Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States Part 8

I now propose to read from a pamphlet sent to me by a lady whom I am not able to characterize as a resident of any State, although I believe she resides in the State of Maine. I do not know whether she be wife or mother. She signs this pamphlet as Adeline D.T. Whitney. I have read it twice, and read it to pure and gentle and intellectual women. I say to-day it ought to be in every household in this broad land. It ought to be the domestic gospel of every true, gentle, loving, virtuous woman upon all this continent. There is not one line or syllable in it that is not written in letters of gold. I shall not read it, for my strength does not suffice, nor will the patience of the Senate permit, but from beginning to end it breathes the womanly sentiment which has made pure and great men and gentle and loving women.

I will venture to say, in my great admiration and respect for this woman, whether she be married or single, she ought to be a wife, and ought to be a mother. Such a woman could only have brave and wise men for sons and pure and virtuous women for daughters. Here is her advice to her s.e.x. I am only sorry that every word of it could not be read in the Senate, but I have trespa.s.sed too long.

Mr. c.o.c.kRELL. Let it be printed in your remarks.

Mr. VEST. I shall ask that it be printed. I will undertake, however, to read only a few sentences, not of exceptional superiority to the rest, because every sentence is equal to every other. There is not one impure unintellectual aspiration or thought throughout the whole of it. Would to G.o.d that I knew her, that I could thank her on behalf of the society and politics of the United States for this production.

After all--

She says to her own s.e.x--

After all, men work for women; or, if they think they do not, it would leave them but sorry satisfaction to abandon them to such existence as they could arrange without us.

Oh, how true that is; how true!

In blessed homes, or in scattered dissipations of show, amus.e.m.e.nt, or the worse which these shows and amus.e.m.e.nts are but terribly akin to, women give purpose to and direct the results of all men's work. If the false standards of living first urge them, until at length the horrible intoxication of the game itself drives them on further and deeper, are we less responsible for the last state of those men than for the first?

Do you say, if good women refused these things and tried for a simpler and truer living, there are plenty of bad ones who would take them anyhow, and supply the motive to deeper and more unmitigated evil? Ah, there come both answer and errand again. Raise the fallen--at least, save the growing womanhood--stop the destruction that rushes accelerating on, before you challenge new difficulty and danger with an indiscriminate franchise. Are not these bad women the very "plenty"

that would out-balance you at the polls if you persist in trying the "patch-and-plaster" remedy of suffrage and legislation.

Recognize the fact, the law, that your power, your high commission, is inward, vital, formative and causal. Bring all questions of choice or duty to this test; will it work at the heart of things, among the realities and forces? Try your own life by this; remember that mere external is falsehood and death. The letter killeth. Give up all that is only of the appearance, or even chiefly so, in conscious delight and motive--in person, surrounding, pursuit. Let your self-presentation, your home-making and adorning, your social effort and interest, your occupation and use of talent, all shape and issue for the things that are essentially and integrally good, and that the world needs to have prevail. Until you can do this, and induce such doing, it is of little use to clamor for mere outward right or to contend that it would be rightly applied.

This whole pamphlet is a magnificent ill.u.s.tration of that stupendous and vital truth that the mission and sphere of woman is in the inward life of man; that she must be the building up and governing power that comes from those better impulses, those inward secrets of the heart and sentiment that govern men to do all that is good and pure and holy and keep them from all that is evil.

Mr. President, the emotions of women govern. What would be the result of woman suffrage if applied to the large cities of this country is a matter of speculation. What women have done in times of turbulence and excitement in large cities in the past we know. Open that terrible page of the French Revolution and the days of terror, when the click of the guillotine and the rush of blood through the streets of Paris demonstrated to what extremities the ferocity of human nature can be driven by political pa.s.sion. Who led those blood-thirsty mobs? Who shrieked loudest in that hurricane of pa.s.sion? Woman. Her picture upon the pages of history to-day is indelible. In the city of Paris in those ferocious mobs the controlling agency, nay, not agency, but the controlling and princ.i.p.al power, came from those whom G.o.d has intended to be the soft and gentle angels of mercy throughout the world. But I have said more than I intended. I ask that this pamphlet be printed in my remarks.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. If there be no objection, the pamphlet will be printed in the RECORD as requested by the Senator from Missouri. The Chair hears no objection.

The pamphlet is as follows:

THE LAW OF WOMAN-LIFE.

The external arguments on both sides the modern woman question have been pretty thoroughly presented and well argued. It seems needless to repeat or recombine them; but in one relation they have scarcely been handled with any direct purpose. Justice and expediency have been the points insisted on or contested; these have not gone back far enough; they have not touched the central fact, to set it forth in its force and finality. The fact is original and inherent, behind and at the root of the entire matter, with all its complication and circ.u.mstance. We have to ask a question to which it is the answer, and whose answer is that of the whole doubt and dispute.

What is the law of woman-life?

What was she made woman for, and not man?

Shall we look back to that old third chapter of Genesis?

When mankind had taken the knowledge and power of good and evil into their own hands through the mere earthly wisdom of the serpent; when the woman had had her hasty outside way and lead, according to the story, and woe had come of it, what was the sentence? And was it a penance, or a setting right, or a promise, or all three?

The serpent was first dealt with. The narrow policy, the keen cunning, the little, immediate outlook, the expedient motive; all that was impersonated of temporary s.h.i.+ft and outward prudence in mortal affairs, regardless of, or blind to, the everlasting issues; all, in short, that represented material and temporal interest as a rule and order--and is not man's external administration upon the earth largely forced to be a legislation upon these principles and economies?--was disposed of with the few words, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman."

Was this punishment--as reflected upon the woman--or the power of a grand retrieval for her? Not to man, who had been led, and who would be led again, by the woman, was the commission of holy revenge intrusted; but henceforth, "I will set the woman against thee." Against the very principle and live prompting of evil, or of mere earthly purpose and motive. "Between thy seed and her seed." Your struggle with her shall be in and for the very life of the race. "It," her life brought forth, "shall bruise thy head,"

thy whole power, and plan, and insidious cunning; "and thou shall bruise," shalt sting, torment, hinder, and trouble in the way and daily going, "his heel," his footstep. Thou, the subtle and creeping thing of the ground, shalt lurk after and threaten with crookedness and poison the ways of the men-children in their earth-toiling; the woman, the mother, shall turn upon thee for and in them and shall beat thee down!

Unto the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception." The burden and the glory are set in one. The pain of the world shall be in your heart; the trouble, the contradiction of it, shall be against your love and insight. But your pain shall be your power; you shall be the life-bearer; you shall hold the motive; yours shall be the desire, and your husband's the dominion. Therefore shall you bring your aspiration to him, that he may fulfill it for you. "Your desire shall be unto him, and he shall rule."

And unto Adam He said, "Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife"--yes, and because thou wilt hearken--"thy sorrow shall be in the labor of the earth; the ground shall be cursed;"

in all material things shall be cross and trouble, not against you, but "for your sake." "In your sorrow you shall eat of it all the days of your life." Your need and struggle shall be with external things, and with the ruling of them. "For your sake,"

that you may learn your mastery, inherit your true power, carry out with ease and understanding the desire and need of the race, which woman represents, discerns afar, and pleads to you.

And Adam bowed before the Lord's judgment; we are not told that he answered anything to that; but he turned to his wife, and in that moment "called her name Eve, because she was the mother of all living." Then and there was the division made; and to which, can we say, was the empire given? Both were set in conditions, hemmed in to divine and special work: man, by the stress and sorrow of the ground; woman, by the stress and sorrow of her maternity, and of her spiritual conception, making her truly the "mother of all the living."

At the beginning of human history, or tradition, then, we get the answer to our question: the law of woman-life is central, interior, and from the heart of things; the law of the man's life is circ.u.mferential, enfolding, shaping, bearing on and around, outwardly; wheel within wheel is the const.i.tution of human power.

It will be an evil day for the world when the nave shall leave its place and contend for that of the felloe. Iron-rimmed for its busy revolution and outward contact is the life and strength of man; but the tempered steel is at the heart and within the soul of the woman, that she may bear the silent pressure of the axle, and quietly and invisibly originate and support the entire onward movement. "The spirit of the living creature is in the wheels,"

and they can move no otherwise. "When the living creatures went, the wheels went by them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up." That was what Ezekiel saw in his vision.

There can he no going forward without a life and presence and impulse at the center; and in the organization of humanity there is where the place and power of woman have been put. For good or for evil, for the serpent or for the redeeming Christ, she must move, must influence, must achieve beforehand, and at the heart; she must be the mother of the race; she must be the mother of the Messiah. Not woman in her own person, but "one born of woman," is the Saviour. For everything that is formed of the Creator, from the unorganized stone to the thought of righteousness in the heart of the race, there must be a matrix; in the creation and in the recreation of His human child G.o.d makes woman and the soul of woman His blessed organ and instrument. When woman clears herself of her own perversions, her self-imposed limitations, returns to her spiritual power and place, and cries, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word," then shall the spirit descend unto her; then shall come the redemption.

Take this for the starting-point; it is the key.

Within, behind, antecedent to all result in action, are the place and office of the woman--by the law of woman-life. And all question of her deed and duty should be brought to this test. Is it of her own, interior, natural relation, putting her at her true advantage, harmonious with the key to which her life is set? I think this suffrage question must settle itself precisely upon this ground-principle, and that all argument should range conclusively around it. Judging so, we should find, I think, that not at the polls, where the last utterance of a people's voice is given--where the results of character, and conscience, and intelligence are shown--is her best and rightful work: on the contrary, that it is useless here, unless first done elsewhere.

But where little children learn to think and speak--where men love and listen, and the word is forming--is the office she has to fill, the errand she has to do. The question is, can she do both?

Is there need that she should do both? Does not the former and greater include the latter and less?

Hers are indeed the primary meetings: in her nursery, her home, and social circles; with other women, with young men, upon whose tone and character in her maturity her womanhood and motherhood join their beautiful and mighty influence; above all, among young girls--the "little women," to whom the ensign and commission are descending--is her undisputed power. Purify politics? Purify the sewers? But what if, first, the springs, and reservoirs, and conduits could be watched, guarded, filtered, and then the using be made clean and careful all through the homes; a better system devised and carried out for separating, neutralizing, destroying hurtful refuse? Then the poisonous gases might not be creeping back upon us through our enforced economies, our makes.h.i.+fts and stop-gaps of outside legislation. For legislation is, after all, but cut-off, curb, and patch; an external, troublesome, partial, uncertain application of hindrance and remedy. What physician will work with lotion and plaster when he can touch, and control, and heal at the very seat of the disease?

It is the beginning of the fulfillment that women have waked to the consciousness that they have not as yet filled their full place in human life and affairs. Only has not the mistake been made of contending with and grappling results, when causes were in their hands? Have they not let go the mainsprings to run after and effectually push with pins the refractory cogs upon the wheel-rims?

Woman always deserts herself when she puts her life and motive and influence in mere outsides. Outsides of fas.h.i.+on and place, outsides of charm and apparel, outsides of work and ambition--she must learn that these are not her true showing; she must go hack and put herself where G.o.d has called her to be with Himself, at the silent, holy inmost; then we shall feel, if not at once, yet surely soon or some time, a new order beginning. He, the Father of all, gives it to us to be the motherhood. That is the great solving and upraising word; not limited to mere parentage, but the law of woman-life. For good or for evil she mothers the world.

Not all are called to motherhood in the literal sense, but all are called to the great, true motherhood in some of its manifold trusts and obligations. "_n.o.blesse oblige_;" you can not lay it down. "More are the children of the desolate than of her who hath a husband." All the little children that are born must look to womanhood somewhere for mothering. Do they all get it? All the works and policies of men look back somewhere for a true "desire"

toward and by which only they can rule. Is the desire of the woman--of the home, the mother-motive of the world and human living--kept in the integrity and beauty for which it was intrusted to her, that it might move the power of man to n.o.ble ends?

Do you ask the governing of the nation? You have the making of the nation. Would you choose your statesmen? First make your statesmen.

Indeed the whole cause on trial may be summarily ended by the proving of an alibi, an elsewhere of demand. Is woman needed at the caucuses, conventions, polls? She is needed, at the same time, elsewhere. Two years of time and strength, of thought and love, from some woman, are essential for every little human being, that he may even begin a life. When you remember that every man is once a little child, born of a woman, trained--or needing training--at a woman's hands; that of the little men, every one of whom takes and shapes his life so, come at length the hand for the helm, the voice for the law, and the arm to enforce law--what do you want more for a woman's opportunity and control?

Which would you choose as a force, an advantage, in settling any question of public moment, or as touching your own private interest through the general management--the right to go upon election day and cast one vote, or a hold beforehand upon the individual ear and attention of each voter now qualified? The ability to present to him your argument, to show him the real point at issue, to convince and persuade him of the right and lasting, instead of the weak and briefly politic way? This initial privilege is in the hands of woman; a.s.suming that she can be brought to feel and act as a unit, which appears to be what is claimed for her in the argument for her regeneration of the outer political word.

But already and separately, if every intelligent, conscientious woman can but reach one man, and influence him from the principle involved--from her interior perception of it, kept pure on purpose from bias and temptation that a.s.sail him in the outside mix and jostle--will she not have done her work without the casting of a ballot? And what becomes of "taxation without representation,"

when, from Eden down, Eve can always plead with Adam, can have the first word instead of the last--if she knows what that first word is, in herself and thence in its power with him--can beguile him to his good instead of to his harm, as indeed she only meant to do in that first ignorant experiment? Would it be any less easy to qualify for and accomplish this than to convince and outnumber in public gathering not only bodies of men but the ma.s.s of women that will also have to be confronted and convinced or overborne?

Preconceived opinions, minds made up, men not so easily beguiled to the pure good, you say? Woman quite as apt to make mistakes out of Paradise as in? That only returns us to the primal need and opportunity. Get the man to listen to you before his mind is made up--before his manhood is made up; while it is in the making. That is just the power and place that belong to you, and you must seize and fill. It is your natural right; G.o.d gave it to you. "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head."

We can not do all in one day, and in such a day of the world as this. We plant trees for posterity where forests have been laid waste and the beautiful work of life is to be done over again; we can not expect to see our fruit in souls and in the nation at less cost of faith and time. Take care, then, of the little children: the men children, to make men of them; the women children--oh, yes, even above all--to make ready for future mothering--to s.n.a.t.c.h from the evil that works over against pure womanliness. Until you have done this let men fend for themselves in rough outsides a little longer; except, perhaps, as wise, able women whom the trying transition time calls forth may find fit way and place for effort and protest--there is always room for that, and n.o.ble work has been and is being done; but do not rear a new generation of women to expect and desire charges and responsibilities reversive of their own life-law, through whose perfect fulfillment alone may the future clean place be made for all to work in.

Is there excess of female population? Can not all expect the direct rule of a home? Is not this exactly, perhaps, just now, for the more universal remedial mothering that in this age is the thing immediately needed? Let her who has no child seek where she can help the burdened mother of many; how she can best reach with influence, and wisdom, and cheris.h.i.+ng, the greatest number--or most efficiently a few--of these dear, helpless, terrible little souls, who are to make, in a few years, a new social condition; a better and higher, happier and safer, or a lower, worse, bitterer, more desperately complicated and distressful one.

"Desire earnestly the best gifts," said Saint Paul, after enumerating the gifts of teaching and prophecy and authority; "and I show you," he goes on, "a yet more excellent way." Charity--not mere alms, or toleration, or general benignity, out of a safe self-provision; but _caritas_--nearness, and caring, and loving,--the very essence of mothering; the way to and hold of the heart of it all, the heart of the life of humanity. "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life."

That is the first word; it charges womanhood itself, which must be set utterly right before it can take hold to right the world. Here are at once task and mission and rewarding sway.

Woman has got off the track; she must see that first, and replace herself. We are mothering the world still; but we are mothering it, in a fearfully wide measure, all wrong.

Sacrifice is the beginning of all redemption. We must give up. We must even give up the wish and seeming to have a hand in things, that we may work unseen in the elements, and make them fit and healthful; that daily bread and daily life may be sweet again in dear, old, homely ways, and plentiful with all truly blessed opportunities. We are not to organize the world, or to conquer it, or to queen it. We are just to take it again and mother it. If woman would begin that, search out the cradles--of life and character--and take care of the whole world of fifty years hence in taking care of them, calling upon men and the state, when needful, to authorize her action and furnish outward means for it--I wonder what might come, as earnest of good, even in this our day, in which we know not our visitation?