Chapter XIII: Part 13

Of course I am aware that all babies are born with the right to be amused--a right which child specialists have valiantly but vainly striven to abridge. In the case of a male baby that right is pretty soon abridged by the rough and tumble and give and take of school and games. The sense that he must be amused is soon knocked out of a normal boy. In a young man whatever may survive of it yields to the somewhat grim business of earning a living. In a rich and unoccupied young man, the problem of amusement is very much that of the woman, with the marked difference, however, that only a very perverse young man imagines that amusement is due him, or can be had on other terms than his paying for it. In comparison with this wholesome process of gradual enlightenment, how little is done for the education of a girl! Compare with the unconditioned freedom of a well to do American maiden, that stern subjection to the complicated interest of a clan which is the lot of an English girl, or better, the rational preparation for marriage and motherhood which every well born French girl receives. To submit, to play a social part, to discount pleasure in favor of duty, this is the very air girls breathe in the older civilizations. A study or a mere observation of the women of Europe and America will leave no doubt as to where the balance of happiness lies. The boasted freedom of the American woman is often her sorrow, and her joy is escape from freedom into some kind of service.

This is a trite story. Robert Grant, Edith Wharton, Robert Herrick have expended the greatest artistry on the ungrateful theme of the egocentric American woman. More blatantly, David Graham Phillips, Upton Sinclair, and Owen Johnson have belabored the unfortunate creature. I venture to move matter so thoroughly familiar, only in the hope of setting it in something like historic perspective, and of pointing out remedial tendencies. And first of all, while this is primarily a woman's problem, it is emphatically of man's making. It would be a most curious and interesting historical study to ascertain just when and precisely how, the American notion of women as a luxury and ornament came into being. Until the quite recent revulsion against the theory, it passed for a beautiful expression of the innate chivalry of the American man. It is possible that it is indeed a product of that peculiar inept sentimentality--of that impotence in the field of the emotions--which frequently accompanies a life too narrowly devoted to business. In affairs involving the intelligence of the heart, there is notoriously no fool comparable with a certain type of millionaire. An unkinder view of this chivalric delusion of the American man as regards his womankind, is that it is not a delusion at all but a Machiavellian policy. He is overconcentrated in work, and socially inert. He bribes his women in order to be let alone. He dangles vanities before them in order to avoid a manly sharing of his life. The Undine Spraggs and her sisters in fiction are prone to take this view when they go to the rare pains of general reflection. Probably a mixture of the two motives would supply the real cause. Our forefathers did idolize their women, and doubtless wished to procure them happiness without first taking the trouble to learn where a woman's happiness really lies. Our forefathers were also over busy men, and willing to pay handsomely for immunity from ungrateful social duties. They may have quite honestly desired to simplify what is a delicate and complicated personal adjustment, but in so doing they ignored that broad community of interest which is the vitalizing principle of any successful marriage. The present iconoclasm concerning our once idolized women will do very little good until it be clearly perceived that what is very much the misfortune of the American woman is also very much the fault of the American man. When he begins to realize that he is not merely a provider or patron, but in the fullest sense a partner, the old sentimentalisms will give way to reality and common sense.

Meanwhile much is happening to make our women more capable of genuine partnership. The projection of millions of women from sheltered homes into business has been a rude process and fraught with evils, but it has given to these women some vision of the world of affairs. Much of our recent humanitarian endeavor has been hysterical and half-baked, but it has also left a considerable residuum of genuine new experience and wisdom. Suffragist and socialist agitation has wavered between gushing sentimentalisms and benighted fanaticisms, but it has also been an educational process, revealing, to hundreds of thousands of women even if in a hectic light, the real figure of the world. A great deal that is still raw in these fermentations may eventuate in clearer ideas of social justice and personal wisdom. In a very true sense much of the revolt of women has been an unconscious protest against the theory of man as paymaster general. When men understand that women cannot live by frocks and functions alone, however generously provided, but want companionship, less will be heard about feminism and more about humanity.

Meanwhile it is the duty of parents to disabuse their female offspring as to the existence of a right to be amused. To be amused is at best a privilege conditional upon one's desire to prove amusing to others. Amusement is necessary, but less necessary than it seems, and always has to be paid for fairly. It seems as if such ideas could be instilled into children, substituting a general morality and sense of fair play, for the old pseudo-chivalric notion of sex privilege. There was more to come of this argument when I was summoned to the telephone to command any one of a half a dozen little playmates to come and see my eight year old daughter. She is temporarily unoccupied and needs to be amused. When she is a little older she shall read this article. _Fiat justitia!_ But stop! When I consider her with many women of my acquaintance, I am amazed that so much sweetness and efficiency have after all survived so much false doctrine and so many unfair kindnesses. The stock is good, if much of the thinking and training has been bad. Quite sincerely I toast the Ladies, if not with the old sentimental unction, at least with the profound conviction that they are worthy of more substantial guerdon than can ever be compacted from mere profits, dividends, and coupons. I will be more of a companion to her who has ever been that to me, and more of a comrade too for the little girl who wants to be amused.

HOW WOMAN SUFFRAGE HAS WORKED

That the results of applied woman suffrage may stand out the more clearly, it will be expedient to show, first, the results achieved in behalf of woman without its help. All are agreed that during the sixty-five years that have elapsed since the suffragists, led by Lucretia Mott, posted their "Declaration of Sentiments" at Seneca Falls, N. Y., in 1848, woman has gained certain rights and privileges. That Declaration contained a bitter indictment by woman of man who had "oppressed her on all sides." He had made her, if married, "in the eye of the law, civilly dead," having taken from her "all right in property, even to the wages she earns." He had made her "morally an irresponsible;" she could commit many crimes with impunity, "provided they be done in the presence of her husband, he becoming to all intents and purposes her master--the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty and to administer chastisement." He had so framed the laws of divorce as to what should be the proper causes, and, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children should be given, "as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women--the law in all cases going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands."

The married woman having no rights, the single woman was "taxed to support a Government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it." Man had "monopolized nearly all the profitable employments;" and from those woman was permitted to follow, "she receives but a scanty remuneration." Man had closed to woman "all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself: as a teacher of theology, in medicine, or law, she is not known." Moreover, man had "denied to her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her." In the Church, too, she was subordinated, and apostolic authority was invoked "for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church." Men acted by a different code of morals from women, "by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in men." By such means, the indictment declared, man had discriminated against woman, endeavoring in every way he could to "destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her lead a dependent and abject life." And because of these things the drawers of the indictment demanded for women "immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States."

It was first of all as voters that the women should gain the rights denied them. Deprivation of the vote was the fundamental evil. The first item of their grievances named the ballot as their "inalienable right." It was primarily because this had been wrested away, the Declaration said, that man had been able to oppress woman on all sides.

But it needs only the restatement of the original suffragist grievances to show how completely woman has been emancipated since they were formulated, and chiefly without the vote. Nowhere in the United States is the married woman, in the eyes of the law, civilly dead. Nowhere is she bereft of the right in property and wages. In that year 1848 when the "Declaration of Sentiments" was drafted, New York State, still withholding the franchise from woman, expressly permitted married women to hold property for their sole and separate use. By a law of 1861, married women in New York received power to control property, including wages, and authority to will property was given them in 1867. By 1887 the property rights of married women in this State were more complete than those of their husbands, who could not convey real estate without their wives' consent. Woman now has a right of action for injuries to person or property, and she is liable for her own wrongful acts; that is, she is no longer "morally an irresponsible." Women are joint guardians with their husbands of their minor children, and, in case of divorce, the custody of the children is decreed reasonably to the innocent party without discrimination as to sex. The laws of divorce and separation, too, though differing widely in the several States, are impartial, applying equally to men and women. New York's women taxpayers have the right to vote on questions of local taxation in all towns and villages, and they are eligible to nearly all political offices, and to various positions of trust and responsibility. Moreover, all the professions are open to them.

In these respects, the case of New York is fairly typical of all the States in the Union, whether suffragist or non-suffragist. As for men's monopolizing "nearly all the profitable employments," the Federal census of 1900 showed that women were engaged in 295 out of the 303 masculine occupations. The original complaint that they were not admitted to men's pursuits on equal terms with men has changed to a demand for laws which shall discriminate in favor of women in industry because of their weaker physique. Only in Massachusetts, Indiana, and Nebraska, however, three male-suffrage States, have laws been passed prohibiting night work for women in factories and machine shops. The eight-hour law for women in California was enacted before they had the suffrage there, but it still exempts the great canning industry of that State from its operation, and it does not prohibit night work. The doubtful minimum wage act, and the maternity act for the protection of women were first copied from anti-feminist Europe by male-suffragist Massachusetts. Massachusetts, also, is generally credited by child labor experts and by woman suffragists with having the best child labor law in the Union, applied in her great textile industries. It would seem, therefore, that the added complaint of the latter-day suffragists of lack of discrimination in favor of working women may be satisfied without resort by them to the ballot.

The facilities for acquiring a thorough education are now in no State denied to woman. In the argument of Mrs. A. J. George to the woman suffrage committee of the Federal Senate on April 19, 1913, this anti-suffragist authority noted the fact that there are "to-day more institutions which grant degrees to women in this country than there are institutions which grant degrees to men." The foundation of Vassar, of Wellesley, of Smith, of Mount Holyoke, was "in no way connected with the suffrage movement," while the opening of the Harvard examinations to women and the opening of the graduate departments of Yale University to women were due to the activities of men and women who were avowed anti-suffragists. In the universal granting of this great privilege to woman, therefore, the ballot was not used or needed.

The grievance that woman is subordinated in the Church was one that, by its nature, could not be settled by the suffrage, since in this country Church and State are irrevocably separate. As a matter of fact, however, woman has steadily gained rights and privileges in most denominations of the Protestant Church, including admission to the ministry and public participation in their affairs. For example, Dr. Anna Shaw, the President of the National Woman's Suffrage Association, is a clergywoman. As in religion, so in morals. The legal prohibitions of immorality are in most cases the same for both men and women; it is only outside the domain of legislation and within the sphere of social custom that divergencies appear, and here the discrimination is exercised notoriously by woman against her erring sisters.

Up to this point results achieved and practicable without the suffrage seem to argue strongly against a continuance of the propaganda to obtain the elective franchise for the redress of aggrieved womankind. Clothed with full rights in property and earnings, held morally accountable for her acts, made joint guardian with her husband over her children, welcomed to an equal competition with men in business, industry, and the professions, after ample opportunities given for acquiring a higher education and special training, to what further extent can the exercise of the voting power by woman improve her status? The grievances set forth in the "Declaration of Sentiments" of 1848 present the "whole case for woman as comprehensively as it ever has been stated since," according to an official statement of the National Woman Suffrage Association; the document's resolutions comprised "practically every demand that ever afterwards was made for women." The civil and legal rights besought therein have been so fully recognized that the anti-suffragists, numbering many public-spirited women who have battled zealously for these rights, now contend that womanhood suffrage is not needed.

Their suffragist opponents will not be gainsaid. While the condition of woman and her children has been mitigated, much remains to do, they say, and the more quickly by the ballot. For example, while eighteen States, comprising nearly one-half the population of the Union--41,231,000, to be exact--enjoy the benefit of joint guardianship laws, and in twenty-seven more States the surviving mother is made sole guardian of her children with the same powers exercised by the father in his lifetime, six States remain--Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and Maryland, with a combined population of 9,104,000--in which the father has power to bequeath the guardianship to a stranger and away from the mother. To be sure, in this ninth of the population of the country the custom ignores the common law; husbands uniformly leave the guardianship of children to their wives, and the mother shares authority over them with the father. But here is a field for corrective legal action. The question is whether, if women had the vote, this would be the swiftest and most direct means of bringing about the reform demanded. A suffragist writer has said: "It took the mothers of Massachusetts fifty-five years to get an equal guardianship law, but after the women obtained the ballot in Colorado the very next Legislature enacted one." She forgot that New York's joint guardianship law was passed a year before the Colorado statute. Mrs. George W. Townsend of Buffalo, who as head of the Woman's Educational and Industrial Union was active in urging the passage of the joint guardianship laws in both States, says of the one in New York:

Our Union was especially careful that the Suffrage Association
should not know of the Union's effort until after the law was
passed. I remember that a prominent suffragist called to see me
as soon as she heard of it, and said, "How did you accomplish
this great good, and not let us know?" And I answered, "Because
we did not let you know." I think I was justified in saying that,
because many men in both houses were so opposed to woman suffrage
that they would not have voted for our bills. The guardianship
bill was passed without a negative vote in either house.

The work was done in a systematic manner. Circulars giving full
information in regard to laws in other States, and as to what we
desired to accomplish, and reasons therefor, were sent to every
legislator. There was no lobbying, and, in fact, it was not
necessary for me to go to Albany at all.

It should be noted in this connection that in Wyoming, while it is not among the "benighted" states that permit the father to will the guardianship of his children away from the mother, the women have had an equal voice in the State Government for more than half a century without making fathers and mothers joint guardians of their children. It is not clear, therefore, that joint guardianship laws have been passed the more quickly by reason of woman suffrage.

But other tests should be applied. The new complaints of woman that have arisen since the Declaration of 1848 deal largely with her condition in the industries which men have thrown open to her. Has the suffrage enabled her more quickly to ameliorate this condition? Around this point the strife rages between the "pros" and the "antis." Miss Minnie Bronson, who was employed from 1907 to 1909 by the Federal Bureau of Labor to investigate the conditions of labor of women and children, and who acted as the Special Agent of the Bureau to report on the strike of shirtwaist makers in 1910 has prepared a statement for the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women embodying a comparison of the laws for the protection of wage-earning women in the various States of the Union. Miss Bronson's contentions have been deemed of sufficient importance to merit a reply, with an introduction by Jane Addams, written by the two best qualified woman suffragist authorities on women in the industries, Miss Edith Abbott of Hull House, Chicago, and Professor Sophonisba P. Breckinridge of the University of Chicago. The allegations of Miss Bronson and the specific replies of her opponents thereto are marshaled below:

_"Anti" Contentions_ _Suffragist Replies_

A suffragist addressing the women When we say that if women had a
shirtwaist strikers in New York vote there would be an end of
declared that if the women child labor, and that young girls
engaged in this industry had had would work shorter hours, this
the ballot such a strike as does not mean that we think the
theirs would be unnecessary. The children in the mills and
speaker would have been surprised factories and workshops are going
to learn that 40 per cent. of the to be allowed to vote. In England
strikers were men, 36 per cent. conditions improved for all
were women under 21 years, and 6 workingmen when some workmen got
per cent. were women workers of the vote; in this country when
voting age who had not been in some women get the vote
this country long enough to gain conditions for all workingwomen
a residence. will improve.

Laws governing the labor of women Any fair-minded person need only
are constantly improved, not recall the long series of
because women have the ballot or statutes enacted in all the
want it, but because women are leading industrial states,
entering more and more into the covering nearly three-fourths of
industrial life of the country. a century, as a result of
In forty-four states the laws for workmen's efforts to get through
safeguarding wage-earning women laws a larger measure of justice
are better and more comprehensive than they could obtain through
than the laws for the their attempts to bargain with
safeguarding of wage-earning men. individual employers. This
Moreover, a comparison of the legislation, although it may in a
labor laws of the various states few cases protect the
shows that there are more and workingwoman as well as the
better laws for the protection of workingman, represents the
women wage-earners in the results of long years of earnest
non-suffrage states than in struggle by workingmen with votes
states where women have the to improve their condition. Miss
ballot. Bronson ignores this, laying
stress on the fact that some
states have a few special
provisions to protect
wage-earning women from
exploitation likely to injure
health and endanger their
children's health.

In thirty-four states laws have No suffragist would deny that
been passed limiting the hours of protective legislation has been
labor in which a woman may be obtained in states where women do
employed. Three of the four woman not vote. It is well known that
suffrage states where women have most of this legislation was
voted long enough to affect obtained through the laborious
legislation have no such law, and efforts of suffragists.
the 54-hour law in Utah was not
enacted until 1911, fifteen years No argument that protective
after woman suffrage became legislation does not exist in
operative there. some of the states in which women
have the ballot is valid which
ignores the special needs of
these states. Colorado, Wyoming,
Idaho and Utah are all mining and
agricultural states and have very
few wage-earning women who are
employed in factories.
Massachusetts had 152,713 women
in "manufacturing and mechanical
pursuits" when the last United
States Census of Occupations was
taken; Idaho had only 681. A
similar contrast might be drawn
for any of the other states:
thus, Wyoming had 501 women in
industrial occupations while New
York in the same year had
136,788.

Thirty-nine states compel The one suffrage state, Idaho,
employers in stores, factories, that fails to provide seats for
shops, etc., to provide seats for saleswomen in all at a time when
female employés. Nine states have Massachusetts had 11,985,
no such laws, and one of the nine Illinois, 12,149, and New York,
states is a suffrage state. 30,858. In most of the
thirty-nine states where voteless
women have secured these laws,
they have never received the
means of enforcing them. The
protective laws protect no one.

In forty-two states, the No reply.
territory of Alaska, and the
District of Columbia, the earnings
of a married woman are
secured to her absolutely, and
cannot be required by law, as
can the earnings of a married
man, for the support of the
family, nor are they liable for
her husband's debts. Six
states do not so provide, and
one is a suffrage state.

Sixteen states regulate the Night work for women is not
employment of women at night, and prohibited in Idaho, Colorado,
specifically state the hours Wyoming, and Utah, for the same
between which women may not be reason that the workingmen of
employed. These laws were all Nebraska have not passed a law
enacted under male suffrage. In protecting seamen.
these sixteen states are all
those that prohibit night work
for girls who are minors, but who
are over 16 and therefore not
protected by child labor laws.

Twenty-four states, only one a The same legislature of
suffrage state, restrict the California that granted equal
number of hours of employment for suffrage passed the eight-hour
women, both by the day and week, law for women. Massachusetts has
thus causing one day of rest in passed a 54-hour a week law for
seven. The suffrage states of women as the culmination of forty
Washington and California, while years of effort by indirect
limiting women's work to influence to improve conditions
forty-eight hours a week, passed for women in industry. Utah in
both laws while under male 1911 passed a nine-hour law for
suffrage. women after less than two years
of effort by its advocates. The
first legislature of which they
asked it gave it to women with
votes. Of the non-suffrage states
not one has an eight-hour law for
women, and only five have
nine-hour laws.

Eliminating the manufacturing The Nebraska law provides for a
states of the east, which have ten-hour day and a sixty-hour
the most and best remedial laws week and does not prohibit Sunday
for women, the suffrage states of labor. Nebraska, in company with
Idaho and Wyoming do not limit a large number of other states,
the hours a woman may be has a law prohibiting Sunday
employed, while the neighboring labor, which applies to both men
male-suffrage states of Oklahoma, and women.
South Dakota, North Dakota, and
Nebraska regulate the hours by The fact that Colorado has no
law, and Nebraska prohibits the Sunday labor law argues as much
employment of women at night in against suffrage for men as for
all manufacturing mechanical, or women, since the men in the large
mercantile establishments, and in metal-working establishments are
hotels, and restaurants, and chiefly affected by absence of
limits the number of hours per Sunday laws. Anyway, such laws
week, thereby insuring one day of are rarely enforced.
rest.

An eight-hour law for women was The eight-hour day of the
enacted in Colorado in 1903, a Colorado law, made for the
very inadequate law, for it was majority of workingwomen of
restricted in its application to Colorado a forty-eight-hour
women who must stand at work, and week, in contrast with the
exempted the great majority of 60-hour week in the neighboring
women employed in that state in states of Oklahoma, South Dakota,
the "seated trades" of ready-made North Dakota, and Nebraska. It is
clothing, dress-making, millinery little short of ridiculous to
and like occupations, and in discuss these laws as if they
candy-making, box-making, and were all genuinely protective
cigar-making. The law was through proper enforcement. The
pronounced unconstitutional in last census of occupations showed
1907 by the Supreme Court of but 65 women and girls in
Colorado, although state courts Colorado employed in
and the Federal Supreme Court candy-making, 11 in box-making,
have upheld similar laws in and 30 in cigar-making, in
neighboring male-suffrage states. contrast to 1,184 saleswomen, 762
Not until 1912, nineteen years waitresses, 1,599 in hand and
after woman suffrage came into steam laundries,--all in the
Colorado, was a law finally standing trades.
secured limiting the hours of
women at work.

Laws not enacted under woman The Massachusetts law relating to
suffrage are those in broken-down machinery was passed
Massachusetts prohibiting to correct peculiar abuses in the
employers from deducting the textile industries. This law was
wages of women when time is lost not needed in suffrage states. In
because machinery has broken a few states the courts took the
down, and prohibiting the position that since women were
employment of women for a fixed not voters they could not become
period before and after practicing lawyers; corrective
childbirth; the law in Delaware statutes were passed. No such law
and Louisiana exempting the wages would be needed in a state where
of women from execution, and laws women do participate in the
in California, Illinois, and Government.
Washington, providing that no
person shall on account of sex be
disqualified from entering upon
or pursuing any lawful business,
vocation, or profession.

A suffragist says that in The doctrine of the inflexibility
Massachusetts the average pay of and almost sacred character of
a female teacher is only supply and demand is outworn. The
one-third that of a male teacher, supply of child labor has been
and in almost all the states it greatly reduced in many states,
is unequal, whereas Wyoming and and is entirely cut off in others
Utah give equal pay for equal by means of protective
work. Where teachers are doing legislation; in still other
the same grade of work no such states the demand for child labor
percentage as three to one has greatly decreased as the
obtains in Massachusetts. Female result of inconvenient protective
teachers do not in the majority child labor laws and the demand
of cases receive the same pay as for labor of men and women has
men for the work of the same correspondingly increased. To get
grade; but here the law of supply equal pay the women teachers in
and demand is paramount. The New York City had to put in six
women teachers of New York City years of hard and exhausting work
receive equal pay with men by "indirect influence" while in
teachers, granted by a the suffrage states the same
male-suffrage legislature. result has come about almost
automatically.

In this conflicting testimony it does not appear that the complaint of Lucretia Mott and her sister suffragists in 1848 that woman had been oppressed on all sides is valid to-day. Both Miss Bronson and her suffragist opponents agree that woman in industry has been protected, not oppressed. It is admitted that this is not a result of the exercise of the ballot by woman. It is unfortunate, of course, that the suffrage states are in the agricultural and mining stages of civilization, and cannot show how formidable the women's vote might be in correcting the oppressive man-made laws. It is a little deplorable, too, that the women in the male-suffrage states should have spent so much of their time proving that protective laws might be gotten by the despised indirect methods. Dr. Abbott and Professor Breckinridge have perceived this tactical error, and they note it in these words:

American women would probably have got the vote long ago if they
had followed the present English method of making suffrage a
paramount issue, first, last, and all the time. Instead of this,
Miss Jane Addams in Illinois, Mrs. Florence Kelley in New York,
and a host of other ardent suffragists have labored with the
greatest devotion and self-sacrifice to secure protective
legislation for women and children. How much effort they have put
into it, how much time and energy it has cost, only those who
have been closely associated with them know. It should not be
forgotten that, as the result of their experience, they say that
the ballot is the swiftest and surest way to bring about the
reforms which are asked by and for the women workers of the
country.

But how can that last sentence be verified? Was it not explicitly admitted that the suffrage states, by reason of their mining and agricultural status, have had little occasion to reform the laws for women workers, and that the reforms have all been worked out in the east? The male workers under male suffrage have done this for themselves, and incidentally for the women workers among them. Of course, there are fewer woman bread-winners, the proportion being five men to one woman. But women share equally in the benefits of labor legislation, besides being specially protected. The unions have even succeeded in leveling up a little the scale of women's wages, thus measurably meeting the complaint of 1848 that in her employments woman "receives but a scanty remuneration." And despite the equal pay laws for teachers in the suffrage states the average pay for women teachers is much below that of men teachers. Dr. Helen M. Sumner, the suffragist writer of the book _Equal Suffrage_ says: "Taking public employment as a whole, women in Colorado receive considerably less remuneration than men;" and "the wages of men and women in all fields of industry are governed by economic conditions." Dr. Sumner's tables show that the pay of women in Colorado has never been quite half as much as the pay of men; while the average weekly wage of women in that state is 97 cents higher than the average in the United States, the average weekly pay of men is $3.62 higher than for the United States as a whole. Dr. Sumner frankly acknowledges that the suffrage has probably nothing to do with the wages of either men or women.

As for hours of work, the contention of the suffragists that the 54-hour a week law in Massachusetts was "the culmination of forty years of effort by indirect influence to improve conditions for women in industry," while Utah granted such a law after less than two years of effort by its suffragist advocates, merits the comment that the forty years, or one-eighth that time, were not consumed in agitating for this specific bit of legislation. The struggle for the law limiting hours of women's work in Massachusetts lasted a little longer than in Utah, chiefly because Utah is an agricultural state where manufacturers have less at stake in the passage of such a restrictive measure. It is not probable that the legislators of Utah blenched and yielded this point through fear of the women's vote, or that any but humanitarian motives dictated the legislation in either state.

Considerations of humanity, indeed, and not politics, seem to animate the legislative programs for the protection of women and children in most states, whether male suffragist or equal suffragist. Pennsylvania, for example, is one of the black states on the suffragist maps, because it has never extended the franchise to woman, even for the election of school committees. If the woman's vote is requisite, we should see the protective laws of Pennsylvania far behind those of Colorado. Colorado has had equal suffrage since 1893, and of all the woman suffragist states, conditions there are most nearly like those in the male suffragist East. For comparison, I draw on two unchallenged documents, one prepared by Mary C. Bradford and published by the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association--with some additions by Elinor Byrns and Helen Ranlett, printed in _The New York Evening Post_ of Nov. 10, 1913--summarizing the protective laws for women and children passed in that state from 1893 to 1912; the other, a statement of similar laws in force in Pennsylvania in 1912, put forth by the Pennsylvania Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage:

_Colorado_ _Pennsylvania_

Establishing a state home for Dependent, delinquent, and
dependent children, three of the incorrigible children fully
five members of the board of provided for by State Juvenile
control to be women. A juvenile court and probation officer
court with houses of detention in system. Child placed in care of
each county with population over parents, probation officers,
100,000; probation officers in industrial school, or a
counties with population over charitable association as the
25,000. Court sees best. Houses of
detention in every city of first
and second class, managed by
board of five members, two of
them women.

Requiring three of the six Visitation periodically by State
members of the county visitors to Board of Charities and Board of
be women. Visitors of all agencies having
custody of delinquent or
dependent children.

Making mother joint guardian of If husband unfit, wife has same
children with the father. rights over child as father would
have had. If wife helps support
child, she has equal rights with
husband; judges decide fitness of
parents where question of it
arises.

Raising the age of protection for Age of consent or protestation,
girls to eighteen years. sixteen years.

Requiring one woman physician One female physician in each
on the board of insane asylums. state hospital or asylum with
female inmates; provision for
women members of board of
visitors of lunatic asylums;
female attendants, paid by
counties or poor districts, for
all insane female persons in
transit; police matron in
Philadelphia county prison.

Establishing parental and truant Provision for institutions and
schools; a state industrial home societies for delinquent and
for girls, three of the five dependent children, also for
members of board of control to be Houses of Refuge in Philadelphia
women. and Western Pennsylvania;
complete system of industrial
schools, besides industrial
education in public school
system; provision for maintenance
of children committed to
industrial schools. Women
eligible as one of two overseers
of the poor in each county.

Making Colorado humane society a Humane societies throughout the
state bureau for child and animal state for child and animal
protection. protection.

Compulsory education for Compulsory education for all
children, between 8 and 16, children of school age. Parents
except those who are ill, or are and guardians failing to comply
taught at home, and those over with school attendance law are
14 who have completed the punishable for a criminal
eighth grade, or whose parents offense.
need their help and support,
and those children who must
support themselves. [Are not some
of these exemptions loopholes in
the law? Ed.] Providing for
examination of eyes, ears, teeth,
and lungs of school children.

Making father and mother joint Father and mother hold by
heirs of deceased child. entireties, with right of
survivorship, real and personal
properties of intestate child.

Establishing state traveling A free library commission
library; library commission to created, and provisions made for
consist of five women from the free libraries throughout the
State Federation of Women's state in cities of first, second
Clubs. and third classes and in
boroughs, together with public
school libraries, a state public
library, and law libraries
throughout the state.

Employing children under 14 in No minor under 14, and no
mill, factory, or underground illiterate minor under 18, shall
works punishable by imprisonment be employed in a factory,
and fine. Children of 16 and workshop, store, mercantile
under forbidden to work more than establishment, and so on. Minors
six hours a day and not after 8 under 18 shall not be employed
P. M. in any mill, factory, about blast furnaces, tanneries,
store, or other occupation that electric wires, elevators,
may be deemed unhealthful. Model railroads, vessels, or
child labor law passed 1912, "one explosives. Minors over 14 who
of the very best in the world." can read and write can be
Illiterate workers under 16 must employed only in establishments
go to night school. From 14 to 16 having proper sanitation, and in
maximum is 54 hours a week, 9 which power machinery is not
hours a day. used, or if used is safeguarded.
No minor under 16 shall be
employed unless employer keeps
employment certificates and
complete lists of minors so
employed.

Meal hours of employed children
regulated, as well as meal hours
of all other employés.

Male minors under 16 and females
under 18 forbidden employment
between 9 P. M. and 6 A. M.

No woman shall work more than Seats provided for women employed
eight hours a day at work in any establishment.
requiring her to be on her feet;
that is, in manufacturing, Sixty-hour-week and
mechanical, or mercantile twelve-hour-day maximum for women
establishments, laundries, and for minors under 16.
hotels, and restaurants.
Provisions for suitable wash and
dressing rooms and lavatories for
men and women in all
establishments.

Employment of females prohibited Employment of women in and about
in coal mines or coke offices mines or coal manufactories
except as clerks. forbidden; women and male minors
under 16 forbidden employment in
mines; women and male minors
under 14 forbidden to be employed
on outside structures of mines,
except for clerical work.

Requiring joint signature of Chattel mortgages do not exist.
husband and wife to every chattel Earnings of a married woman,
mortgage, sale of household whether as wages for labor,
goods, or mortgage of a salary, property, business or
homestead. Homestead, whether otherwise, are her own, inure to
husband's or wife's, cannot be her separate benefit and are not
sold without the consent of both. subject to levy by her husband.
No assignment of wages by husband Wife must consent to conveyance
is valid without wife's consent. of real estate by husband in
order to bar her dower, and a
mortgage requires her consent.

Criminal offense to contribute to Criminal offense to contribute to
delinquency of a child; law delinquency of a child; penalty
raising the delinquency age for of not more than $500 or
girls. imprisonment not exceeding one
year, or both.

Making it a misdemeanor to Provisions for support of every
fail to support aged or infirm poor, blind, lame, and impotent
parents. person unable to work, by his or
her relatives, either children,
grandchildren, parents, or
grandparents; provisions for
support of the wife's relatives,
either children, grandchildren,
parents or grandparents, who are
poor, blind, lame, impotent, or
unable to maintain themselves.

Abolishing the system of binding Provisions for binding out minors
out girls committed to the maintained by charitable
industrial school. Separate institutions, asylums, or
industrial school for girls corporations, to suitable
created. persons, without prejudicing
rights of such institutions over
the child.

The husband must support his wife If husband neglects or deserts
and children under 16 (legitimate rights of trade by filing a
or illegitimate); non-support is petition and securing a
made an extraditable offense. certificate from the court. Her
Parents liable for support of property is then her own
children in State institutions. absolutely and exempt from all
claims of husband or his
creditors. Statute requires
husband to support wife, and
family; desertion a misdemeanor.

All policies of life insurance or
annuities on the life of any
person for benefit of wife or
children or dependent relative
are vested full and clear from
all claims of creditors of such
person.

Improved employers' liability law Employers' Liability act of 1907
passed in 1912. Assumption of allows recovery from employer for
risk abolished except where injuries of employé, doing away
remedying defect is employe's with the "fellow-servant" rule as
chief duty. a defense.

A married woman has same right as
unmarried person to acquire and
dispose of property real and
personal, with entire freedom of
contract; but she may not
mortgage or convey real property
unless husband joins, and may not
become indorser or surety for
another.

Dower and curtesy abolished; The widow of an intestate who
neither husband nor leaves issue has one-third of the
wife may will away more than realty for life and one-third of
half of his or her property the personalty absolutely. If
without the other's consent; without issue, the widow has
wife's will validated. $5,000 worth of real or personal
estate, besides the widow's
exemption of $300. If estate
exceeds $5,000, she has one-half
the remainder for life, and
one-half the remaining personalty
absolutely.

Four deputy factory inspectors Five of the thirty-nine deputy
are required, one of them a factory inspectors must be women.
woman.

Law providing for the care Institutions for care and
of the feeble minded. School treatment of feeble minded and
for the Mute and Blind is insane maintained throughout and
declared to be an educational by the state. Institutions for
institution. care and treatment of the deaf,
dumb, blind, consumptive,
epileptic, aged, indigent,
orphan, pauper, and so on,
maintained throughout and by the
state, counties or
municipalities.

While minor differences exist in this comparison, the picture as a whole does not show that the legislation protective of women and children in Colorado is greatly, if at all, in advance of that in the male-suffrage state of Pennsylvania. The American Vigilance Association calls Pennsylvania's laws on "white slavery" and disorderly houses "good," and Colorado's only "fair." Colorado created in 1913 a Minimum Wage Commission, thus coming abreast of male-suffrage Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania lacks such a commission. But a law establishing a minimum wage is open to the objection that it throws out of employment all who are incapable of earning that wage. It does not protect them in industry, it simply throws them upon the streets, thence to find their way into jails and poorhouses. Designed as a protective measure, it has yet to vindicate that purpose, and it seems to be adopted irrespective of the votes of women. Aside from this it seems clear that if there is any essential difference between the protective legislation of Colorado and Pennsylvania, it must lie in the degree with which the women's votes compel enforcement of the laws.

But just how effective do the suffragists themselves feel the women's vote to be in securing redress for their injuries? Do they trust it? Their chief grievance is the deprivation of the suffrage. The American Woman Suffrage Association says of this, nevertheless, that while woman must have the ballot on every other question, she cannot be trusted to wield it in deciding this most vital question of legal privilege; that only an electorate of men is qualified to decide it. The association is convinced that every improvement in woman's position thus far has been secured "not by a general demand from the majority of women, but by the arguments, entreaties and 'continual coming' of a persistent few." In the association's _Brief History_ of the suffrage movement it contends that the beneficial changes of the last half century in the laws, written and unwritten, relating to women have necessarily come by the influence of a few men and women. "Not one of them would have been made to this day if it had been necessary to wait until the majority of women asked for it," the association says. But that is an argument against the extension of the suffrage, which works only by majorities!

It is a valid argument, and it has historical facts in its support. Massachusetts in 1895 granted woman the right to vote on the question whether the municipal suffrage should be extended without distinction of sex. The suffragists made a vigorous campaign in that state. Only 4 per cent. of the women cared to go to the polls and record an affirmative vote. When human grievances have become intolerable, men have been willing to shed blood for their redress. This grievance of the suffragists cannot be very widespread or keenly felt, when they fail to persuade the women even to signify their protest.

She that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much. Mrs. George, speaking for the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, has presented to the woman suffrage committee of the Federal Senate the record of seventeen years' voting for school committees by the women of Massachusetts. During that time the registration showed but 4.8 per cent. of all the women of the state who were qualified to register and vote, and 2.1 per cent., less than one-half of them, actually got to the polls. Mrs. George obtained from the town clerk of Dedham, Mass., the official list of male and female voters in that town from 1889 to 1912, which shows a steadily diminishing female vote from 154 in 1889 to 1 in 1903; since 1903 not one of the fifty to seventy women registered in Dedham has remembered to go to the polls on Election Day.

If women cannot be expected to look after the interests of their children's schooling, how can they be expected to be faithful in the general field of politics? The Massachusetts State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage has compiled the total vote cast in the Presidential election of 1912 in the six woman suffrage States of California, Colorado, Wyoming, Washington, Idaho, and Utah--1,521,590 out of a total possible vote of 3,200,152--showing that only 47-1/2 per cent. of men and women in those states cared to go to the polls for the most interesting of all elections; comparing this with the 1,587,984 male votes cast out of a possible 2,295,119 votes--69 per cent. of the total--in the six non-suffrage western states of Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon, Nevada, South Dakota, and Missouri. Now if 69 per cent. of the men voted in the woman suffrage states in 1912, then only 17.8 per cent. of the women voters in those states actually cast their ballots. At any rate, it is certain that the extension of suffrage to women results in a notable decrease of the actual voting strength of the electorate, as compared with the more healthy interest in voting shown by the electorates of the non-suffrage states. In that same Presidential election of 1912, Secretary of State Jordan of California reports that 802,000 men and but 180,000 women registered to vote--over 93 per cent. of the men, and a trifle over 27 per cent. of the women who were qualified to register and vote. In the election in Pasadena on March 20, 1913, deciding bond issues, some of them for parks and playgrounds, only 4,672 men and women cast ballots out of a voting population of 16,324; in Los Angeles four days later, the Citizens' Committee's vigorous campaign advocating the carrying of certain propositions and defeat of others ended in a vote of 31,000 men and women, while 130,000 qualified voters of both sexes stayed away. Although 45,665 women registered out of 121,000 women qualified to register and vote in San Francisco's local option election in 1913, the votes of only 15,087, both men and women, were cast in favor of the amendment. In all the elections of which there are records of men and women voting, the women manifest less interest both in registering and in voting than the men.

This fact has its vital bearing on the question of law enforcement. If elected officials fail to enforce the law, the only corrective is the ballot. Dr. Abbott and Professor Breckinridge, answering Miss Bronson's statement that thirty-nine states compel employers in stores, factories, and shops to provide seats for female employés, say that in most of the states where voteless women have got such laws they have never had the means of enforcing them. But if the extension of the elective franchise to the women of these states should mean the lowering of the total vote from 69 per cent. to but 47-1/2 per cent. of the possible vote, what prospect is there that the laws will be better enforced under woman suffrage? Judge Ben B. Lindsey of Colorado, himself a suffragist by propinquity, testified in 1910 that his battle with "the Beast" and "the System" in that state was begun without the help of the women leaders who at national meetings had been telling how much the women had done for the juvenile court in Denver. They dared not help him, Judge Lindsey said, and women like Mary C. Bradford and Mrs. Lafferty, a member of the Legislature, "took the platform against me and supported the System." He added:

If anyone believes that woman's suffrage is a panacea for all the
evils of our political life, he does not know what those evils
are. The women are as free of the power of the Beast as the men
are, and no freer.... In a typical American community such as
ours, where the Beast rules, the women are as helpless as the
rest of us.... Their leaders in politics are politicians; when
they get their nominations from corporation machines they do the
work of the corporations; and there is almost no way under the
Beast to get a party nomination except from a corporation
machine. Women in politics are human beings; they are not
"ministering angels" of an ethereal ideality; and they are unable
to free us, because they are not free themselves.