Suffragist

“ 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 tactics of the suffragist agitator are the same when she is dealing with a woman who is living at the charges of a husband or relative, and who recoils against the idea that she lies under a moral obligation to make to the man who works for her support some return of gratitude. The suffragist agitator will point out to her that such an obligation is slavery, and that the woman's suffrage cause is the cause of freedom. ”

“ His passionate impulse was to throw himself at her feet, and silence any further humbleness with kisses. But he controlled himself.
"You mean—that violence—has been a mistake?"
"Yes—just that. Oh, of course!"—she flushed again—"I am just as much for women—I am just as rebellious against their wrongs—as I ever was. I shall be a Suffragist always. But I see now—what we've stirred up in England. I see now—that we can't win that way—and that we oughtn't to win that way." ”

“ With regard to the suffragist's complaint that it is "insulting" for woman to be told that she is as a class unfit to exercise the suffrage, it is relevant to point out that one is not insulted by being told about oneself, or one's class, untruths, but only at being told about oneself, or one's class, truths which one dislikes. And it is, of course, an offence against ethics to try to dispose of an unpalatable generalisation by characterising it as "insulting." But nothing that man could do would be likely to prevent the suffragist resorting to this aggravated form of intellectual immorality. ”

“ 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. ”

“ MENTAL OUTLOOK AND PROGRAMME OF THE FEMALE LEGISLATIVE REFORMER
The suffragist woman, when she is the kind of woman who piques herself upon her ethical impulses, will, even when she is intellectually very poorly equipped, and there is no imprint of altruism upon her life, assure you that nothing except the moral influence of woman, exerted through the legislation, which her practical mind would be capable of initiating, will ever avail to abate existing social evils, and to effect the moral redemption of the world. ”

“ All that is worth while saying on these points is that the suffragist is here manufacturing grievances for herself, first, by reasoning from the false premiss that every legal distinction which happens to press hardly upon a few individuals ought for that to be abrogated; and, secondly, by steady leaving out of sight that logical inconsistencies can, for the more part, be got rid of only at the price of bringing others into being. ”

“ Often I have heard the taunt that suffragists are women who have failed to find any normal outlet for their emotions, and are therefore soured and disappointed beings. This is probably not true of any suffragist, and it is most certainly not true of me. My home life and relations have been as nearly ideal as possible in this imperfect world. ”

“ The law which the militant suffragist has violated is among the ordinances of that code which forbade us even to think of employing our native Indian troops against the Boers; which brands it as an ignominy when a man leaves his fellow in the lurch and saves his own life; and which makes it an outrage for a man to do violence to a woman. ”

“ Physiological Difficulties of Woman--Intellectual
Grievances of Suffragist and Corrective.
Is there then, let us ask ourselves, if the suf-
frage with its programme of feminism is
barred as leading to social disaster, any pallia-
tive or corrective that can be applied to the
present discontents of woman?
If such is to be found, it is to be found only
by placing clearly before us the suffragist's
grievances.
These grievances are, first, the economic
difficulties of the woman who seeks to earn her
living by work other than unskilled manual
labour ”

“ Being a suffragist does not mean being antagonistic to the family duties. On the contrary, the suffragist realizes that the happiness of the family is the foundation of the happiness of society, and she knows that social distress and vices affect the family and that she can and should coöperate with man in the relief of that distress and the suppression of those vices. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The man who looks forward to the intellectual development of woman must be brought near to despair when he perceives that practically every woman suffragist sees in every hard case arising in connexion with a legal distinction affecting woman, an insult and example of the iniquity of man-made laws, or a logical inconsistency which could with a very little good-will be removed.
We have come now to the last item on our list, to the grievance that woman has to submit herself to "man-made laws." ”

“ Herein lies the distinction between the suffragist and the anti-suffragist. The suffragist wishes to be enfranchised, but does not seek to compel those who prefer to be governed by others from being so. Anti-suffragists do not wish to be enfranchised, they consent to be governed, but they would prevent those people from governing themselves who do not consent to be governed. ”

“ Each candidate, upon the day of election, took his seat upon the bench of the judge in the county court-house, and the suffragist appeared at the bar, demanding to exercise his privilege in the choice of his representative. This was done by declaring the names of those he voted for. These peculiar institutions cultivated open and manly bearing, pride, and independence. There was little opportunity for the arts of the demagogue; and the elevation of sentiment in the suffragist made him despise the man, however superior his talents, who would attempt them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ I thought I had been a suffragist before I became a Poor Law Guardian, but now I began to think about the vote in women's hands not only as a right but as a desperate necessity. ”

“ People came thirty, forty and fifty miles in buggies and wagons to shake hands with the pioneer suffragist. Grizzly-headed opposers succumbed to Miss Anthony's logic and came up to grasp her hand and say God bless her, and proved the depth of their fervor by generous financial aid to the cause she so ably represents. It is seldom that the beginner of a great reform lives to see such fruitage of her labors as does she. People often descant upon the indifference of women to the question of their own enfranchisement and to political matters generally ”

“ The programme, as distinguished from the
methods, of these women is not very different
from that of the ordinary suffragist woman.
(b) There file past next a class of women
who have all their life-long been strangers to
joy, women in whom instincts long suppressed
have in the end broken into flame. ”

“ To those who have not suffered the annoyance of having to read suffragist literature, it will seem almost incredible that even the most unscrupulous of its purveyors would accuse men of general unfairness to women. ”

“ It is not the indifferent suffragist, she can be galvanized into life. Our real enemy is the dead or dormant suffragist," and then she preached a stirring sermon on the necessity for hard, incessant, faithful work by all who were enlisted heart and soul in this cause. ”

“ The whole argument with the anti-suffragists, or even the critical suffragist man, is this: that you can govern human beings without their consent. ”

“ To the question put by the suffragist the
reply is that experience with regard to the
capacity of woman has been accumulating in
all climes, and through all times; and that the
belief of men in the inherent inferiority of
women in the matter of intellectual morality,
and in the power of adjudication, has never
varied.
I pass now to the two most familiar griev-
ances of the suffragist; the grievance that the
virtuous and intelligent woman has no vote,
while the male drunkard has ”

“ I know, of course, the answer made by thoughtful, conscientious suffragists who believe as strongly as I do in the integrity of the home, when facts like these are brought to their attention. "All suffragists are not feminists. All feminism is not of this extreme sort. Feminism is nothing but a theory, anyway." ”

“ Finally, every girl ought to be shown, in the example of the militant suffragist, how revolt and martyrdom, undertaken in order to possess oneself of what belongs to others, effects the complete disorganisation of moral character. ”

“ All this betrayed his fear that the women were turning votes. Even The Times, that anti-Suffragist newspaper which had always condemned the Suffragette tactics and minimised the effect of their work, acknowledged now that their attack was damaging the Government candidates' chances, and, on July 6th, the special correspondent of this paper wrote:
The women suffragists have made a favourable impression upon the electorate and the miners specially appear to have been thoroughly converted by the new propaganda.... ”

“ While themselves abstaining from any unlawful act they are perfectly willing and desirous that they and their movement shall reap all the advantages of advertisement and otherwise that may accrue from the militant policy. That the above is a true state of the case as regards the "peaceful and law-abiding" elements in the suffragist movement, which we are assured so largely outnumber the militant section, one would think must be plain to everyone, however obtuse, who has followed with attention the course of the present agitation. ”

“ The women’s local government movement, which has been almost killed in the last two years by Suffragist excesses and the wrath provoked by them in the nation, would then pass over into the hands of those better able to use without abusing it. ”

“ The development of sick nursing since Florence Nightingale, the experience of work among prostitutes since Josephine Butler, and the study of medicine since Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake, had revealed to an increasing number of women the dreadful consequences of a moral standard which indulged men and degraded women. Prostitution appears to the Suffragist to be a direct consequence of the political supremacy of one sex over the other, to be the result of that encouragement of egoism which always follows the disposition of the political affairs of one class by another. ”

“ But in reality, whether it is a question of the rules of a game, or of the reciprocal rights and duties of members of a community, it is, and ought to be, to every reasonable human being not a grievance, but a matter of felicitation, that an expert or a body of experts should have evolved a set of rules under which order and harmony are achieved. Only vanity and folly would counsel amateurs to try to draw up rules or laws for themselves.
Again, the woman suffragist takes it as a matter of course that she would herself be able to construct a system of workable laws. ”

“ The recruiting field for the militant suffragists is the million of our excess female population—that million which had better long ago have gone out to mate with its complement of men beyond the sea. ”

“ These may be trivial things, but they are nevertheless the key to the nature of American suffragists. To be sure, their English sisters have outgrown these silly notions. They have shown themselves equal to the greatest demands on their character and power of endurance. All honor to the heroism and sturdiness of the English suffragettes. Thanks to their energetic, aggressive methods, they have proved an inspiration to some of our own lifeless and spineless ladies. But after all, the suffragettes, too, are still lacking in appreciation of real equality. ”

“ “A lifted world lifts women up,”
The Socialist explained.
“You cannot lift the world at all
While half of it is kept so small,”
The Suffragist maintained.
The world awoke, and tartly spoke:
“Your work is all the same:
Work together or work apart,
Work, each of you, with all your heart—
Just get into the game!” ”

“ 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. ”