The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Flame Ignites. Susan B. Anthony
wife have the same power to dispose of separate property. Comparatively few women in this country have property when married, especially if young at the time, and the same is true of the majority of men, but afterwards the woman may never hope to accumulate any, as the joint earnings of the marriage partnership belong exclusively to the husband, and the duties of the average household prevent the wife from engaging in outside work. However, in order that she might not be left absolutely penniless after years of labor, the Common Law provided that she should be entitled to "dower," i. e., the possession, for her lifetime, of one-third of all the real estate of which her husband was possessed in fee simple during the marriage. That is, she should receive the life-use of one-third of any realty she might have brought into the marriage and one-third of all they had earned together. But if the husband had converted these into cash, bonds, stocks or other personal property, she could legally claim nothing. He had "curtesy," i. e., the life-use of all her real estate, (sometimes dependent on the birth of children, sometimes not), and usually the whole of her personal estate absolutely.
Curtesy has now been abolished in over one-half the States. The law of dower still exists in more than one-half, but special statutes in regard to personal property and the wife's separate estate have been made so liberal that in comparatively few States is she left in the helpless condition of olden times. In about one-half of them she takes from one-third to the whole (if there are no children) of both real and personal estate absolutely; but in all of them it is only at the death of the husband that she has any share or control of the joint accumulations except such as he chooses to allow. At the death of the wife all of these belong legally to the husband and she can not secure to her children or her parents any part of the property which she has helped to earn. Space forbids going into a discussion of the general upheaval which follows the death of the husband, the inventories which must be taken, the divisions which must be made, generally resulting in the breaking up of the home; while at the death of the wife all passes peacefully into the possession of the husband and there is no scattering of the family unless he wishes it. A general but necessarily superficial statement of the property laws will be found in connection with each State in the following chapters, and they represent a complete legal revolution during the past half century.
Fathers and mothers are given equal guardianship of children in the District of Columbia and nine States—Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York and Washington. (See Pennsylvania.) In all others the father has the sole custody and control of the persons, education, earnings and estates of minor children. Where this right is abused the mother can obtain custody only by applying for separation or divorce or proving in court the unfitness of the father. In a number of States the father may by will appoint a guardian even of a child unborn, to the exclusion of the mother. In others the widow is legally entitled to the guardianship but forfeits it by marrying again. Others do not permit a widow to appoint by will a guardian for her children. Tennessee and Louisiana offer examples of the English and French codes in this respect.
Although the father is the sole guardian and entitled to the services of the children, and although the joint earnings of the marriage belong exclusively to him, and in a number of States he is declared in the statutes to be the "head of the family," in many of them the mother is held to be equally liable for its support. Her separate property may be taken for this purpose and she is also required to contribute by her labor. In such cases the husband decides what constitutes "necessities" and the wife must pay for what he orders. A recent decision of the Illinois courts compelled a wife to pay for the clothes of an able-bodied husband. In most but not all of the States the husband, if competent, is punished for failure to support his family. The punishment consists in a fine, the State thus taking from the family what money he may possess; or confinement in prison, where he is boarded and lodged while the family is in nowise relieved.
It has not been deemed necessary to consider at length the subject of divorce, except to mention the laws of the few States which discriminate against women. South Carolina is the only one which does not grant divorce; New York the only one which makes adultery the sole cause. In the remainder the causes have a wider range, but in all the records show that the vast majority of divorces are granted to wives. The following list is taken from the New York Sun (1902) and corresponds with information gathered from other sources:
Habitual drunkenness, in all except eight States.
Wilful desertion, generally.
Felony, in all except three.
Cruelty, and intolerable cruelty, in all except five.
Failure by the husband to provide, in twenty.
Fraud and fraudulent contract, in nine.
Absence without being heard from, for different periods, in six.
Ungovernable temper, in two.
Insupportably cruel treatment, outrages and excesses, in six.
Indignities rendering life burdensome, in six.
Attempt to murder other party, in three.
Insanity or idiocy at time of marriage, in six. Insanity lasting
ten years, in Washington; incurable insanity, in North Dakota,
Florida and Idaho.
Husband notoriously immoral before marriage, unknown to wife,
in West Virginia. [Pregnancy of wife before marriage, unknown
to husband, in many States].
Fugitive from justice, in Virginia.
Gross misbehavior or wickedness, in Rhode Island.
Any gross neglect of duty, in Kansas and Ohio.
Refusal of wife to remove into the State, in Tennessee.
Mental incapacity at time of marriage, in Georgia.
Three years with any religious society that believes the marriage
relation unlawful, in Massachusetts; and joining any such sect, in
New Hampshire.
When parties can not live in peace and union, in Utah.
Vagrancy of the husband, in Missouri and Wyoming.
Excesses, in Texas.
Where wife by cruel and barbarous treatment renders condition
of husband intolerable, in Pennsylvania.
By reference to the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. I, pp. 482, 717, 745 and following, it will be seen that the resolutions favoring divorce for habitual drunkenness offered in the first women's conventions, during the early '50's, almost disrupted the meetings, and caused press and pulpit throughout the country to thunder denunciations, but half a century later such laws exist in thirty-seven of the forty-five States and meet with general approval. It is frequently charged that the granting of woman suffrage has been followed by laws for free divorce, but an examination of the statutes will show that exactly the same causes obtain in the States where women do not vote as in those where they do; that there has not been the slightest change in the latter since the franchise was given them; and that in Wyoming, where it has been exercised since 1869, there is the smallest percentage of divorce in proportion to the population of any State in the Union. The three places which are so largely utilized by outsiders who wish a speedy divorce, because only a ninety days' residence is required, are North and South Dakota and Oklahoma, in neither of which have women any suffrage except for school trustees.
The "age of consent or protection" for girls, i. e., the age when they are declared to have sufficient understanding to consent to intercourse, and above which they can claim no legal protection, was fixed at ten years by the Common Law. No action was taken by any State to advance the age up to which they might be protected until 1864, when Oregon raised it to fourteen years. No other State followed this example until 1882, when Wyoming made it fourteen. In 1885 Nebraska added two years making it twelve. At this date women commenced to besiege the Legislatures in all parts of the country, and there was a general movement from that time forward to have the age of protection increased, but in almost every instance where this has been accomplished, the penalty for violation of the law has been reduced, and now in thirteen States no minimum penalty is named.