Address delivered before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate of the State of New York, March 24th, 1897 ... representing the Association Opposed to the Extension of the Suffrage to Women

ADDKESS

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

JUDICIARY COMMITTEE

OF THE

SENATE OF THE STATE OF NEW YOBK

MARCH 24th, 1897,

BY

MRS. FRANCIS M. SCOTT

REPRESENTING THE

ASSOCIATION OPPOSED TO THE

EXTENSION OF THE SUFFRAGE

TO WOMEN.

^

J. J. O'BRIEN Sl son,

PRINTERS AND STATIONERS,

lit EAST S30 STREET,

NEW YORK.

•^

G-ENTLEMEN I

It is my privilege to appear before you
to-day to state as briefly as I can some of the reasons why
the New York State Association Opposed to the Extension
of the Suffrage prays you not to report favorably on the
Concurrent Resolution to strike out the word "Male"
from Article II, Section I, of the State Constitution.

The arguments in favor of the proposed change have
been reiterated for thirty years. If strenuous assertion
could stand for fact, and plausibility for truth, if only the
old, the ignorant or the indifferent women were arrayed
against the Resolution, I should have no business here.
Reason and logic, however, support the arguments of the
Opposition, and youth, intelligence and enthusiasm are
arrayed to bar the way of unwise and ill-considered
legislation.

My task is to try to prove to this Committee the
justice of the attitude of the Association for which I speak.
In any argument the point of departure is of paramount
importance. Given a wrong premise, a structure fair and
goodly in appearance may be raised, but strike at its
weak foundation and it crumbles and disappears.

My point of departure is the simple acceptance of a
fact about which there can be no argument. The exist-
ence of a fundamental difference between men and women.
With the recognition of this unalterable truth, I am
not afraid to try conclusions with your petitioners for
change.

The first necessity of a Government is Law. Without
law Government cannot exist, or let me, preferably, say
Government is the enforcement of Law. The necessity of
enforcement is a question admitting of no doubt. Whether
a country has a governing class, or, as in our own case, its
citizens govern one another, the authorities must be vested
with power to enforce the Laws.

We women can persuade men, we can influence them,
there are those among us who can sway opinion by their
magnetic eloquence, but can we enforce the law ? Would
persuasion have conquered the Indian ; or gentle influence
freed our colonies ; or the greatest eloquence alone have
destroyed slave-holding and preserved the integrity of our
country ?

Shall we, then, be given power to create the laws when
we are confessedly unable to enforce them —

Or shall not our persuasions, our influence, our elo-
quence be used to counsel and advise you in framing the
laws, leaving to you their enactment as we must look to
you for their enforcement.

There has been a frequently made claim that the
suffrage is an inherent right inuring to every citizen by
reason of his citizenship, but there has never been con-
ceded to men an inherent right to vote. It has been ex-
haustively proven that every extension of the suffrage has
been a matter of governmental expediency. There is,
however, one single view of the case under which every
man may claim a right to vote.

It is the view which bars all women out.

It is the concession that all men are equal in that they
are — broadly and generically speaking — physical equals,
the enormous majority being able each one to protect him-
self from the aggression of any other man. This is the
only possible sense in which we can understand that men
are equal ; as in mental capacity, education or wealth, our
country shows as broad contrasts as any in the world.

This is a demonstration of the inequality of men and
women, for were the average women to be attacked by the
average man she could protect neither her property, her
life nor her honor !

It is plain to see how quickly the suffragists' claims of
equality and an inherent right to vote vanish into thin
air under the strong illuminating sunlight of unsentimental
common sense.

It will be urged upon you that the working- woman would
be largely benefited by being given the vote; that her
position as a wage-earner would be improved because her
political importance would place her where she could com-
mand higher wages, and that the woman's vote would be
used to compel legislation directing the more liberal pay-
ment of women.

The power that you wield for the good of all citizens
may well be used in behalf of these women. There are,
however, some obvious reasons why women' s wages have a
tendency to keep lower than men's. One of them is that
only a small proportion of women are wage-earners for
many years of their lives. The working girl, commonly,
naturally and humanly selects an "inevitable he" and
leaves her income-making work to do a no less valuable one
in making a home for him; while the man who began work
at about the same age as his wife did, and has reached about
the same state of efficiency at the time of marriage, goes
on with his trade, or business, or profession, growing more
valuable because he is a husband, and usually a father,
and has an interest in the community which inspires him
to thoroughness, and faithfulness to his employer.

This condition creates a large class of wage-earning
women who never advance beyond a certain degree of com-
petency because they have as a rule no expectation, nor
desire to pursue their calling indefinitely, but contemplate
marriage as a probable contingency, which as a matter of
fact occurs in the vast majority of cases. As a result their
wage-earning years are few, and their ranks are constantly
filled from below.

Apparently these women are in many cases doing the
same work as men. That is, they are clerks, typewriters,
stenographers, etc., but in reality they seldom reach the
same state of efficiency as the men who are pursuing a defi-
nite career in which they expect to continue during their
whole lives.

When an employer is seeking to fill a place for which
there are many applicants of equal efficiency, the man with
a wife and children is preferred to the married man without

6

children, and he in turn is considered before the man with-
out family, and the man with a family to support will be
justly preferred to the single woman.

Where identical work is done, identical payment should
be the rule; and even now at the top of the ladder there
exists no difference. With authors, artists, musicians,
actors, there is no question of sex, only of accomplish-
ment. The quality of the work is the only test of its value.
We can scarcely doubt that this salutary test will be the
universal one of the future, and as it exists among the
great it will work gradually down to the lowest work and
lowliest workers.

This is only touching upon a grave question, but it is
enough to show that conditions of life — not the ballot —
are what control employment and wages. That legislation
can and ought to, effect only an inappreciable number of
cases, and that the inexorable law of supply and demand
will do the rest, both supply and demand being immediately
affected by the natural differences between men and women.
The claim of mental equality it seems idle to discuss. As
a matter of fact the general intelligence and education of
women are not so great at the present day as those
of men. But practically every source of education has
been opened to woman, and every opportunity for use-
fulness, excepting political office-holding, is her's to use;
the world watches her growth and development with
intensest interest and no one would put out a hand to
hinder her progress.

Furthermore, neither the claim of mental equality nor
that of moral superiority have any bearing upon the ex-
tension of the Suffrage to women. The tests of mental
capacity or moral character have never been used to prove
the men of this State especially fitted for the ballot, and
therefore there appears to be no reason why they should
be urged as a claim for the admission of women to the
suffrage.

As to the contention that the Extension of the Suffrage
to women will lead to the enactment of more efficient laws

for the advancement of morality, or stricter enforcement of
those laws which have been or may be made, why should
we pose as the only agents for good. Can we look into the
past and not acknowledge that the moral standard has
grown steadily higher, and that the government by men
has, on the whole, done no despicable work in the cause of
morality.

Are we not each born of a man and woman, and can
we escape the sad sharing of an inheritance of evil, and a
glad bond of inherited aspiration. That sharing and that
bond are what make us strong to work together. Together,
but not in identical ways. The balance of power among
nations but typifies a social and political balance of i^ower
among us as a race. It cannot be disturbed without dis-
aster. We should share and divide the work of the world,
not strain and strive to do the same work. Above all, no
work should be taken up by either of us which would in-
terfere with our highest work as fathers and mothers. If
fatherhood interfered with the performance of public duty,
public duty could not be performed by men.

Motherhood must interfere with the performance of
public duty. Even wifehood alone gives a woman the in-
timate and peremptory duty of home-making, and debars
her from answering the demands of an inexorable public,
if she gives her best self to the work she deliberately takes
up when she marries.

You are asked to give all women the ballot. Not the
widow and the spinster only, but all women, and I am here
to ask you whether women are not already doing their full
half of the world's work; to beg you to consider whether
they have done their share so well, with so much time
and energy, and ability to spare, that you are justified in
asking them to take a part of your work in addition, and
finally to impress upon you the fact that I speak for thou-
sands of women, who look to your decision to leave them
opportunity for consistent development, and pray that
their lives may not be hampered and held back by the
obligation to enter upon political life with its distractions,
its struggles and contentions.

Printed by the
New York State Assooiation Opposed to the Extension of the Suffrage to Women.