Anti-Suffrage Essays Part 8

XIII

THE ANTI-SUFFRAGE IDEAL

MRS. HERBERT LYMAN

_Ruth Whitney Lyman, wife of Herbert Lyman; studied two years at Bryn Mawr; a member of the Woman's Munic.i.p.al League of Boston and of the Board of Directors of the North End Diet Kitchen._ _J. A. H._

Women today find their s.e.x disquieted by deep unrest. Our s.e.x is seeking to adjust itself to new conditions. Suffrage, feminism, militancy, have been the symptoms of the first phase of modern woman's attempt to adjust herself to twentieth century conditions. That phase was the outgrowth of hasty judgment, and is rapidly giving place to the second phase, wherein the sober second thought of the normal woman is repudiating the false values preached by those women who impulsively leaped to the conclusion that man's sphere was more potent than woman's and therefore more desirable.

The struggle over woman suffrage presents the spectacle of two camps of women arrayed against each other with opposing ideals. Let no one be so simple as to suppose that the issue is one between men and women. It is not a "woman's rights" question; it is a _which_ woman's rights question. Two types of women are at war, for although both desire the same end--namely, a better world to live in--they differ fundamentally as to the method of attaining it.

The fundamental difference is this--that the suffragist (like the socialist) persists in regarding the individual as the unit of society, while the anti-suffragist insists that it is the family. Individualism is the all-important thing to the suffragist; to the anti-suffragist it is soundness of family relations.h.i.+ps. Suffragism is founded upon a s.e.x-conscious individualism and s.e.x antagonism, which leads it to say that woman can only be represented by herself, and that women now are a great unrepresented cla.s.s. As a matter of fact, women are not a cla.s.s, but a s.e.x, pretty evenly distributed throughout all the various cla.s.ses of society.

Anti-suffrage is founded upon the conception of co-operation between the s.e.xes. Men and women must be regarded as partners, not compet.i.tors; and the family, to be preserved as a unit, must be represented by having one political head. The man of the family must be that representative, because government is primarily the guarantee of protection to life and property and rests upon the political strength of the majority, which should be able in times of need to force minorities to obey their will.

That is the only basis on which a democracy can endure. Suffragism says that in order to attack existing evils women must organize for partic.i.p.ation in law making. It stakes its faith on more government (a second resemblance to socialism), upon control by law. The anti-suffragist sees the evils of society as fundamentally resulting from the evil in individuals, and calls on women to check it at its source. They emphasize the power of individual homes to turn out men and women, who, trained to self-control, will not necessitate control by law. Knowing well that the great training school for private morality is family life, the anti-suffragist seeks to preserve conditions making for sound family life, the sum total of private morality being public morality, the conscience of the people.

Moreover, the twentieth century has given us its watchword, which is, differentiation or division of labor. Anti-suffragists by accepting it, and applying to their s.e.x the new demands of specialization, put themselves abreast of the times; but suffragists lag behind, still harping on the exploded theories of equality and ident.i.ty. The strikingly progressive message the new century presents us is this: Give equal opportunity to men and women for expression along their _different_ lines. Government, law making, law enforcement, with all the allied problems of tariff, taxation, police, railroads, interstate and international relations.h.i.+ps, etc., must still be the business of men.

The business of women must be to work out a national ideal of domestic life and juvenile training. They must standardize the family life with their new understanding of the importance of the product of every separate family to the state.

The suffragist, who is so often the unmarried or childless woman, here objects that women could also vote. But it is practically impossible for women as a s.e.x to undertake the regular and frequent political duties.

If the highest efficiency in private life is to be striven toward, women must regard themselves as a sort of emergency corps, prepared to meet the unexpected; for illness, accidents, temptation, sorrow--all the disturbances of domestic life--do not come at stated intervals. Anyone can readily see that for women private duty would constantly conflict with public duty. To become an efficient political unit, a woman would have to set aside much time and strength upon organizing and bringing out the woman's vote. There would be the splitting up of women into rival political groups on cla.s.s, race, or religious lines, the dissipation of energies and strain of contention for women who in America already reach with sad frequency the breaking point of nerves and body.

In contrast to such obligatory activity for all women, consider the field of voluntary non-partisan activity now open to the single woman, the woman of leisure, and to every woman at such times as her family duties permit. Indeed the germ of the true woman's movement lies in the activities of such organizations as education societies, playground a.s.sociations, munic.i.p.al leagues, and so forth, which are only in their first stages of usefulness. Here is ample scope and outlet for talents and energy.

Our s.e.x, if kept out of politics, has the opportunity in these days when we prate so much about peace, to set about disarming distrust and discord within our own borders. Shall we not dream of a united American womanhood? We twentieth century women may take a n.o.ble stride toward it, if we will, by working for those causes that disregard the divisions of race, religion, and politics. Is it surprising that the anti-suffragist sees a vast, unexhausted field for woman's influence outside the political? No wonder that to the suffragist's craving for a new sphere and new rights she opposes the plea of old duties unfulfilled and existing opportunities neglected.

To contrast the opposing ideals of the two groups of women, let me quote from what a great Frenchman said in the time of the French Revolution: "You have written upon the monuments of your city the words Liberty--Fraternity--Equality. Above Liberty write Duty; above Fraternity write Humility; above Equality write Service; above the immemorial creed of your Rights inscribe the divine creed of your Duties." I truly believe that the women who, perceiving present duties imperfectly performed, refuse to take up the cry for more rights, are following the more Christ-like ideal. I do not think that twentieth century American women have outgrown His peerless example, which urges them to be faithful first over a few things as He commanded. G.o.d made us women; and if we are told that women suffer more than men in peace and war, let us answer, "Very likely--Christ Himself found His cross heavy--let us bear the cross and crown of womanhood in His name."

XIV

THE TRUE FUNCTION OF THE NORMAL WOMAN

MRS. HORACE A. DAVIS

_Anna Hallowell Davis, wife of Horace Davis; was educated in Boston private schools and is a graduate of Radcliffe College; was a member of Local School Board No. 46, New York City, for eight years; is a member of Brookline Civic Society, the North Bennett Street Industrial School a.s.sociation, and of the Ma.s.sachusetts Peace a.s.sociation._ _J. A. H._

The whole question of suffrage and anti-suffrage is significant chiefly as it affects the married woman with children and a home; for if there is any elemental fact on which to plant our feet, it is that the normal woman is a wife and mother and home-maker. But is not the contention of the suffragists fundamentally based upon the circ.u.mstances of the woman who is not leading this normal life,--who is unmarried, who has no children, or who is not making a home and bringing up her children herself? It is in planning for these exceptional women, as I think they do, that the suffragist leaders tend to ignore the truly representative women--the majority. Do we not suspect, indeed, that they are turning to new ideals, because they have never tried the old? As Chesterton says: "The ideal house, the happy family, is now chiefly a.s.sailed by those who have never known it, or by those who have failed to fulfil it.

Numberless modern women have rebelled against domesticity in theory, because they have never known it in practice."

"But," the suffragists ask, "granting that your woman of 'normal' life is in the majority, and doesn't want the vote, _oughtn't_ she to want it? Casting a ballot takes next to no time, and that is all she needs to do. Most men do no more than that."

But men ought to do more. That is just the point. That is just why corrupt government has been fastened on our cities. The Tammany leaders do more. They give all their time to politics; but the "reform" vote cannot, except occasionally, be got to the polls in sufficient numbers; and too few of the best men will run for office. If women are simply going to aggravate these conditions, if the "normal," representative woman isn't going to vote and hold office, and the non-representative, exceptional woman is, where is the advantage to the state of adding women to the electorate? Probably, however, rather than have this happen, the representative woman would feel that she must enter the lists. In compet.i.tion with "abnormal" or unscrupulous women, she would be forced to vote and to hold office. More than just going to the polls, she would have to think, read, and talk politics, as men do, or ought to do. The whole question here is: Is it better for her to do this, or to do the things which men don't do? _For one person can't do it all well._ A good mother of three or four children already has more than she can do well. If she takes up this whole new department of life and thought, I am convinced she will have to let something else go, and already under the influence of the feminist movement, that "something else" seems to be her home. So, this is what the anti-suffragists feel most keenly--that once the franchise is imposed as a duty, they would have to do the things which men already are doing (and doing as well as the women could do them); that they would no longer be free to do what they think is the higher work for them, as women. Therefore, when a suffragist tells me she has a "right" to vote, I say that, in the name of the best interests of the community, I have the right _not_ to vote.

Another thing which the anti-suffragists feel is not recognized sufficiently by their opponents, is the essential and valuable difference between men and women in their manner of approach to any given human problem. "Law" to the antis seems a man's word. Man thinks of people in ma.s.ses. He makes laws for the whole. He generalizes better than women. On the other hand, where woman is stronger than he is in her feeling for the individual person, and her use of love rather than of law, neither the masculine nor the feminine gift is better, the one than the other, but the two work together as necessary parts of one whole. As Ida Tarbell puts it: "Human society may be likened to two great circles, one revolving within the other. In the inner circle rules the woman. Here she breeds and trains the material for the outer circle, which exists only by and for her. That accident may throw her into this outer circle is, of course, true, but it is not her natural habitat. Nor is she fitted by Nature to live and circulate freely there. What it all amounts to is that the labor of the world is naturally divided between the two different beings that people the world. It is unfair to the woman that she be asked to do the work of the outer circle. The man can do that satisfactorily if she does her part, that is, if she prepares him the material. Certainly, he can never come into the inner circle and do her work."

So, in claiming for women the right to take a part in the man's half of life, the suffragists, I think, lose sight of what the woman's half is.

In urging that they must have a hand in law-making and government and public life generally, they do not see that woman's peculiar work is pretty independent of laws and of government, is rather in private life.

For it is just where the law cannot reach that woman is supreme. It is just in the finer, more personal and intimate relations.h.i.+ps of life, which government cannot include, that woman finds her work waiting for her, which she alone can do--what Octavia Hill calls "the out-of-sight, silent work."

That woman is today neglecting this, her own part of the world's work, I think is everywhere apparent. Surely we do not need more laws; what we do need is more of the spirit which shall make people want to obey the laws which we have. What else does it mean when we say we cannot enforce the laws? The suffragists are clamoring for more laws, for more of the man-element in society; the anti-suffragists feel that it is the inner life and character, the mother's work, which everywhere needs strengthening. Settlement workers, doctors, ministers, and police commissioners, are beginning to feel this, too. They are telling us that in their work they find that no laws and no inst.i.tutions can take the place of home teaching and influence with young people. The outer restraint and penalty are little effective unless they are met by the inner desire to do right.

On points like these I believe the accent should be laid today. The pendulum is swinging too far away from the things which our mothers and grandmothers made their chief concern. What is called "the rise of woman," her new feeling of influence and power, are blessings only as they help her to do better and of freer choice the things which are in tune with Nature and with the need of the world.

XV

THE IMPERATIVE DEMAND UPON WOMEN IN THE HOME

MRS. CHARLES BURTON GULICK

_Anne Hathaway Gulick, wife of Professor Charles B. Gulick of Harvard University; graduated at the Framingham State Normal School; taught four years in Boston and Cambridge, and is Secretary of the Public Interests' League of Ma.s.sachusetts._ _J. A. H._

In his address to the a.s.sociated Press on April 21, 1915, President Wilson said: "You deal in the raw material of opinion, and if my convictions have any validity, _opinion_ ultimately governs the world."

This is exactly what the anti-suffragists believe and teach. They know that the vote merely registers public opinion, it does not make it.

Therefore, they oppose laying the useless burden of the ballot on the shoulders of woman, who already has every opportunity in her own special province to mold public opinion by educating the inmates of her home to live right and to think right. From such homes, where high principles are inculcated, comes the public spirited, right minded man, whose vote registers the fact that the mother in that home has done her duty faithfully and well. A woman who has thus fulfilled her obligation to the world knows that there is not time left to take up political duties.

Either the home or the politics must suffer. In the end, in the great majority of cases, nature would a.s.sert herself, and the political duties would be neglected.

A minister, who is a suffragist, is quoted recently as saying: "Our young men, we believe, would be safer if their mothers and wives had the ballot, for they are the ones most injured by many evils." In what way will our young men be safer because their mothers and their wives have the ballot? Instead of devoting themselves wholly to teaching their sons and daughters the value of self-restraint, of respect for the rights and comfort of others, and the importance of high ideals of citizens.h.i.+p, if these same mothers and wives are dividing their attention between the home and political strife and strain, can they reasonably be expected to fulfill their greatest duty successfully? No woman should be obliged to divide her energies, and so have less time to give to the study of her children. No two children are alike, and each child requires special consideration and care for its best development. Can any one tell at what moment a child may need unusual attention and thought to guide it aright? Supposing the mother had the ballot, would the political campaign wait because her child was going through a particularly trying period, when a step one way or the other might make or mar its character? Or would the child wait to take the step because it was important for the mother to throw all the weight of her sound sense and good influence into the political campaign, and she must, therefore, just at this critical time set aside her home duties? No, most certainly not. The mother must have _no_ other duties which could come before her home duties at any time.

Some one said recently: "A man must have a place to go from and to come to." In order to make him continue to want to go from and come to his home, there must be something there to make him look forward to the home-coming with pleasure as the reward of his labor. If this home is kept by a woman who cannot be at home often when most needed, who labors under the excitement of the political campaign, how long is he going to look forward to his home-coming? Of course, the answer to this is that most women would not spend any more time over politics than they do now.

But if that is so, of what use will they be as voters, and why add a perfectly useless body of voters, when this addition to the electorate will mean an increase in the expenses of the government and consequently higher cost of living, already too high for the average family?

We do not believe with Mr. Creel that "the old fas.h.i.+oned idea of home is bunk," nor do we agree with Mr. Roger Sherman h.o.a.r, who is reported as saying that "woman suffrage, by doubling the electorate, will double the opportunities of each man for political interest." He goes on to say that when a man's wife becomes a voter he will talk politics with her and will give more weight to her political opinion, thereby learning the home point of view on home matters. Is it probable that a man who has not spent enough time with his wife to know what the home point of view is before she has a vote, would be induced to spend more time there because she had? It is much more likely that he would spend less time there, since without political duties she was unable to make his home attractive, and with political duties she would have even less time to give to the making of a good home. Further on we read: "With increased interest in matters political"--this increase to be brought about by giving women the vote--"the men will scrutinize their public servants more carefully." What becomes here of the contention of the suffragists that the _ballot_ is the only thing that wakens interest in good government, if the men who already have the ballot are not interested in good government, but need to have the women enfranchised before they can have a real interest in matters political?

No, woman must specialize in the home. I am not speaking of those who "by choice or accident have missed the highest privilege of womanhood,"

as Mr. Pyle ably puts it, but of the great majority of women. To my mind the advantages of a properly conducted home life far outweigh the advantages of any inst.i.tution, no matter how good. That I am not alone in this opinion is witnessed by the fact that the trustees of the best orphan asylums are making every effort to diminish the number of children in their inst.i.tutions and to place the children in homes. They have learned that even a poorly conducted home is better than a well conducted asylum, and that they have no right to deprive children of the benefits of family life. Yet the feminists, closely allied with the suffragists, advocate putting children of tender age into inst.i.tutions, where, according to them, they will be better cared for than at home.

"If they are well, the inst.i.tution nurse is as good; if they are ill, she is much better than the mother" says one suffrage leader. Those of us who have known better can only pity people who hold such beliefs. To them mother love can have no meaning. Yet those of us who have felt this mother love, know what a guiding star it has been, and must always continue to be, brightening steadily as the years go by, and beckoning us more persistently than ever to higher ideals when it is only a memory. Who would dare deprive our children of this precious heritage?

Only the unknowing.

After all, the women who rebel against the idea that home is the place for woman are largely those who misunderstand the duties of home, who think only of the drudgery, and forget to think of the happiness that comes with watching our families develop under our care. Although the mother must do all the work in the average family, it is not from these homes where in most cases the women are happily busy with their home duties that most of the agitation about abandonning the home comes, but from among those people who have too much leisure on their hands, and who, unfortunately, do not find sufficiently exciting the duties of training good citizens. Whatever our work in life, whatever our occupation, we cannot rid ourselves of drudgery. Is there not more deadening, unvarying monotony for the business woman, the shop girl, the factory hand, than for the woman in the home who is her own mistress and can in some degree regulate and vary her work to suit her own pleasure?

It is only because such work is new and untried by them that many women think it preferable to home duties; but the fact that so many girls in industry marry young to get away from this uncongenial work proves that when tried it is not found either so exciting or so interesting as these advocates of woman in industry and out of the home imagine.

Do not mistake me: No woman should spend all of her time at home. Public needs and social duties must be attended to. From the latter she brings refreshment and new ideas to the home, and by giving a proper share of her energies to the former she can do her part toward helping the community in which she lives to be constantly improving itself, and so to become an ideal place in which to develop worthy citizens. With these interests she can be a real influence for good, and without them she must fall short of ideal motherhood. We must not forget that a woman can select her own time for her social duties, and they can be set aside at any time that more important matters need her attention in the home, but that she could not select her own time for political duties.

Let us remember, then, as Miss Lucy Price says, that after all, women in big business are not the successes, men can do that work as well and better than they. It is the women in the home, outnumbering all others fifteen to one (and fourteen of these do not keep a servant), who are really the great and typical women of the world.