Part 7 (2/2)
In the matter of forming political judgments, not even the wisest men are beyond improvement. International affairs, monetary systems, the best way of raising taxes, and similar problems, often divide the male electorate pretty evenly into rival parties. Since both cannot be right, a great deal of poor political thinking must be done by the present body of voters. Meantime, women are showing their ability to deal intelligently with all sorts of subjects in our educational inst.i.tutions, in business and in social life. Their judgments command respect in every other field; and it is hard to see why they could not apply their powers to political questions.
We must remember, too, that during these last years the field of political life has been rapidly broadening, through the awakening of social consciousness among the people. To concern one's self with politics now is to be interested in good market facilities, in rapid transit for cities, in recreation centers for children, in honest labelling of food products, in reformation of criminals, in preventing marriage among the unfit, and in a hundred similar matters. Here women will doubtless bring us a strong addition to our political efficiency.
They have long been considered the natural directors of social life and, in spite of being disfranchised, they mainly handle such matters at present. Now that these subjects are being brought into the political field, women should follow them there, as they have followed their industries from the homes into the factories. There is no reason to believe that their judgments will be less sound than those of their brothers and husbands.
Of course, women's knowledge of means and methods is much less than that of men in their own cla.s.s. Not only have they not partic.i.p.ated in political life, but they have been steadily warned away from that particular tree of knowledge. Yet the present generation of women has gone through the same preliminary education in schools with its brothers; and many women in high schools and colleges have made a more extended study of political inst.i.tutionalism. Still more important, more than a million women have been educating themselves for some years in this direction through voluntary a.s.sociations of some kind; while in most States they have had some political practice through limited suffrage, and in a few States full experience.
In selecting representatives to carry out their will, women have certain obvious defects of temperament and training. Having been brought up for generations to judge men only as providers of sustenance and fathers of children, they must at first find it difficult to consider candidates impersonally. Still, their general morality and their standards of right are probably superior to those of men, and they are more intolerant of faults, and they find it harder to compromise on matters of character than do men. One can hardly believe that 1,700 women could be found among the respectable, church-going, American-born residents in any county of America, who would sell their votes, year after year, as that number of men voters has recently confessed to doing in Adams County, Ohio. In fact, Judge Blair says: ”There was one cla.s.s of the population which rebelled against the practice. It was the womanhood of Adams County, which had never become reconciled to the custom, and whose continual hostility has resulted finally, I hope, in its abolishment.”[46]
[46] Seventeen Hundred Rural Vote-Sellers, by A.Z. Blair, _McClure's Magazine_, November, 1911.
Of the need of women for the training which partic.i.p.ation in political life gives there can be no doubt. Their lives have always been directly dependent upon other individuals, and they are p.r.o.ne to think in small details. Any training which extends the horizon of their interests and enables them to deal more largely with these details will fit them better for living in a world where industrial, business and social changes are so rapidly merging details in larger wholes. Experience in selecting candidates for public office would also do much to broaden women's judgments of life, and would help to break down the pettiness which sometimes characterizes their personal relations.
In the case of women, the community has a double reason for desiring that they shall develop political judgments and become acquainted with political methods. It is not only that they may share in the general intelligence and carry their fair part of the political burdens; but they have become the teachers, both in homes and schools, of the oncoming generation of male voters. We no longer live in small communities where children can see the simple processes of government operating around them, but in a complex civilization where it must all be interpreted to them, and mainly by women. Many boys who complete our elementary schools never work a day under the direction of a man. In the homes, busy fathers increasingly turn over the training of children to their wives. How can these women train safe citizens for the future if they do not understand the processes involved well enough to use them themselves?
Meantime the old arguments against woman suffrage are too outworn to need serious attention. In the past decades our civilization has become so complex, with so many groups carrying on differentiated functions, that even if we had not the millions of educated, property-owning, wage-earning, voting women that now fill our public life, the old arguments would still be obsolete. The issues of life are no longer primarily military, and but a fraction of men voters is capable of meeting modern requirements as policemen and soldiers; in time of crisis, all men would be called into the reserves; but in such periods women have always fought in the breach, from Carthage to Paris. Still, in modern warfare, those who guard the rear and furnish supplies are as necessary as those who go to the front.
It has also long been recognized that women who rear finest sons and daughters must sometimes turn away from the cradle to refresh their lives with the touch of other interests. It has also been demonstrated a thousand times over that women do not incite the lawless element to riot about the polls; but that, instead, their presence tends to remove the polling-place from the saloon and make it safer for men to go there on election-day. The plea that women would introduce a new element of s.e.x into politics, thereby confounding its real issues, is certainly not well grounded. s.e.x has always played a great part in politics, as it has in all the vital affairs of life. In the open compet.i.tions of education, business or politics, s.e.x ceases to be as significant as it is in the drawing-room.
Nor do thoughtful people imagine to-day that if women partic.i.p.ated in political life they would suddenly bring about a reign of universal peace and righteousness. It has taken many centuries for men to learn to play the game of politics indifferently well as they do. The first effect of woman's partic.i.p.ation would probably be to lower the efficiency of the electorate in some directions; but they are starting much farther along than men began, and they would learn more rapidly than men have learned.
It is often claimed that women do not want to vote; and, of course, there are many who do not care to a.s.sume such arduous and often difficult duties, if they can avoid it. The same holds true of many intelligent, but selfish men who desire the advantages of good government without its burdens. All such must be urged to do their duty to the state. Those who have vision and a large sense of duty can be trusted to do their fair part in caring for the public welfare. Those who wish to enjoy the benefits of peace and settled government, partic.i.p.ating in the advantages of education, engaging in business, and having their persons and property protected, without sharing the burdens of government, should be forced to play their part.
If a woman should board a street-car to-day and, when asked for her fare, should hide her face with womanly modesty and declare that she did not wish to be involved in such public matters, but preferred that the man swinging on the strap before her should pay, she would be informed that all who use the cars must pay for their maintenance. Women in America now have more than their share of education and leisure. If they do not wish to pay their fair proportion of service, they should withdraw from the high schools and colleges, from literature and music, from offices and factories, and not crowd into places where they are unwilling to play the game. The woman who leads the movement against equal suffrage in England has made a fortune in the open market as a writer, protected by the national copyrights; she maintains a house where she is protected in person and property by the city of London, the organization and administration of which calls for the constant attention of all intelligent citizens; and yet she urges women to take what they can get, but to refrain from doing their fair share of the city and national housekeeping, lest they lose their feminine charm.
Surely those who profit by government should give their share of service.
It is idle to claim that equal suffrage will make no change in women. It will certainly accentuate the changes already made by higher education and by a freer business life. Some loss there must inevitably be in any such far-reaching change. We lost something of chivalry and of the spirit of _n.o.blesse oblige_ in the transition from feudalism to democracy. In transferring causes of personal difference from the dueling field to the courts of law, we lost a degree of poetic feeling and tragic exaltation, of personal initiative and physical courage. So when women pa.s.sed from slavery to serfdom we lost something of male dominance and of female submission. We shall lose something in the present transition; but one must be content to lose Louis XIV and Versailles if one thereby finds modern France; one must be satisfied to lose an inst.i.tution which gave us the tragically pathetic death of Alexander Hamilton, if it increases human justice and saves fathers to their families. We must even be content to lose the languis.h.i.+ng and weeping lady of chivalry, and the coquetting, crocheting and confiding maiden of the eighteenth century if we gain in return fair minded comrades in daily living, devoted partners in family life, and strong, intelligent mothers for the coming generations. The s.e.x instinct needs no fostering; it has led us to our best developments in civilization; and its work has only begun.
So far we have taken the popular position, and have discussed this matter as though it were still in the period of debate. The fact is, it long ago pa.s.sed from the field of theory; it is now a condition. In six of our States, women have now full partic.i.p.ation in managing public affairs. In Wyoming, since 1869; in Colorado, since 1893; in Idaho, since 1896; in Was.h.i.+ngton, beginning in 1910; and in California, since 1911, women have been sharing the vote with men. In twenty-nine States they have school suffrage, and in many places munic.i.p.al suffrage.[47] In newer parts of the world, like New Zealand and Australia, women have complete suffrage, while in old countries, like Norway, Sweden and Finland, they have essentially all the rights of men. In England, there are 1,141 women on Boards of Guardians and 615 on Educational Committees; and they are demanding full partic.i.p.ation in all political life. In Canada they have school and munic.i.p.al suffrage. It is no longer a time for argument; it is time for adjustment.
[47] BERTHA REMBAUGH, _The Political Status of Women in the United States_, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1912, gives complete information to date.
Meantime the results of woman's full partic.i.p.ation in political life, even where they have had the suffrage for some years, are difficult to determine, because of the fact already pointed out that political life in a modern democracy is so closely bound up with all the other life about it. It is quite as difficult to estimate these effects as it would be to estimate the effects of housekeeping or of woman's special costume. And yet some results are clear enough to have a large bearing on the extension of woman's suffrage in new localities.
In 1906, the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League engaged Miss Helen Sumner to make a careful study of the actual working of equal suffrage in the State of Colorado. Miss Sumner, aided by several a.s.sistants, spent nearly two years in the investigation. She gathered and carefully a.n.a.lyzed written answers to an extended set of questions from 1,200 representative men and women of Colorado, some opposing and some favoring equal suffrage; and she and her a.s.sistants interviewed many more. They also made a general study of industrial conditions and of legislation for the State as a whole, and a detailed study of election records and newspaper files for representative cities and counties. Her report is a masterpiece of patient research and scientific exposition.[48]
[48] HELEN L. SUMNER, _Equal Suffrage. The Results of an Investigation Made in Colorado for the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League of New York State._ New York: Harper & Bros., 1909.
Equal suffrage goes back to 1893 in Colorado; and while the influence of women has been in no way revolutionary, this report shows that, on the whole, political conditions have improved and woman's intelligence and her general public spirit have increased with no appreciable loss in distinctive feminine charm. One cannot help feeling as one reads this report that it is what a disinterested observer would have to say about the effect of woman's larger educational or industrial life since 1870.
In all democracies it is difficult to bring voters to the polls unless, as in some Swiss cantons, they are fined for absence. In Colorado, Miss Sumner shows that women cast about forty per cent. of the total vote in the earlier years of their enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, though they were in a minority of the total population.[49] In the work of the primaries they were in a much smaller minority, except when some special problem or candidate appealed to them. The more intelligent the community, the larger the woman's vote; and it is largest of all in the best residence districts of Denver, the capital city. The vote of American born women is larger than that of foreigners; and while the prost.i.tutes of Denver have been voted in the interests of the party in power, public opinion is steadily making this more difficult. In Idaho, all residents of the red light district have been disfranchised by statute; and practically they do not vote.
[49] Mr. LAWRENCE LEWIS, in the _Outlook_, for January 27, 1906, a.n.a.lyzes the election returns for parts of Pueblo City and vicinity, and he finds from 25 to 46 per cent. of the vote was cast by women, and the proportion of women increased with the intelligence and _morale_ of the precinct.
There is no appreciable tendency on the part of women to form a new party, nor to favor their own s.e.x. They are more inclined than men to scratch the ticket and, as ill.u.s.trated in the case of Judge Lindsey, they sometimes rally efficiently around an independent candidate, especially on a moral issue. On the whole, women vote with their husbands, just as sons vote with their fathers; but the strength of the family vote, as compared with the vote of unsettled people, is certainly desirable.
Since the beginning of equal suffrage, Colorado has fully held her own with other States in advanced legislation, especially in social and educational lines. Women have suffered no insult at the polls, and on the whole polling-places have improved; but how far this is due to women's presence no one can say. Women have occasionally held legislative and executive offices; but they have especially distinguished themselves as State and county superintendents of schools.
<script>