The Case for Women's Suffrage/Women's Votes in New Zealand and Australia
WOMEN'S VOTES IN NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA
VOTES for women! Votes for women! Why are we hearing so much of this subject now? Is it possible that in free England over 140 women have been sent to prison for only asking for votes for women? No wonder this question is the burning question of the day. Has the English House of Commons forgotten the old proverb, "Righteousness exalteth a nation?" Surely this democratic Parliament—the greatest democratic majority England has ever had—will stand by its constitution that taxation and representation must go hand-in-hand, and will put into effect its own boasted superiority over the other party which says to the people, "You trust us." The Liberal Party is supposed to "Trust the People."
Well indeed has this determination of the women to get their votes succeeded. They have looked on the younger colonies of the Empire, and have seen that where women have the vote social laws and their industrial position have greatly improved. Seeing this, a holy discontent seized the women of Great Britain—and a great unrest which will never quieten until their demand is granted. In young countries women are in greater demand, their opinions are sought after because the country begins with the homes, and wherever the women's help has been sought, the results have proved that the natural housekeeper can become the national housekeeper, as nation-keeping is only house-keeping on a larger scale. The Isle of Man enfranchised her women in 1884, and those M.P.'s who now predict most terrible disaster to England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales if women should be enfranchised forget to look to that peaceful little island so near for an example.
New Zealand enfranchised her women, and in 1893 they used their votes for the first time. The result of the first Parliament elected by women and men was the introduction of old age pensions; every man over the age of sixty-five was entitled to seven shillings a week; every woman over sixty-five was entitled to seven shillings a week. That is a notable fact that where men and women are political equals they are treated equally. So well did the old age pensions work that less than two years ago they were raised to ten shillings a week the man, and ten shillings a week the woman. I have visited your workhouses, and have read about your poor rates, and have seen your starving men and women, and pinched, pale-faced children. I have seen your sweated women workers, have visited the slums in which they exist and sew and sleep; I have seen that still worse great army of women who could not endure the misery of starving slowly, and who are selling their souls for food and clothes and shelter. I have read in the Daily News of 50,000 souls, men, women, and children in West Ham, starving, and I have seen the marches of the unemployed in Tottenham and Wood Green, in the North, and the terrible, never-to-be-forgotten march of East End unemployed to Hyde Park. I took part in the women's march, and I can assure my readers only a heart of stone could look on unmoved. Then I go to the other end of your wonderful city and see the signs of wealth in houses and furniture, luxuries abounding everywhere, children happy with their nurses, beauty, plenty, happiness. One is led to ask are we all children of one great Father, and members of one human family, and subjects of the same King, and legislated for by the same Parliament? If so, surely the weak and helpless should have the first care. I look with horror on your misnamed "workhouses," and see in them breeding dens of discontent, envy, malice, and hatred, and nurseries for idleness and selfishness. The cost of maintaining these iniquitous blots on twentieth century legislation would go a long way to providing old age pensions, and starting reproductive works for the able-bodied men and women to earn their livelihood. When men and women are old they are entitled to old age pensions, which really are the interest of the wealth their own labour has produced. With charity or relief, indoor or outdoor, recipients are paupers, and consequently forfeit all privileges of citizens; with old age pensions go respect, honour and rights of citizenship. The pension is proof that the aged citizen has done his or her duty to the country, and the country acknowledges it, just as the British Parliament pensions its ex-Admirals, ex-Generals, ex-Cabinet-Ministers, and others who were supposed to have served their country well, and who were well paid during their service. Ruskin tells us "every man (or woman) who has done well to his parish or country deserves well from that parish or country," and so we say. The women’s vote helped to bring about this old age pension in New Zealand.
Liquor Reform was another great work brought about by the women’s vote in New Zealand; local option in many districts, and abolition in a few. The official Year Book of 1906 for New Zealand comments on the large increase in the number of votes recorded for no license or reduction of license; it also refers to "the substantial increase shown in the number of persons who went to the poll."[1]
The Factories Act, 1901, of New Zealand is one of the most perfect and complete laws to be found. A maximum forty-five hours a week for women and youths is insisted on, except in woollen mills, where they may work 48 hours. All bakehouses and laundries, if only two persons be employed, are classed as factories to bring them under the Factories Act inspection. In shops a weekly half-holiday is compulsory, and to all young persons a minimum wage of 5s. per week must be paid, with an increase of 3s. per week until they are twenty years old. The following are a few of the Labour Laws passed since the enfranchisement of the New Zealand women:—The Alcoholic Liquor Sale Control Amendment Act, 1895 (re holiday on licensing election day); the Electoral Act, 1905 (re holiday on election day); the Factories Act, 1901; Industrial Arbitration and Conciliation Act; Trades Union Amendment Act, 1896; Wages Protection Act, 1899; Workers’ Dwellings Act, 1905; the Land for Settlements Consolidation Act, 1900 (with provision for workmen’s homes); Servants’ Registry Offices Act, 1895; Shops and Offices Act, 1904; and many others. Those people who say the enfranchisement of women will stop all Social Reforms will be surprised to learn that the very reforms they are talking of have been brought about with the aid of the women’s vote.
The education, too, of the children at the Public Schools is free and purely secular, doing away with the sectarian controversy. There are a great many other reforms of which I have written but do not wish to refer to them here, so will pass on to the first State of Australia which followed New Zealand in giving her women the vote. South Australia enfranchised her women in 1894, and the following are a few of the Social and Industrial Acts of Parliament passed since that date:—Married Women’s Protection Act; Workmen’s Liens Amendment; Gambling Suppression; Indecent Advertisement Suppression; Affiliation Act; Legitimation of Children; Married Women’s Property Act; Workmen’s Wages; Children’s Protection; Early Closing; Factories Amendments; State Children’s Amendment; Workmen’s Compensation; Children’s Protection re Smoking; Opium Amendment; Police Prisons, &c.
Immediately the women of South Australia were enfranchised the age to protect girls was raised from fourteen to sixteen years, and since, I think, has been raised to eighteen. I was very much impressed by the remarks made by Mr. Horace Smith, the magistrate who was on the Bench when seventy-five women were brought before him for attempting to go to the House of Commons to present a petition praying the Government to bring in a Bill for Votes for Women under the same terms as now do, or may, in future apply to men.
There was one over sixteen but not seventeen years old, a young girl who had been working in the factory over two years and who came from Huddersfield representing her mother, who took her to Manchester to place her in the care of one of the leaders of the W.S.P.U. to bring to London for the purpose of attending the Conference and to help carry the resolution of that Conference into effect. Mr. Smith said she was a child and should be in the schoolroom; she was too young to know or understand what she was doing. Yet the law of this land—the man-made law—says in effect that a girl of sixteen and a day is quite old enough to decide on what is right or wrong as to acts of morality. A man may ruin a young girl of sixteen and one day, and if the girl says she consented to her own ruin nothing is done to the man, although the poor "child," as Mr. Smith calls her, may have been intimidated, coerced, or bribed into saying she consented to the stealing of "the immediate jewel of the soul"—her good name. It is a great pity these kindly gentlemen, such as Mr. Horace Smith, do not look after the young girls in the right way; it is because there are such disgraceful laws on the statute-book of this country—these one-sided laws—that we are fighting for the votes for women. We should very much like to see our girls, the girls of the working classes, in the schoolroom until they are sixteen; but alas! poor souls, many of them have to be in the factories, the mills, and the shops two years before that age, and many have to earn money in other ways long before they are fourteen and before they leave school. It is a very good sympathy, Mr. Smith; carry it into effect for the poor unprotected working women's daughters who are subjected to all kinds of temptation in coming and going, aye and even in their work. Protect the poor girls' good names at least as long as you protect the rich girls' property. In the States which gave women the vote the first reform was to raise the age of consent; in fact, to look after the welfare of the future mothers. What could be better than that? South Australia brought in many Bills to deal with the children. It is with the children every country should help to reform itself.
Germany owes her progress not to her Protective policy but to the way she deals with her children. Her supervision and care of illegitimate, neglected or deserted children is indeed magnificent; her system of technical schools and municipal control could be copied for the advantage of Great Britain. South Australia is making a good second in her care of the child-life. Smoking and other habits of vice are suppressed by Acts of Parliament, and if children should break the law there are separate courts for their trial.
Another good Act is the "Suppression of Indecent Advertisement" and questionable literature. Το prevent children becoming criminals is much greater than reforming them, and to keep their minds pure is of infinitely more importance to the future generations than schools of correction, reformatories, and prisons, which are all needed in later life through the lack of attention in the right direction when the mind is most susceptible. Lady Montague, in a letter to her daughter, the Countess of Bute, said: "The same characters are formed by the same lessons." If only our legislators would think of that sometimes when they are dealing with the questions relating to children and the homes of our workers! We know what the slums and rookeries of crowded cities have turned out, and yet these same slums and rookeries exist and the same characters are being turned loose on the world; the lessons learned in those slums, of vice, cruelty, and degradation are being repeated day after day and year after year, and we only hear of the "Housing Problem." If women had the votes here in Britain do you think this would continue to go on?
What our wise (?) legislators spent in the South African war alone would have been enough to buy up all the slums and make houses and homes worthy of the name for our workers to live in, and the money saved in gaols, lunatic asylums, police and magistrates, &c., would be enormous. The people often sin because "the means to do ill-deeds make ill-deeds done." The women, having more to do with homes than men, and having to spend most of their time there, would make this a live question, and if there were a spare room in the homes where tired fathers might rest undisturbed by crying children they would not want to go to the public-house; children, too, are less peevish when they can play and not be in "mother's way." It is the right of the worker—a decent home. Was it not Moody who said: "The home was founded before the Church, and Britons stand more in need of homes than of churches"? One more reform I must refer to. The Opium Amendment Act of South Australia shows what good uses the women's votes have been put to. About a year ago there was a great cry all over England about the opium traffic; meetings of women were held, resolutions were unanimously carried praying Mr. John Morley to abolish the traffic; with what result—failure! The Government could not afford to lose the revenue derived from that diabolical drug. Morals of the people! what is that in comparison to money for the National Exchequer? I spoke at several of those women's meetings and foretold them if they wished the abolition of opium traffic they must fight for the women's vote, as that was the only weapon which would annihilate the trade. Tasmania, which only enfranchised her women in December, 1903, in 1906 passed an Act prohibiting opium smoking. The women's vote will attack this question in England too, for women will attach more importance to the salvation of human life than to money for the national coffers. Since 1903 (December) Tasmania—the little island south of Australia and one of the Commonwealth States—has placed on the Statute Book the following Acts since the women exercised their votes:—Legitimation Act; Women and Children Employment Act; Education Act; Youthful Offenders, Destitute, and Neglected Children Act, in 1905; the Midwifery Nurses Act; Opium Smoking Prohibition Act; Young Persons' and Women's Detention Act, in 1906. Surely, surely these are sufficient proof that women's share in politics are not blocks to reform, but rather open the door to reform.
The State of Western Australia gave her women the vote in 1898 (the second Australian State to enfranchise women). Since then an Act to raise the age of consent from fourteen years to sixteen (now eighteen) was carried. Women were made eligible for the Bar. Arbitration (Industrial Disputes), Compensation to Families of Persons killed by Accidents, Co-operative and Provident Societies Acts, Criminal Code Consolidation Acts, Drunkards Act (1903), Early Closing (1902), Education Amendments (1899), Factories Act (1904), Gaols (1903), Health Act Amendments (1899 and 1904), Indecent Publications (1902), Marriage Law (1900), Married Women's Judicial Separation (1896, Amendment 1902), Prohibition of Secret Commissions (1905), Seats for Shop Assistants (1899), Slander of Women (1900), Trades Unions (1902), Truck Act (1899), and many other social, industrial and domestic Acts, which I have not space to mention. New South Wales, the third State to give women the vote, began immediately on social reforms. The age of consent was raised from fourteen years to sixteen. Infant Mortality and Legitimation of Children, Juvenile Smoking Prohibition, Liquor Reform Bill (no compensation), Women Inspectors for Early Closing have been appointed, Wages Boards to abolish Sweating created, and attempts made to enforce equal wages for equal work, and Several other reforms are under discussion. A Local Government Bill has been carried and a State Children's Bill, to give the poor, neglected, or orphaned child a trade to commence life on. Public-houses are closed all day on Sundays, early closing and half-holiday for shop assistants, women factory inspectors, police matrons—and many other things which make life bright and endurable for our workers. The Wages Board of Australia has acted so well in putting down sweating that this same Government, which sent 140 women to prison for asking for the vote to help put down this gigantic evil, has sent a Commissioner to Australia to inquire into its working, with a view of solving the evil which exists in Britain. (In New Zealand sub-contracting is forbidden by law, and sweating is absolutely impossible there.) Would it not be more economical to enfranchise the British women and let them help the Government to wipe sweating entirely out, as they have done in New Zealand and Australia, than to pay a man's travelling and other expenses, besides time and delay through red-tapeism after his return, and then perhaps nothing will be done. It is nearly one year since that awful "Sweating Exhibition" was opened in London—what practical results have we? The women are still working nineteen hours for 1s. Shirts are still being made for 7½d. per dozen. The women are suffering whilst our wise (?) legislators are talking. How utterly incompetent this Democratic Government is to bring about a few democratic measures!
I think the above will clearly show there is nothing to be feared by giving women the vote. Have women not always been from the cradle to the grave the best friends men had? Then what have they to fear? Do they think women will combine in one great Party to make men suffer? I have heard it said that women being in the majority by three-quarters of a million would be able to overrule the men. I think this brilliant idea was mentioned by our bitter opponent, Mr. Cremer, in the House. The injustice done to the majority of adults by giving them no representation at all never seems to have occurred to him. It would be unjust to allow 750,000 more women than men to vote, but evidently, from his standpoint, it is no injustice to withhold the vote from all women! He is a member of that great Democratic Party now sitting at Westminster, and an advocate for Peace and Arbitration, but has not yet learned the golden rule laid down by the Nazarene, and the principle on which Peace with Justice must be maintained, viz., to "Do unto others as you would have them do to you." No Party will suffer by a righteous action, and to enfranchise the women is right.
These militant tactics commenced on May 12, 1905, outside the House of Commons, when Mr. Labouchere and Mr. Robertson "talked out" the Bill, and have gone on, getting bolder and bolder, stronger and stronger. We have hit on a magnificent plan of campaign.
First, we are independent of all party politics, and we go to all by-elections to work against the Government nominee, until the Government will find a place on its programme for our Bill. We get the people's ears, and the justice of our cause appeals to them—we never hold a meeting without making converts, We are reaching the women as well as the men; we show plainly that every law which affects men also affects women; we prove to them we are taxed and not represented; we point out the great reforms effected in the colonies by the women's votes; we are educating fathers and mothers together. The great people, the great masses, are awakening to the bare justice of our demand; there is a sign of a great rebellion, a great revolt, for the people are beginning to stir from their long sleep of indifference, and are asking healthy questions as to our methods and reasons for them. It is coming like the mighty roar of the ocean, this great voice of the People, this one Great Almighty Power against which no King, Emperor, Czar, or Governments can stand. It has beheaded and dethroned kings. It has emptied the House of Commons once before; it has given freedom to the slaves; it has put down the tyrants from high places. Our movement is on the crest of that great wave, and no power can stop it! We are fighting for Liberty and Freedom; we know not defeat, we may "fall to rise," strengthened every time. Our army is growing, growing daily; women are drawing nearer each other, and in so doing are getting nearer the Great Father of all; they are understanding each other better than before; classes and masses banded together in the great Women's Social and Political Union, making this great cause their religion—the religion of Humanitarianism.
- ↑ I make a point of quoting this from page 199 of Year Book because we are often told the women did not want the vote, and do not use it. Whereas the total of voters in 1896 were, males 151,285; females 108,663, total 259,948, and in 1905, males 221,674; females 174,743, total 396,417.