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
I know the feud, and the grounds for it, between socialism and anarchy.
But both are enemies of the social order, and both are favorers of woman
suffrage. How "pacifically" the labor movement that originated in France
in 1848, and spread throughout Europe, was likely to proceed, we may judge
by its constant outbreaks kindred to the recent bomb-throwing in Paris. In
the German Working-man's Union, Hasenclever, for many years the leading
socialist in the German Reichstag, said: "The Woman Question would be
taken by the developed, or, more correctly speaking, the communistic
state, under its own control, for in this state" (which was to consist of
men and women with equal vote) "when the community bears the obligation of
maintaining the children, and no private capital exists, the woman need no
longer be chained to one man. The bond between the sexes will be merely a
moral one, and if the characters do not harmonize could be dissolved." The
"Social Democrat" of Copenhagen has for mottoes: "All men and women over
twenty-one should vote." "There should be institutions for the proper
bringing up of children." All the communistic and anarchistic labor
organizations in Germany, France, Switzerland, Denmark, and England
proclaim woman suffrage as a prime factor, and the disruption of the
family as its corollary.
There are many who remember the visit to this country of the socialist,
Dr. Aveling, and his (so-called) wife, the daughter of Karl Marx. His
legal wife had been left in England. Miss Marx said, in reply to the
question of a Chicago lady, that love was the only recognized marriage in
Socialism, consequently no bonds of any kind would be required. Divorces
would be impossible; for when love ceased, separation would naturally
ensue.
At a meeting of the Woman's Council held in Washington, in 1888, Mrs.
Stanton said: "I have often said to men of the present day that the next
generation of women will not stand arguing with you as patiently as we
have for half a century. The organizations of labor all over the country
are holding out their hands to women. The time is not far distant when, if
men do not do justice to women, the women will strike hands with labor,
with socialists, with anarchists, and you will have the scenes of the
Revolution of France acted over again in this republic."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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