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Page 39
Meantime the old arguments against woman suffrage are too outworn to
need serious attention. In the past decades our civilization has become
so complex, with so many groups carrying on differentiated functions,
that even if we had not the millions of educated, property-owning,
wage-earning, voting women that now fill our public life, the old
arguments would still be obsolete. The issues of life are no longer
primarily military, and but a fraction of men voters is capable of
meeting modern requirements as policemen and soldiers; in time of
crisis, all men would be called into the reserves; but in such periods
women have always fought in the breach, from Carthage to Paris. Still,
in modern warfare, those who guard the rear and furnish supplies are as
necessary as those who go to the front.
It has also long been recognized that women who rear finest sons and
daughters must sometimes turn away from the cradle to refresh their
lives with the touch of other interests. It has also been demonstrated a
thousand times over that women do not incite the lawless element to riot
about the polls; but that, instead, their presence tends to remove the
polling-place from the saloon and make it safer for men to go there on
election-day. The plea that women would introduce a new element of sex
into politics, thereby confounding its real issues, is certainly not
well grounded. Sex has always played a great part in politics, as it has
in all the vital affairs of life. In the open competitions of education,
business or politics, sex ceases to be as significant as it is in the
drawing-room.
Nor do thoughtful people imagine to-day that if women participated in
political life they would suddenly bring about a reign of universal
peace and righteousness. It has taken many centuries for men to learn to
play the game of politics indifferently well as they do. The first
effect of woman's participation would probably be to lower the
efficiency of the electorate in some directions; but they are starting
much farther along than men began, and they would learn more rapidly
than men have learned.
It is often claimed that women do not want to vote; and, of course,
there are many who do not care to assume such arduous and often
difficult duties, if they can avoid it. The same holds true of many
intelligent, but selfish men who desire the advantages of good
government without its burdens. All such must be urged to do their duty
to the state. Those who have vision and a large sense of duty can be
trusted to do their fair part in caring for the public welfare. Those
who wish to enjoy the benefits of peace and settled government,
participating in the advantages of education, engaging in business, and
having their persons and property protected, without sharing the burdens
of government, should be forced to play their part.
If a woman should board a street-car to-day and, when asked for her
fare, should hide her face with womanly modesty and declare that she did
not wish to be involved in such public matters, but preferred that the
man swinging on the strap before her should pay, she would be informed
that all who use the cars must pay for their maintenance. Women in
America now have more than their share of education and leisure. If they
do not wish to pay their fair proportion of service, they should
withdraw from the high schools and colleges, from literature and music,
from offices and factories, and not crowd into places where they are
unwilling to play the game. The woman who leads the movement against
equal suffrage in England has made a fortune in the open market as a
writer, protected by the national copyrights; she maintains a house
where she is protected in person and property by the city of London, the
organization and administration of which calls for the constant
attention of all intelligent citizens; and yet she urges women to take
what they can get, but to refrain from doing their fair share of the
city and national housekeeping, lest they lose their feminine charm.
Surely those who profit by government should give their share of
service.
It is idle to claim that equal suffrage will make no change in women. It
will certainly accentuate the changes already made by higher education
and by a freer business life. Some loss there must inevitably be in any
such far-reaching change. We lost something of chivalry and of the
spirit of _noblesse oblige_ in the transition from feudalism to
democracy. In transferring causes of personal difference from the
dueling field to the courts of law, we lost a degree of poetic feeling
and tragic exaltation, of personal initiative and physical courage. So
when women passed from slavery to serfdom we lost something of male
dominance and of female submission. We shall lose something in the
present transition; but one must be content to lose Louis XIV and
Versailles if one thereby finds modern France; one must be satisfied to
lose an institution which gave us the tragically pathetic death of
Alexander Hamilton, if it increases human justice and saves fathers to
their families. We must even be content to lose the languishing and
weeping lady of chivalry, and the coquetting, crocheting and confiding
maiden of the eighteenth century if we gain in return fair minded
comrades in daily living, devoted partners in family life, and strong,
intelligent mothers for the coming generations. The sex instinct needs
no fostering; it has led us to our best developments in civilization;
and its work has only begun.
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