Anti-suffragism

“ 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. ”

“ But is not the contention of the suffragists fundamentally based upon the circumstances 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Man the protector, woman the protected. Woman the inspiring force, man the organizing and physical power.
So the Bible, Science, and Republican government, according to Suffragist and Anti-suffragist, have planted themselves squarely on the sex issue. ”

“ Anti-suffragists, especially anti-suffrage men, maintain that to take part in the strife and turmoil of practical politics is in its essence degrading to women, and calculated to sully their refinement and purity. If this, indeed, is so, why invite women into the turmoil? Why advertise, as the anti-suffragists do, the holding of classes to train young women to become anti-suffrage speakers, and thus be able to proclaim on public platforms that "woman's place is home?" ”

“ They had to dip back into the middle ages to find a means of repressing the women in revolt, and the whole history shows how futile it is for men who have been considered able statesmen to deal with dissatisfied women who are determined to win their citizenship and who will not submit to government until their consent is obtained. That is the whole point of our agitation. The whole argument with the anti-suffragists, or even the critical suffragist man, is this: that you can govern human beings without their consent. ”

“ That they have provoked discussion and aroused attention is equally obvious and from these our cause always stands to gain. On the other hand many of us feel a profound conviction, which experience only strengthens, that women arc adopting a mistaken course in ap- pealing to violence. Our business as women asking for justice is not to rely upon physical force but in the eternal principles of right and justice. Law abiding methods alienate no one while methods of violence and disorder create anti-suffragists by the hundreds. ”

“ Let us now turn to the anti-suffragist view. The anti-suffragist (man or woman) holds that chivalry is a principle which enters into every reputable relation between the sexes, and that of all the civilising agencies at work in the world it is the most important. ”

“ 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 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 institutions 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. ”

“ She called attention to the forming of the Anti-Suffrage Association by women in Great Britain and said: "They are sending in a petition to Parliament. It is well known that people by nature are opposed to new things; before education people are anti-suffragists. ”

“ These are the lessons of their own leaders; but the anti-suffragists pay no heed to them; it is little wonder then that they pay no heed to the great suffrage leader who has taught us that women, like men, do not need the franchise in order that they may govern, but in order that they may not be misgoverned. ”

“ But, as a matter of fact, if you will inquire, you will find that nearly all the opposition of women is directed against the enfranchisement of other women, not themselves. Most anti-suffragists will agree that some women are fit for the vote. Scarcely any woman thinks that she herself is unfit; it is the other women who are unfit. ”

“ We give our readers these interesting pages of anti-slavery history because they were the initiative steps to organized public action and the Woman Suffrage Movement per se, and to show how much more enthusiasm women manifested in securing freedom for the slaves, than they ever have in demanding justice and equality for themselves. Where are the societies to rescue unfortunate women from the bondage they suffer under unjust law? ”

“ These feminists tell you constantly how badly the men manage the country; the idea being how much better the women would [Pg 83] govern it. But would they? The anti-suffragists think that, on the whole, the men are doing well, and that a government ought to be in the hands of those who have the power to enforce the laws they make. To have responsibility without power is to be in a very uncomfortable and ignominious position. To the observer it seems that the professional suffrage agitator is not out for service or the good of her town, state, and country, but for her own good. ”

“ She pointed out the "indirect alliance between the anti-suffragists and the vicious elements, opponents of all reform, fearful that if women vote good will prevail over evil." "The chief foes of woman suffrage,' she said, "are the saloon keepers, scum of society, barred from fraternal organizations, social clubs and even from some of the insurance societies." ”

“ The contention of woman Suffragists could not be more reasonably presented. Add to this the belief of Englishmen in the power of the vote to lift from degradation and to widen the outlook of citizens; their attitude towards rebellions on behalf of constitutional rights by Russians, Turks, Persians, and Uitlanders of South Africa; the principles of every constitution in which Britishers have had a hand, notably in Australasia and South Africa, and the case is complete. To meet the Anti-Woman Suffragist arguments, it is only necessary to quote their own utterances. ”

“ It is the seedling of the true democratic and social Republic, wherein neither caste, color, sex, nor age stands prescribed. It is a moral-suasion temperance society on the teetotal basis. It is a moral-power Anti-slavery society, radical and without compromise. It is a peace society on the only impregnable foundation, that of Christian non-resistance. It is a sound theoretical and practical Woman's Rights Association." Among other Suffragists, Abby Kelly Foster was resident at Hopedale. ”

“ Imagine that, if at the end of arduous labor, we had contrived to defeat a number of Democratic anti-Suffragists, and an equal number of Republican anti-Suffragists, we should by immense sacrifice have completely nullified our own efforts, and left the strength of the Parties just where it was before....
What should we do in our enfranchised States, if we confined ourselves to the plan of supporting individual Suffragists and attacking individual anti-Suffragists, irrespective of their Party affiliations? All the candidates for office in the enfranchised States are Suffragists. ”

“ Leaders of the anti-suffragists insist that women shall not be enfranchised against their protest, but when all the big organizations of women in the country are asking for it, who is making the protest? ”

“ Yet some of those modern anti-suffragists possess a college degree, an opportunity which other women won for them in the face of universal ridicule; they own property which is theirs today as the effect of laws which other women labored for a quarter of a century to secure; they stand upon public platforms where free speech for women was won for them by other women amid the jeers of howling mobs; they use the right of organization which was established as the result of many a heartache and many a brave endeavor when the world condemned it as a threat against all moral order. ”

“ To impose political duties upon the sex against its will was simply to create conditions that encouraged corrupt and feeble government. The soundness of this principle was, furthermore, being demonstrated in woman-suffrage territory, such cities as Seattle and [Pg xiv] such states as Colorado showing that sooner or later a neglectful electorate leads to the downfall of good government.
The third cause for the defeat of woman suffrage was the disgust which the manners, methods, and unethical sentiments of the suffragists aroused. ”

“ One focuses upon the book the eye of desire not to know its contents, with which we have so long been familiar, but to know what it means that anybody should be writing an anti-feminist book now; to know whether this is a new revolt of the intellectuals, or whether it is an echoed cry of the woman of our American South who wrote to an anti-suffragist in the North: "We are against suffrage. ”

“ This is not a question of what some women want or do not want—it is solely a question of how the average woman shall best contribute her part to the general welfare. Anti-suffragists contend that the average woman can serve best by remaining a non-partisan and working for the common good outside the realms of political strife. To prove this contention they point to what women have done without the ballot and what they have failed to do with it. ”

“ The methods of the anti-suffragists have been copied from the non-militant suffragists. With a fine disdain of logic they have proclaimed that the sphere of woman is the home, and have come out of the home to prove it! They have even urged the formation of classes in which women may be taught to combat the argument of the suffrage antagonists. ”

“ The grateful woman will practically always
be an anti-suffragist.
It will be well, before passing on to another 52
class of arguments, to summarise what has
been said in the three foregoing sections.
We have recognised that woman has not
been defrauded of elementary natural rights;
that Justice, as distinguished from egalitarian
equity, does not prescribe that she should be
admitted to the suffrage; and that her status
is not, as is dishonestly alleged, a status of
serfdom or slavery. ”

“ Much criticism has been made [52] upon the manner in which the anti-suffragists have obtained the signatures to their petitions and protests against women's suffrage, and we know that in some cases signatures have been asked for "as a protest against being governed by these lawless women." Now there are almost as many fallacies in this sentence as there are words. Many ardent suffragists, probably the majority of them, are opposed to the use of physical violence as a means of obtaining political justice. Moreover, women are not lawless. ”

“ For several days before the day on which the Woman Suffrage amendment was moved to the Franchise Bill, a Liberal Member, who had refused to pledge himself to either side, was "bombarded" with requests from pledged Suffragist Members that he would vote against them and defeat the amendment. We hang soldiers who commit this offence in military warfare.
[361] Sir Almroth Wright's notorious pamphlet has of course been repudiated by the saner women Anti-Suffragists. But it certainly represents the opinions of the average man Anti-Suffragist. ”

“ They thought that their little group, by noisy publicity, could be made to appear a considerable number. But the men, when they discovered who opposed the Drury bill, were not deceived. They saw that a small minority of women was trying to induce them to coerce the great majority. They awoke to the fact that the suffragist's demand was not that men should grant women an expressed desire, but that men, contemptuously disregarding the evident wishes of women, should force upon them a heavy responsibility. ”

“ She must relinquish her rights and exemptions under the law [Pg 27] and in civil life, if she is to take her place as a responsible elector and compete with man as the provider and governor of the race. Such equality would be a brutal and retrogressive view of woman's rights. It is impossible, and here we have the unanswerable answer to woman suffrage theories. ”

“ 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. ”