The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Flame Ignites. Susan B. Anthony
appeal to the several Legislatures. The subject would be much more likely to receive intelligent treatment at the hands of the picked men of a State, where calm discussion may be had, than at the polls where prejudice and tradition oftentimes exert a more potent influence than logic and justice. To refuse this method to those to whom we are bound by the dearest ties betrays an indifference to their requests or an inexplicable adhesion to prejudice, which is only sought to be defended by an asserted regard for women, that to me seems most illogical.
I share no fears of the degradation of women by the ballot. I believe rather that it will elevate men. I believe the tone of our politics will be higher, that our caucuses will be more jealously guarded and our conventions more orderly and decorous. I believe the polls will be freed from the vulgarity and coarseness which now too often surround them, and that the polling booths, instead of being in the least attractive parts of a ward or town, will be in the most attractive; instead of being in stables, will be in parlors. I believe the character of candidates will be more closely scrutinized and that better officers will be chosen to make and administer the laws. I believe that the casting of the ballot will be invested with a seriousness—I had almost said a sanctity—second only to a religious observance.
The objections enumerated above appear to be the only profferings against this measure excepting certain fragmentary quotations and deductions from the sacred Scriptures; and here, Mr. President, I desire to enter my most solemn protest. The opinions of Paul and Peter as to what was the best policy for the struggling churches under their supervision, in deferring to the prejudices of the communities which they desired to attract and benefit, were not inspirations for the guidance of our civilization in matters of political co-operation; and every apparent inhibition of the levelment of the caste of sex may be neutralized by selections of other paragraphs and by the general spirit and trend of the Holy Book.... Sir, my reverence for this grandest of all compilations, human or divine, compels a protest against its being cast into the street as a barricade against every moral, political and social reform; lest, when the march of progress shall have swept on and over to its consummation, it may appear to the superficial observer that it is the Bible which has been overthrown and not its erroneous interpretation.
If with our present experience of the needs and dangers of co-operative government and our present observation of woman's social and economic status, we could divest ourselves of our traditions and prejudices, and the question of suffrage should come up for incorporation into a new organic law, a distinction based upon sex would not be entertained for a moment. It seems to me that we should divest ourselves to the utmost extent possible of these entanglements of tradition, and judicially examine three questions relative to the proposed extension of suffrage: First, Is it right? Second, Is it desirable? Third, Is it expedient? If these be determined affirmatively our duty is plain.
If the right of the governed and the taxed to a voice in determining by whom they shall be governed and to what extent and for what purposes they may be taxed is not a natural right, it is nevertheless a right to the declaration and establishment of which by the fathers we owe all that we possess of liberty. They declared taxation without representation to be tyranny, and grappled with the most powerful nation of their day in a seven-years' struggle for the overthrow of such tyranny. It appears incredible to me that any one can indorse the principles proclaimed by the patriots of 1776 and deny their application to women.
Samuel Adams said: "Representation and legislation, as well as taxation, are inseparable, according to the spirit of our Constitution and of all others that are free." Again, he said: "No man can be justly taxed by, or bound in conscience to obey, any law to which he has not given his consent in person or by his representative." And again: "No man can take another's property from him without his consent. This is the law of nature; and a violation of it is the same thing whether it is done by one man, who is called a king, or by five hundred of another denomination."
James Otis, in speaking of the rights of the colonists as descendants of Englishmen; said they "were not to be cheated out of them by any phantom of virtual representation or any other fiction of law or politics." Again: "No such phrase as virtual representation is known in law or constitution. It is altogether a subtlety and illusion, wholly unfounded and absurd."
The Declaration of Independence asserts that, to secure the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, governments are instituted among men, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
Benjamin Franklin wrote that "liberty or freedom consists in having an actual share in the appointment of those who frame the laws and who are the guardians of every man's life, property and peace;" that "they who have no voice nor vote in the electing of representatives do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes and to their representatives."
James Madison said: "Under every view of the subject, it seems indispensable that the mass of the citizens should not be without a voice in making the laws which they are to obey, and in choosing the magistrates who are to administer them." ...
The right of women to personal representation through the ballot seems to me unassailable, wherever the right of man is conceded and exercised. I can conceive of no possible abstract justification for the exclusion of the one and the inclusion of the other.
Is the recognition of this right desirable? The earliest mention of the Saxon people is found in the Germany of Tacitus, and in his terse description of them he states that "in all grave matters they consult their women." Can we afford to dispute the benefit of this counseling in the advancement of our race?
The measure of the civilization of any nation may be no more surely ascertained by its consumption of salt than by the social, economic and political status of its women. It is not enough for contentment that we assert the superiority of our women in intelligence, virtue, and self-sustaining qualities, but we must consider the profit to them and to the State in their further advancement.
Our statistics are lamentably meager in information as to the status of our women outside their mere enumeration, but we learn that in a single State 42,000 are assessed and pay one-eleventh of the total burden of taxation, with no voice in its disbursements. From the imperfect gleaning of the Tenth Census we learn that of the total enumerated bread-winners of the United States more than one-seventh are women.... That these 2,647,157 citizens of whom we have official information labor from necessity and are everywhere underpaid is within the knowledge and observation of every Senator upon this floor. Only the Government makes any pretense of paying women in accordance with the labor performed—without submitting them to the competition of their starving sisters, whose natural dignity and self-respect have suffered from being driven by the fierce pressure of want into the few and crowded avenues for the exchange of their labor for bread. Is it not the highest exhibit of the moral superiority of our women that so very few consent to exchange pinching penury for gilded vice?
Will the possession of the ballot multiply and widen these avenues to self-support and independence? The most thoughtful women who have given the subject thorough examination believe it, and I can not but infer that many men, looking only to their own selfish interests, fear it.
History teaches that every class which has assumed political responsibility has been materially elevated and improved thereby, and I can not believe that the rule would have an exception in the women of to-day. I do not say that to the idealized women so generally described by obstructionists—the dainty darlings whose prototypes are to be found in the heroines of Walter Scott and Fenimore Cooper—immediate awakening would come; but to the toilers, the wage-workers and the women of affairs, the consequent enlargement of possibilities would give new courage and stimulate to new endeavor, and the State would be the gainer thereby.
The often-urged fear that the ignorant and vicious would swarm to the polls while the intelligent and virtuous would stand aloof, is fully met by the fact that the former class has never asked for the suffrage or shown interest in its seeking, while the hundreds of thousands of petitioners are from our best and noblest women, including those whose efforts for the amelioration of the wrongs and sufferings of others have won for them imperishable tablets in the temple of humanity. Would fear be entertained that the State would suffer mortal harm if, by some strange revolution, its exclusive control should be turned over to an oligarchy composed of such