [against Suffrage] worth anything at all, comes down to this--an argument against American democracy--and must rest there.” Many arguments have been adduced against Woman Suffrage that were also arguments against democracy; because there are always people, and wise people too, who fear the test of the ultimate experiment. To this fear the Suffragists catered when, in contradiction to their own dictum of universal suffrage, they asked Congress for a sixteenth amendment that should require an educational qualification for all, both men and women.
But, guided by the statesmans.h.i.+p that seeks to form a true and enduring democracy, this Republic has come to the s.e.x basis.
Dr. Jacobi says: ”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 and rudimentary attribute they possess,--that, namely, of s.e.x.
If the original contempt for ma.s.ses of men has ever diminished, and the conception of mankind been enn.o.bled, it is because, upon the primitive animal foundation, human imagination has built a fair structure of mental and moral attribute and possibility, and habitually deals 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 s.e.x hitherto so despised--are now recognized to const.i.tute 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.”
The immortal orator at Gettysburg was commander-in-chief of an army and navy whose physical power was then in the very act of saving the nation and redeeming it from the sin of slavery. The soldier-statesman of Greece, in his funeral oration, was addressing an army. The fair structure of mental and moral attribute and possibility has not been built by human imagination. The conception of the moral man that has enn.o.bled mankind is older than any man who has embodied it. It is as old as mankind itself, upon whose primitive animal foundation G.o.d implanted side by side the conception of the moral man, woman--and of the governing man, man.
That no inequality should be possible when this idea should really rest upon the most primitive, rudimentary and yet continuing and controlling attribute, instead of upon complex contradictions in regard to the distribution of sovereign human power, G.o.d, speaking through the ideal which the moral man had grasped, said: ”Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh.”
Man is not the hereditary sovereign in a republic. He is an actual, present, continuing sovereign, and he is that only so long as he obeys the law of his being and const.i.tutes himself, by reason of his manhood strength, the defence of the republic's laws for all. In woman suffrage democracy has met a most dangerous foe. It has been asked ”If it would be best for man to make over half his sovereignty to woman?” I cannot imagine how he could do this, whatever might be his wish. Sovereignty in a republic is only divisible among those who are equals as to sovereign power; and any effort to divide with those who lack the essential attribute must result in despotism or anarchy. Men are as subject to the restrictions and requirements of s.e.x as are women, and when they try an experiment contrary to those conditions, the end must be destruction of government itself.
Prof. Goldwin Smith says: ”One of the features of a revolutionary era is the prevalence of a feeble facility of abdication. The holders 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 conviction.”
This is true, and it is what makes the present situation portentous. From the very tenderheartedness of the men of our time comes the danger to the women of this nation. So far from desiring to hold the slightest restriction over the women of the Republic, they may rush into an attempt at abdication of a sovereignty that did not originate in their will but in their environment, in order to prove the sincerity of their desire that woman should not even appear to be compelled to obey.
This movement is a feature of the revolutionary era that seems suddenly to have extended to the men with whose theories it belongs. Not at once, nor everywhere equally, but finally and completely would this change come.
Man, as well as woman, must ”consent to be governed” by the laws of being.
If man really could ”share his sovereignty,” there might be some show of reason in the Suffrage claim that he should do so. But unless he can abdicate the very essentials of his s.e.x condition, he cannot abdicate his sovereignty. His laws are dead letters whenever more men than those who pa.s.sed them and approve them choose that they shall be dead. He would have no material outside the men in this country, with which to execute the wishes of the woman voters whom it is proposed to introduce to make laws which they know they cannot themselves enforce.
And this leads us right round again to consider the ”disabilities foisted upon s.e.x conditions.” The first thing demanded of a voter is that, in the ordinary state of things, he should be able to vote. A body of citizens is asking that a s.e.x be admitted to franchise when it is known to all that a large part of that s.e.x would at every election find it physically impossible, or improper, to go to the polls. Suffragists say: ”No women need vote who do not wish to; but they have no right to hinder us.” Is this the Individualism of Democracy? It is the Individualism of Anarchy.
It is not the rule of the majority. It is cla.s.s rule with a vengeance; and as for ”consenting to be governed,” there never was a man or a government that so coolly a.s.sumed to govern without their consent such a body, as do the Suffragists. The disabilities ”foisted upon s.e.x” would be felt first of all by the wives and mothers who are most interested in the laws.
The next duty of citizens.h.i.+p is jury service. The leaders said: ”We demand, in criminal cases, that most sacred of all rights, trial by jury of our own peers.” In regard to jury duty Suffragists are not agreed; which fact alone shows that that service would be felt to be an impairment of s.e.x conditions. So impossible has jury duty been found, even in small communities, that in Wyoming the jury service of women ceased with the first judge who admitted them to serve at all; and in Colorado but one or two women have ever served. The judges there do not allow them to be called. It was found to be expensive, and not promotive of the ends of justice. Whether this is held to be man's cruel withholding of woman's rights or not, it shows that either the s.e.x condition or the co- extensiveness of woman's work with man's must be impaired. Dr. Jacobi says in regard to jury service: ”The numerous cases for exemption now admitted for men would be certainly paralleled for women, but they would not always be identical. Men are now more often excused for business; women would 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 number of years of their lives.”
Who would establish the ”special plea” for so large a proportion of the voting population? No law of justice on which a solid government can rest could do it; and that it would be asked, and needed, shows that s.e.x conditions would interfere with voting conditions. A criminal case often lasts weeks, even months, during which time the jury are kept together and alone, locked up at night, and walked out by day. This second duty cannot be, and is not, performed; not because many women would not make good jurors, not because they should not try delicate cases, and might not serve well at certain times, and in special ways, but because jury duty, like military service, cannot take account of s.e.x conditions when they are the rule and not the exception.
Office-holding is the next necessary concomitant of the ballot. Of course it can be said at once: ”Why, mult.i.tudes of men never hold office, why should women?” It may be answered that mult.i.tudes of men do hold office, that no American would think of extending the ballot without expecting that, as an accompaniment, the duty, or the privilege, of office-holding should follow.
Not only is it true that if more than half the population were added to the voting list mult.i.tudes among them would attempt to rush into office, but it was mainly for office that a majority of those who have been pressing the demand cared for the vote. The authors of the ”History” say: ”As to offices, it is not be supposed that the cla.s.s of men now elected will resign to women their chances, and, if they should to any extent, the necessary number of women to fill the offices would make no apparent change in our social circles. If, for example, the Senate of the United States should be entirely composed of women, but two in each State would be withdrawn from the pursuit of domestic happiness.”
How could ”the cla.s.s of men now elected” help resigning, if women enough chose to put up a woman and give her a majority of votes,--provided, as Suffragists say, that the vote secures the office and retains it by a mere mandate? But it is not one office, or set of offices, which we have to consider. It is the entrance upon political life, permanently, of a large body of women. What that means to the social life that ”would not miss them,” we well know. There could be no domestic ties; no hindering child.
The time would be short before this unnatural position would breed a race of Aspasias--without the intellect that ruled ”the ruler of the land, when Athens was the land of fame.”
The ”History” says: ”An honest fear is sometimes expressed 'that women would degrade politics, and politics would degrade women,'” and the writers answer: ”As the influence of woman has been uniformly elevating in new civilizations, in missionary work in heathen lands, in schools, colleges, literature, and general society, it is fair to suppose that politics would prove no exception.” We do not need to depend upon forecast or inference. The influence of women upon politics, and the influence of politics upon women, have already been degrading. This is true of political intrigue in the old world, and of the ”Female Lobby” in Was.h.i.+ngton. It is astonis.h.i.+ng to what an extent it is true in our new country, with our fresh and sweet traditions.
In 1851, Mrs. Stanton, writing to a convention at Akron, Ohio, said: ”The great work before us is the education of those just coming on the stage of action. Begin with the girls of to-day, and in twenty years we can revolutionize this nation. Teach the girl to go alone by night and day, if need be, on the lonely highway, or through the busy streets of the crowded metropolis. Better for her to suffer occasional insults, or die outright, than live the life of a coward, or never move without a protector....
Teach her that it is no part of life to cater to the prejudices of those around her. Make her independent of public sentiment, by showing her how worthless and rotten a thing it is.... Think you, women thus educated would long remain the weak, dependent beings we now find them? They would soon settle for themselves this whole question of Woman's Rights.”