Anarchism and Other Essays
precious to her. It exacts her brothers, lovers, sons, and in return
gives her a life of loneliness and despair. Yet the greatest
supporter and worshiper of war is woman. She it is who instills the
love of conquest and power into her children; she it is who whispers
the glories of war into the ears of her little ones, and who rocks
her baby to sleep with the tunes of trumpets and the noise of guns.
It is woman, too, who crowns the victor on his return from the
battlefield. Yes, it is woman who pays the highest price to that
insatiable monster, war.
Then there is the home. What a terrible fetich it is! How it saps
the very life-energy of woman,--this modern prison with golden bars.
Its shining aspect blinds woman to the price she would have to pay as
wife, mother, and housekeeper. Yet woman clings tenaciously to the
home, to the power that holds her in bondage.
It may be said that because woman recognizes the awful toll she is
made to pay to the Church, State, and the home, she wants suffrage to
set herself free. That may be true of the few; the majority of
suffragists repudiate utterly such blasphemy. On the contrary, they
insist always that it is woman suffrage which will make her a better
Christian and homekeeper, a staunch citizen of the State. Thus
suffrage is only a means of strengthening the omnipotence of the very
Gods that woman has served from time immemorial.
What wonder, then, that she should be just as devout, just as
zealous, just as prostrate before the new idol, woman suffrage. As
of old, she endures persecution, imprisonment, torture, and all forms
of condemnation, with a smile on her face. As of old, the most
enlightened, even, hope for a miracle from the twentieth century
deity,--suffrage. Life, happiness, joy, freedom, independence,--all
that, and more, is to spring from suffrage. In her blind devotion
woman does not see what people of intellect perceived fifty years
ago: that suffrage is an evil, that it has only helped to enslave
people, that it has but closed their eyes that they may not see how
craftily they were made to submit.
Woman's demand for equal suffrage is based largely on the contention
that woman must have the equal right in all affairs of society. No
one could, possibly, refute that, if suffrage were a right. Alas,
for the ignorance of the human mind, which can see a right in an
imposition. Or is it not the most brutal imposition for one set of
people to make laws that another set is coerced by force to obey?
Yet woman clamors for that "golden opportunity" that has wrought so
much misery in the world, and robbed man of his integrity and
self-reliance; an imposition which has thoroughly corrupted the
people, and made them absolute prey in the hands of unscrupulous
politicians.
The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to
tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal
suffrage, and, by that right, he has forged chains about his limbs.
The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the
right of boycott, of picketing, in fact, of everything, except the
right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor. Yet all these
disastrous results of the twentieth century fetich have taught woman
nothing. But, then, woman will purify politics, we are assured.
Needless to say, I am not opposed to woman suffrage on the
conventional ground that she is not equal to it. I see neither
physical, psychological, nor mental reasons why woman should not have
the equal right to vote with man. But that can not possibly blind me
to the absurd notion that woman will accomplish that wherein man has
failed. If she would not make things worse, she certainly could not
make them better. To assume, therefore, that she would succeed in
purifying something which is not susceptible of purification, is to
credit her with supernatural powers. Since woman's greatest
misfortune has been that she was looked upon as either angel or
devil, her true salvation lies in being placed on earth; namely, in
being considered human, and therefore subject to all human follies
and mistakes. Are we, then, to believe that two errors will make a
right? Are we to assume that the poison already inherent in politics
will be decreased, if women were to enter the political arena? The
most ardent suffragists would hardly maintain such a folly.
As a matter of fact, the most advanced students of universal suffrage
have come to realize that all existing systems of political power are
absurd, and are completely inadequate to meet the pressing issues of
life. This view is also borne out by a statement of one who is
herself an ardent believer in woman suffrage, Dr. Helen L. Sumner.
In her able work on EQUAL SUFFRAGE, she says: "In Colorado, we find
that equal suffrage serves to show in the most striking way the
essential rottenness and degrading character of the existing system."
Of course, Dr. Sumner has in mind a particular system of voting, but
the same applies with equal force to the entire machinery of the
representative system. With such a basis, it is difficult to
understand how woman, as a political factor, would benefit either
herself or the rest of mankind.
But, say our suffrage devotees, look at the countries and States
where female suffrage exists. See what woman has accomplished--in
Australia, New Zealand, Finland, the Scandinavian countries, and in
our own four States, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. Distance
lends enchantment--or, to quote a Polish formula--"it is well where
we are not." Thus one would assume that those countries and States
are unlike other countries or States, that they have greater
freedom, greater social and economic equality, a finer appreciation
of human life, deeper understanding of the great social struggle,
with all the vital questions it involves for the human race.
The women of Australia and New Zealand can vote, and help make the
laws. Are the labor conditions better there than they are in
England, where the suffragettes are making such a heroic struggle?
Does there exist a greater motherhood, happier and freer children
than in England? Is woman there no longer considered a mere sex
commodity? Has she emancipated herself from the Puritanical double
standard of morality for men and women? Certainly none but the
ordinary female stump politician will dare answer these questions in
the affirmative. If that be so, it seems ridiculous to point to
Australia and New Zealand as the Mecca of equal suffrage
accomplishments.
On the other hand, it is a fact to those who know the real political
conditions in Australia, that politics have gagged labor by enacting
the most stringent labor laws, making strikes without the sanction of
an arbitration committee a crime equal to treason.
Not for a moment do I mean to imply that woman suffrage is
responsible for this state of affairs. I do mean, however, that
there is no reason to point to Australia as a wonder-worker of
woman's accomplishment, since her influence has been unable to free
labor from the thralldom of political bossism.
Finland has given woman equal suffrage; nay, even the right to sit in
Parliament. Has that helped to develop a greater heroism, an
intenser zeal than that of the women of Russia? Finland, like
Russia, smarts under the terrible whip of the bloody Tsar. Where are
the Finnish Perovskaias, Spiridonovas, Figners, Breshkovskaias?
Where are the countless numbers of Finnish young girls who cheerfully
go to Siberia for their cause? Finland is sadly in need of heroic
liberators. Why has the ballot not created them? The only Finnish
avenger of his people was a man, not a woman, and he used a more
effective weapon than the ballot.
As to our own States where women vote, and which are constantly being
pointed out as examples of marvels, what has been accomplished there
through the ballot that women do not to a large extent enjoy in other
States; or that they could not achieve through energetic efforts
without the ballot?
True, in the suffrage States women are guaranteed equal rights to
property; but of what avail is that right to the mass of women
without property, the thousands of wage workers, who live from hand
to mouth? That equal suffrage did not, and cannot, affect their
condition is admitted even by Dr. Sumner, who certainly is in a
position to know. As an ardent suffragist, and having been sent to
Colorado by the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League of New York State to
collect material in favor of suffrage, she would be the last to say
anything derogatory; yet we are informed that "equal suffrage has but
slightly affected the economic conditions of women. That women do
not receive equal pay for equal work, and that, though woman in
Colorado has enjoyed school suffrage since 1876, women teachers are
paid less than in California." On the other hand, Miss Sumner fails
to account for the fact that although women have had school suffrage
for thirty-four years, and equal suffrage since 1894, the census in
Denver alone a few months ago disclosed the fact of fifteen thousand
defective school children. And that, too, with mostly women in the
educational department, and also notwithstanding that women in
Colorado have passed the "most stringent laws for child and animal
protection." The women of Colorado "have taken great interest in the
State institutions for the care of dependent, defective, and
delinquent children." What a horrible indictment against woman's
care and interest, if one city has fifteen thousand defective
children. What about the glory of woman suffrage, since it has
failed utterly in the most important social issue, the child? And
where is the superior sense of justice that woman was to bring into
the political field? Where was it in 1903, when the mine owners
waged a guerilla war against the Western Miners' Union; when General
Bell established a reign of terror, pulling men out of beds at night,
kidnapping them across the border line, throwing them into bull pens,
declaring "to hell with the Constitution, the club is the
Constitution"? Where were the women politicians then, and why did
they not exercise the power of their vote? But they did. They
helped to defeat the most fair-minded and liberal man, Governor
Waite. The latter had to make way for the tool of the mine kings,
Governor Peabody, the enemy of labor, the Tsar of Colorado.
"Certainly male suffrage could have done nothing worse." Granted.
Wherein, then, are the advantages to woman and society from woman
suffrage? The oft-repeated assertion that woman will purify politics
is also but a myth. It is not borne out by the people who know the
political conditions of Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah.
Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigotted and relentless in
her effort to make others as good as she thinks they ought to be.
Thus, in Idaho, she has disfranchised her sister of the street, and
declared all women of "lewd character" unfit to vote. "Lewd" not
being interpreted, of course, as prostitution IN marriage. It goes
without saying that illegal prostitution and gambling have been
prohibited. In this regard the law must needs be of feminine nature:
it always prohibits. Therein all laws are wonderful. They go no
further, but their very tendencies open all the floodgates of hell.
Prostitution and gambling have never done a more flourishing business
than since the law has been set against them.
In Colorado, the Puritanism of woman has expressed itself in a more
drastic form. "Men of notoriously unclean lives, and men connected
with saloons, have been dropped from politics since women have the
vote."[1] Could brother Comstock do more? Could all the Puritan