Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

them, women are placed at further disadvantage in comparison with the men with whom they must compete, by their utter inability to affect industrial conditions through the exercise of the right of suffrage. It is a handicap race, but one conducted contrary to all rules, for the handicap is placed on the competitor who is already at a disadvantage. In asking for the removal of the handicap of disfranchisement from women we are not asking for them an advantage over men to compensate for the disadvantage from which women suffer because of the inferior position given to them and the extra burdens laid upon them in the past, but are asking simply for a fair field and no favors.

There has been in some quarters a disposition to regard the presence of women in industrial life as an abnormal condition of affairs, and therefore as something to be discouraged by all means possible. This opinion is the opinion of those who look at the question only superficially, those who fail to appreciate economic history, and fail to com prehend the working of economic laws and to understand the changes in industrial conditions which have taken place during the last half century. The industrial history of the last half century is not a history of the increased employment of women. It is simply a history of industrial readjustment. Women have always been workers, but changes have taken place in the conditions under which they work.

Before the development of the factory system much of the work now done in the factories was performed in the home and by women.

This is especially true of spinning, carding, weaving, and of all labor entering into the manufacture of textiles. While it is true that large numbers of women are employed in textile mills, it is true also that large numbers of men are employed in those mills, and are thus employed in the performance of labor formerly performed by women. What is true of textile manufacture is, in a less degree, true of many other occupations, as laundry work, the canning of fruit, the making of butter and cheese, etc.

The specialization of labor, which has taken work from the home to the factory, has brought about a readjustment of the labor of both men and women. The transfer of the work and the substitution of the labor of men for that of women has deprived many women of employment which they formerly found within the home, and has forced them to look outside and find occupation wherever there may be opportunity. Many of them have found employment directly in the occupations taken from home to factory, but there has not been room for all in these occupations, inasmuch as much of the labor is now being performed by men, and consequently many others have been forced to look for employment in occupations from which there have been withdrawn the men who are now employed in occupations formerly monopolized by women.

Again, industrial changes have created many new occupations, such as stenography and typewriting, in which large numbers of women have found employment, and in which there has been no displacement of either men or women.

It can not he said, therefore, that women are taking men's work from them or that they are displacing men in the sense that more women and fewer men are being actually employed in labor.*

The change lies in the facts that an increasing number of women are doing their work in factories and that they are being paid a definite money wage for their work instead of being obliged to be dependent for compensation on the caprice of the head of the household within which their work may lie.

The idea is held more or less broadly in this country that the ideal condition for women is that of leisure. This ideal is both modern and artificial. Women have always been factors in the world's work, and in the past were so recognized. The Statutes of Laborers enacted

*Taken from article on "Labor of Women," for the Industrial Commission by Miss Laughlin and embodied in their reports,

in Edward III's time exacted service from men and women alike. The Statute of Apprenticeship authorized magistrates to seize upon any woman between 14 and 40 years of age who was unmarried and out of service and set her to work "for such wages and in such reasonable sort or manner as they shall think fit." The false modern ideal has been produced by the changed conditions which make it necessary for a large proportion of women workers to find their work outside the home. Because the activities of women have been confined to the home in the past the scope and value of their work have not been recognized. The world, however, could not have done without their labor and it can not do without it now. No nation can be strong and support a large leisure class, whether that class consist of men or women. There is not such a surplus of force and ability in the world that we can afford to waste one-half of the available supply. The world needs the work of women for its development. Women need work for their own development. The active, intelligent, capable women of this country will never accept either as a fact or as an ideal an aimless, occupationless life, which would mean the dissipation of their energies, the dwarfing of their abilities, and the limitation of their possibilities. Women will continue to be workers in the future as they have been workers in the past. There will be no going back from the factory system, no retransfer of industry from factory to home. Women therefore in order to do their share of the world's work in the future must in large numbers find occupation outside the home. The woman wage-earner has come to stay. The existence of a large body of wage-earning women is a normal, therefore a permanent feature of our industrial life and one which must be reckoned within the shaping of national policies. All that they ask is an opportunity equal to that of their brothers to do good, honest work in the world, an equal opportunity to make the most of the abilities which God has given them with equal power to secure for themselves protection of their inalienable rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to secure which rights is the fundamental object of government. [Applause.]

[ocr errors]

Miss ANTHONY. The next speaker will be Mrs. Jennie A. Brown, of Minneapolis, Minn.

STATEMENT OF MRS. JENNIE A. BROWN.

Mrs. BROWN. Just a word for the women of the Northwest, gentlemen: We, the women of the Northwest, the land of broad acres and prosperity, do not come to-day with a tale of wrongs to be righted. We are not a discontented, envious class of women, but when the governor of Colorado in his charge to the young women graduates of the Denver University told them, "You are now equally with your brothers qualified citizens of our great Republic. You receive the same privileges and upon your shoulders fall the same responsibilities, and you are in every respect as fully prepared to perform the duties, discharge the responsibilities in as creditable manner as they, your brother classmates"-might we be excused a feeling of jealousy, a twinge of envy, of those our fortunate sisters?

For, gentlemen, we are not in every respect citizens of this great Republic. As you very well know, our great Northwest is sprinkled

liberally with coeducational universities, where the young women of the day breathe the spirit of equality and comradeship, and it is only when they leave the protection of their alma mater where they have stood side by side with their brother students in the legal, the medical, and the literary classics, that the male students can say, "Now step aside; we are the people,' you are female."

[ocr errors]

For as scientists have discovered, the spiritual, the mental, the intellectual is superior to the distinction of sex. Therefore we come to you urging this very natural right which men are every day tacitly acknowledging "the right of equal legalized recognition. We are not socialists; we have no anarchistic motives; but in our very climate we breathe the spirit of energy and courage, and many of us who would not start at the blood-curdling cry of the coyote tremble with nervous dread at the very thought of coming to the national capital and facing the Senatorial dignity of this gracious but august committee. True. As our French sister would say, "Voila." It is in the atmosphere and the training of the new century.

Some very astute observers from the European countries have remarked the great influence of the American woman with her husband and brothers. In no other land, say they, is the wife so much the companion, the adviser, the comrade, as in this great America. Our Austrian friends claim that the American women are weak, that they neglect the development of the muscular system. While in Austria the wife may as often beat her husband as he can beat her, in America the wife is in the power of the husband. In New Zealand the women are politically equal to the men, and in many European countries they seem to be ahead of us in a few particulars; yet in the main it is in America that the woman is accorded a high place socially, practically, and theoretically, and in no other country is the spirit of reform so favorable to the uplifting of women.

We, the American women of the Northwest, do not ask for the earth. We would not be modern Atlases. We only ask our share-only a legal claim to half; only share and share alike the lesson our mothers taught us in infancy. Why unlearn in mature years the best of their teaching? And because we are the helpmates, the comrades, of our husbands and brothers, reading the same papers, listening to the same arguments, interested vitally in the same government, trained along the same lines, we to-day ask the equal share. We would like to vote on all these great absorbing questions upon which you, together with the Sioux Indian, are voting. Is it unreasonable? Is it unnatural? You yourselves are partially responsible. The Goddess of Liberty is always a female figure. If this is not natural, if this is not seemly, then pull her down and erect in her place the Colossus of Rhodes and give him the American flag to hold.

I beg pardon, gentlemen. This is not a recommendation. I have not come to advise. I have only come to plead for that which the new woman, the young woman of the Northwest, would applaud you for giving. [Applause.]

Miss ANTHONY. The next in order will be Mrs. Mary Wood Swift. She was formerly the president of the State of California Suffrage Society, and she is now the president of the National Council of Women of California. Her husband was a former minister to Japan.

STATEMENT OF MRS. MARY WOOD SWIFT.

Mrs. SWIFT. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, in all sincerity I thank you for this privilege of speech. Women can not stand still while the world goes on. To hold that the world is not moving ahead were absurd; hence we have the admitted fact that women must progress. Department stores have crowded out small stores in many cities and towns. The small storekeepers have vainly protested against this form of competition. You know as well as I know that these protests have not even made a dent in economic conditions. In no single instance have they checked the department-store combination. The department store, whatever the equities may be, has come to stay. It is one form of modern mercantile progress. The same progress in a large degree is seen in the vast aggregations of capital that control American manufacturing and transportation interests, that are reaching out in all directions, that aim to dominate the trade and commerce of the world.

I am not discussing the equities of this material progress, gentlemen; I simply call your attention to vital facts. It is true that the material progress of the nation is one source of our national pride. The complement of this material progress should be moral or political progress, involving proper privileges to women. There can not be even and symmetrical progress unless these privileges be granted. The law should recognize woman as a factor in the great progress problem. The law should recognize the fact that the woman of to-day is liberally educated, is abreast of the world on current topics, is honestly patriotic, and, given a fair chance, can assist in making a greater United States. Does any thinking person doubt for a single moment that the thousands and thousands of women educated in our universities, colleges, and similar institutions are unequal to the great responsibili ties of active and representative citizenship? And does it not strike you, gentlemen, that the cohesive intellectual strength of these intelligent women should be at least measurably utilized in shaping the progress of the country?

You see and note and are influenced by progress in other directions. Why not see and note and be influenced by the progress of woman toward suffrage? Why not work for amendments to the law that will protect women in their property rights? Money quarrels are the basis of family discord. Most of these quarrels would not occur if the wife had the property rights to which she is justly entitled.

If I have presented my ideas in a homely way, if I have left the paths usually followed in a discussion of this kind, remember, gentlemen, that I am mindful of the constant drain on your time and attention and have tried to be brief and suggestive. We who are working for this cause ask that you, gentlemen, as lawmakers, carefully read the signs of the times and assist in promoting the progress for which we specially stand. Woman suffrage is one of the several forms of progress which are forcing themselves to the front and becoming national issues. One by one they defy evasion and in the end have to be met and decided.

I lay no claim to the gift of prophecy, but I do say that political convulsions of the future, possibly the very near future, will throw woman suffrage into such prominence that at least one of the great W S- -2*

political parties will find it expedient, if not absolutely necessary, to put a woman suffrage plank in its platform. The United States is moving swiftly forward in a political as well as material sense. Had any man five years ago predicted the national conditions of to-day, the war with Spain, and our annexation and expansion programme, he would have been laughed to scorn. Is it not possible, aye even probable, that the political changes of the next few years will be equally startling? Is it not possible that aside from its merits, on general principles, woman suffrage will be utilized by one or both of the parties in trimming the ship of state? [Applause.]

Miss ANTHONY. Next in order will be Mrs. Lucy Hobart Day, president of the Maine Woman Suffrage Association. She is the daughter of a Methodist minister, and I do not think she will preach anything but good gospel.

STATEMENT OF MRS. LUCY HOBART DAY.

Mrs. DAY. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, a great reform never has spontaneous birth, but exists in embryo, often for years, waiting the fullness of time when it shall be born, and this is especially true of the reform under consideration at the present time. Such a movement as this requires and deserves the best and most earnest thought of its advocates, and in the promulgation of the theory of "equality for all and special privileges for none" it should be remembered that we are not advancing a new doctrine, but simply an old one revived, which formerly had a promoter in the person of Plato, the greatest philosopher of his time, who has left this maxim on record.

Neither a man as a man nor a woman as a woman has any special function in the administration of a State, but the gifts are equally diffused in the sexes.

If this be true, as we believe it is, it may be said that the nonrecognition of women in affairs of state is simply and purely an arbitrary distinction, which from time immemorial has been made by men against women, and is not founded either on justice or equity.

It may be untrue, but there seems to be a lurking suspicion in the minds of those who administer affairs of state that women would scarcely be satisfied with an equal participation, and that there is great danger of an endeavor to secure a trifle more than our proportionate share.

I believe I voice the sentiments of every person in the world who believes in equality of rights for men and women when I say that if such a suspicion exists it is utterly without foundation.

We hear a great deal in these days about the "iron hand in the velvet glove," and are frequently told by our would-be opposers that we rule now by our indirect influence-altogether ignoring the fact that this is not a question of anybody's ruling.

Instead, it is a question of sharing equally with men all the rights, privileges, and duties which they enjoy, while every one who considers the subject intelligently can but acknowledge that an influence which has no responsibility back of it is a dangerous element which needs to be carefully watched and guarded.

The gentleman who at a dinner party proposed the following toast: "To the ladies, once our superiors, now our equals," had small conception of the term superiority. If being superior means "taxation without representation," if it means that mothers are not coguardians

« AnteriorContinuar »