Käthe Schirmacher

“ Merely because she is more helpless than man. Children are valued even less than women because they surpass the women in helplessness. Only animals have less power of defense; therefore they have the lowest value placed on them. In the United States it has now been demonstrated that whoever possesses the right to vote is esteemed more highly than he who does not have that right. We see this in the woman’s suffrage states; here the women have made provisions not only for themselves, but for the children as well, for it is one of the fundamental instincts of woman to protect her little ones. ”

“ On this last passage the Americans comment with especial emphasis: they say the right to vote is their right as human beings,—they possess it as a natural right; the government cannot justly take it from them, cannot even grant it to them justly. So long as the government does not ask the women for their consent, it is acting illegally according to the Declaration of Independence. ”

“ Whatever she wishes for herself must appear as a domestic virtue, if possible as a sacrifice for the family. Man thinks it very natural that he should do what he desires, that he should pursue his pleasures and gratify his passions, for he is indeed the one who possesses authority and does not need first to stamp his wishes as virtues. But it seems just as natural to him that the women of the family should be endowed with a double portion of piety, economy and willingness to make sacrifices,—virtues in which he is so lacking. Women are created especially for that. ”

“ Throughout Canada the workingwoman is paid less than the workingman, partly because she is more poorly trained, partly because she is kept in subordinate positions, partly because, in order to find work at all, she must offer her services for less money. Even when teaching, or doing piecework, woman is paid less than man. In Canada there is as yet no political woman’s rights movement strong enough to rectify this injustice by means of organizations and laws as has been done in Australia. As yet there are no women preachers in Canada. ”

“ She had assisted in securing twenty-eight thousand signatures to a petition, providing for the regulation of the sale of alcohol, which was presented to the New York State Legislature. Susan B. Anthony was in the gallery during the discussion of the petition, and as she saw how one speaker scornfully threw the petition to the floor and exclaimed, “Who is it that demands such laws? They are only women and children...,” she vowed to herself that she would not rest content until a woman’s signature to a petition should have the same weight as that of a man. ”

“ Germany has nine and a half million married women, i.e. only one half of all adult women (over 18 years of age) are married. In Germany, too, marriage is not a lifelong “means of support” for woman, or a “means of support” for the whole number of women. Therefore the demands of woman for a complete professional and industrial training and freedom to choose her calling appear in the history of our time with a tremendous weight, a weight that the founders of the movement hardly anticipated. ”

“ These circumstances dwarf woman’s humanity, and limit the development of her individuality, her freedom, and her responsibility. These conditions are opposed by the woman’s rights movement. The movement hopes to secure the happiness of woman, of man, of the child, and of the world by establishing the equal rights of the sexes. ”

“ So the English women have before them an example of the salutary effect of legislation for the protection of the laborers in the textile industries. Nevertheless, there is in England a faction among the woman’s rights advocates which vigorously resists every movement for the protection of women laborers; it has organized itself into the “League for Freedom of Labor Defense.” It acts on the principle that every law for the protection of women laborers signifies an unjustifiable tutelage; that the workingwomen should defend themselves through the organization of trade-unions ”

“ From the French consul in Dantzig, Count Jouffroy d’Abbans, one familiar with Australian conditions, I learned the following isolated facts concerning woman’s suffrage. It has a salutary influence throughout. Women show a lively interest in political and municipal questions; for the sake of their political rights they neglect their “specifically feminine” duties so little that they come to the parliamentary sessions with knitting, embroidery, and sewing. ”

“ The Spanish woman regards herself as a person of the second order, a necessary adjunct to man. Such a fundamental humiliation and subordination is opposed to human nature. As the Spanish woman has no power of open opposition, she resorts to cunning. By instinct she is [Pg 207] conscious of the power of her sex; this she uses and abuses. A woman’s rights advocate is filled with horror, quite as much as with pity, when she sees this mixture of bigotry, coquetry, submissiveness, cunning, and hate that is engendered in woman by such tyranny and lack of progress. ”

“ Moreover, it has been the fate of no other civilized nation to owe its political existence to a war triumphantly fought out in less than one generation. Every war, every accentuation and promotion of militarism is a weakening of the forces of civilization and of woman’s influence. “German masculinity is still so young,” I once heard somebody say. ”

“ Women’s wages are one half or three fourths of those of the men.
The lives of the Chinese women, especially among the lower classes, are so wretched that mothers believe they are doing a good deed when they strangle their little girls, or place them on the doorstep where they will be gathered up by the wagon that collects the corpses of children. Many married women commit suicide. “The suffering of the women in this dark land is indescribable,” says an American woman missionary. Those Chinese women that believe in the transmigration of souls hope “in the next world to be anything but a woman.” ”

“ It is due to the success of these tactics that the whole world is to-day speaking about woman’s suffrage, which has become a burning political question in England. All along the people and the press are giving greater support to the suffragettes who have the courage to brave the horrors of the London prison, and there become acquainted with the distress of the poor, the destitute, and the helpless. ”

“ The Chinese woman of the lower classes has the same status as the Mohammedan woman,—ostensible freedom of movement, and hard work. The women of the property owning classes, however, must remain in the house; here, entertaining one another, they live and eat, apart from the men. As woman is not considered in the Chinese worship of ancestors, her birth is as unwished for as that of the Indian woman. ”

“ Among other things he declared that China has produced too many distinguished women (in the political as well as in other fields) for law and public opinion to restrict the freedom of woman. “The Chinese admits superiority, with all its consequences, as soon as he sees it; and this, whether it is shown by man or woman.” [119] According to him there can be no woman’s rights movement in China, because man does not oppress woman! ”

“ Fifteen thousand American women are students in woman’s colleges, and twenty thousand in coeducational colleges and universities. In the latter, the women have distinguished themselves through application and ability so that frequently they have taken all the academic honors and prizes to the exclusion of the men. Since they can no longer be excluded on the ground of their inferiority, their superiority is now the pretext for their exclusion. But a suspension of coeducation in the United States is not to be considered. The state universities, supported with public funds, are all coeducational. ”

“ All who wish to have the right to participate in a discussion on woman’s suffrage must first study these two books of testimonials. A mere knowledge of these facts will cause much insipid discussion to cease in public meetings. ”

“ Man, by opposing woman, caused the struggle between the sexes. Only equality of rights can bring peace. Woman is already certain of her equality. Man will learn by experience that renunciation can be “manly,” that business can be “feminine,” and that all “privilege” is obnoxious. The emancipation of woman is synonymous with the education of man. ”

“ In the Slavic countries there is a lack of an ancient, deeply rooted culture like that of western Europe. Everywhere the oriental viewpoint has had its effect on the status of woman. In general the standards of life are low; therefore, the wages of the women are especially wretched. Political conditions are in part very unstable,—in some cases wholly antique. All of these circumstances greatly impede the progress of the woman’s rights movement. ”

“ It is a sign of the time and also of the awakening of woman’s self-reliance that the government of Korea has been presented with a petition, signed by many women, requesting that these conditions be abolished and that women be granted the right to have their own names. ”

“ Woman is the best apostle of nationalism; the educated woman is the most valuable ally. In the national propaganda woman takes her place beside the man. The names of the Czechish women patriots are on the lips of everybody. Had the Liberals of German Austria known equally well how to inspire their women with liberalism and Germanism, their cause would to-day be more firmly rooted.
In inexpensive but well-organized boarding schools the Czechish girls (especially country girls, the daughters of landowners and tenants) are being educated along national lines. ”

“ In Italy there is no strict morality among married men. Moreover, the opposition to divorce in Italy comes largely from the women, who, accustomed to being deceived in matrimony, fear that if they are divorced they will be left without means of support. “Boys [Pg 197] make love to girls,—to mere unguided children without any will of their own,—and when these boys marry, be they ever so young, they have already had a wealth of experience that has taught them to regard woman disdainfully—with a sort of cynical authority. ”

“ They formed the National Woman’s Suffrage League, which, in 1906, joined the International Woman’s Suffrage Alliance. Through the discussions in the women’s clubs, woman’s suffrage became a topic of public interest. The Amsterdam Report [of the Congress of the International Woman’s Suffrage Alliance] says: “The women of the aristocracy wish to vote because they are intelligent; they feel humiliated because their coachman or chauffeur is able to vote. The workingwomen demand the right to vote, that they may improve their conditions of labor and be able to support their children better.” ”

“ The legal status of the Russian woman is favorable in so far as the property law provides for property rights. The Russian married woman controls not only her property, but also her earnings and her savings. As survival of village communism and the feudal system, the right to vote is restricted to taxpayers and to landowners. [Pg 227] In the rural districts the wife votes as “head of the family,” if her husband is absent or dead. Then she is also given her share of the village land. She votes in person. In the cities the women that own houses and pay taxes vote by proxy. ”

“ Italy’s political position as a great power, her modern parliamentary life, and the Liberal and Socialist majority in her Parliament give Italy a position that Spain, for example, does not possess in any way. Catholicism, Clericalism, and Roman custom are no match for these modern liberal powers, and are therefore unable to hinder the woman’s rights movement in the same degree as do these influences in Spain. ”

“ This Union, as well as the “Social Purity League,” is a firm advocate of woman’s suffrage.
The emancipation of the American women is promoted through sports. If on the one hand they appreciate an elaborate toilette, on the other hand they recognize the advantages of bloomers, the walking skirt, and the divided skirt. In these costumes they play basketball, polo, tennis, and take gymnastic exercise, fence, and row. The woman’s colleges are centers of athletic life. There the girls now play football in male costume, the public being excluded. ”

“ Just suppose that the members of the typographical union were to-morrow deprived of their right to vote. Only their full political emancipation could again restore them to their former position of prestige among the working classes. This is exactly the case with the women, and they have not even reached the highly-developed organization of the typographers. A politically unfree laboring class is also unable to maintain its vocation against a laboring class possessing political rights; if the vocation is remunerative the unfree class will be deprived of it or be kept from it altogether. ”