The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Flame Ignites. Susan B. Anthony

more often indelicate, for her to appear and act in caucuses, conventions or elections, or to act as a member of the Legislature or as a juror or judge.

      I can not bring myself to believe that any large portion of the intelligent women of this country desire any such thing granted them, or would perform any such duties if the chance were offered them.

      [To comment upon this would be "to gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet." It would be positively "indelicate."]

      William Dorsheimer (N. Y.) agreed with the committee to table the resolution, but did not endorse their arguments. He signed the following statement: "I think it probable that the interests of society will some time require that women should have the right of suffrage, and I am not willing to say more than that the present is not an opportune time for submission to the States of the proposed amendment."

      In this, it will be observed, there is no recognition of woman's right to represent herself, no disposition to grant her petition for her own sake, but simply the opinion that should there ever be a crisis when her suffrage was needed it should be allowed as a matter of expediency.

      In the eyes of posterity the Judiciary Committee of this Forty-eighth Congress will be redeemed from the disgrace of these reports by that of the minority, signed by Thomas B. Reed, afterwards for many years Speaker of the House; Ezra B. Taylor (O.); Moses A. McCoid (Ia.); Thomas M. Browne (Ind.). The question of woman suffrage never has been and never can be more concisely and logically stated.

      No one who listens to the reasons given by the superior class for the continuance of any system of subjection can fail to be impressed with the noble disinterestedness of mankind. When the subjection of persons of African descent was to be maintained, the good of those persons was always the main object. When it was the fashion to beat children, to regard them as little animals who had no rights, it was always for their good that they were treated with severity, and never on account of the bad temper of their parents. Hence, when it is proposed to give to the women of this country an opportunity to present their case to the various State Legislatures to demand equality of political rights, it is not surprising to find that the reasons on which the continuance of the inferiority of women is urged are drawn almost entirely from a tender consideration of their own good. The anxiety felt lest they should thereby deteriorate would be an honor to human nature were it not an historical fact that the same sweet solicitude has been put up as a barrier against all the progress which women have made since civilization began.

      There is no doubt that if to-day in Turkey or Algiers, countries where woman's sphere is most thoroughly confined to the home circle, it was proposed to admit them to social life, to remove the veil from their faces and permit them to converse in open day with the friends of their husbands and brothers, the conservative and judicious Turk or Algerine of the period, if he could be brought even to consider such a horrible proposition, would point out that the sphere of woman was to make home happy by those gentle insipidities which education would destroy; that by participating in conversation with men they would debase their natures, and men would thereby lose that ameliorating influence which still leaves them unfit to associate with women. He would point out that "nature" had determined that women should be secluded; that their sphere was to raise and educate the man-child, and that any change would be a violation of the divine law which, in the opinion of all conservative men, ordains the present but never the future.

      So in civilized countries when it was proposed that women should own their own property, that they should have the earnings of their own labor, there were not wanting those who were sure that such a proposition could work only evil to women, and that continually. It would destroy the family, discordant interests would provoke dispute, and the only real safety for woman was in the headship of man; not that man wanted superiority for any selfish reason, but to preserve intact the family relation for woman's good. To-day a woman's property belongs to herself; her earnings are her own; she has been emancipated beyond the wildest hopes of any reformer of twenty-five years ago. Almost every vocation is open to her. She is proving her usefulness in spheres which the "nature" worshiped by the conservative of the last generation absolutely forbade her to enter. Notwithstanding all these changes the family circle remains unbroken, the man-child gets as well educated as before, and the ameliorating influence of woman has become only the more marked.

      Thirty years ago hardly any political assemblage of the people was graced by the presence of women. Had it needed a law to enable them to be present, what an argument could have been made against it! How easily it could have been shown that the coarseness, the dubious expressions, the general vulgarity of the scene, could have had no other effect than to break down that purity of thought and word which women have, and which conservative and radical are alike sedulous to preserve. And yet the actual presence of women at political meetings has not debased them but has raised the other sex. Coarseness has not become diffused through both sexes but has fled from both. To put the whole matter in a short phrase: The association of the sexes in the family circle, in society, and in business, having improved both, there is neither history, reason nor sense to justify the assertion that association in politics will lower the one or demoralize the other.

      Hence, we would do well to approach the question without trepidation. We can better leave the "sphere" of woman to the future than confine it in the chains of the past. Words change nothing. Prejudices are none the less prejudices because we vaguely call them "nature," and prate about what nature has forbidden, when we only mean that the thing we are opposing has not been hitherto done. "Nature" forbade a steamship to cross the Atlantic the very moment it was crossing, and yet it arrived just the same. What the majority call "nature" has stood in the way of all progress of the past and present, and will stand in the way of all future progress. It is only another name for conservatism. With conservatism the minority have no quarrel. It is essential to the stability of mankind, of government and of social life. To every new proposal it rightfully calls a halt, demanding countersign, whether it be friend or foe. The enfranchisement of women must pass this ordeal like everything else. It must give good reason for its demand to be, or take its place among the half-forgotten fantasies which have challenged the support of mankind and have not stood the test of argument and discussion.

      The majority of the committee claim that suffrage is not a right but a privilege to be guarded by those who have it, and to be by them doled out to those who shall become worthy. That every extension of suffrage has been granted in some form or other by those already holding it is probably true. In some countries, however, it has been extended upon the simple basis of expediency, and in others in obedience to a claim of right. If suffrage be a right, if it be true that no man has a claim to govern any other man except to the extent that the other man has a right to govern him, then there can be no discussion of the question of Woman Suffrage. No reason on earth can be given by those who claim suffrage as a right of manhood which does not make it a right of womanhood also. If the suffrage is to be given man to protect him in his life, liberty and property, the same reasons urge that it be given to woman, for she has the same life, liberty and property to protect. If it be urged that her interests are so bound up in those of man that they are sure to be protected, the answer is that the same argument was urged as to the merging in the husband of the wife's right of property, and was pronounced by the judgment of mankind fallacious in practice and in principle. If the natures of men and women are so alike that for that reason no harm is done by suppressing women, what harm can be done by elevating them to equality? If the natures be different, what right can there be in refusing representation to those who might take juster views about many social and political questions?

      Our Government is founded, not on the rule of the wisest and best, but upon the rule of all. The learned and the ignorant, the wise and the unwise, the judicious and the injudicious are all invited to assist in governing, and upon the broad principle that the best government for mankind is not the government which the wisest and best would select, but that which the average of mankind would select. Laws are daily enacted, not because they seem the wisest even to those legislators who pass them, but because they represent what the whole people wish. And, in the long run, it may be just as bad to enact laws in advance of public sentiment as to hold on to laws behind it. Upon what principle in a Government like ours can one-half the minds be denied expression at the polls? Is it because they are untrained in public affairs? Are they more so than the slaves were