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Page 38
In the matter of forming political judgments, not even the wisest men
are beyond improvement. International affairs, monetary systems, the
best way of raising taxes, and similar problems, often divide the male
electorate pretty evenly into rival parties. Since both cannot be right,
a great deal of poor political thinking must be done by the present body
of voters. Meantime, women are showing their ability to deal
intelligently with all sorts of subjects in our educational
institutions, in business and in social life. Their judgments command
respect in every other field; and it is hard to see why they could not
apply their powers to political questions.
We must remember, too, that during these last years the field of
political life has been rapidly broadening, through the awakening of
social consciousness among the people. To concern one's self with
politics now is to be interested in good market facilities, in rapid
transit for cities, in recreation centers for children, in honest
labelling of food products, in reformation of criminals, in preventing
marriage among the unfit, and in a hundred similar matters. Here women
will doubtless bring us a strong addition to our political efficiency.
They have long been considered the natural directors of social life and,
in spite of being disfranchised, they mainly handle such matters at
present. Now that these subjects are being brought into the political
field, women should follow them there, as they have followed their
industries from the homes into the factories. There is no reason to
believe that their judgments will be less sound than those of their
brothers and husbands.
Of course, women's knowledge of means and methods is much less than that
of men in their own class. Not only have they not participated in
political life, but they have been steadily warned away from that
particular tree of knowledge. Yet the present generation of women has
gone through the same preliminary education in schools with its
brothers; and many women in high schools and colleges have made a more
extended study of political institutionalism. Still more important, more
than a million women have been educating themselves for some years in
this direction through voluntary associations of some kind; while in
most States they have had some political practice through limited
suffrage, and in a few States full experience.
In selecting representatives to carry out their will, women have certain
obvious defects of temperament and training. Having been brought up for
generations to judge men only as providers of sustenance and fathers of
children, they must at first find it difficult to consider candidates
impersonally. Still, their general morality and their standards of right
are probably superior to those of men, and they are more intolerant of
faults, and they find it harder to compromise on matters of character
than do men. One can hardly believe that 1,700 women could be found
among the respectable, church-going, American-born residents in any
county of America, who would sell their votes, year after year, as that
number of men voters has recently confessed to doing in Adams County,
Ohio. In fact, Judge Blair says: "There was one class of the population
which rebelled against the practice. It was the womanhood of Adams
County, which had never become reconciled to the custom, and whose
continual hostility has resulted finally, I hope, in its
abolishment."[46]
[46] Seventeen Hundred Rural Vote-Sellers, by A.Z. Blair, _McClure's
Magazine_, November, 1911.
Of the need of women for the training which participation in political
life gives there can be no doubt. Their lives have always been directly
dependent upon other individuals, and they are prone to think in small
details. Any training which extends the horizon of their interests and
enables them to deal more largely with these details will fit them
better for living in a world where industrial, business and social
changes are so rapidly merging details in larger wholes. Experience in
selecting candidates for public office would also do much to broaden
women's judgments of life, and would help to break down the pettiness
which sometimes characterizes their personal relations.
In the case of women, the community has a double reason for desiring
that they shall develop political judgments and become acquainted with
political methods. It is not only that they may share in the general
intelligence and carry their fair part of the political burdens; but
they have become the teachers, both in homes and schools, of the
oncoming generation of male voters. We no longer live in small
communities where children can see the simple processes of government
operating around them, but in a complex civilization where it must all
be interpreted to them, and mainly by women. Many boys who complete our
elementary schools never work a day under the direction of a man. In the
homes, busy fathers increasingly turn over the training of children to
their wives. How can these women train safe citizens for the future if
they do not understand the processes involved well enough to use them
themselves?
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