Volume V Part 29 (1/2)
From the early days of the National Suffrage a.s.sociation its representatives had appeared before committees of every Congress to ask for the submission of an amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution and during many years this ”hearing” took place when the annual convention met in Was.h.i.+ngton. As it was to be held elsewhere this year and at a time when the Congress was not in session a delegation of speakers had gone before the committees the preceding March by arrangement of Mrs.
William Kent, chairman of the a.s.sociation's Congressional Committee.
At the hearing before a joint committee of the Senate Judiciary and Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage March 13 six of the members were present: Senators Overman (N. C.), chairman; Brandegee (Conn.); Bourne (Ore.); Brown (Neb.); Johnston (Ala.); Wetmore (R. I.). Senator John D. Works of California, who had introduced the resolution in the Senate, presented Dr. Anna Howard Shaw as ”one of the best known and most distinguished of those connected with the movement for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women.” As she took charge of the hearing she said in part:
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee, this is the forty-third year that the women suffragists have been represented by delegations appointed by the national body to speak in behalf of resolutions which have been introduced to eliminate from the Const.i.tution of the United States in effect the word ”male,” to eliminate all disqualifications for suffrage on account of s.e.x.
The desire of our a.s.sociation is not so much to put on record the opinions of this committee in regard to woman suffrage as to plead with it to give a favorable report, so that the question can come before the Congress, be discussed on its merits and then submitted to the various States for ratification. The Federal Const.i.tution guarantees to every State a republican form of government--that is, a government in which the laws are enacted by representatives elected by the people--and we claim that it has violated its own principle in refusing to protect women in their right to select their representatives, so we are asking for no more than that the Const.i.tution shall be carried out by the U.
S. Government. As the president of the National Suffrage a.s.sociation, I stand here in the place of a woman who gave sixty years of her life in advocacy of that grand principle for which so many of our ancestors died, Miss Susan B. Anthony. There is not a woman here today who was at the first hearing, nor a woman alive today who was among those that struggled in the beginning for this fundamental right of every citizen. I now introduce Mrs.
Susan Walker Fitzgerald of Ma.s.sachusetts. It has been said that women cannot fight. Mrs. Fitzgerald's father was an Admiral of the Navy and if she can not fight her father could.
Mrs. Fitzgerald spoke at length in the interest of the home and the family, showing the evolution that had taken place until now ”the Government touches upon every phase of our home life and largely dictates its conditions while at the same time the woman is held responsible for them and is working with her hands tied behind her back and she asks the vote in order to do her woman's work better.”
Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw of New York spoke beautifully of the desire of the mothers of the rising generation that their daughters should not have to enter the hard struggle for the suffrage and pictured the need for the highest development of the womanly character. Mrs. Elsie Cole Phillips of Wisconsin showed the standpoint of the so-called working cla.s.ses, saying in part:
The right to vote is based primarily on the democratic theory of government. ”The just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed.” What does that mean? Does it not mean that there is no cla.s.s so wise, so benevolent that it is fitted to govern any other cla.s.s? Does it not mean that in order to have a democratic government every adult in the community must have an opportunity to express his opinion as to how he wishes to be governed and to have that opinion counted? A vote is in the last a.n.a.lysis an expression of a need--either a personal need known to one as an individual as it can be known to no one else, or an expression of a need of those in whom we are interested--sister-women or children, for instance. The moment that one admits this concept of the ballot that moment practically all of the anti-suffrage argument is done away with.... Is it to strengthen the hands of the strong? Oh, no; it is to put into the hands of the weak a weapon of self-protection.
And who are the weak? Those who are economically handicapped--first of all the working cla.s.ses in their struggle for better conditions of life and labor. And who among the workers are the weak? Wherever the men have suffered, the women have suffered more.
But I would also like to point out to you how this affects the homekeeping woman, the wife and mother, of the working cla.s.s, aside from the wage-earning woman. Consider the woman at home who must make both ends meet on a small income. Who better than she knows whether or not the cost of living advances more rapidly than the wage does? Is not that a true statement in the most practical form of the problem of the tariff? And who better than she knows what the needs of the workers are in the factories?
Take the tenement-house woman, the wife and mother who is struggling to bring up a family under conditions which constantly make for evil. Who, better than the mother who has tried to bring up six or seven children in one room in a dark tenement house, knows the needs of a proper building? Who better than the mother who sees her boy and her girl playing in the streets knows the need of playgrounds? Who better than a mother knows what it means to a child's life--which you men demand that she as a wife and a mother shall care for especially--who, better than she, knows the cruel pressure that comes to that child from too early labor in what the U. S. census report calls ”gainful occupations”?
There is a practical wisdom that comes out of the pressure of life and an educational force in life itself which very often is more efficient than that which comes through textbooks of college.... The ignorant vote that is going to come in when women are enfranchised is that of the leisure-cla.s.s woman, who has no responsibilities and knows nothing of what life means to the rest of the world, who has absolutely no civic or social intelligence. But, fortunately for us, she is a small percentage of the women of this land, and fortunately for the land there is no such rapid means of education for her as to give her the ballot and let her for the first time feel responsibilities....
Now the time has come when the home and the State are one. Every act, every duty of the mother in the home is affected by something the State does or does not do, and the only way in which we are ever going to have our national housekeeping and our national child-rearing done as it should be is by bringing into the councils of the State the wisdom of women.
James Lees Laidlaw of New York was introduced as president of the National Men's League for Woman Suffrage and after stating that such leagues were being organized throughout the country he spoke of the great change that had taken place in the status of women and said:
Most important of all is the change of woman's position in industrial, commercial and educational fields. We are all familiar with the exodus of millions of women from the home into the mill and the factory. Today they may enter freely into business either as princ.i.p.al or employee. I was astonished to hear reported at a recent meeting of the Chamber of Commerce in New York that in the commercial high schools of that city, where a business education is given, 85 per cent. of the pupils are girls. We have today a great body of intelligent citizens with many interests in the Government besides their primary interests as mothers and home-keepers. If men are not going to take the next logical step they have made a great mistake in going thus far. Why give women property rights if we give them no rights in making the laws governing the control and disposition of their property and no vote as to who shall have the spending of tax money? Why give women the right to go into business or trades, either as employees or employers, without the right to control the conditions surrounding their business or trades? Why train women to be better mothers and better housekeepers and refuse them the right to say what laws shall be pa.s.sed to protect their children and homes? Why train women to be teachers, lawyers, doctors and scientists and say to them: ”Now you have a.s.sumed new responsibilities, go out into the world and compete with men,”
and then handicap them by depriving them of political expression?
Women now have the opportunity for equal mental development with men. Is it right or is it politically expedient that we should not avail ourselves of their special knowledge concerning those matters which vitally affect the human race?...
Mrs. Ella S. Stewart, president of the Illinois Suffrage a.s.sociation and member of the national board, contrasted the old academic plea for the ballot with the modern demand for it to meet the present intensely utilitarian age and continued: ”Today we know that the ballot is just a machine. In fact it impresses us as being something like the long-distance telephone which we in this scientific age have grown accustomed to use. We go into the polling booth and call up central (the Government) and when we get the connection we deliver our message with accuracy and speed and then we go about our business.
Women have been encouraged during the past to have opinions about governmental matters and there is no denying that we do have opinions.
If we could submit to you today the list of bills which the Federations of Women's Clubs of the various States have endorsed and for which they are working you would know that women have a large civic conscience and an intelligent appreciation of the measures which affect both women and the homes. They have been encouraged to have these opinions but to try to influence legislation only in indirect ways. Today, being practical and scientific, we are asking ourselves all the time why should we be limited to expressing our opinion on governmental affairs in our women's clubs? Why should we breathe them only in the prayer meeting or in the parlors of our friends? Why not directly into the governmental ear--the ballot box? Why do we not go into that long-distance telephone booth, get connection with central, and then know that our message has been delivered in the only place where it is recorded. The Government makes no record whatever of the opinions which we express in our women's clubs and our prayer meetings.”
Mrs. Caroline A. Lowe of Kansas City, Mo., spoke in behalf of the 7,000,000 wage-earning women of the United States from the standpoint of one who had earned her living since she was eighteen and declared that to them the need of the ballot was a vital one. She gave heart-breaking proofs of this fact and said:
From the standpoint of wages received we wage earners know it to be almost universal that the men in the industries receive twice the amount granted to us although we may be doing the same work.
We work side by side with our brothers; we are children of the same parents, reared in the same homes, educated in the same schools, ride to and fro on the same early morning and late evening cars, work together the same number of hours in the same shops and we have equal need of food, clothing and shelter. But at 21 years of age our brothers are given a powerful weapon for self-defense, a larger means for growth and self-expression. We working women, because we find our s.e.x not a source of strength but a source of weakness and a greater opportunity for exploitation, have even greater need of this weapon which is denied to us. Is there any justice underlying such a condition?
What of the working girl and her employer? Why is the ballot given to him while it is denied to us? Is it for the protection of his property that he may have a voice in the governing of his wealth, of his stocks and bonds and merchandise? The wealth of the working woman is far more precious to the welfare of the State. From nature's raw products the working cla.s.s can readily replace all of the material wealth owned by the employing cla.s.s but the wealth of the working woman is the wealth of flesh and blood, of all her physical, mental and spiritual powers. It is not only the wealth of today but that of future generations which is being bartered away so cheaply. Have we no right to a voice in the disposal of our wealth, the greatest that the world possesses, the priceless wealth of its womanhood? Is it not the cruelest injustice that the man whose material wealth is a source of strength and protection to him and of power over us should be given the additional advantage of an even greater weapon which he can use to perpetuate our condition of helpless subjection?...
The industrial basis of the life of the woman has changed and the political superstructure must be adjusted to conform to it. This industrial change has given to woman a larger horizon, a greater freedom of action in the industrial world. Greater freedom and larger expression are at hand for her in the political life. The time is ripe for the extension of the franchise to women.
We do not come before you to beg of you the granting of any favor. We present to you a glorious opportunity to place yourselves abreast of the current of this great evolutionary movement.
Mrs. Donald Hooker of Baltimore gave striking instances of the conditions in that State regarding the social evil, of the hundreds of virtuous girls who every year are forced into a life of shame, of the thousands of children who die because mothers have no voice in making laws for their protection. ”There was never a great act of injustice,”
she said, ”that was not paid for in human life and happiness. A great act of injustice is being perpetrated by denying women the right to vote.”
Miss Leonora O'Reilly, a leader among the working women of New York, made an impa.s.sioned plea that carried conviction. ”I have been a wage-earner since I was thirteen,” she said, ”and I know whereof I speak. I want to make you realize the lives of hundreds of girls I have seen go down in this struggle for bread. We working women want the ballot as our right. You say it is not a right but a privilege.