Women's Suffrage: A Short History of a Great MovementFawcett, Millicent Garrett, Dame
Philosophy
Women's Suffrage: A Short History of a Great Movement
Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, Dame
Women -- Suffrage -- Great Britain
The _Anti-Suffrage Review_ of January 1911 contained an article called
"Arguments for use in Poor Districts," which throws a flood of light on
the methods by which these signatures of women against women's suffrage
have been obtained. The article represents an anti-suffrage lady going
round with a petition against women's suffrage. She approaches the
house of a working woman and appeals to her whether, after she has
looked after her children and her home, she has not done all that a
woman has time for, and "had better leave such things as the Government
of India and the Army and Navy, and all those outside things to the men
who understand them." A more extraordinarily dishonest argument, if
argument it can be called, can hardly be imagined. If it were sound,
it would exclude from all share in political power not only working
women, but also working men--all who live by the sweat of their brow,
and all hard working professional and business men. If the argument
were a sound one, the best Government would be a bureaucracy like that
of Russia, where the great tasks of government and the management of
the Army and Navy "are left to the men who understand them," and where
the peasant, the artisan, the professional man, and the merchant have
nothing to do with laws but to obey them, and nothing to do with taxes
but to pay them. But this system has never commended itself to the
political instincts of the British nation. Some of the anti-suffragists
at any rate could see this plainly enough when this "argument" was
applied to the continued exclusion of working men from the franchise.
Mr. Frederic Harrison has written words on this very subject which are
as applicable to women to-day as they were to men at the time when they
were first published:--
"Electors have not got to govern a country; they have only to find a
set of men who will see that the Government is fresh and active....
Government is one thing, but electors of any class cannot and ought
not to govern. Electing, or giving an indirect approval of Government,
is another thing, and demands wholly different qualities. These are
moral, not intellectual, practical, not special gifts--gifts of a
very plain and almost universal order. Such are, firstly, social
sympathies and sense of justice, then openness and plainness of
character; lastly, habits of action and a practical knowledge of
social misery."[28]
These are the lessons of their own leaders; but the anti-suffragists
pay no heed to them; it is little wonder then that they pay no heed to
the great suffrage leader who has taught us that women, like men, do
not need the franchise in order that they may govern, but in order that
they may not be misgoverned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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