In
1869 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan
B. Anthony formed a new organisation, the National
Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). The organisation condemned
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments as blatant injustices to women.
The NWSA also advocated easier divorce and an end to discrimination
in employment and pay.
Another group, the American Woman Suffrage
Association (AWSA) was formed in the same year in Boston. Leading
members of the AWSA included Lucy Stone
and Julia Ward Howe. Less militant that
the National Woman Suffrage
Association, the AWSA was only concerned with obtaining
the vote and did not campaign on other issues.
In 1870 the AWSA founded its own magazine, the Women's
Journal. The journal was edited by Lucy
Stone,
Mary
Livermore,
and Julia Ward Howe.
The journal featured
articles by members of the organisations and cartoons by Blanche
Ames, Lou
Rogers, Mary
Sigsbee, Fredrikke
Palmer and Rollin Kirby.
Some of the regional groups also produced journals, most notably,
the Women Voter (New York City)
Maryland Suffrage News
(Baltimore)
and the Western Woman Voter
(Seattle).
In the 1880s it became clear that it was not a good idea to have two
rival groups campaigning for votes for women. After several years
of negotiations, the AWSA and the NWSA merged in 1890 to form the
National
American Woman Suffrage Association
(NAWSA). The leaders of this new organisation include Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony,
Carrie Chapman Catt, Frances
Willard, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Anna
Howard Shaw.
Mary Taylor, No Vote Means
No Remedy for Long Hours and Short Pay
Maryland Suffrage News
(22nd May, 1915)
(1)
Editorial, Time
and Tide
(9th July, 1926)
Feminism, like any other great movement, proceeds at varying
paces and in varying forms in different countries. Few things are
more enlightening than a study of the inter-reactions of the feminist
movement in the two great English speaking peoples during
the past seventy or eighty years. It is curious how closely related
have been the movements on the two sides of the Atlantic.
Each has continually learnt from the other. Beginning with
Mary Wollstonecraft in the late 18th century, the feminist movement
owed its next big impetus (in the eighteen forties and fifties)
to Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony, of New England. It
was Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth C. Stanton who organised the
first Equal Rights Convention which was held in New York in
1848; and it was Lucretia Mott who laid. down the definite proposition
which American women are still struggling to implement
today: 'Men and Women shall have Equal Rights throughout
the United States.' A few years later Susan B. Anthony, the pioneer
Suffragist, came into the American movement.
It was not till the eighteen
sixties that the political feminist movement came alive in Great Britain.
Dame Millicent Fawcett was even in those early days one of the leading
names connected with it. The British suffragists pushed forward enthusiastically
for some twenty years,
but the failure to achieve success in 1885, when the third Reform
Bill was passed giving the agricultural labourer the vote, seemed
to take the heart out of our early suffragists, and the movement died
down again. Meanwhile, in the nineties the American women were full
of life and enthusiasm, winning victory after victory in State after
State.'
In 1902 Susan B. Anthony
came to England and stayed with Mrs. Pankhurst in Manchester. The
result of that visit was
far-reaching. All unwittingly the old pioneer handed back the torch
to the British suffragists. 'It is unendurable,' declared
Christabel Pankhurst after her departure, 'to think of another generation
of women wasting their lives begging for the vote. We must not lose
any more time. We must act.' Those words heralded the birth of the
British militant movement. From that moment onwards British feminists
went forward without pause till the outbreak of war in 1914 and when
that time came (although the actual Bill was not passed until 1918)
the first instalment of victory was virtually won.
Meanwhile in America by
1912 things had died down to very much the same state as the English
movement has been in since 1918. Votes had been achieved in a considerable
number of States, the feeling was widespread that a partial victory
was good enough for the moment and that complete victory would ' come
all in good time without much further trouble. And then in 1912
Alice Paul, lit by the fire of the English militant movement, returned
to America - and America woke up. It took the Americans just eight
years from that date to achieve complete political equality;
but they were under wise leadership (Alice Paul will surely
go down to history as one of the great leaders of the world),
and when they did achieve political equality they did not make
the mistake of supposing that that was the end. They turned
back to the 'declaration of sentiments' laid down by Lucretia
Mott in 1848 and they realised that political equality was
only the first step on the path which they had chosen and that
there could be neither halting nor relaxing their pace until they
had come to the end of that path.
(2)
In 1840 Lydia Drake of Ohio wrote down a list of reasons why women
in the United States should not have the vote.
1. Her mind is inferior to that of man, and we know that it requires
the strongest of minds to become a good politician.
2. It is
beneath her dignity.
3. She has no right to
vote and there is no use in her being prepared to do intelligently
what she is not permitted to do at all.
4. She has not sufficient
stability of character. She would always
follow the opinions other father, brother or husband and
this might do more hurt than good.
5. We should soon see
ladies mounted on the public stage
addressing her listening audience on the subject of politics
and that would not look very well.
6. She is too capricious
and full of new-tangled notions.
7. Women would soon enough
occupy the Presidential chair
and the legislative halls of our country, and we do not know
what the consequences of that might be.
8. There is no need of
it. There are men enough who have
nothing else to do who can transact all necessary business.
(3)
Sojourner
Truth,
speech at the Women's
Convention in Akron, Ohio (1851)
I want women to have their
rights. In the courts women have no right, no voice; nobody speaks
for them. I wish woman to have her voice there among the pettifoggers.
If it is not a fit place
for women, it is unfit for men to be there.
I am above eighty years
old; it is about time for me to be going. I have been forty years
a slave and forty years free, and would be here forty years more to
have equal rights for all. I suppose I am kept here because something
remains for me to do; I suppose I am yet to help to break the chain.
I have done a great deal of work; as much as a man, but did not get
so much pay. I used to work in the field and bind grain, keeping up
with the cradler; but men doing no more, got twice as much pay. We
do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. I suppose I am about
the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of
the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the
ice is cracked. What we want is a little money. You men know that
you get as much again as women, when you write, or for what you do.
When we get our rights, we shall not have to come to you for money,
for then we shall have money enough in our own pockets; and maybe
you will ask us for
money. But help us now until we get it. It is a good consolation to
know that when we have got this battle once fought we shall not be
coming to you any more.
I am glad to see that
men are getting their rights, but I want women to get theirs, and
while the water is stirring I will step into the pool. Now that there
is a great stir about colored men's getting their rights is the time
for women to step in and have theirs. I am sometimes told that "Women
ain't fit to vote. What, don't you know that a woman had seven devils
in her: and do you suppose a woman is fit to rule the nation?"
Seven devils ain't no account; a man had a legion in him. The devils
didn't know where to go; and so they asked that they might go into
the swine. They thought that was as good a place as they came out
from. They didn't ask to go into the sheep - no, into the hog; that
was the selfish beast; and man is so selfish that he has got women's
rights and his own too, and yet he won't give women their rights.
He keeps them all to himself.
(4)
Mary
Livermore
joined the American
Woman Suffrage Association after
the American
Civil War. She wrote about it in
her autobiography, My
Story of the War.
In January, 1869, at my own cost and risk, I established a woman
suffrage paper, The Agitator, which, from the
start, espoused the temperance cause, as well as that of woman suffrage.
I conducted the paper for a year, and with the help of my husband,
who took charge of the business, made it a success, and lost no money.
In January, 1870, the Woman's Journal of Boston was founded
by Mrs. Lucy Stone, and a joint stock company was formed for its weekly
publication. I was invited to merge my paper in this new and promising
advocate of the suffrage reform, and to become its editor-in-chief.
I accepted the invitation with much hesitation. For there were associated
with me as "editorial contributors," Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mrs.
Julia Ward Howe, Colonel Thomas W. Higginson, William Lloyd Garrison,
and Henry B. Blackwell, - so brilliant a coterie of men and women,
as caused me to doubt my fitness for the editorship, notwithstanding
my large experience in newspaper work.
(5)
Victoria
Woodhull, Lecture on Constitutional
Equality (20th February, 1872)
That the framers of the Constitution had Woman's Rights
clearly in their minds is borne out by its whole structure. Nowhere
is the word man used in contradistinction to woman.
They avoided both terms and used the word "persons"
for the same reason as they avoided the word "slavery,"
namely, to prevent an untimely contest over rights which
might prematurely be discussed to the injury of the infant
republic.
The issue upon the question
of female suffrage being thus definitely settled, and its rights inalienably
secured to woman, a brighter future dawns upon the country. Woman
can now unite in purifying the elements of political strife in restoring
the government to pristine integrity, strength and vigor. To do this,
many reforms become of absolute necessity. Prominent in these are:
A complete reform in the
Congressional and Legislative work, by which all political discussion
shall be banished from legislative halls, and debate be limited to
the actual business of the people.
A complete reform in Executive
and Departmental conduct, by which the President and the Secretaries
of the United States, and the Governors and State officers, shall
be forced to recognize that they are the servants of the people, appointed
to attend to the business of the people, and not for
the purpose of perpetuating their official positions, or of securing
the plunder of public trusts for the enrichment of their
political adherents and supporters.
A reform in the tenure
of office, by which the Presidency shall be limited to one term, with
a retiring life pension, and a
permanent seat in the Federal Senate, where his Presidential
experience may become serviceable to the nation, and on
the dignity and life emolument of Presidential Senator he
shall be placed above all other political positions, and be excluded
from all professional pursuits.
A reform between the relations
of the employer and employed, by which shall be secured the practice
of the great natural law, of one-third of time to labor, one-third
to recreation and
one-third to rest, that by this intellectual improvement
and physical development may go on to that perfection
which the Almighty Creator designed.
A reform in the system
of crime punishment, by which the death penalty shall no longer be
inflicted - by which the hardened criminal shall have no human chance
of being let loose to harass society until the term of the sentence,
whatever that may be, shall have expired, and by which, during that
term, the entire prison employment shall be for - and the product
thereof be faithfully paid over to - the support of the criminal's
family, instead of being absorbed by the legal thieves to whom, in
most cases, the administration of prison discipline has been entrusted,
and by whom atrocities are perpetrated in the secrecy of the prison
enclosure, which, were they revealed, would shock the moral sense
of all mankind.
In the broadest sense,
I claim to be the friend of equal rights, a faithful worker in the
cause of human advancement;
and more especially the friend, supporter, co-laborer with
those who strive to encourage the poor and the friendless.
If I obtain the position
of President of the United States, I promise that woman's strength
and woman's will with God's support, if he vouchsafe it, shall open
to them, and to this country, a new career of greatness in the race
of nations.
In accordance with the
above, we shall assume the new position that the rights of women under
the Constitution are complete, and hereafter we shall contend, I not
for a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, but that the
Constitution already recognizes women as citizens, and that
they are justly entitled to all the privileges and immunities
of citizens.
It will therefore be our
duty to call on women everywhere to come boldly forward and exercise
the right they are thus
guaranteed. It is not to be expected that men who assume that they
alone, as citizens of the United States, are entitled
to all the immunities and privileges guaranteed by the Constitution,
will consent that women may exercise the right of
suffrage until they are compelled. We will never cease the struggle
until they are recognized, and we see women established in their true
position of equality with the rest of the citizens of the United States.
(6)
Victoria
Woodhull, speech, (20th February,
1872)
These privileged classes of the people have an enduring hatred for
me, and I am glad they have. I am a friend not only of freedom in
all things, and in every form, but also for equality and justice as
well. These cannot be inaugurated except through revolution. I am
denounced as desiring to precipitate revolution. I acknowledge it.
I am for revolution, if to get equality and justice it is required.
(7)
Elizabeth
Cady Stanton,
speech (20th February, 1894)
The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion
is the individuality of each human soul - our Protestant idea, the
right of individual conscience and judgment - our republican idea,
individual citizenship. In discussing the rights
of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual,
in a world other own, the arbiter other own destiny, an imaginary
Robinson Crusoe with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her rights
under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own
safety and happiness.
Secondly, if we consider
her as a citizen, as a member of a great nation, she must have the
same rights as all other members, according to the fundamental principles
of our Government.
Thirdly, viewed as a woman,
an equal factor in civilization, her rights and duties are still the
same - individual happiness
and development.
Fourthly, it is only the
incidental relations of life, such as mother,
wife, sister, daughter, which may involve some
special duties and training. In the usual discussion in regard to
woman's sphere, such men as Herbert Spencer, Frederick Harrison
and Grant Alien uniformly subordinate her rights and
duties as an individual, as a citizen, as a woman, to the necessities
of these incidental relations, some of which a large
class of women never assume. In discussing the sphere of
man we do not decide his rights as an individual, as a citizen,
as a man, by his duties as a father, a husband, a brother
or a son, some of which he may never undertake. Moreover
he would be better fitted for these very relations, and
whatever special work he might choose to do to earn his bread,
by the complete development of all his faculties as an
individual. Just so with woman. The education which will
fit her to discharge the duties in the largest sphere of human
usefulness, will best fit her for whatever special work
she may be compelled to do.
The isolation of every
human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual
the right to choose his own surroundings. The strongest reason for
giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full
development of her faculties, her forces of mind and body; for giving
her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation
from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from
all the crippling
influences of fear - is the solitude and personal responsibility of
her own individual life. The strongest reason why we ask for woman
a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she
is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief
factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn
her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because,
as an individual, she must rely on herself.
To throw obstacles in
the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes; to deny
the rights of property is like cutting off the hands. To refuse political
equality is like robbing the ostracized of all self-respect, of credit
in the market place, of recompense in the world of work, of a voice
in choosing those who make and administer the law, a choice in the
jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their
punishment. Shakespeare's play of Titus and Andronicus contains a
terrible satire on woman's position in the nineteenth century - "Rude
men seized the king's daughter, cut out her tongue, cut off her hands,
and then bade her go call for water and wash her hands." What
a picture of woman's position! Robbed other natural rights, handicapped
by law and custom at every turn, yet compelled to fight her own battles,
and in the emergencies of life fall back on herself for protection.
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