The Feminist Movement/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
THE CASE FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE
In one part of his magnificent biography of Mr Gladstone, Lord Morley points out at some length the change which has taken place in the character of politics during recent years. A hundred years ago Parliament concerned itself primarily with questions remote from the lives of the common people. It is not so to-day. The overwhelming majority of the questions with which modern Parliaments deal are questions which touch the lives and the interests of the great masses of the people. Political parties vie with one another to produce the programme which shall promise most to the toiling millions of the country. Three principal causes have contributed to this condition. Two generations have lived under a system of compulsory education, and, as a natural consequence, their standard of life is higher and the number of their material wants greater than the standard of life and the daily wants of their predecessors. Seven millions of adult men now exercise political power, where in the early days of last century less than a million voted. The sight of inordinate wealth side by side with disgraceful poverty, the sufferings of women and children, and the hard conditions of labour in many of the occupations and trades of the country have combined to develop in all classes of the community a social conscience and a social spirit unmatched in any previous period of British history.
The result of the working of these three things—education, the popular vote, and the social spirit—is seen in the popular institutions of the country. It has reflected itself most clearly perhaps in legislation and administration. Since the enactment of the Municipal Corporations Act, and of kindred Acts of Parliament, the increase in municipal enterprise, with its corresponding and inevitable development of public spirit and the sense of public responsibility, has been little short of marvellous. The co-operative principle has been established as the working principle of life by the large majority of the thinking people of the country. A sense of the responsibility of each for all and of all for each has seized the minds and hearts of the better sort of people. Hence the legislation of the country has largely ceased to be in the material interests of the private individual. Of all the great interests of land and capital which were vested in a comparatively small number of the population, not one, unless the Press be excepted, retains the power, and the strength to maintain the power, it once had. Privilege is rapidly breaking down before the advance of a rational and humane public opinion. The legislation of Great Britain to-day concerns itself far less with the ends of the earth and far more with the homes of its people than it previously did. Legislation to-day is social and domestic.
In this fact lies one of the arguments for the political enfranchisement of women. Domestic affairs are the special concern of women. In olden times the argument that because woman's special sphere was the home she ought not to be concerned with politics had in it some weight and authority. To-day, the same argument is on the other side; because the special sphere of woman is the home, women ought to have the vote.
The time will never come when women will cease to regard the home and children as their special concern. A God-implanted instinct has taught them this truth. The granting or the withholding of the vote will make no difference here. Those who fear that the enfranchisement of women will mean an interference with the laws of God and nature pay a poor compliment to their Creator. The laws of God and nature are not so easily interfered with; they can safely be left to take care of themselves. As the face of a flower turns naturally towards the sun, so the heart of a woman turns towards a little child. The most rampant feminism would never accomplish the destruction of this natural and beautiful instinct towards life-giving and life-protecting inherent in all women. The pity of it is that so many women, for various reasons, some of them preventable, cannot with honour achieve the sphere towards which every instinct of their being calls them. Poverty so abounds that thousands of men dare not marry and take upon themselves new and unknown responsibilities. More than one-fourth of the working people of the country are so poor that they have to live in houses which do not conform to the requirements of the law in such matters as air-space and sanitary arrangements. The thinking woman is wise to hesitate before condemning herself and her children to the doubtful happiness provided by such surroundings and such homes. There are over a million more women than men in the kingdom, and this means that the natural instinct towards home-making, of which the anti-suffragist prates so much, must starve, and in its starving, stunt mind and spirit, unless it is permitted to project itself into the sphere of corporate home-making which local and national politics now offer.
Every Act of Parliament involves the interests of women, either directly or indirectly; but the legislation of the last few years has interfered in a very notable manner with the recognised sphere of women—home and children. To work backwards: It cannot be maintained by any sensible person that the new Criminal Law Amendment Act is not supremely a measure in which women are interested. It will most certainly be maintained that this Act has been placed upon the Statute-book without the women's vote, but it must be remembered that practically the same measure was rejected scores of times before the public opinion created by the suffrage agitation made further rejection dangerous to legislators. The Insurance Act was one which touched the women of the country very nearly, yet they were never consulted about it. Education, Temperance, Old Age Pensions, Feeding of School Children, Medical Inspection of School Children, Child Protection, Housing and Land Reform, Wages Boards, Factory and Mines Acts—these and a hundred other measures of reform enacted during the last few years concern the women of the country quite as intimately as the men. And the signs of the times are all in favour of an increase in this kind of legislation. It is unthinkable that Parliament can much longer continue to interfere with the special province of women in these ways without giving them equal rights with men to say whether such legislation is acceptable to them or not.
Not only has there been a remarkable change in the character of politics, but, during the same period, there has been an important change in the lives of women. The industrial revolution wrought this change, which has already been described in a previous chapter. More than five millions of girls and women are engaged in occupations of an industrial, professional, or commercial character in the United Kingdom. They have entered spheres formerly closed to them. They are the competitors of men in the world's labour market, seeking to earn their own living. Legislation is necessary for the protection of their labour and the improvement of their labour conditions. Working men have demonstrated how valuable the vote may be in these respects when wisely used. By means of collective bargaining working men have won a host of reforms of their working conditions—Workmen's Compensation, Legalisation of Trade Unions, the Miners' Eight Hours Day, Factory Legislation, Unemployment Insurance, Wages Boards, Fair Wages Clauses, and the like. It is significant that the Fair Wages Clause demanded in all Government contracts does not, practically, include women within its operation, and that many women workers in Government employ are badly sweated. The anti-suffrage remedy for industrial suffering is Trade Unionism. But Trade Unionism without political power is of very little use in these days. A prominent Trade Unionist, who was asked why he did not favour the admission of women to his Union, insisting on their forming a Union of their own, is known to have replied that the status of his Union would suffer in the eyes of politicians if it were known that it contained a large percentage of non-political, non-voting members, and that, as women could not be voters, they had better form Unions of their own. It is to be feared that a women's Trade Union would have little effect upon Parliament unless it were supported by a large body of voters.
The difference in the treatment of voters and non-voters was illustrated in the case of a well-known member of the present Government, an anti-suffragist, who was asked by a deputation of working women in his constituency to support the Conciliation Bill. When he was invited to say why he was against woman suffrage, he replied, very scornfully: 'Oh, I am, because I am.' It is unthinkable that an answer like that could have been given to a deputation of working men from the same constituency; or if such an answer were to be given, it is certain the working men would know how to express their resentment when the time and the occasion offered.
There is no argument in favour of the enfranchisement of men which does not apply with equal truth to the enfranchisement of women. There is no argument against the enfranchisement of women which does not apply equally to the case of men. All the old political mottoes which were inscribed on the banners of the Chartists are the truth for women as well as men. Though the argument is not a weighty one, the claim that taxation and representation should go together applies to men and women alike. There are nearly a million women householders in the country, paying rates and taxes, who come within this definition of the voter. The magnificent peroration to the most perfect short speech which was ever made, that made by Abraham Lincoln on the battle-field of Gettysburg, which Liberal politicians are for ever quoting in their election leaflets, 'Government of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth,' includes women, for, notwithstanding the law, women are people. That fine phrase contained in the American Constitution, 'Government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed,' might be the text for every feminist appeal.
Herein lies the distinction between the suffragist and the anti-suffragist. The suffragist wishes to be enfranchised, but does not seek to compel those who prefer to be governed by others from being so. Anti-suffragists do not wish to be enfranchised, they consent to be governed, but they would prevent those people from governing themselves who do not consent to be governed. There is no power to compel a woman to vote if she should have conscientious scruples about the rightness of voting. No police officer will arrest her, no summons be served upon her for not doing so. Then why should she object to the power of governing themselves being granted to those women of independent spirit who desire it? The right to say who shall govern her and how she shall be governed belongs to every grown woman of good understanding by the divine right of her humanity with its sense of responsibility to her kind.
Though the spirit of democracy bears witness to the justness of the women's claim, it is urged that, on grounds of expediency, and in the interests both of the women themselves and of the State, a thing which is just in itself must necessarily be withheld. 'It would not be good either for the women or for the State' said a famous politician in the House of Commons quite recently. If this be true the claim of the women ought to be withdrawn. If there is something in the exercise of the franchise which spells damage both to women and the community, and, consequently, to the generations unborn, that fact would justify a refusal of the suffrage to women. Justice, like most of the virtues and all of the vices, is a relative term. A whole view of life would reveal as unjust many things which have been masquerading as the purest justice. Nothing could make it just for women or men to have and hold that which would ultimately prove a curse to humanity. There is no such thing as an absolute right and title, an inborn and inalienable right and title to anything in the world. There is no such thing as the inborn and inalienable right of a man to the vote. The only right that the woman can establish is the right to have what the man in the same circumstances and with the same qualifications enjoys. Men and women lunatics and criminals are equally without the right to inflict on the community the consequences of their insanity or their criminality. Men and women of good character and sound understanding have equally the right, as human beings, to share in the government of their native land, provided that neither is to suffer so radically and so completely by the exercise of these rights as to endanger the whole of the community and blight the prospects of the next generation. Race-expediency is a legitimate argument, but its use must be proved to be justifiable before it should be accepted.
Those who use the argument have not proved that they are justified. They have not proved anything. Millions of women have been living in the exercise of every franchise enjoyed by their men. The women of this country have exercised a partial franchise for forty-two years. Nobody could say that a radical alteration for the worse had taken place in the character of voting British women. Those who know the colonial women voters, or the women voters of Norway and Finland, would never dare to assert that the women of these countries are one whit less womanly, even in the narrow sense of that term, less fond of their homes and children, less capable as housewives, less women in short, than the women of any other country. Their behaviour is as modest, their conversation as intelligent, their dress and manners as attractive, and their charm as patent as in the women of any one of the lands where women do not vote. Most certainly it has not been shown that women, by voting at intervals for Parliamentary candidates, have lost anything that goes to make up the special and distinctive charm of womanhood. Neither has their use of the vote been discovered to be harmful to any of the States where they vote. The opinion of the Australian Commonwealth has been quoted. Evidence in abundance is to hand from American statesmen of every degree of responsibility to prove that, so far as the suffrage States of America are concerned, there will be no going back to the old state of affairs when half their citizens were without the symbol of citizenship.
The legislation of all the countries where women vote reveals the fact that woman may be trusted to follow the line of political evolution. There have been no violent political changes, no embarrassing excesses, no promises of revolution, no extravagances, no flooding of the public offices with women, no wild rush into the realms of statecraft by women; neither the sudden overturning of old institutions nor the violent putting back of causes and questions that had matured. The women have voted in almost the same numbers, in proportion, as the men; and in the last New Zealand elections the women voted quite as heavily as the men. While their legislation has been along well-marked lines, their influence, as is natural, has been felt most in questions of purely domestic concern; but they have not been unmindful of larger interests, as the Commonwealth resolution points out.
It is good to reflect that a large number of eminent men all over the world are holding out friendly hands to the women and bidding them welcome as comrades. In this country the number of great men who support the claim of the women is exceedingly large—men in every rank and station of life. The names of some of these have been quoted, but the names of only a very few. The suffrage question cuts through the ordinary political party divisions, and so the grateful spectacle is presented of leaders in politics, in every quarter of the House of Commons, supporting woman suffrage.
Mr Asquith is a well-known opponent, but Mr Lloyd George is a stalwart friend. He has said in his own eloquent fashion: 'About half the students who come up to receive their degrees won in science and in art, some of them with distinction, are young women. Yet these brilliant and cultured women are deemed more unfit for the franchise than a sandwichman in the streets. This is irrational, it is indefensible, and it must end. A drunken illiterate, staggering to the poll, can record his vote against a name which he could not read even if he were sober. He is considered by the law of the land to be fit to give a decision on issues upon which the fate of the Empire may depend. But an able woman who may be keeping together a business, a business which, perhaps, finds employment for that privileged inebriate, is not regarded as fit to choose the best man to represent her in Parliament. There is nothing that exceeds the stupidity of such a position except its arrogance.'
Mr Winston Churchill, speaking in Manchester in 1908, said: 'I will try my best, when occasion offers, to get women the Parliamentary suffrage, because I do think sincerely that the women have always had a logical case, and they have now got behind them a great popular demand among women.' Lord Haldane believes that 'the time will come, and I believe it will come soon, when it will be seen not only that those who are already bearing a distinguished share of the political activity of the nation cannot any longer be shut out, but that their admission to the full rights of citizenship is for the advantage of every one concerned.' Lord Morley of Blackburn, Lord Courtney of Penwith, Sir Edward Grey, and Sir John Simon are well-known and distinguished advocates of the principle of woman suffrage.
On the other side in politics the most famous supporters are Mr Balfour and Mr Bonar Law. Mr Balfour, speaking in the House of Commons, in 1892, made short work of the argument that politics is degrading for women. He said: 'We have been told that to encourage women to take an active part in politics is degrading to the sex. . . . It has received the assent of almost every speaker to-day. I should think myself grossly inconsistent and most ungrateful if I supported that argument in this House, for I have myself taken the chair at Primrose League meetings, and urged to the best of my ability the women of this country to take a share in politics, and to do their best in their various localities to support the principles which I believe to be sound in the interests of the country. After that, to come down to the House and say I have asked these women to do that which degrades them appears to me to be most absurd. . . . I think I may take it that every section in this House is only too glad to use the services of women when they think they can profit by them, and it does not lie in the mouths of any of us to say that taking part in the framing of the policy of the Empire is degrading to the sex. In any other department of human thought than politics such an argument would be described by no milder word than "cant." Cant it undoubtedly is.' Lord Salisbury, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, and Lord Beaconsfield were amongst the sincere friends of the women's cause.
The fear that possesses some timid people is the idea that women want to sit in Parliament. It is quite conceivable that some women may aspire to such a position, and equally certain that some would do good work there. This would come within the demands of the feminist. It is pure feminism. But this must be remembered by those who dislike the idea of the woman legislator, that women will never be able to go to Parliament because they want to go there. They will only be able to go through the same doors as men. They will have to persuade some constituency to elect them. They will have to submit to tests far more severe than any man would have to face, for women candidates would have to face not only the prejudice of the male elector but the hostile criticism of the average woman elector, who will certainly not be inclined to favour one of her own sex. The standards which women set up for each other are much higher than the standards which men set up for women, except for their own women. That is why women are sometimes accused by men of cruelty to one another. Cruelty it is not meant to be, but excess of virtue it is which frequently makes one woman harsh with another. Her standard is high, and the other does not come up to it.
When the world ceases to be obsessed with sex and takes a cleaner, finer, broader outlook upon life and humankind, it will be seen that the best interests of the world and the State are served when the individual, man or woman, is doing that work which he or she can best do. The question to the feminist is not: Ought women or men to do this and that? It is, rather: Can women do this with advantage to themselves and the community? If women show evidences of breaking down under the work they have themselves elected to do, or if that work be badly done, the keen eyes of their sisters will note it, and with democratic fervour they will hasten to enact those regulations, whether social or political, which shall veto, in the wider interests of the community, the ambitions of the minority. The common sense of the majority of women may be safely trusted to guide and control the eccentricities of the few.