WOMEN AND CHILDREN UNDER

SOCIALISTIC CONTROL*

By CAROLINE FAIRFIELD CORBIN

One of the Founders of the Association for the Advancement of Women; President of the Illinois Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage; Author, "Letters from a Chimney Corner;" "A Woman's Philosophy of Love;" "Wom

an's Rights in America," Etc.

T IS now well known and admitted that woman suffrage is not only a tenet of Socialism, but one of its fundamental principles; the one, indeed, that is most indispensable to its success,

since any "revolution" that affects but one-half the race, must of necessity be futile-abortive. Absolute "equality" of all human beings is all that will satisfy the socialistic requirements. It was from this sentiment, so widely diffused in Europe in the middle of the last century, that the woman-suffrage movement in America took its rise. Comparatively few Americans were aware of the fact, at the time of its inception. Still fewer realized that so vital was the connection between the offshoot and the parent stock, that no other means of opposing Socialism could be so effective as to combat and frustrate its efforts to achieve the industrial and political independence of

women.

I'

WOMEN AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

N THE opinion of many of the closest observers, the cause of woman suffrage would have been dead in America long ago, if it had not been for the energetic support, open or covert, which it has received from the Socialistic propaganda. With Socialists, as we have said, the question of woman suffrage is of the deepest and most vital import. It is indispensable to their schemes. It is

By permission of the New York Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, from "Woman's Rights in America," reprinted by courtesy of the Illinois Association.

for this reason that women are everywhere welcomed to their councils, made prominent upon their platforms, encouraged to take part in their secret intrigues, and indeed in their armed assaults. The main objects of Socialism, so far as women are concerned, is to revolutionize entirely her position in regard to all social and political life. A recent newspaper article puts the case very fairly thus:

"It is a physiological fact that in justice to herself, her children, and to society at large, the child-bearing woman ought not to be compelled to labor for her own support. Her maternal duties constitute an insurmountable handicap in the labor market.

"The present social order meets this condition of things by providing that the father of her children shall, through the institution of marriage, labor for her support and that of their children, he attending to the external duties of their united life, and she to the domestic affairs. If woman is to become industrially independent of man, some other way of providing for her support during her child-bearing years must be devised. Socialism puts this responsibility upon the State, together with that of caring for the children. What then becomes of marriage and the home? Is there any escape from the conviction that the industrial and political independence of woman would be the wreck of our present domestic institutions?"

"FREE DIVORCE," "SOUL-MATING" AND PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF

I'

CHILDREN

T Is precisely this end at which Socialism aims. This is the true significance of its outcry for "equality" between men and women, for "equal work” and “equal pay," without regard to those characteristics and conditions of sex that practically modify, to a great extent, the amount and character of service; the demand for free marriage, free divorce, and the removal of all legal or social restrictions upon the relations between men and women.

Anti-suffrage women have not failed to take into the account the embarrassments that have arisen from the changes that are going on in regard to the employment of

women in those occupations which have hitherto been regarded as belonging exclusively to men. They believe these changes, adverse as they are to the wage-earning capacity of men, and therefore most inimical to the true interests of the home, are temporary, and that they will yield in time to the increasing sense of the importance and dignity of our domestic institutions, and those varied domestic needs which are now so hampered by lack of capable and efficient service. But whatever the remedy for these evils of a transitional state, they are firmly convinced that it does not lie in the direction of woman suffrage nor any other socialistic nostrum.

Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, the English suffragist, who has recently been advocating in America the violent methods employed by the extremists of her party in England, is reported as saying publicly on her return to her own country, that the anti-suffrage movement in America is having a most disastrous effect upon the suffrage cause, and that she could see little hope for suffrage in America, except through Socialism.

But will not American women pause to reckon the price which they must pay to the Socialist propaganda for the so-called emancipation? That price is simply the wreck of the home, the abandonment of all their legal rights to its support and protection, and the surrender of their children to the care of the State.

HOW BRITISH WOMEN ARE ORGANIZED

IN POLITICS*

By MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT, LL.D.

President of the British National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies ONDON, nay Great Britain, has never seen anything like the great, well-organized, most impressive and perfectly orderly procession of June, 1911, when tens of thousands of unrepresented citizens, numbering among them women of every rank, women of every creed, professional women, industrial women, university women, artists, actresses, titled women, charwomen and domestic servants, marched, five abreast, from Blackfriars Bridge to the Albert Hall, occupying more than four hours to pass any given point. They all had, notwithstanding their extraordinary diversity in other respects, but one object and one aim-the breaking down of the aristocracy of sex and the admission of women to a share in the representative institutions of the country. This great demonstration, unique in many respects as it was, did not stand alone; it was but one of many which have been held all over the country; the largest halls have been filled again and again; there has been the largest concourse of people ever known to have been assembled for any political object in Hyde Park. More than 130 town councils and other locally elected representative bodies petitioned Parliament in favor of the Women's Suffrage Bill of 1911, the towns thus acting including Edinburgh, Dublin, Glasgow, Dundee, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Bradford, Wolverhampton and Brighton.

W

WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN ENGLAND, 1886-1912

OMEN's Suffrage has been debated again and again in Parliament, and no bill has been defeated on second reading since 1886. The majority in 1910 was 110; in 1911 it was 167. It will be an outrage which

By Mrs. Fawcett's permission; from "Women and Representative Government," published in "The Methodist Times."

will be deeply and permanently resented if the result of all this continuous work and effort is to give more representation to men and none at all to women. There has been comparatively no demand among men for a lowering of the franchise. There has been no mandate from the country to extend the franchise to such men as are at present excluded. No men, it may be remarked, are definitely and permanently excluded. There has been a mandate for Women's Suffrage; the best form of mandate, as Mr. Lloyd George explained in his speech at the Horticultural Hall, is a mandate which each member of Parliament gets from his own constituents-and when, after the election of each successive Parliament during a quarter of a century, it is found that a majority of members are returned pledged to their constituents to support Women's Suffrage, this is a mandate of the most effective and constitutional kind.

It is almost inconceivable that the House of Commons, having now for more than twenty-five years had a majority of members pledged to woman's enfranchisement, should be content to enfranchise more men and to leave the whole of one sex entirely without the protection of representation. The Labor Party and the Independent Labor Party have declared positively that they will not lend themselves to any such betrayal. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, M. P., as chairman of the Labor Party, has declared that he recognizes "that it has been the women's agitation that has brought the question of the franchise both for men and women to the front at the present time," and that his party is resolved that the new Reform Bill shall not be used to destroy the success of Women's Suffrage. The Independent Labor Party pledged itself to oppose the Reform Bill unless women are included in it. Sir Edward Grey, at the Horticultural Hall in December, said that it was to him "inconceivable that the House of Commons, which has more than once (he might have said a dozen times) by large majorities approved the principle of Women's Suffrage, should calmly proceed to pass through all its stages a bill widening the suffrage for men without doing something to remove the barriers against