Woman and the Republic: A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost AdvocatesJohnson, Helen Kendrick
History
Woman and the Republic: A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates
Johnson, Helen Kendrick
Women -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
Dr. Jacobi, in "Common Sense," says: "Whatever may be the personal
privileges of their lot, whatever the legal protection accorded to their
earnings, the public status of such a class remains strictly that of
aliens. At the present moment this vast and constantly growing army of
women industrials constitutes an alien class. The privation for that class
of political right to defend its interests is only masked, but not
compensated, by its numerous inter-relations with those who have rights."
So they are conceded to have personal privileges, and legal protection for
earnings. The alienism is then purely political, and works no hardship but
what Suffragists conceive to be in the mental attitude of the worker.
Foreign capitalists who own land or plant in the United States are
unfranchised. We have large numbers of men working in trades and
professions who never have been naturalized, but we do not dream that all
these constitute an alien class of industrials. No distinction is made in
business opportunity between the voter and non-voter. Neither is any
social distinction made regarding worker or employer on account of the
relations of either to the ballot. Market value is not measured by
suffrage, except in dishonorable transactions, and the women "with ballots
in their hands" are not the Government's preferred creditors. The men in
the District of Columbia are not conscious of lower wages and industrial
ostracism. Again, Dr. Jacobi says: "The share of women in political rights
and life--imperfect and deferred during the predominance of militarism--
has become natural, has become inevitable, with the advent of
industrialism, in which they so largely share."
Industrialism has no more power to change the basis of government than the
abolition movement had when certain advocates of it shouted that it was
"sinful to vote or hold office, because the government was founded upon
physical force and maintained itself by muskets." Industrialism is
bringing into this country some of the gravest problems it has ever met.
The sympathy of the people is on the side of labor that uses honorable
means; but Cleveland and Leadville are among the places that suggest
afresh the fact that industrialism must be kept in order for its own sake,
for the sake of general peace, and for the sake of its increasing ranks of
"alien" women who look to it for "every whit of protection," save that
which their own self-respect and that of public opinion can win them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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