The History of Woman Suffrage Volume IV Part 5

_Resolved_, That the officers of this convention shall communicate with presidential nominees of the several political parties and ascertain their position upon this question.

_Resolved_, That all Legislatures shall be requested to memorialize Congress upon the submission of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Const.i.tution, this to be the duty of the vice presidents of the States and Territories.

WHEREAS, The National Government, through Congress and the Supreme Court, has persistently refused to protect the women of the several States and Territories in "the right of the citizen to vote,"

therefore

_Resolved_, That this a.s.sociation most earnestly protests against national interference to abolish the right where it has been secured by the Legislature--as, for example, the Edmunds Tucker Bill, which proposes to disfranchise all the women of Utah, thus inflicting the most degrading penalty upon the innocent equally with the guilty, by robbing them of their most sacred right of citizens.h.i.+p.

[18] The method of organization must be governed by circ.u.mstances. In some localities it is best to call a public meeting, in others to invite the friends of the movement to a private conference. Both women and men should be members and co-operate, and the society should be organized on as broad and liberal a basis as possible.

Hold conventions, picnics, teas, and occasionally have a lecture from some one who will draw a large crowd. Utilize your own talent, encourage your young women and men to speak, read essays and debate on the question. Hold public celebrations of the birthdays of eminent women, and in that way interest many who would not attend a p.r.o.nounced suffrage meeting.

Persons who can not be induced to attend a public meeting will often accept an invitation to a parlor conference or entertainment where woman suffrage can be made the subject of conversation. Cultured women and men, who "have given the matter no thought," can be interested through a paper presenting the life and work of such women as Margaret Fuller, Abigail Adams, Lucretia Mott, etc., or showing the rise and progress of the woman suffrage movement, giving short biographies of the leaders.

Advocate suffrage through your local papers. Send them short, pithy communications, and, when possible, secure a column in each, to be edited by the society.

Invite pastors of churches to select from the numerous appropriate texts in the Bible and preach occasionally upon this subject.

A strong effort should be made to circulate literature. Every society should own a copy of the Woman Question in Europe, by Theodore Stanton, of the History of Woman Suffrage, by Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Gage, of Mrs. Robinson's Ma.s.sachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement, of T. W. Higginson's Common Sense for Women, of John Stuart Mill's Subjection of Women, and of Frances Power Cobbe's Duties of Women. These will furnish ammunition for arguments and debates.

Suffrage leaflets should be circulated in parlors and places of business, and "pockets" should be filled and hung in railroad stations, post-offices and hotels, that "he who runs may read." Over these should be printed "Woman Suffrage--Take and Read."

All the above methods aim rather at the education of the popular mind than the judiciary and legislative branches of the Government. The next step is to educate the representatives in Congress and on the bench of the Supreme Court in the principles of const.i.tutional law and republican government, that they may understand the justice of the demands for a Sixteenth Amendment which shall forbid the several States to deny or abridge the rights of women citizens of the United States.

[19] Miss Anthony never wrote her addresses and no stenographic reports were made. Brief and inadequate newspaper accounts are all that remain.

CHAPTER III.

CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS AND REPORTS OF 1884.

Both Senate and House of the preceding Congress had appointed Select Committees on Woman Suffrage to whom all pet.i.tions, etc., were referred.[20] The Senate of the Forty-eighth Congress renewed this committee, but the House declined to do so. Early in the session, Dec.

19, 1883, the Committee on Rules refused to report such a committee but authorized Speaker Warren Keifer of Ohio to present the question to the House. A spirited debate followed which displayed the sentiment of members against the question of woman suffrage itself. John H.

Reagan of Texas was the princ.i.p.al opponent, saying in the course of his remarks:

I hope that it will not be considered ungracious in me that I oppose the wish of any lady. But when she so far misunderstands her duty as to want to go to working on the roads and making rails and serving in the militia and going into the army, I want to protect her against it. I do not think that sort of employment suits her s.e.x or her physical strength. I think also, when we attempt to overturn the social status of the world as it has existed for six thousand years, we ought to begin somewhere where we have a const.i.tutional basis to stand upon....

But I suppose whoever clamors for action here finds a warrant for it in the clamor outside, and it is not necessary to look to the Const.i.tution for it; it is not necessary to regard the interests of civilization and the experience of ages in determining our social as well as our political policy; but we will arrange it so that there shall be no one to nurse the babies, no one to superintend the household, but all shall go into the political scramble, and we shall go back as rapidly as we can march into barbarism. That is the effect of such doings as this, disregarding the social interests of society for a clamor that never ought to have been made.

Mr. Reagan then rambled into a long discussion of the rights allowed under the Const.i.tution, although no action had been proposed except the mere appointment of a Select Committee, to whom all questions relating to woman suffrage might be referred, such as already existed in the Senate.

James B. Belford of Colorado in an able reply said:

I have no doubt that this House will be gratified with the profound respect which the gentleman from Texas has expressed for the Const.i.tution of the country. The last distinguished act with which he was connected was its attempted overthrow; and a man who was engaged in an enterprise of that kind can fight a cla.s.s to whom his mother belonged. I desire to know whether a woman is a citizen of the United States or an outcast without any political rights whatever....

What is the proposition presented by the gentleman from Ohio?

That we will const.i.tute a committee to whom shall be referred all pet.i.tions presented by women. Is not the right of pet.i.tion a const.i.tutional right? Has not woman, in this country at least, risen above the horizon of servitude, discredit and disgrace, and has she not a right, representing as she does in many instances great questions of property, to present her appeals to this National Council and have them judiciously considered? I think it is due to our wives, daughters, mothers and sisters to afford them an avenue through which they can legitimately and judicially reach the ear of this great nation.

Moved by Mr. Reagan's attacks, Mr. Keifer made a strong plea for the rights of women, which deserves a place in history, saying in part:

We must remember that we stand here committed in a large sense to the matter of woman suffrage. In the Territories of Wyoming and Utah for fifteen years past women have had the right to vote on all questions which men can vote upon; and the Congress of the United States has stood by without disapproving the legislative acts of those Territories. And we now have before us a law pa.s.sed at the last session of the Legislature of Was.h.i.+ngton, giving to its women the right to vote. We have not pa.s.sed upon the question one way or the other, but we have the right to pa.s.s upon it.

This, I think, seems to dispose sufficiently of the question of const.i.tutional legislative power without trampling upon the toes of any State-rights man.

The right of pet.i.tion belongs to all persons within the limits of our republic, and with the right of pet.i.tion goes the right on the part of the Congress through const.i.tutional means to grant relief. Do gentlemen claim it is unconst.i.tutional to amend the Const.i.tution? I know that claim was made at one time on the floor of this House and on the floor of the Senate. When it was proposed to abolish slavery in the United States, distinguished gentlemen argued that it was unconst.i.tutional to amend the Const.i.tution so as to abolish slavery. But all that has pa.s.sed away and we now find ourselves, in the light of the present, seeing clearly that we may amend the Const.i.tution in any way we please, pursuing always the proper const.i.tutional methods of doing so.

There are considerations due to the women of this country which ought not to be lightly thrust aside. For thirty-five years they have been pet.i.tioning and holding conventions and demanding that certain relief should be granted them, to the extent of allowing them to exercise the right of suffrage. In that thirty-five years we have seen great things accomplished. We have seen some of the subtleties of the Common Law, which were spread over this country, swept away. There is hardly anybody anywhere who now adheres to the doctrine that a married woman can not make a contract, and that she has no rights or liabilities except those which are centered in her husband. Even the old Common-Law maxim that "husband and wife are one, and that one the husband," has been largely modified under the influence of these patriotic, earnest ladies who have taken hold of this question and enlightened the world upon it. There are now in the vaults of this Capitol _hundreds of thousands of pet.i.tions_ for relief, sent in here by women and by those who believed that women ought to have certain rights and privileges of citizens.h.i.+p granted to them. For sixteen years there has been held in this city, annually, a convention composed of representative women from all parts of the country. These conventions, as well as various State and local conventions, have been appealing for relief; and they ought not to be met by the statement that we will not even give them the poor privilege of a committee to whom their pet.i.tions and memorials may be referred.

We have made some progress. In 1871 there was a very strong minority report made in this House in favor of woman suffrage.

Notwithstanding the notion that we must stand by all our old ideas, the Supreme Court of the United States, after deliberately considering the question, admitted a woman to practice at the bar of that Court.[21] A hundred years ago, in the darkness of which some gentlemen desire still to live, I suppose they would not have done this. Favorable reports on this subject were made by the Committee on Privileges and Elections in the Senate of the Forty-fifth Congress, and in the last Congress by a Select Committee of the Senate and of the House. The Legislatures of many of the States have expressed their judgment on the matter.

There has been a great deal of progress in that direction. The Senate and the House of Representatives of the last Congress provided Select Committees to whom all matters relating to woman suffrage could be referred. Will this House take a step backward on this question?

I want especially to notify the gentleman from Texas that we are not standing still on this matter. Eleven States--New Hamps.h.i.+re, Vermont, Ma.s.sachusetts, New York, Michigan, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and Oregon--have authorized women to vote for school trustees and members of school boards. Kentucky extends this right to widows who have children and pay taxes.

Women are nominated and voted for not only in the eleven States and three Territories, but in nearly all the Northern and Western States. Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa and other States have large numbers of women county superintendents of public schools. And let me say, for the benefit of the Democratic party, that in the great, progressive western State of Kansas the Democracy rose so high as to nominate and vote for a woman for State Superintendent of Public Instruction at the last election. So there has been a little growing away from those old ideas and notions, even among the Democracy. We are permitting women to fill public offices.

Why should they not partic.i.p.ate in the election of officers who are to govern them? We require them to pay taxes and there are a great many burdens imposed upon them. Kansas, Michigan, Colorado and Nebraska have in recent years submitted the question of woman suffrage to a vote of the people and more than one-third of the electors of each voted in favor. Oregon has now a similar proposition pending.

By the laws of all the States women are required to pay taxes; but we are practically working on the theory that these women shall be taxed without the right of representation. Taxation without representation led to the separation of the colonies from the mother country. They were not so much opposed to being taxed as they were to being taxed without representation. The patriots of that day conceived the idea that there was a principle somewhere involved in the right of representation. So they evolved and formulated that Revolutionary maxim, "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute." The basis of that maxim was that they would not give to the payment of taxes without the right of representation. Revolution and war made representation and taxation correlative. But the States tax all women on their property. For ill.u.s.tration, 8,000 women of Boston and 34,000 in Ma.s.sachusetts pay $2,000,000 of taxes, one-eleventh of the entire tax of that great and wealthy State. The same ratio will be found to prevail in all the other States.

Progress has gone on elsewhere than in the United States. England has been moving forward in this matter, and we should not stand behind her in anything....

I am one of those who do not believe that to give to women common rights and privileges will degrade them, but on the contrary I believe it will enn.o.ble them; and I believe further that to put them on an equality in the matter of rights and privileges with men will enhance their charms and not lessen their beauty.

The vote resulted--yeas, 85; nays, 124; not voting, 112. Of the affirmative votes 72 were Republican, 13 Democratic; of the negative, 4 were Republican, 120 Democratic.

In January, 1884, after the return of the members from their holiday recess, Miss Anthony addressed letters to the 112 absentees, asking each how he would have voted had he been present. Fifty-two replies were received, 26 from Republicans, all of whom would have voted yes; 26 from Democrats, 10 of whom would have voted yes, 10, no, and 6 could not tell which way they would have voted.

In the hope that this respectable minority could be increased to a majority, the Hon. John D. White (Ky.) made a further attempt, Feb. 7, 1884, to secure the desired committee, saying in his speech upon this question:

It seems to me to be an anomalous state of affairs that in a great Nation like this one-half of the people should have no committee to which they could address their appeals.

Women consider they have the same political rights as men. I might read from such distinguished authority as Miss Susan B.

Anthony, whose name has been jeered in her native State, and who has been prosecuted there for voting, but who stands before the American people to-day the peer of any woman in the nation, and the superior of half the men occupying a representative capacity.

It does seem to me hard that when a woman like this comes to Congress, instructed by thousands and tens of thousands of her s.e.x, in order to be heard she should be compelled to hang around the doors of the Judiciary Committee, or of some other committee, pre-eminently occupied with other matters. But we are told there is no room. Yet we have a room where lobbyists of every sort are provided for. And are we to be told that no room in this wing of the Capitol can be had where respectable women of the nation can present arguments for the calm consideration of their friends in this body? I ask simply for the opportunity to be afforded the representatives of the political rights of women to be heard in making respectful argument to the law-making power of the nation.

Byron M. Cutcheon (Mich.) also spoke in favor of the committee, saying:

Ever since the organization of this House I have received pet.i.tions from my const.i.tuents in regard to this matter of the political rights of women, but there seems to be no committee to which they could properly be referred. A few years since, when this question of woman suffrage was submitted to the people in my State, more than 40,000 electors were in favor of it. It seems to me, without committing ourselves on the question of the political rights of women, it is but respectful to a very large number of people in all our States that there should be a committee to receive and consider and report upon these pet.i.tions which come to us from time to time.

The House refused to allow a vote.

The Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage granted a hearing March 7, 1884, at 10:30 a. m., in the Senate reception room, to the speakers and delegates in attendance at the convention, the entire committee being present.[22] In introducing the speakers Miss Anthony said: "This is the sixteenth year that we have come before Congress in person, and the nineteenth by pet.i.tions, asking national protection for the citizen's right to vote, when the citizen happens to be a woman."

MRS. HARRIET R. SHATTUCK (Ma.s.s.): We canva.s.sed four localities in the city of Boston, two in smaller cities, two in country districts and made one record also of school teachers in nine schools of one town. The teachers were unanimously in favor of woman suffrage, and in the nine localities we found that the proportion of women in favor was very much larger than of those opposed. The total of women canva.s.sed was 814. Those in favor were 405, those opposed, 44; indifferent, 166; refused to sign, 160; not seen, 39. These canva.s.ses were made by respectable, responsible women, and they swore before a Justice of the Peace as to the truth of their statements. Thus we have in Ma.s.sachusetts this reliable canva.s.s of women showing those in favor are to those opposed as nine to one....

MRS. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL (Ind.): ... My friend has said that men have always kept us just a little below them where they could shower upon us favors and they have done that generously. So they have, but, gentlemen, has your s.e.x been more generous to women than they have been generous toward you in their favors? Neither can dispense with the service of the other, neither can dispense with the reverence of the other or with the aid of the other in social life. The men of this nation are rapidly finding that they can not dispense with the service of woman in business life. I know that they are also feeling the need of the moral support of woman in their political life.

You, gentlemen, by lifting the women of the nation into political equality would simply place us where we could lift you where you never yet have stood--upon a moral equality with us. I do not speak to you as individuals but as the representatives of your s.e.x, as I stand here the representative of mine, and never until we are your equals politically will the moral standard for men be what it now is for women, and it is none too high. Let woman's standard be still more elevated, and let yours come up to match it.