XII Woman Suffrage a Menace to Social Reform
Margaret C. Robinson
Margaret Casson Robinson, wife of Professor Benjamin L. Robinson of Harvard University; President of the Public Interests League of Massachusetts; President of the Jaffrey Village Improvement Society; Vice-President of the Cambridge Hospital League; Vice-President of the Friends of Poland; member of the Executive Board of the Cambridge Anti-Tuberculosis Association; Editor of the “Anti-Suffrage Notes,” and a frequent contributor to the press.
J. A. H.
The truth of our anti-suffrage doctrine that woman suffrage will destroy the present non-partisan power of women and give us nothing worth having in its place is constantly confirmed by the current happenings in suffrage states. We have now, in the eastern and middle states, a body of non-political women workers of incomparable value, and one is amazed at the wrong-headedness which would deprive society of their influence. Under present conditions the intelligent woman interested in public affairs brings the full force of her influence to bear upon legislation; her influence is a moral influence—it is direct and can be used with men of all political parties. The possession of this unprejudiced, unrestricted power is something which anti-suffragists value so highly that the threat of the suffragists to destroy it is a very serious grievance.
It is surprising that social workers and club women in larger numbers are not awake to this danger; but, as has well been said, deciding wisely on this question is not a matter of intelligence but of information; and it is easier to accept suffrage theories and the misinformation which suffrage orators generously supply as to how suffrage will work than to study the happenings in suffrage states and learn for oneself how it does work.
Social workers and club women know their present strength and how many good laws they have helped to put on the statute books. What they seemingly do not realize is how quickly this power will be gone when they divide into political parties. Many of them are apparently too ignorant of politics to understand that as voters it is only those men for whom they will vote that they can influence.
A despatch from Topeka, Kansas, describing the recent campaign in that state says that three years ago the Kansas Federation of Women’s Clubs lined up solidly for suffrage, and won it—and that they have not been lined up solidly for anything since! Instead of throwing their influence as a unit for good legislation, as women’s clubs are wont to do in male suffrage states, these women are divided into Republicans, Democrats, Progressives, and Socialists, and the friction among them is greater than ever before.
At the time Jane Addams joined the Progressive party it was very striking that such ardent suffragists as Ida Husted Harper and Edward Devine, editor of “The Survey,” should have protested publicly in the strongest terms against her action. They realized perfectly that political partisanship narrows a woman’s sphere of influence, and that Miss Addams as a member of the Progressive party could exercise much less influence upon Democrats and Republicans. She had before been able to reach men of all parties, but now her field had suddenly become immensely restricted in its scope. And while Mrs. Harper and Mr. Devine were perfectly willing, even eager, that other women should enter politics and ally themselves with political parties, Miss Addams was too valuable to the causes they had at heart, namely, suffrage and social service, for them to view with equanimity such a narrowing of her field of influence.
In an article on the “Legislative Influence of Unenfranchised Women,” by Mary R. Beard, which appeared in the “Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,” for November, 1914, Mrs. Beard, although an ardent suffragist, admits that women without the vote have been a strong influence toward good legislation. She says:
“National as well as state legislation has been affected by women, if the testimony of men like Harvey W. Wiley is accepted. In his campaign for pure food laws, he stated repeatedly that his strongest support came from women’s organizations. That support was not passive and moral, merely expressed to him privately, but these women inundated congress with letters, telegrams, petitions, pleading for the passage of the laws in question. These communications were presented to congress by their recipients who often urged as their reason for supporting pure food laws the appeals of women whose interests in food should not be ignored.
“The Consumers’ League of New York helped the national food committee to defeat a mischievous amendment to the Gould bill, which requires that all package goods should be labelled as to the amount of their contents.
“Mrs. Albion Fellowes Bacon, of Indiana, practically single-handed, secured the first tenement house laws of value for Evansville and Indianapolis. She did this before the National Housing Association, of which she is now a director, was formed. The recent improvements in the Indiana housing legislation are due apparently to her continued leadership and to the public opinion which she has helped to create. In her case it was personal initiative and moral persuasion.
“Another example of personal influence on legislation exerted by women is that of Frances Perkins, of New York, in her fight for the fifty-hour bill for the women workers of her state. Unlike Mrs. Bacon, Miss Perkins represented a society—the Consumers’ League—which asked for this measure, and she was supported in her demand by the Women’s Trade Union League and other organizations. The measure would have been defeated, as is widely known and acknowledged in New York, had it not been for the personal sagacity and watchfulness of Miss Perkins.
“The social service committee of the ‘American Club Woman’ states that in the first year of its existence it has done important and effective work. It was largely responsible for the passage of an ordinance by city councils regulating dance halls.
“Similar activities, both positive and negative, can be discovered in the records of practically every woman’s association not organized for purely literary purposes.”
We all know that this is true. Mrs. Beard also says:
“The woman’s influence lies not in physical force, but in the occasional subservience of the mind of man to the actual presence of a moral force.”
The influence of this moral force is so strong and has come to be so well recognized that certain types of politicians and commercial interests rebel against it. They wish to destroy it, and as the best means to that end they advocate—woman suffrage! That is not at all in line with what one is told at suffrage meetings. We are told that women need the ballot in order that they may improve the conditions in the home, that they may help the working girl, and put through good legislation. But the rank and file of suffragists are being deceived in these matters, for suffrage works, and will work directly the other way. The New York World has committed a great indiscretion and has let this cat out of the bag. The World recently came out for suffrage and gave its reasons. One of them is that a few women, representing perhaps ten per cent of the sex, have under present conditions too much influence. These women, the World says, “have maintained at times a reign of terror over legislative bodies, in consequence of which half the country is now bedeviled by some form or other of harem government, and legislators are forever making ridiculous concessions to women agitators.” These “women agitators” are, of course, the club women, social workers, and others interested in social welfare. In order to make it unnecessary for legislators to make “ridiculous concessions” to this type of woman, the World advocates—what? Giving the vote to all women! It has certainly hit upon the most effective expedient, and it is because the vote will do exactly what the World claims for it, that anti-suffragists are so opposed to it. The World says that most of the reasons urged in favor of suffrage are fantastic and unreal, that women are not purer and more noble than men, and that they are not so wise as men in general affairs. It admits that they will not purify politics—indeed, that they will confuse and disorganize government, without reforming it; but nevertheless it believes in woman suffrage because it will destroy the power of the ten per cent of women whose influence is now so strong!
The question for intelligent women to decide is whether or not they want this influence destroyed. If they wish to give up the moral influence which a body of women, educated, public-spirited, non-partisan, can wield—an influence so strong that legislators feel obliged to make what the World calls “ridiculous concessions” to it—if in its stead they wish to depend on political influence gained through the ballot, which can be applied only to one party, which can be entirely offset by the votes of women who are ignorant, boss-controlled, and whose votes are purchasable—if they prefer that, they will get their wish if woman suffrage wins. That is exactly how it is working out in the suffrage states. In Wyoming the politicians were clever enough to foresee this. Woman suffrage was granted by one of the most corrupt legislatures Wyoming ever had. These men knew that at that time good women were few in that sparsely settled State, and they knew they could “manage the others.”
Nevada is offering us a most perfect example of the good woman’s loss of influence by entering politics. The easy divorce laws of that state, in force until three years ago, were a national scandal. This was realized by certain women of the state, who in consequence brought their moral influence to bear upon the legislature for the repeal of these laws. Their efforts were successful and the laws were repealed. Woman suffrage was granted in Nevada last fall, and one of the very first acts of the legislature was to re-enact the easy divorce laws! These women again protested, but with no success. They were now voters, and the legislature knew perfectly well that plenty of women’s votes could be secured to offset those of the protesting women. The moral influence of this minority of Nevada women who cared for social betterment was gone since the vote had been given to all women.
In her admirable anti-suffrage address before the Maine legislature at the recent hearing on suffrage, Mrs. J. F. A. Merrill said:
“What do men do when they want to bring about a reform?
“They do as the men of Portland did a short time ago, when a number of citizens became convinced that the moral conditions in Portland were not what they should be. And what did they do? Did they vote about it? Did they form party organizations? No; they resorted as nearly as they could, to what is known as ‘women’s methods,’ and formed a non-partisan citizen’s committee, just as detached as possible from politics. And why did they resort to women’s methods? Simply because they had all had the vote since coming of age, and they all knew how useless it is as a means of accomplishing reform work.
“Gentlemen, in every community there are a handful of women who can be relied upon to carry on church and philanthropic and reform work; but we all know that the vast majority are indifferent, and that they neither help nor hinder. And then there is a third class, of women—the wrongminded. They do not hinder reform work now, because they cannot.
“But, gentlemen, when you give the ballot to all women your handful of earnest women in each community, who are willing to give their time and thought to reform work, will have only their handful of ballots to cast for reform measures; your great mass of indifferent women will be indifferent still, and will omit to cast their ballots, and your very considerable number of wrongminded women will have had a weapon put into their hands which they will not omit to use against your reform measures, because it is of importance to them to see to it that their way of life is not interfered with.
“So for the sake of reform which women have done in the past, and ought to be able to do in the future, we beg of you not to tie their hands and hamper them by giving suffrage to women!”
That is the matter in a nutshell—and proofs of the correctness of this statement are constantly multiplying. In an attempt to prove that woman suffrage will not lead women to neglect their homes, a writer signing herself “Annie Laurie” says in the San Francisco Examiner:
“I’ve been in Denver when a good man was being maligned and almost robbed by political enemies, and he needed the vote of every good woman in town to keep the good work he had done from being stultified. And do you think you could get a single woman out to vote for that man if she wanted to go to a ‘tea’ or to stay at home and knit socks for the new baby? You could not.”
This is just what anti-suffragists maintain—that the great body of home-making women will not vote.
The Woman Citizen, a suffrage publication of California, in its July issue, bears testimony on this question as follows:
“There are today many women in California and other States of the union who, being enfranchised, are too indifferent to vote. We are loath to believe that these women—thousands of them in the United States—are aware of the wrong they are doing. We do not think they know they are shirking a fundamental duty of citizenship. Too many ballots are cast in the cause of dishonesty and corruption. Honest and law-abiding citizens must exert their united strength at the polls to uphold honesty and good government. There are too many women today who are priviliged to vote, yet refrain from doing so either because they do not believe a woman should go to the polls, or because for some inexcusable reason they have neglected to register. They regard their franchise as an invitation to a bridge party, something they can accept or reject as their fancy dictates.”
There is no lack of testimony that the wrongminded women do vote. On November 4, the day after election, the San Francisco Examiner said: “McDonough Brothers had several automobiles busy all day long hauling Barbary coast dance hall girls and the inmates of houses on Commercial street to the different booths, and always the women were supplied with marked sample ballots.”
They were outvoting the women reformers!
What is the result? What is happening to moral conditions in San Francisco since women vote? The American Social Hygiene Association pointed out last spring that there had been an increase in the number of questionable dance halls, and the “Survey” of April 10 stated that danger signals were being flashed all over the country to young people bound for the exposition, as there was much unemployment, and the city’s moral condition gave cause for anxiety.
A later report, by Bascom Johnson, counsel of the Social Hygiene Association, who was sent to San Francisco for further investigation, appears in full in the September issue of “Social Hygiene.” It is far more serious than previous reports. Within the exposition are several concessions, maintained despite protests specifically against them, which are deplorably vicious. In the city itself conditions are appalling, the policemen being there apparently to prevent anything from interfering with the orderly and profitable traffic in vice.
Summing up his report, Mr. Johnston says, “in spite of announcements of officials to the contrary, San Francisco remains one of the few large cities of this country where prostitution is frankly and openly tolerated. The natural and inevitable result has been that San Francisco has become the Mecca of the underworld, and that for every such addition to her population the problem is rendered that much more difficult.”
These are the conditions in a city where women vote! Mr. Johnson says that the Y. W. C. A., the W. C. T. U. and other organizations of the kind have tried to improve these conditions, but have failed, as they received “little or no support from the city officials.” This fact is directly in opposition to the suffrage theory that women must have the vote in order that city and state officials shall pay heed to their wishes. If California were still under male suffrage—if the thousands of dissolute women in San Francisco who will vote as the party in power dictates did not have the vote—the moral influence of the ladies of the Y. W. C. A. and the W. C. T. U. would be much more likely to be a factor in the situation. If these ladies vote at all, their vote is divided between the Democrats, Republicans, Progressives, and Socialists, and is therefore of much less importance than the big vote which can be controlled. Dr. Helen Sumner, sent by the suffragists to study conditions in Denver several years ago, states that “the vote of these women to whom the police protection is essential is regarded as one of the perquisites of the party in power.”
With these facts in mind it is very clear that the statement constantly made by suffragists that after women are enfranchised they need not vote if they do not want to, is shallow and unprincipled, and the woman who makes it proves herself an unsafe person to be enfranchised. The stay-at-home vote is a great and serious menace.
Voting differs from the higher education and other so-called “woman’s rights.” They are privileges only. Whether a girl goes to college or does not go to college is a personal matter, and her decision works no danger to other girls or to the community. The college is there, and she can go or not, as her taste and circumstances decide. But voting is a totally different matter. Enfranchisement confers a privilege and an obligation, the obligation being inseparable from the privilege. Since the shirking of this obligation means a serious menace to the community, the unwillingness of a large majority of women to accept the obligation is a factor of the utmost importance in the situation.
The San Francisco Chronicle says: “Results show that in this state women refuse to accept the obligation which at their request, or upon their apparent acquiescence, has been imposed upon them, or to discharge the resulting duties. The question, then, for the people of other states to decide is the light of experience of the western States is whether it is in the public interest to impose on women imperative duties which the great majority of them refuse to discharge after they have been imposed upon them.”
Another danger connected with woman suffrage is this—the character of the women chosen for the positions of responsibility will change.
The Woman’s Journal of March 20, 1915, speaking of Mayor Harrison, of Chicago, says: “If he had occasion to appoint a welfare worker for women and children, he did not appoint a woman who had experience for the work and could do it well, but picked out a woman who would be a cog in his political machine.” Naturally! It is when women are outside politics that they are appointed on their merits. When they have the vote those are naturally chosen who are cogs in the political machine.
The suffragists never tire of quoting Julia Lathrop. As she holds an important position as head of the Federal Children’s Bureau, they consider her views on suffrage, since her views coincide with theirs, as most valuable and important. What is important is the fact that if Miss Lathrop were allied with a political party she would not be holding the position which is supposed to give her views such weight. It was only because she was a woman and a non-partisan that she retained her position at the change of administration, when the Republicans went out and the Democrats came in. Every man at the head of a similar bureau lost his job!
Miss Jane Addams, in a suffrage speech in Boston, claimed that by means of the ballot women in Chicago have accomplished several important reforms. These were:
1. Covered markets had been secured where food might be kept clean.
2. A court for boys of 17 and under 25 had been established.
3. Public wash-houses have been established.
4. The garbage dumps have been abolished.
The record of accomplishments of Chicago women voters as presented by Miss Addams is not impressive, for the reforms she cites have been accomplished in other cities without votes for women.
What the women accomplished in Chicago before they got the vote makes a much more impressive showing. It is to them, says the Chicago Tribune, that Chicago owes the kindergarten in the public school, the juvenile court and detention home, the small park and playground movement, the vacation school, the school extension, the establishment of a forestry department of the city government, the city welfare exhibit, the development of the Saturday half-holiday, the establishment of public comfort stations, the work of the Legal Aid Society, and the reformation of the Illinois Industrial School. This is a long and brilliant list of women’s achievements, not to be matched by the voting women of any state. Chicago women were working together when these things were accomplished—now they are fighting each other in rival political parties.
Henry M. Hyde, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, which has long supported the woman suffrage movement, wrote over his own signature his impressions of last spring’s election in Chicago, and the part women played in it. He says:
“The first mayoralty campaign in which women voters participated failed to develop the refining and elevating influence which the sex was expected to exert. When one sees a woman of dignified presence and cultivated appearance greeted with torrents of hisses and insults from the frenzied lips of both men and women; when one sees her finally driven from the platform with no chance of speaking a word, one is tempted to retire to some quiet spot for a moment and meditate on what it all means.
“When one watches a venerable lady trying to quell the tumult by waving a flag and almost dancing to the same rhythm, while 1,200 shrieking men and women order her to ‘sit down and chase herself,’ one remembers his own grandmother, and makes a feeble effort to blush. One is almost tempted to pick that discarded and discredited old relic once known as masculine chivalry out of the scrap heap, and see how many people would recognize it.”
These references are to a woman’s political mass meeting, which was described in a Chicago despatch to the Boston Herald as follows:
“A demonstration approaching a riot marked the women’s political meeting here today, and was ended only when the managers of the theatre where the meeting was held dropped the steel curtain and a spectator sent in a riot call for the police.”
Does this sort of thing tend to increase woman’s influence in uplifting and benefiting her community?
A suffrage writer said recently that the son who grows up to find his mother a voter will have a broadened respect for womanhood. With these scenes in Chicago in mind, do you think he will? Suppose she has just voted for Bath-House John, the notorious candidate who got a majority of the women’s votes in his ward, or in favor of saloons, as thousands of women have done—will he have added respect for her? This same writer says: “It might be a new and stimulating experience for a man to have to explain to his wife just why he was voting on the side of a corrupt boss, in favor of the liquor traffic, or against the suppression of child labor.” But if she had just done those things herself—and in Chicago the women voted just as the men did—why should the experience be a stimulating one?
Jane Addams, while on her foreign mission of “Peace—with suffrage” said in London, on May 12, 1915:
“I am a strong supporter of woman suffrage, and, although I hope to see the women of England enfranchised, I see around me endless opportunities for social work which could be usefully performed while the vote is being won.”
The interesting point about this is that English women have for many years had the vote on all matters pertaining to housing, care of the poor, sanitation, education, liquor regulations, police, care of the insane, care of children, etc. Probably Miss Addams does not know this. They have failed completely to do with the vote what even Miss Addams, confirmed and prejudiced suffragist that she is, admits that they could do perfectly well without the vote. This is certainly a striking admission on her part.
Why have they failed so lamentably? Mrs. Pethick Lawrence tells us. She says:
“I never saw so many women working for social betterment as I have seen in the American cities I have visited. In England women have turned their attention to politics and have accomplished nothing like so much in civic reform.”
Anti-suffragists ask women not to turn their attention to politics and neglect civic reform; not to make this appalling mistake, which will set back the social progress of our cities for many years; not to make powerless, through woman suffrage, as the New York World wants to do, the women who are now working for social betterment.
The suffragists apparently do not care what evils follow, provided they get their way.
The Rev. Anna Shaw, president of the National Suffrage Association, says:
“I believe in woman suffrage whether all women vote or no women vote; whether all women vote right or all women vote wrong; whether all women will love their husbands after they vote or forsake them; whether they will neglect their children or never have any children.”
In introducing this astounding statement, Dr. Shaw declared: “I believe I speak for the thousands of women belonging to the national association.”
Perhaps she does. At least no one of them has been heard to deny it; but fortunately she does not speak for the 24,000,000 women of voting age in the United States who are not members of the National Suffrage association. Many of these do care for public welfare, for social well-being, and for human happiness, all of which would be destroyed if all women voted wrong, if they deserted their husbands, and neglected their children. Anti-suffragists protest against having political power put into the hands of women with no higher ideals than those of Dr. Shaw and her followers. They neither wish to be ruled by such women nor do they wish to have to wage an eternal fight not to be ruled by them, and one thing or the other will be necessary if the ballot is forced upon women. In California the men are begging the home-making type of women to come out and fight the political women, whom they already recognize as a danger and a nuisance.
Men who believe in fair play will refuse to force political life upon all the women of their states because a small fraction think they want it. Those who care for the political welfare of their states will decline to adopt this innovation, which assuredly cannot stand the tests of rational criticism and of experience. If they value in the slightest degree the assistance which educated, public-spirited women are able to give in securing enlightened legislation, they will certainly not favor votes for women; for what woman suffrage does is to take the power out of the hands of these women, who without the vote exert a strong moral influence toward good legislation, and put the power gained through an increase in the electorate into the hands of the bosses who can control the largest woman’s vote.
“Practical politicians” are learning this lesson rapidly. The New York Commercial calls attention to the fact that in our cities the female vote is more easily manipulated than the male. This fact does not escape the bosses, and they are rapidly coming into line for woman suffrage. While woman suffrage was largely an untried theory suffragists could maintain with some plausibility that woman’s vote would be cast for moral and humane legislation, and would purify politics; but with the actual conditions in Chicago, San Francisco, Reno, Denver, and Seattle what they are, this theory no longer holds water, and it is becoming increasingly evident that the way to do away with the moral influence of women in public life is to give the vote to all women.