Volume IV Part 44 (1/2)

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: We respectfully request that in the qualifications for voters in the proposed Const.i.tution for the new Territory of Hawaii the word ”male” be omitted.

The declared intention of the United States in annexing the Hawaiian Islands is to give them the benefits of the most advanced civilization, and it is a truism that the progress of civilization in every country is measured by the approach of women toward the ideal of equal rights with men.

Under barbarism the struggle for existence is entirely on the physical plane. The woman freely enters the arena and her failure or success depends wholly upon her own strength. When life rises to the intellectual plane public opinion is expressed in law.

Justice demands that we shall not offer to women emerging from barbarism the ball and chain of a s.e.x disqualification while we hold out to men the crown of self-government.

The trend of civilization is closely in the direction of equal rights for women. [Then followed a list of the gains for woman suffrage.]

The Hon. John D. Long, Secretary of the Navy, calls the opposition to woman suffrage a ”slowly melting glacier of bourbonism and prejudice”. The melting is going on steadily all over our country, and it would be most inopportune to impose upon our new possessions abroad the antiquated restrictions which we are fast discarding at home.

We, therefore, pet.i.tion your Honorable Body that, upon whatever conditions and qualifications the right of suffrage is granted to Hawaiian men, it shall be granted to Hawaiian women.[119]

Notwithstanding this appeal, and special pet.i.tions also from the Suffrage a.s.sociations of the forty-five States, our Congress provided a const.i.tution in which the word ”male” was introduced more frequently than in the Const.i.tution of the United States or of any State, in the determination to bar out Hawaiian women from voting and holding office. It was declared that only ”male” citizens should fill any office or vote for any officer, a sweeping restriction which is not made in a single State of our Union. Not satisfied with this infamous abuse of power, our Congress refused to this new Territory a privilege enjoyed by every other Territory in the United States--that of having the power vested in its Legislature to grant woman suffrage--and provided that this Territorial Legislature must submit the question to the voters. It took care, however, to enfranchise every male being in the Islands--Kanaka, j.a.panese and Portuguese--and it will be only by their permission that even the American and English women residing there ever can possess the suffrage.

The members of the commission who drafted this const.i.tution were President Sanford B. Dole and a.s.sociate Justice W. F. Frear of Hawaii; Senators John T. Morgan, Ala.; Shelby M. Cullom, Ills.; Representative Robert R. Hitt, Ills. Justice Frear said over his own signature, Feb.

11, 1899: ”I proposed at a meeting of the Hawaiian Commission that the Legislature be permitted to authorize woman suffrage, and President Dole supported me, but the other members of the commission took a different view.” In other words, the Hawaiian members favored the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of their women but were overruled by the American members. If but one of the latter had stood by those from Hawaii its women would not have been placed, as they now are, under greater subjection even than those of the United States, and far greater than they were before the annexation of the Islands. Yet after the consummation of this shameful act the world was asked to rejoice over the creation of a new republic!

There is not the slightest reason to hope that the appeals for justice to the women of the Philippines will meet with any greater success, as it is the policy of our Government to give to men every incentive to study its inst.i.tutions and fit themselves for an intelligent voice in their control, but to discourage all interest on the part of women and to prevent them absolutely from any partic.i.p.ation. Having held American women in subjection for a century and a quarter, it now shows a determination to place the same handicap upon the women of our newly-acquired possessions.

During the spring of 1902, just before this volume goes to the publishers, the U. S. Senate Philippine Commission has been summoning before it a number of persons competent to give expert testimony as to existing conditions in those Islands. Among these were Judge W. H.

Taft, who for the past year has been Governor of the Philippines and speaks with high authority; and Archbishop Nozaleda, who has been connected with the Catholic church in the Islands for twenty-six years, and Archbishop since 1889, and who has the fullest understanding of the natives. Governor Taft said in answer to the committee:

The fact is that, not only among the Tagalogs but also among the Christian Filipinos, the woman is the active manager of the family, so if you expect to confer political power on the Filipinos it ought to be given to the women.

Archbishop Nozaleda testified as follows: (Senate Doc.u.ment 190, p.

109.)

The woman is better than the man in every way--in intelligence, in virtue and in labor--and a great deal more economical. She is very much given to trade and trafficking. If any rights and privileges are to be granted to the natives, do not give them to the men but to the women.

Q. Then you think it would be much better to give the women the right to vote than the men?

A. O, much better. Why, even in the fields it is the women who do the work; the men who go to the c.o.c.k fights and gamble. The woman is the one who supports the man there; so every law of justice demands that even in political life they should have the privilege over the men.

The action which our Government will eventually take in conferring the suffrage on the Filipinos can not be recorded in this volume, but the prophecy is here made that, in spite of the above testimony, and much more of the same nature which has been given by correspondents in the Philippines and by many who have returned from there, the Government of the United States will enfranchise the inferior male inhabitants and hold as political subjects the superior women of these Islands.

And again the world will be called upon to greet another republic!

FOOTNOTES:

[117] Miss Anthony spoke to a crowded house in the Fountain Street Baptist Church on The Moral Influence of Women, and the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw to another great audience in the Park Congregational Church from the text, ”Only be thou strong and very courageous.”

Calvary Baptist Church was filled to overflowing to hear Miss Laura Clay on The Bible for Equal Rights. Interested congregations listened to the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, who preached at the Division Street Methodist Church from the text, ”Knowledge shall increase”; Miss Laura Gregg, who spoke at the Second Baptist Church on My Country, 'Tis of Thee; Mrs. Colby, at the Plainfield Avenue Methodist Church, on The Legend of Lilith; Miss Lena Morrow at Memorial Church, Miss Lucy E. Textor at All Souls, and Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton and various members of the convention in other pulpits.

[118] The following resolutions were adopted:

That we reaffirm our devotion to the immortal principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and we call for its application in the case of women citizens.