Woman and the Republic by Helen Kendrick Johnson

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WOMAN AND THE REPUBLIC

A SURVEY OF THE WOMAN-SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES AND A
DISCUSSION OF THE CLAIMS AND ARGUMENTS OF ITS FOREMOST ADVOCATES BY

HELEN KENDRICK JOHNSON

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER II. IS WOMAN SUFFRAGE DEMOCRATIC?
CHAPTER III. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
CHAPTER IV. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND PHILANTHROPY
CHAPTER V. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE LAWS
CHAPTER VI. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE TRADES
CHAPTER VII. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE PROFESSIONS
CHAPTER VIII. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND EDUCATION
CHAPTER IX. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE CHURCH
CHAPTER X. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND SEX
CHAPTER XI. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE HOME
CHAPTER XII. CONCLUSION

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

The introduction to the "History of Woman Suffrage," published in 1881-85,
edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn
Gage, contains the following statement: "It is often asserted that, as
woman has always been man's slave, subject, inferior, dependent, under all
forms of government and religion, slavery must be her normal condition;
but that her condition is abnormal is proved by the marvellous change in
her character, from a toy in the Turkish harem, or a drudge in the German
fields, to a leader of thought in the literary circles of France, England,
and America."

I have made this quotation partly on account of its direct application to
the subject to be discussed, and partly to illustrate the contradictions
that seem to inhere in the arguments on which the claim to Woman Suffrage
is founded. If woman has become a leader of thought in the literary
circles of the most cultivated lands, she has not always been man's slave,
subject, inferior, dependent, under all forms of government and religion;
and, furthermore, it is not true that there has been such a marvellous
change in her character as is implied in this statement. Where man is a
bigot and a barbarian, there, alas! woman is still a harem toy; where man
is little more than a human clod, woman is to-day a drudge in the field;
where man has hewn the way to governmental and religious freedom, there
woman has become a leader of thought. The unity of race progress is
strikingly suggested by this fact. The method through which that unity is
maintained should unfold itself as we study the story of the sex
advancement of our time.

Progress is a magic word, and the Suffrage party has been fortunate in its
attempt to invoke the sorcery of the thought that it enfolds, and to blend
it with the claim of woman to share in the public duty of voting.
Possession of the elective franchise is a symbol of power in man's hand;
why should it not bear the same relation to woman's upward impulse and
action? Modern adherents ask, "Is not the next new force at hand in our
social evolution to come from the entrance of woman upon the political
arena?" The roots of these questions, and consequently of their answers,
lie as deep as the roots of being, and they cannot be laid bare by
superficial digging. But the laying bare of roots is not the only way, or
even the best way, to judge of the strength and beauty of a growth. We
look at the leaves, the flowers, and the fruit. "Movement" and "Progress"
are not synonymous terms. In evolution there is degeneration as well as
regeneration. Only the work that has been in accord with the highest
ideals of woman's nature is fitted to the environment of its advance, and
thus to survival and development. In order to learn whether Woman Suffrage
is in the line of advance, we must know whether the movement to obtain it
has thus far blended itself with those that have proved to be for woman's
progress and for the progress of government.

I am sure I need not emphasize the fact that, in studying some of the
principles that underlie the Suffrage movement, I am not impugning the
motives of the leaders. Nor need I dwell upon the fact that it is from the
good comradeship of men and women that has come to prevail under our free
conditions, that some women have hastily espoused a cause with which they
never have affiliated, because they supposed it to be fighting against
odds for the freedom of their sex.

The past fifty years have wrought more change in the conditions of life
than could many a Cathayan cycle. The growth of religious liberty,
enlargement of foreign and home missions, the Temperance movement, the
giant war waged for principle, are among the causes of this change. The
settlement of the great West, the opening of professions and trades to
woman consequent upon the loss of more than a half million of the nation's
most stalwart men, the mechanical inventions that have changed home and
trade conditions, the sudden advance of science, the expansion of mind and
of work that are fostered by the play of a free government,--all these
have tended to place man and woman, but especially woman, where something
like a new heaven and a new earth are in the distant vision.

To this change the Suffragists call attention, and say, "This is, in great
part, our work." In this little book I shall recount a few of the facts
that, in my opinion, go to prove that the Suffrage movement has had but
little part or lot in this matter. And because of these facts I believe
the principles on which the claim to suffrage is founded are those that
turn individuals and nations backward and not forward.

The first proof I shall mention is the latest one in time--it is the fact
of an Anti-Suffrage movement. In the political field alone are we being
formed into separate camps whose watchwords become more unlike as they
become more clearly understood. The fact that for the first time in our
history representatives of two great organizations of women are appealing
to courts and legislatures, each begging them to refuse the prayer of the
other, shows, as conclusively as a long argument could do, that this
matter of suffrage is something essentially distinct from the great series
of movements in which women thus far have advanced side by side. It is an
instinctive announcement of a belief that the demand for suffrage is not
progress; that it does array sex against sex; that woman, like man, can
advance only as the race advances; and that here lies the dividing line.

How absolute is that dividing line between woman's progress and woman
suffrage, we may realize when we consider what the result would be if we
could know to-morrow, beyond a peradventure, that woman never would vote
in the United States. Not one of her charities, great or small, would be
crippled. Not a woman's college would close its doors. Not a profession
would withhold its diploma from her; not a trade its recompense. Not a
single just law would be repealed, or a bad one framed, as a consequence.
Not a good book would be forfeited. Not a family would be less secure of
domestic happiness. Not a single hope would die which points to a time
when our cities will all be like those of the prophet's vision, "first
pure and then peaceable."

Among the forces that are universally considered progressive are: the
democratic idea in government, extinction of slavery, increase of
educational and industrial opportunities for woman, improvement in the
statute laws, and spread of religious freedom. The Woman-Suffrage movement
professed to champion these causes. That movement is now nearly fifty
years old, and has made a record by which its relation to them can be
judged. What is the verdict?

CHAPTER II.

IS WOMAN SUFFRAGE DEMOCRATIC?

As the claim of woman to share the voting power is related to the
fundamental principles of government, the progress of government must be
studied in relation to that claim in order to learn its bearing upon them.
It is possible to suggest in one brief chapter only the barest outline of
such a far-reaching scrutiny, and wiser heads than mine must search to
conclusion; but some beginnings looking toward an answer to the inquiry I
have raised have occurred to me as not having entered into the newly-
opened controversy on woman suffrage.

I say, the newly-opened controversy, for, through these fifty years, the
Suffragists have done nearly all the talking. So persistently have they
laid claim to being in the line of progress for woman, that many of their
newly aroused opponents fancied that the anti-suffrage view might be the
ultra conservative one, and that democratic principles, strictly and
broadly applied, might at last lead to woman suffrage, though premature if
pushed to a conclusion now.

The first step in finding out how far that position is true is, to
ascertain what the Suffragists say about this noblest of democracies, our
own Government. In referring to the "The History of Woman Suffrage" for
the opinions of the leaders, I am not only using a book that on its
publication was considered a strong and full presentment of their
arguments, but one which they are today advertising and selling as "a
perfect arsenal of the work done by and for women during the last half
century." In it the editors say: "Woman's political equality with man is
the legitimate outgrowth of the fundamental principles of our government."
Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, writing in the New York Sun in April, 1894, says:
"Never, until the establishment of universal [male] suffrage, did it
happen that all the women in a community, no matter how well born, how
intelligent, how well educated, how virtuous, how wealthy, were counted
the political inferiors of all the men, no matter how base born, how
stupid, how ignorant, how brutal, how poverty-stricken. This anomaly is
the real innovation. Men have personally ruled the women of their
families; the law has annihilated the separate existence of women; but
women have never been subjected to the political sovereignty of all men
simply in virtue of their sex. Never, that is, since the days of the
ancient republics." Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick, who, as Secretary of the
New-England Suffrage Association, was put forward to meet all comers,
writing in July, 1895, said: "Shall we, as a people, be true to our
principles and enfranchise woman? or, shall we drift along in the meanest
form of oligarchy known among men--an oligarchy which exalts every sort of
a male into a ruler simply because he is a male, and debases every woman
into a subject simply because she is a woman?" Mrs. Fanny B. Ames,
speaking in Boston in 1896, said: "I believe woman suffrage to be the
final result of the evolution of a true democracy." Not only has every
woman speaker or writer in favor of suffrage presented this idea in some
form, but the men also who have taken that side have done likewise. One
among those who advocated the cause before the Committee in the
Constitutional Convention of New York, said: "Woman Suffrage is the
inevitable result of the logic of the situation of modern society. The
despot who first yielded an inch of power gave up the field. We are
standing in the light of the best interests of the State of New York when
we stand in the way of this forward movement."

All these writers charge the American Republic with being false to
democratic principles in excluding women from the franchise, while but one
of them alludes to the fact that in the ancient republics the same
"anomaly" was seen.

As I read political history, the facts go to show that the fundamental
principles of our Government are more opposed to the exercise of suffrage
by women than are those of monarchies. To me it seems that both despotism
and anarchy are more friendly to woman's political aspirations than is any
form of constitutional government, and that manhood suffrage, and not
womanhood suffrage, is the final result of the evolution of democracy.

The Suffragists repeatedly call attention to the fact that in the early
ages in Egypt, in Greece, and in Rome, women were of much greater
political consequence than later during the republics; but the moral they
have drawn has been that of the superiority of the ancient times. Mrs.
Dietrick says: "The ideal woman of Greece was Athena, patroness of all
household arts and industries, but equally patroness of all political
interests. The greatest city of Greece was believed to have been founded
by her, and Greek history recorded that, though the men citizens voted
solidly to have the city named for Neptune, yet the women citizens voted
solidly for Athena, beat them by one vote, and carried that political
matter. If physical force had been a governing power in Greece, and men
its manifestation, how could such a story have been published by Greek men
down to the second century before our era?"

Mrs. Dietrick's remarkably realistic version of the old myth does not tell
the tale as Greek men published it. Varro, who was educated at Athens,
goes on to say: "Thereupon, Neptune became enraged, and immediately the
sea flowed over all the land of Athens. To appease the god, the burgesses
were compelled to impose a threefold punishment upon their wives--they
were to lose their votes; the children were to receive no more the
mother's name; and they themselves were no longer to be called Athenians,
after the goddess." It seems to me this fable teaches that physical force
was indeed the governing power in Athens at that day, and that men were
its manifestation.

The legend is generally taken to indicate the time when the Greek gens
progressed to the family. In the ruder time, the legitimacy of the
chieftain might be traced, because the mother, though not always the
father, could be known with certainty. When the father became the
acknowledged head of the household, a distinct advance was made toward
that heroic age in which the vague but towering figures of men and women
move across the stage. Goddesses, queens, princesses, are powerful in love
and war. Sibyls unfold the meaning of the book of fate. Vestals feed the
fires upon the highest and lowest altars. Later, throughout most of the
states of Greece, something like the following order of political life is
seen: from kings to oligarchs, from oligarchs to tyrants or despots, from
them to some form of restricted constitutional liberty. In Sparta, all
change of government was controlled by the machinery of war, and the
soldiers were made forever free. Athens, separated from the rest of
Greece, was less agitated by outward conflict. In government she passed
from king to archon; from hereditary archon to archons chosen for ten
years, but always from one family, then to those elected for one year,
nine being chosen. At the time of the Areopagus there were four classes of
citizens. The first three paid taxes, had a right to share in the
government, and formed the defence of the state. If women were of
political importance in earlier times, and if a republic is more favorable
to the exercise by them of the elective franchise, we should expect to
find women reaching their highest power under the Areopagus. Exactly the
contrary appears to be true. Native and honorable Greek women retired to
domestic life as the liberty of their people grew. Grote, in his "History
of Greece," referring to the legendary period, says: "We find the wife
occupying a station of great dignity and influence, though it was the
practice of the husband to purchase her by valuable presents to her
parents. She even seems to live less secluded, and to enjoy a wider sphere
of action, than was allotted to her in historic Greece."

Lecky, in his "European Morals," says: "It is one of the most remarkable
and, to some writers, one of the most perplexing facts in the moral
history of Greece, that in the former and ruder period women had
undoubtedly the highest place, and their type exhibited the highest
perfection." What the "highest perfection" is, for her type, or for man's
type, is not here under discussion; but it is not out of place to say in
passing that if the final conquest of the spiritual over the material
forces of humanity is really the aim of civilization, these "facts in the
moral history of Greece" become less "perplexing."

The heroines of Homer's tales were all of noble birth--they were
goddesses, princesses, hereditary gentlewomen. In early historic times,
also, it was only royal or gentle blood that secured for woman political
power. Athena was, in gentle Athens, patroness of household arts; but in
Sparta, as Minerva, the same divinity was goddess, not of political
interests, as Mrs. Dietrick puts it, but of war. She sprang full-armed
from the head of Jove--rather a masculine origin, it must be owned. In
Sparta women became soldiers as the democratic idea advanced. Princess
Archidamia, marching at the head of her female troop to rebuke the
senators for the decree that the women and children be removed from the
city before the anticipated attack could come, is an example. In Etolia,
in Argos, and in other states, the same was true. Maria and Telesilla led
the women in battle and disciplined them in peace. But the world does not
turn to Sparta for its ideal of a pre-Christian republic, and the
Suffragists of our day do not propose to emulate the Spartan Amazon and
hew their way to political power with the sword.

In Athens, which does present the model, matters were far otherwise. In
the year 700 B. C., the Spartans called upon Athens for a commander to
lead them to the second Messenian war, and the Athenians sent them
Tyrtaeus, their martial poet. The Spartans were displeased at his youth
and gentle bearing; but when the battle was joined, his chanting of his
own war-songs so animated the troops that they won against heavy odds. The
following is a fragment translated from one of his lyrics:

"But be it ours to guard the hallowed spot,
To shield the tender offspring and the wife;
Here steadily await our destined lot,
And, for their sakes, resign the gift of life."

Aeschylus, poet and soldier, writing a hundred and fifty years later, in
his "Seven Against Thebes," puts into the mouth of the chieftain Eteocles
this address to the women:

"It is not to be borne, ye wayward race;
Is this your best, is this the aid you lend
The state, the fortitude with which you steel
The souls of the besieged, thus falling down
Before the images to wail, and shriek
With lamentations loud? Wisdom abhors you.
Nor in misfortune, nor in dear success,
Be woman my associate. If her power
Bears sway, her insolence exceeds all bounds;
But if she fears, woe to that house and city.
And now by holding counsel with weak fear,
You magnify the foe, and turn our men
To flight. Thus are we ruined by ourselves.
This ever will arise from suffering women
To intermix with men. But mark me well,
Whoe'er henceforth dares disobey my orders--
Be it man or woman, old or young--
Vengeance shall burst upon him, the decree
Stands irreversible, and he shall die.
War is no female province, but the scene
For men. Hence, home! nor spread your mischiefs here.
Hear you, or not? Or speak I to the deaf?"

Pericles, in his famous funeral oration over those who fell in the
Peloponnesian war, thus addresses the Athenian women: "To the wives who
will henceforth live in widowhood, I will speak, in one short sentence
only, of womanly virtue. She is the best woman who is most truly a woman,
and her reputation is the highest whose name is never in the mouths of men
for good or for evil."

Seclusion was the best thing that the most intellectual pre-Christian
republic could give to its honorable women. The freedom with which the
hetairse, who were foreigners or daughters of slaves, mingled with
statesmen and philosophers, brought them open political influence, but not
a hint of voting power or of office-holding.

For the sake of brevity, I will confine my reference to Roman custom to a
single pregnant sentence from Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Empire."
He says: "In every age and country the wiser, or at least the stronger of
the two sexes, has usurped the powers of the state, and confined the other
to the cares and pleasures of domestic life. In hereditary monarchies,
however, and especially in those of modern Europe, the gallant spirit of
chivalry, and the law of succession, have accustomed us to allow a
singular exception, and a woman is often acknowledged the absolute
sovereign of a great kingdom, in which she would be deemed incapable of
exercising the smallest employment, civil or military. But, as the Roman
Emperors were still considered as the generals and magistrates of the
Republic, their wives and mothers, although dignified by the name of
Augusta, were never associated to their personal honors; and a female
reign would have appeared an inexplicable prodigy in the eyes of those
primitive Romans, who married without love, or loved without delicacy or
respect."

The warlike states named republics in the Middle Ages had no woman Doge,
or Duke, although women rose to the semblance of political power with
empires and kingdoms, in Italy and Spain as well as in Germany and France,
Austria and Russia.

Let us turn to modern Europe, in which thrones have been occupied now and
again by queens. The progress of woman here, especially in Anglo-Saxon
countries, has been steady, true and inspiring. In the earliest recorded
councils of the race from which we sprang, we see freemen in full armor
casting equal votes. During the ages of feudalism, women who were land-
owners had the same rights as other nobles. They could raise soldiery,
coin money, and administer justice in both civil and criminal proceedings.
In proportion as the aristocratic power lost its hold, women were exempted
from these services and gained in moral influence. The Germanic races were
renowned for their respect for woman, and their love for home. As
constitutional liberty grew, and each Englishman's house became his castle
for defence against arbitrary power, the protection was not for himself
but for his family. A figure-head ruler in feminine attire sits on
England's throne to-day--the England that still unites its church and
state, and in which feudal customs still prevail to some extent. Widows
and spinsters who are property-owners can vote for all offices except the
one charged under the Constitution with the framing and execution of the
laws of the land. Aristocracy decrees that in the House of Lords the
Bishops shall have a voice; but in the House of Commons no clergyman can
hold a seat, and for members of Parliament no woman votes. Would any
Suffragist hold that a clergyman was the inferior of men who do sit in the
House of Commons? They are excluded for the same reason that woman has not
the parliamentary vote--they are looked upon as non-combatants.

The Greek and Roman republics appear to have followed an instinct that was
unerring in the condition of society when they removed women from the
seats of power as the commonwealth gathered strength. Gibbon, in the
sentences quoted, attributes the fact that queens as well as kings have
occupied the thrones of modern Europe to the chivalry of men toward those
who would yet be incapable of exercising actual power except for the
backing of a standing army, or an hereditary nobility sworn to their
support, both of which are composed solely of men. If this be true, it
should be visible in the workings of the constitutional restrictions upon
monarchies that have developed in the past fifty years, during which the
principle of democratic government has advanced with enormous strides over
a great portion of the globe.

In the Austro-Hungarian monarchy there is restricted woman suffrage. The
kingdom of Italy has restricted municipal woman suffrage. The little
republic that separates those countries, the land of Tell and the Vaudois,
has direct manhood suffrage only.

Sweden and Norway are apparently parting company. Sweden chooses to keep
its king and its aristocracy, and it has restricted woman suffrage; but
Norway, which is working toward free institutions, and last year voted to
remove the insignia of union from the Norwegian flag, has no woman
suffrage. [Footnote: In the city of Berne, Switzerland, in 1852, a proxy
vote was given to independent women who paid a commercial tax, but they
made no effort to use it until 1885, when contending political factions
compelled them to do so in a measure. Norway's women have a local school
vote. Both these cases of exception serve to prove the rule that I am
trying to set forth.]

Autocratic Russia and its Asiatic colonies have more woman suffrage than
England. Finland, a constitutional monarchy, was ceded to the Emperor of
Russia in 1809. Women there have all except the parliamentary suffrage.
The Governor-General of the Senate is nominated by the Emperor, and is
chief of the military force. The National Assembly is convoked by the
Emperor whenever he sees fit. The duties of that Assembly are to consider
laws proposed by the Emperor and elaborated by the Committee of Affairs
and four members nominated by the Emperor, who sit in St. Petersburg. The
Emperor has the veto power over any act of theirs. That National Assembly
consists of representatives of the nobility, the clergy, the burghers, and
the peasantry, the consent of all of whom must be obtained to any measure
that makes a change in the constitution or imposes taxes. But the royal
veto can set aside any decision.

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