TENNYSON, The Princess.
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of an angel light.
WORDSWORTH.
Towards a higher conception of their duties, women are steadily advancing. It often happens that the history of words will give a hint of the progress of civilisation. Such a story is told by the use of lady and woman. Not many decades ago the use of the word woman in referring to respectable members of the sex was interpreted as a lack of courtesy. To-day, women prefer to be called women.
III. Women should be given the full right to enter any profession or business which they may desire. As John Stuart Mill says:
"The proper sphere for any human being is the highest sphere that being is capable of attaining; and this cannot be ascertained without complete liberty of choice."
"We are, as always, in a period of transition," remarks Mr. Björkman,[426] "the old forms are falling away from us on every side. Concerning the new ones we are still uncertain and divided. Whether woman shall vote or not, is not the main issue. She will do so sooner or later if it suits her. No, the imperative question confronting us is this: What are we to do that her life once more may be full and useful as it used to be? That question cannot be answered by anybody but herself. Furthermore, it can only be answered on the basis of actual experience. And urged onward by her never-failing power of intuition, woman has for once taken to experimenting. She has, if you please, become temporarily catabolic. But it means merely that she is seeking for new means to fulfil her nature, not for ways of violating it. And the best thing—nay, the only thing—man can do to help her is to stand aside and keep his faith, both in her and in life. Whether it be the franchise, or the running of railroads, or public offices, that her eager hands and still more eager soul should happen to reach out for, he must give her free way. All she wants is to find herself, and for this purpose she must try everything that once was foreign to her being: the trial over, she will instinctively and unfailingly pick out the right new things to do, and will do them."
The opening up of professions and industries to woman has been of incalculable benefit to her. Of old the unmarried woman could do little except sit by the fire and spin or make clothing for the South Sea Islanders. Her limited activities caused a corresponding influence on her character. People who have nothing to do will naturally find an outlet for their superfluous energy in gossip and all the petty things of life; if isolated from a share in what the world is doing, they will no less naturally develop eccentricities of character and will grow old prematurely. To-day, by being allowed a part in civic and national movements, women can "get out of themselves"—a powerful therapeutic agent. Mrs. Ella Young, a woman of sixty, was last year made Superintendent of the great Public School System of Chicago. Fräulein Anna Heinrichsdorff is the first woman in Germany to get an engineer's diploma, very recently bestowed upon her; an "excellent" mark was given Fräulein Heinrichsdorff in every part of her examination by the Berlin Polytechnic Institute. Miss Jean Gordon, the only factory inspector in Louisiana, is at present waging a strong fight against the attempt to exempt "first-class" theatres from the child-labour law. Mrs. Nellie Upham, of Colorado, is President and General Manager of the Gold Divide Mining, Milling, and Tunnel Company of Colorado and directs 300 workmen. These are a few examples out of some thousands of what woman is doing.[427] And yet there are men who do not believe she should do anything but wash dishes and scrub.
Much more serious is the glaring discrepancy in the wages paid to men and to women. For doing precisely the same work as a man and often doing it better, woman receives a much lower wage. The reasons are several and specious. We are told that men have families to support, that women do not have such expensive tastes as men, that they are incapable of doing as much as men, that by granting them equal wages one of the inducements to marry is removed. These arguments are generally used with the greatest gravity by bachelors. If men have families to support, women by the hundreds support brothers and sisters and weak parents. That they are incapable of doing as much sounds unconvincing to one who has seen the work of sweat-shops. The argument that men have more expensive tastes to satisfy is too feeble to deserve attention. Finally, when men argue that women should be forced to marry by giving them smaller wages, they are simply reverting to the time-honoured idea that the goal of every women's ambition should be fixed as matrimony. If the low wages of women produced no further consequence, one might dismiss the matter as not of essential importance; but inadequate pay has been found too frequently to be a direct cause of prostitution. No girl can well keep body and soul together on four dollars a week and some business managers have been known to inform their women employees with frankness that a "gentleman friend" is a necessary adjunct to a limited income.
The women who suffer most from low wages are probably the teachers in our primary schools. They start usually on a salary of about three hundred and fifty dollars a year. For this each teacher performs all the minute labour and bears all the nervous strain of instructing sixty pupils six and a half hours a day and of correcting dozens of papers far into the night. And when crime increases or the pupils are not universally successful in business, the school teacher has the added pleasure of getting blamed for it, being told that she ought to have trained them better. These facts lend some colour to Mark Twain's sage reflection that God at first made idiots—that was for practice; then he made school boards.
One of the most interesting examples of recent evolution in the industrial status of women is the decision of the Supreme Court of Illinois in the so-called Ritchie Case. The last Legislature of Illinois passed a law limiting to ten hours the working day of women in factories and stores. Now, as far back as 1893, the Legislature had passed a similar law limiting woman's labour to eight hours; but the Supreme Court in 1895 declared it unconstitutional on the ground that it was an arbitrary and unreasonable interference with the right of women to contract for the sale of their labour. When, therefore, this year a ten-hour bill was tried, W.C. Ritchie, who had secured the nullification of the act of 1893, again protested. The decision of the Court, rendered April 21, 1910, is an excellent proof of the great advance made within two decades in the position of women. Reversing completely its judgment of 1895, the Court left far behind it mere technicalities of law and found a sanction for its change of front in the experience of humanity and of common sense. These are its conclusions:
"It is known to all men, and of what we know as men we cannot profess to be ignorant as judges:
"That woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a great disadvantage in the battle of life.
"That while a man can work for more than ten hours a day without injury to himself, a woman, especially when the burdens of motherhood are upon her, cannot.
"That while a man can work standing upon his feet for more than ten hours a day, day after day, without injury to himself, a woman cannot.
"That to require a woman to stand upon her feet for more than ten hours in any one day and to perform severe manual labour while thus standing has the effect of impairing her health.
"And as weakly and sickly women cannot be the mothers of vigorous children, it is of the greatest importance to the public that the State take such measures as may be necessary to protect its women from the consequences produced by long-continued manual labour in those occupations which tend to break them down physically.
"It would seem obvious, therefore, that legislation which limits the number of hours which women shall be permitted to work to ten hours in a single day in such employments as are carried on in mechanical establishments, factories, and laundries would tend to preserve the health of women and assure the production of vigorous offspring by them and would conduce directly to the health, morals, and general welfare of the public, and that such legislation would fall clearly within the police powers of the State."
IV. All phenomena that concern family life should be carefully studied and their bearing on the state ascertained as exactly as possible. There is no subject, for example, from which such wild conclusions are drawn as the matter of divorce. The average moralist, but more particularly the clergy, seeing the fairly astonishing increase in divorce during the last decade, jump to the conclusion that family life is decadent and immorality flagrantly on the increase. They point to the indubitable fact that a century ago divorces were insignificant in number; and they infer that morality was then on a much higher level than it is now. Such alarmists neglect certain elementary facts. The flippant manner in which marriage is treated by the Restoration dramatists and by novelists of the 18th century, the callous sexual morality revealed in diaries and in the conversations of men like Johnson alone are sufficient to suggest the need of a readjustment of one's view regarding the standard of morality in the past. A century ago it was the duty of a gentleman to drink to excess; and it was presumed that a guest had not enjoyed his dinner unless he was at least comfortably the worse for liquor. This view of drunkenness is admirably depicted in Dickens's Pickwick Papers, where intoxication is treated throughout as something merely humorous.
There were just as many unhappy marriages formerly in proportion to the population as there are to-day; but the wife was held effectually from application for a divorce not only by rigid laws but by the sentiment of society, which ostracised a divorced woman, and furthermore by her lack of means and of opportunity for earning an independent livelihood. To-day women are not inclined to tolerate a husband who is brutal or debauched. Alarmists make a mistake when they place too much emphasis on the seeming triviality of the reasons, justifying their course, which wives advance when applying for a separation. For example, the phrase "incompatibility of temperament" is in a great number of cases merely a euphemism for something much worse. The clergy will counsel a woman to bear with what they call Christian resignation a husband addicted to drink or scarred by the diseases that are a consequence of sin. Abstractly considered, this may conceivably be good advice. But viewed in a common-sense way it is the duty of a woman to reflect on the consequences of conceiving children from such a man; and the researches of physicians will furnish her with incontrovertible facts regarding the impaired health of the offspring of such a union. A law which would permit of no divorce under such conditions, instead of benefiting the state, would injure it in its most vital asset—healthy children, the coming citizens. Doubtless the divorce laws in many States are too lax. But sweeping generalities based on theory will not remedy matters. Divorce may simply be a symptom, not a disease; a revolt against unjust conditions; and the way to do away with divorce or reduce the frequency of it is to remedy the evil social conditions which, in a great many instances, are responsible.
The fact is, the institution of marriage is going through a crisis. The old view that marriage is a complete merging of the wife in the husband and that the latter is absolute monarch of his home is being questioned. When a man with this idea and a woman with a far different one marry, there is likely to be a clash. Marriage as a real partnership based on equality of goods and of interests finds an increasing number of advocates. There is great reason to believe that the issue will be only for the good and that from doubt and revolt a more enduring ideal will arise, based on a sure foundation of perfect understanding.
See an excellent article on "The American Woman" by Miss Ida M. Tarbell, in the American Magazine for April, 1910.
In 1893. "Be it resolved by the Second Legislature of the State of Wyoming:
"That the possession and exercise of suffrage by the women of Wyoming for the past quarter of a century has wrought no harm and has done great good in many ways; that it has largely aided in banishing crime, pauperism, and vice from this State, and that without any violent and oppressive legislation," etc.
Women in Colorado have been of greatest service in establishing the following laws:
1—Establishing a State Home for dependent children, three of the five members of the board to be women.
2—Requiring that at least three of the six members of the county visitors shall be women.
3—Making mothers joint guardians of their children with the fathers.
4—Raising the age of protection for girls to 18 years.
5—Establishing a State Industrial School for girls. There had long been one for boys, but the women could not get one for girls until they had the vote.
6—Removing the emblems from the Australian ballots. This is a little, indirect step toward educational qualifications for voting.
7—Establishing the indeterminate sentence for prisoners.
8—Requiring one physician on the board of the Insane Asylum to be a woman.
9—Establishing truant schools.
10—Making better provision for the care of the feeble-minded.
11—For tree preservation.
12—For the inspection of private eleemosynary institutions by the State Board of Charities.
13—Various steps toward prevention of cruelty to animals.
14—Providing that foreign life and accident insurance companies, when sued, must pay the costs.
15—Establishing a juvenile court.
16—Making education compulsory for all children between the ages of 8 and 16, except those who are ill or those who are 14 and have completed the eighth grade, or those whose parents need their help and support.
17—Making the mother and father joint heirs of a deceased child.
18—Providing for union high schools.
19—Establishing a State travelling library commission.
20—Providing that any person employing a child under 14 in any mine, mill, or factory be punished by imprisonment in addition to a fine.
21—Requiring the joint signature of the husband and wife to a mortgage of a homestead.
22—Forbidding the insuring of the lives of children under 10.
23—Forbidding children of 16 or under to work more than six hours a day in any mill, factory, or other occupation that may be unhealthful.
24—Making it a criminal offence to contribute to the delinquency of children—the parental responsibility act.
25—Making it a misdemeanour to fail to support aged or infirm parents.
26—Providing that no woman shall work more than eight hours a day at work requiring her to be on her feet.
27—Restricting the time for shooting doves.
28—Abolishing the binding out of girls committed to the Industrial School until the age of 21.
29—A pure food law in harmony with the national law.
In the Boston Herald for June 4, 1910.
Quoted in the New York Times of Jan. 9, 1910.
See, for example, Lyman Abbott in the Outlook for Feb. 19, 1910.
American Magazine, July, 1909.
History of European Morals, vol. ii, pp. 379 and following. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1869.
Note, for example, that in Maryland a man can get a divorce if his wife has had sexual intercourse before marriage; but a wife cannot get a divorce from her husband if he has been guilty of the same thing. In Texas, adultery on the part of the wife entitles the husband to a divorce; but the wife can obtain divorce from her husband only if he has abandoned her and lived in adultery with another woman.
On Jan. 12, 1910, a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives to check the "White Slave Traffic" by providing a penalty of ten years' imprisonment and a fine of five thousand dollars for any one who engages in it.
In some it is even lower; ten in Georgia and Mississippi for example.
In Collier's Weekly, Feb. 5, 1910.
Note what the officers of the Chicago Juvenile Protective Association, many of whom are women, accomplished in 1909-1910. These women are fighting the agencies which make for juvenile crime mostly and each officer has a specified "beat" to patrol. Last year their work amounted to the following:
| Complaints of selling liquors to minors investigated | 295 |
| Complaints of selling tobacco to minors investigated | 52 |
| Complaints of selling obscene postcards investigated | 49 |
| Complaints of poolrooms investigated | 203 |
| Complaints of dance halls investigated | 92 |
| Five and ten cent theatres visited | 1,013 |
| Penny arcades visited | 67 |
| Saloons visited | 735 |
| Relief visits | 174 |
| Cases referred to relief organisations | 374 |
| Legal aid cases referred | 105 |
| Referred to Visiting Nurses' Association | 7 |
| Housing cases referred | 51 |
| Applications for work referred | 264 |
| Placed in hospitals | 103 |
| Sent to dispensaries | 192 |
| Children placed in homes | 240 |
| Slot machines removed | 223 |
| Work found for men | 57 |
| Work found for women | 81 |
| Work found for boys | 84 |
| Work found for girls | 90 |
| Visits to ice-cream parlors | 356 |
| Visits to candy stores | 805 |
| VISITS TO COURTS | |
| Juvenile | 451 |
| Municipal | 1,809 |
| Criminal | 211 |
| County | 86 |
| Grand Jury | 26 |
| Conferences with state or city officials | 1,244 |
| PROSECUTIONS | |
| Cases of abandonment | 99 |
| Assault and battery | 8 |
| Contributing to delinquency and dependency of children | 232 |
| Crimes against children | 12 |
| Disorderly conduct | 141 |
| Immoral dancing | 4 |
| Intoxicating liquors | 33 |
| Juvenile Court cases | 78 |
| Larceny | 4 |
| Tobacco | 10 |
| Sale of cocaine | 4 |
| Other cases | 110 |
| Total prosecutions | 738 |
| RESULTS | |
| Convictions | 311 |
| Settled out of court | 100 |
| Nolle pros, or nonsuit | 52 |
| Dismissed | 93 |
| Acquittals | 50 |
| Pending | 92 |
| Total complaints received | 5,047 |
In the four years intervening since this book was first written, the progress of equal rights for women has been so rapid that the summary on pages 175-235 is now largely obsolete; but it is useful for comparison. In the United States at present (August, 1914), Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington, California, Oregon, Kansas, Arizona, and Alaska have granted full suffrage to women. In the following States the voters will pass upon the question in the autumn of 1914: Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, Nebraska, and Ohio, the last three by initiative petition. In New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New York, and Massachusetts a constitutional amendment for equal suffrage has passed one legislature and must pass another before being submitted to the people. The advance has been world-wide. Thus, in 1910 the Gaekwar of Baroda in India allowed the women of his dominions a vote in municipal elections, and Bosnia bestowed the parliamentary suffrage on women who owned a certain amount of real estate; Norway in 1913 and Iceland in 1914 were won to full suffrage. The following table presents a convenient historical summary of the progress in political rights:
On July 2, 1776, two days before the Declaration of Independence was signed, New Jersey, in her first State constitution, enfranchised the women by changing the words of her provincial charter from "Male freeholders worth £50" to "all inhabitants worth £50," and for 31 years the women of that State voted.
GAINS IN EQUAL SUFFRAGE
Eighty years ago women could not vote anywhere, except to
a very limited extent in Sweden and in a few other places in the
Old World.
| TIME | PLACE | KIND OF SUFFRAGE |
| 1838 | Kentucky | School suffrage to widows with children of school age. |
| 1850 | Ontario | School suffrage, women married and single |
| 1861 | Kansas | School suffrage. |
| 1867 | New South Wales | Municipal suffrage. |
| 1869 | England | Municipal suffrage, single women and widows |
| Victoria | Municipal suffrage, married and single women |
|
| Wyoming | Full suffrage. | |
| 1871 | West Australia | Municipal suffrage. |
| 1875 | Michigan | School suffrage. |
| Minnesota | Do. | |
| 1876 | Colorado | Do. |
| 1877 | New Zealand | Do. |
| 1878 | New Hampshire | Do. |
| Oregon | Do. | |
| 1879 | Massachusetts | Do. |
| 1880 | New York | Do. |
| Vermont | Do. | |
| South Australia | Municipal suffrage. | |
| 1881 | Scotland | Municipal suffrage to the single women and widows |
| Isle of Man | Parliamentary suffrage. | |
| 1883 | Nebraska | School suffrage. |
| 1884 | Ontario | Municipal suffrage. |
| Tasmania | Do. | |
| 1886 | New Zealand | Do. |
| New Brunswick | Do. | |
| 1887 | Kansas | Do. |
| Nova Scotia | Do. | |
| Manitoba | Do. | |
| North Dakota | School suffrage. | |
| South Dakota | Do. | |
| 1887 | Montana | School suffrage |
| Arizona | Do. | |
| New Jersey | Do. | |
| Montana | Tax-paying suffrage. | |
| 1888 | England | County suffrage. |
| British Columbia | Municipal Suffrage. | |
| Northwest Territory | Do. | |
| 1889 | Scotland | County suffrage. |
| Province of Quebec | Municipal
suffrage, single women and widows |
|
| 1891 | Illinois | School suffrage. |
| 1893 | Connecticut | Do. |
| Colorado | Full suffrage. | |
| New Zealand | Do. | |
| 1894 | Ohio | School suffrage. |
| Iowa | Bond suffrage. | |
| England | Parish and
district suffrage, married and single women. |
|
| 1895 | South Australia | Full State suffrage. |
| 1896 | Utah | Full suffrage. |
| Idaho | Do. | |
| 1898 | Ireland | All offices except members of Parliament. |
| Minnesota | Library trustees. | |
| Delaware | School suffrage to tax-paying women. | |
| France | Women
engaged in commerce can vote for judges of the tribunal of commerce. |
|
| Louisiana | Tax-paying suffrage. | |
| 1900 | Wisconsin | School suffrage. |
| West Australia | Full State suffrage. | |
| 1901 | New York | Tax-paying suffrage; local taxation in all towns and villages
of the State. |
| Norway | Municipal suffrage. | |
| 1902 | Australia | Full suffrage. |
| New South Wales | Full State suffrage. | |
| 1903 | Kansas | Bond suffrage. |
| Tasmania | Full State suffrage. | |
| 1905 | Queensland | Do. |
| 1906 | Finland | Full suffrage; eligible for all offices. |
| 1907 | Norway | Full parliamentary suffrage to the 300,000 who already had
municipal suffrage. |
| Sweden | Eligible to municipal offices. | |
| Denmark | Can vote
for members of boards of public charities and serve on such boards. |
|
| England | Eligible as
mayors, aldermen, and county and town concilors. |
|
| Oklahoma | New State
continued school suffrage for women. |
|
| 1908 | Michigan | Taxpayers to vote on question of local taxation and granting
of franchises. |
| Denmark | Women who
are taxpayers or wives of taxpayers vote for all offices except of
members of Parliament. |
|
| Victoria | Full State suffrage. | |
| 1909 | Belgium | Can vote for members of the conseils des prudhommes, and
also eligible. |
| Province of Voralberg (Austrian Tyrol) | Single
women and widows paying taxes were given a vote. |
|
| Ginter Park, VA | Tax-paying
women, a vote on all municipal questions. |
|
| 1910 | Washington | Full suffrage. |
| New Mexico | School suffrage. | |
| 1910 | Norway | Municipal suffrage made universal. Three-fifths of the women had it before. |
| Bosnia | Parliamentary
vote to women owning a certain amount of real estate. |
|
| Diet of the Crown Prince of Krain (Austria) |
Suffrage to the
women of its capital city Laibach. |
|
| India (Gaekwar of Baroda) |
Women in his
dominions vote in municipal elections. |
|
| Wurttemberg | Women engaged in
agriculture vote for Kingdom of members of the chamber of agriculture;
also eligible. |
|
| New York | Women in all
towns, villages and third-class cities vote on bonding propositions. |
|
| 1911 | California | Full suffrage. |
| Honduras | Municipal suffrage in capital city, Belize. | |
| Iceland | Parliamentary
suffrage for women over 25 years. |
|
| 1912 | Oregon | Full suffrage. |
| Arizona | Do. | |
| Kansas | Do. | |
| 1913 | Alaska | Do. |
| Norway | Do. | |
| Illinois | Suffrage for
statutory officials (including presidential electors and municipal
officers). |
|
| 1914 | Iceland | Full suffrage. |
"I do not believe that there is a red-blooded man in the world who in his heart really believes in woman suffrage. I think that every man who favours it ought to be made to wear a dress. Talk about taxation without representation! Do you say that the young man who is of age does not represent his mother? Do you say that the young man who pledges at the altar to love, cherish, and protect his wife, does not represent her and his children when he votes? When the Christ of God came into this world to die for the sins of humanity, did he not die for all, males and females? What sort of foolish stuff are you trying to inject into this tariff debate?... There are trusts and monopolies of every kind, and these little feminine fellows are crawling around here talking about woman suffrage. I have seen them here in this Capitol. The suffragette and a little henpecked fellow crawling along beside her; that is her husband. She is a suffragette, and he is a mortal suffering yet."
Mr. Falconer of Washington rose in reply. He remarked:[430]
"I want to observe that the mental operation of the average woman in the State of Washington, as compared to the ossified brain operation of the gentleman from Alabama, would make him look like a mangy kitten in a tiger fight. The average woman in the State of Washington knows more about social economics and political economy in one minute than the gentleman from Alabama has demonstrated to the members of this House that he knows in five minutes."
On February 2, 1914, a delegation of women called upon President Wilson to ascertain his views. The President refused to commit himself. He was not at liberty, he said, to urge upon Congress policies which had not the endorsement of his party's platform; and as the representative of his party he was under obligations not to promulgate or intimate his individual convictions. On February 3, 1914, the Democrats of the House in caucus, pursuant to a resolution of Mr. Heflin, refused to create a woman suffrage committee. So the constitutional amendment was quite lost. In the following July Mr. Bryan suddenly issued a strong appeal for equal suffrage in the Commoner. Among his arguments were these:
"As man and woman are co-tenants of the earth and must work out their destiny together, the presumption is on the side of equality of treatment in all that pertains to their joint life and its opportunities. The burden of proof is on those who claim for one an advantage over the other in determining the conditions under which both shall live. This claim has not been established in the matter of suffrage. On the contrary, the objections raised to woman suffrage appear to me to be invalid, while the arguments advanced in support of the proposition are, in my judgment, convincing."
"Without minimising other arguments advanced in support of the extending of suffrage to woman, I place the emphasis upon the mother's right to a voice in molding the environment which shall surround her children—an environment which operates powerfully in determining whether her offspring will crown her latter years with joy or 'bring down her gray hairs in sorrow to the grave.'
"For a time I was imprest by the suggestion that the question should be left to the women to decide—a majority to determine whether the franchise should be extended to woman; but I find myself less and less disposed to indorse this test.... Why should any mother be denied the use of the franchise to safeguard the welfare of her child merely because another mother may not view her duty in the same light?"
The change in the status of women has been significant not only in the political field, but also in every other direction. A brief survey of the legislation of various States in the past year, 1913, reveals the manifold measures already adopted for the further protection of women and indicates the trend of laws in the near future. Acts were passed in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, and Ohio to punish the seduction of girls and women for commercialised vice, the laws being known as "White Slave Acts"; laws for the abatement of disorderly houses were passed in California, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington; Oregon decreed that male applicants for a marriage license must produce a physician's certificate showing freedom from certain diseases; and it authorised the sterilisation of habitual criminals and degenerates. The necessity of inculcating chastity in the newer generation, whether through the teaching of sex hygiene in the schools or in some other form, was widely discussed throughout the country. Mothers' pensions were granted by fourteen States; minimum wage boards were established by three; and three passed laws for the punishment of family desertion, in such wise that the family of the offender should receive a certain daily sum from the State while he worked off his sentence. Tennessee removed the disability of married women arising from coverture. Ten States further limited the hours of labour for women in certain industries, the tendency being to fix the limit at fifty-four or fifty-eight hours a week with a maximum of nine or ten in any one day. The hours of labour of children and the age at which they are allowed to work were largely restricted. A National Children's Bureau, under the charge of Miss Julia Lathrope, has been created at Washington; and Mrs. J. Borden Harriman was appointed to the Industrial Relations Commission. The minuteness and thoroughness of modern legislation for the protection of women may be realised by noting that in 1913 alone New York passed laws that no girl under sixteen shall in any city of the first, second, or third class sell newspapers or magazines or shine shoes in any street or public place; that separate wash rooms and dressing rooms must be provided in factories where more than ten women are employed; that whenever an employer requires a physical examination, the employee, if a female, can demand a physician of her own sex; that the manufacture or repair for a factory of any article of food, dolls' clothing, and children's apparel in a tenement house be prohibited except by special permit of the Labor Commission; that the State Industrial Board be authorised to make special rules and regulations for dangerous employments; and that the employment of women in canning establishments be strictly limited according to prescribed hours.
The unmistakable trend of legislation in the United States is towards complete equality of the sexes in all moral, social, industrial, professional, and political activities.
In England the House of Commons rejected parliamentary suffrage for women. Incensed at the repeated chicanery of politicians who alternately made and evaded their promises, a group of suffragettes known as the "militants" resorted to open violence. When arrested for damaging property, they went on a "hunger strike," refusing all nourishment. This greatly embarrassed the government, which in 1913 devised the so-called "Cat and Mouse Act," whereby those who are in desperate straits through their refusal to eat are released temporarily and conditionally, but can be rearrested summarily for failure to comply with the terms of their parole. The weakness in the attitude of the militant suffragettes is their senseless destruction of all kinds of property and the constant danger to which they subject innocent people by their outrages. If they would confine themselves to making life unpleasant for those who have so often broken their pledges, they could stand on surer ground. The English are commonly regarded as an orderly people, especially by themselves. Nevertheless, it is true that hardly any great reform has been achieved in England without violence. The men of England did not secure the abolition of the "rotten-borough" system and extensive manhood suffrage until, in 1831, they smashed the windows of the Duke of Wellington's house, burned the castle of the Duke of Newcastle, and destroyed the Bishop's palace at Bristol. In 1839 at Newport twenty chartists were shot in an attempt to seize the town; they were attempting to secure reforms like the abolition of property qualifications for members of Parliament. The English obtained the permanent tenure of their "immemorial rights" only by beheading one king and banishing another. In our own country, the Boston Tea Party was a typical "militant outrage," generally regarded as a fine piece of patriotism. If the tradition of England is such that violence must be a preliminary to all final persuasion, perhaps censure of the militants can find some mitigation in that fact. Some things move very slowly in England. In 1909 a commission was appointed to consider reform in divorce. Under the English law a husband can secure a divorce for infidelity, but a woman must, in addition to adultery, prove aggravated cruelty. This is humorously called "British fair play." In November, 1912, the majority of the commission recommended that this inequality be removed and that the sexes be placed on an equal footing; and that in addition to infidelity, now the only cause for divorce allowed, complete separation be also granted for desertion for three years, incurable insanity, and incurable habitual drunkenness. The majority, nine commissioners, found that the present stringent restrictions and costliness of divorce are productive of immorality and illicit relations, particularly among the poorer classes. The majority report was opposed by the three minority members, the Archbishop of York, Sir William Anson, and Sir Lewis Dibdin, representing the Established Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. Thus far, Parliament has not yet acted and the old law is still in force.
On the Continent, with the exception of a few places like Finland, the movement for equal suffrage, while earnestly pressed by a few, is not yet concentrated. Women have won their rights to higher education and are admitted to the universities. They can usually enter business and most of the professions. Inequities of civil rights are gradually being swept away. For example, in Germany a married woman has complete control of her property, but only if she specifically provided for it in the marriage contract; many German women are ignorant that they possess such a right. The Germans may be divided into two classes: the caste which rules, largely Prussian, militaristic, and bureaucratic; and that which, although desirous of more republican institutions and potentially capable of liberal views, is constrained to obey the first or ruling class. This upper class is not friendly to the modern women's-rights movement. Perhaps it has read too much Schopenhauer. This amiable philosopher, whose own mother could not endure living with him, has this to say of women[431]:
"A woman who is perfectly truthful and does not dissemble, is perhaps an impossibility. In a court of justice women are more often found guilty of perjury than men.... Women are directly adapted to act as the nurses and educators of our early childhood, for the simple reason that they themselves are childish, foolish, and shortsighted.... Women are and remain, taken altogether, the most thorough and incurable Philistines; and because of the extremely absurd arrangement which allows them to share the position and title of their husbands they are a constant stimulus to his ignoble ambitions.... Where are there any real monogamists? We all live, at any rate for a time, and the majority of us always, in polygamy.... It is men who make the money, and not women; therefore women are neither justified in having unconditional possession of it nor capable of administering it.... That woman is by nature intended to obey, is shown by the fact that every woman who is placed in the unnatural position of absolute independence at once attaches herself to some kind of man, by whom she is controlled and governed; that is because she requires a master. If she is young, the man is a lover; if she is old, a priest."
Essentially the opinion of Schopenhauer is that of the Prussian ruling class to-day. It is indisputable that in Germany, as elsewhere on the Continent, chastity in men outside of marriage is not expected, nor is the wife allowed to inquire into her husband's past. The bureaucratic German expects his wife to attend to his domestic comforts; he does not consult her in politics. The natural result when the masculine element has not counterchecks is bullying and coarseness. To find the coarseness, the reader can consult the stories in papers like the Berliner Tageblatt and much of the current drama; to observe the bullying, he will have to see it for himself, if he doubts it. This is not an indictment of the whole German people; it is an indictment of the militaristic-bureaucratic ruling class, which, persuaded of its divine inspiration and intolerant of criticism,[432] has plunged the country into a devastating war. It is not unlikely that the end of the conflict will mark also the overthrow of the Hohenzollern dynasty. The spirit of the Germans of 1848, who labored unsuccessfully to make their country a republic, may awake again and realise its dreams. In concluding this chapter, I wish to enlarge somewhat upon the philosophy of suffrage as exhibited in the preceding chapter. The "woman's sphere" argument is still being worked overtime by anti-suffrage societies, whose members rather inconsistently leave their "sphere," the home, to harangue in public and buttonhole legislators to vote against the franchise for women. "A woman's place," says the sage Hennessy, "is in th' home, darning her husband's childher. I mean----" "I know what ye mean," says Mr. Dooley. "'Tis a favrite argument iv mine whin I can't think iv annything to say." A century ago, the home was the woman's sphere. To-day the man has deliberately dragged her out of it to work for him in factory and store because he can secure her labor more cheaply than that of men and is, besides, safer in abusing her when she has no direct voice in legislation. Are the manufacturers willing to send their 1,300,000 female employees back to their "sphere"? If they are not, but desire their labor, they ought in fairness to allow them the privileges of workmen—that is, of citizens, participating actively in the political, social, and economic development of the country.
As women enter more largely into every profession and business, certain results will inevitably follow. We shall see first of all what pursuits are particularly adapted to them and which ones are not. It has already become apparent that as telephone and typewriter operators women, as a class, are better fitted than men. They have, in general, greater patience for details and quickness of perception in these fields. Similarly, in architecture some have already achieved conspicuous success. One who has observed the insufficient closet space in modern apartments and kitchenettes with the icebox in front of the stove, is inclined to wish that male architects would consult their mothers or wives more freely. In law and medicine results are not yet clear. We shall presently possess more extensive data in all fields for surer conclusions.
A second result may be, that many women, instead of leaving the home, will be forced back into it. This movement will be accelerated if the granting of equal pay for equal work and a universal application of the minimum wage take place. There are a great number of positions, especially those where personality is not a vital factor, where employers will prefer women when they can pay them less; but if they must give equal pay, they will choose men. Hence the tendency of the movements mentioned is to throw certain classes of women back into the home. The home of the future, however, will have lost much of the drudgery and monotony once associated with it. The ingenious labor-saving devices, like the breadmixer, the fireless cooker, the vacuum cleaner, and the electric iron, the propagation of scientific knowledge in the rearing of children, and wider outlets for outside interests, will tend to make domestic life an exact science, a profession as important and attractive as any other.
The home is not necessarily every woman's sphere and neither is motherhood. Neither is it every woman's congenital duty to make herself attractive to men. The "woman's pages" of newspapers, filled with gratuitous advice on these subjects, never tell men that their duty is fatherhood or that they should make themselves attractive or that their sphere is also the home. Until these one-sided points of view are adjusted to a more reasonable basis, we shall not reach an understanding. They are as unjust as the farmer who ploughs with a steam plow and lets his wife cart water from a distant well instead of providing convenient plumbing.
Women who are fitted for motherhood and have a talent for it can enter it with advantage. There is a talent for motherhood exactly as there is for other things. Other women have genius which can be of greatest service to the community in other ways. They should have opportunity to find their sphere. If this is "Feminism," it is also simple justice. One reason that we are at sea in some of the problems of the women's-rights movement, is that the history of women has been mainly written by men. The question of motherhood, the sexual life of women, and the position of women as it has been or is likely to be affected by their sexual characteristics, must be more exactly ascertained before definite conclusions can be reached. At present there is too much that we don't know. We need more scientific investigations of the type of Mr. Havelock Ellis's admirable Studies in the Psychology of Sex[433] and less of pseudo-scientific lucubrations like Otto Weininger's Sex and Character. When human society has rid itself of the bogies and nightmares, superstitions and prejudices, which have borne upon it with crushing force, it will be in a better position to construct an ideal system of government. Meanwhile experiments are and must be made. Woman suffrage is not necessarily a reform; it is a necessary step in evolution.
One venerable bogey I wish to dispose of before I close. It is that the Roman Empire was ruined and collapsed because the increasing liberty given to women and the equality granted the sexes under the Empire produced immorality that destroyed the State. The trouble with Rome was that it failed to grasp the fundamentals of economic law. Slavery, the concentration of land in a few hands, and the theory that all taxation has for its end the enriching of a select few, were the fallacies which, in the last analysis, caused the collapse of the Roman Empire. The luxury, immorality, and race-suicide which are popularly conceived to have been the immediate causes of Rome's decline and fall, were in reality the logical results, the inevitable attendant phenomena of a political system based on a false hypothesis. For when wealth was concentrated in a few hands, when there was no all-embracing popular education, all incentives to thrift, to private initiative, and hence to the development of the sturdy moral qualities which thrift and initiative cause and are the product of, were stifled. A nation can reach its maximum power only when, through the harmonious cooperation of all its parts, the initiative and talents of every individual have free scope, untrammeled by special privilege, to reach that sphere for which nature has designed him or her.
NOTE: The official organ of the National American Woman Suffrage Association is The Woman's Journal, published weekly. The headquarters are at 505 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
England has two organisations which differ in methods. The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies has adopted the constitutional or peaceful policy; it publishes The Common Cause, a weekly, at 2 Robert Street, Adelphi, W.C., London. The "militant" branch of suffragettes forms the National Women's Social and Political Union, and its weekly paper is Votes for Women, Lincoln's Inn House, Kingsway, W.C.
The International Woman Suffrage Alliance issues the Jus Suffragii monthly at 62 Kruiskade, Rotterdam.
A good source from which to obtain the present
status of women in Europe is the Englishwoman's
Year Book and Directory for 1914, published by
Adam and Charles Black.