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a revolution is not going to be bought so cheap!

"Let us, then, meet energy with energy, and in a spirit of hope. There is nothing in this movement which cannot be defeated, as this Manifesto points out. I have ventured lately to draw English attention to the state of things in America, where, after half a century of agitation, the Woman Suffrage movement is obviously declining, put down by the common sense of women themselves. They certainly could have got it if they had ultimately determined upon it; and in the sixties and seventies, when Women's Clubs were spreading all over the States, with the avowed object of securing Woman Suffrage, when great meetings were perpetually being held, and petitions presented to the State Legislatures, or to Congress, it looked as though the movement would and must succeed. Four States had granted the Suffrage; other States were being pressed to grant it. Then, in the eighties, the tide turned. The opinion of women themselves set against it. Women's Anti-Suffrage Societies sprang up; led in many cases by the women most actively concerned in social and philanthropic work; appeals to State Legislatures were met by counter-appeals, ably argued, a vast amount of literature was distributed: and now, not even Mrs. Cobden Sauderson can deny that the movement is receding, or, as Mrs. Fawcett prefers to put it, is 'less advanced' than in England. Mr. Zangwill, indeed, announces that he is bored' by facts drawn from Wyoming and Oregon. But I am afraid this is only when they are used against him! The Society for which he writes is never tired of quoting the four Suffrage States, when it suits them to do so, and of printing a number of highly doubtful statements about them. One of their recent pamphlets deals entirely with the no

ble example of Wyoming and Colorado, Ulan and Idaho. But when someone points out that there is a great deal to be said of another kind about these four States, and that the State of Oregon, which has for neighbors these very Suffrage States, has just defeated a Woman's Suffrage amendment by 20,000 votes, as against 10,000 last time, and 1,800 the time before-then Mr. Zangwill is 'bored.'

"We must fight then, and fight with hope.

"As to the reasons for the fight, we are probably all pretty much agreed in this room. Women are not undeveloped men but diverse,' and the more complex the development of any State, the more diverse. Difference, not inferiority-it is on that we take our stand. The modern State depends for its very existence and no juggling with facts can get rid of the truth-on the physical force of men, combined with the trained and specialized knowledge which men alone are able to get, because women, on whom the childbearing and child-rearing of the world rest, have no time and no opportunity to get it. The difference in these respects between even the educated man and the educated woman-exceptions apart-is evident to us all. Speaking generally, the man's mere daily life as breadwinner, as merchant. engineer, official, or manufacturer. gives him a praetical training that is not open to the woman. The pursuit of advanced science, the constantly developing applications of science to industry and life, the great system of the world's commerce and finance, the fundamental activities of railways and shipping, the hard physical drudgery, in fact, of the world, day by day-not to speak of naval and military affairs. and of that diplomacy which protects us and our children from war-these are male, conceived and executed by men. The work of Parliament turns

upon them, assumes them at every
turn.
That so many ignorant male
voters have to be called into the ua-
tion's councils upon them, is the pen-
alty we pay for what on the whole
are the great goods of democracy. But
this ignorance-vote is large enough in
all conscience, when one considers the
risks of the modern State; and to add
to it yet another, where the ignorance
is imposed by nature and irreparable--
the vote of women who in the vast ma-
jority of cases are debarred by their
mere sex from that practical political
experience which is at least always
open to men-could any proceeding be
more dangerous, more unreasonable?
The women who ask it-able, honor-
able, noble women though they be--are
not surely true patriots, in so far as
they ask it. There is a greatness in
self-restraint as well as in self-asser-
tion; and to embarrass the difficult
work of men, in matters where men's
experience alone provides the materials
for judgment, is not to help women.
On the contrary. We are mothers,
wives, and sisters of men, and we
know that our interests are bound up
with the best interests of men, and
that to claim to do their work as well
as our own is to injure both.

that he failed. The work of Parliament is one and indivisible. The handling of every subject bears on the handling of every other, and the vote, once given, can only carry with it the whole range of parliamentary power.

"But what then? Are women without power over the subjects that spe cially concern them, because they are and, as we hope, will remain without the parliamentary vote?

"By no means. They have first of all the power which will always belong, vote or no vote, to knowledge and experience wherever they are to be found. During the last half-century, as the education of women has advanced, and as their experience has been enlarged, their influence upon public men and upon legislation has steadily increased. Not a single Bill is now passed bearing on the special interests of women and children, but women are anxiously consulted. When the Special Schools for defective children were constituted throughout the country, the influence of women shaped the law at every successive stage; when the Midwives Act was passed, it was not, as Mrs. Pankhurst says, 'passed by men without consulting women'-it was, as I happened to

"But we shall be told there is a vast know, mainly the work of a group of field where men and women are equally concerned-the field of industrial and domestic legislation-and that women bere ought to have an equal voice. And if there were any practical possibility of dividing up the work of Parliament, so that women should vote on only those matters where they are equally concerned with men, there would be a great deal to be said for a special franchise of the kind. But there is no such possibility. Mr. Gladstone tried something like it when in the case of the first Home Rule Bill he endeavored to draw a line between certain subjects and others, in the case of the Irish members. We all know

energetic and clear-headed women, who proved their point and achieved their reform, even against a strong masculine opposition. The Probation of Offenders Act of last year was framed throughout in consultation with women possessed of expert knowledge and experience; and as for the Children's Bill of this Session, this children's charter, which does Mr. Samuel such honor, it could not have been drawn up without the advice and help of women, which it has had, throughout. Women, moreover, are now placed on Royal Commissions, and we may be very sure that the influence of Mrs. Sidney Webb on the Poor Law

Commission is at least equal to that of any man upon it.

"But this is not all. Women have not only the influence given them by special knowledge and ability, knowledge which enables them now in all fields to represent and speak for their sex; they have also freely open to them, whether as electors or elected, the immense field of local government. They have had the municipal vote for thirty-seven years; they have long been eligible as Poor Law Guardians, as parish or district councillors, and they have now been made eligible as county and borough councillors. If anyone will take up any competent book on local government and look at the powers of county and borough councils, he will ask himself, I think, how long will it be before women overtake or fill the immense sphere which has been here opened to them? They have not, indeed, shown any great zeal to fill it. The women's vote has been extremely small, except when some exciting cause has intervened-not unlike the men, however, in this! But all the time, if the vote were really the talisman that the Suffragists proclaim, what women might have done in local government! -what they still might do!

"If we get the vote,' says one of the Suffragist leaflets, 'more attention would be given to the condition of the children, to the care of the sick and aged, to education,' and so on. But meanwhile all sorts of powers are lying unused under the hands of women. There has been much talk, for instance, of the evils of street trading for children of school age. But this is a matter which depends entirely upon the County Council; and if the women's vote in London, which they have now possessed for thirty years and more, had been properly used and directed, street trading could have been inade impossible. Organized playgrounds again for children throughout London

could have been established, as they have been established in Boston and New York; a hundred things could have been done for children, if voters and organizers had so willed it. Meanwhile, the need for women school managers of a capable sort throughout London is really urgent. In the Cripple Schools with which I have been specially connected, we cannot get women enough to do the work which urgently wants doing for these delicate and helpless children. And meanwhile good brains and skilled hands are being diverted from women's real tasks to this barren agitation for equal rights with men, in men's own field, this sexrivalry, which has too often masqueraded as reform.

"Two arguments often used in the controversy are not touched in the Manifesto, which had of necessity to be short. But they have had remarkable influence upon the working population of the north. I mean (1) the argument that the possession of the vote would raise the wages of women to an equality with those of men; (2) that hygienic regulation of the employment of women-married women especiallyshould not be imposed on women without their consent, expressed through the vote.

If

"Heavy indeed is the responsibility of those who are teaching an excitable factory population that the possession of a vote will raise their wages! this were even remotely true, would the average wage of the agricultural laborer, twenty-four years after his political enfranchisement, be still 158. or 168. a week? Would all that mass of low-paid male labor disclosed by Mr. Rowntree's book on York, or Mr. Booth's London, still exist-if the vote could remedy it?

"The reasons why women's wage is generally lower than that of men are partly economic, partly physical. There are more women than men; men

are stronger than women; there is far more competition for men's labor; marriage and the expectation of marriage affect the industrial value of women's work unfavorably; and above all the organization of women's labor is still backward and weak.

"Many causes now in operation will, we hope, tend in time to the better payment of women; the more even spread of the world's population, better training, better organization, and so on. But to teach the laboring women of England that a parliamentary vote is of itself to raise wages and bring them the economic millennium, is, as it seems to me, to poison the wells of thought and action among them, and to increase instead of lightening the burdens on our sex.

"As to factory regulations, the opinion of women in the matter, trained and experienced women, has been of increasing importance with the Government for many years past. I believe I am not wrong in saying that a very large proportion of the recent reforms in factory legislation for women and children are due to the reports of women inspectors, in daily contact with the people, and bringing their trained knowledge to bear. But let us ask a further question. Is the work of married women in factories the concern only of women? Not at all. It is the concern of the nation as a whole, who are the trustees for and the guardians of the coming generation.

"Whether the legitimate influence of women on legislation could be carried further, on the lines of responsible advice, and co-operation with Government departments, is a matter to which some of us have given anxious thought. You will find a reference to this in the Manifesto. We have no hard and fast plan. We throw out the suggestion to show that we are far from admitting that everything is for the best in the best of worlds. We know that there

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"The party of sex may be the worst of all parties. And there is too much of it in the Suffrage agitation.

“Practically, then, our new Leagne meets the Suffragist demand by a direct negative, and by the strong assertion that women's true sphere is already secured to her, both in the home and the State, and what she has to do now is to fill and possess it. For the brutalities and wrongs that remain, force, political force, is no remedy. The task, alack, is harder than that.

"Finally, outside the political machinery necessary to the maintenance of the modern, civilized State, there is a world of thought and action common to both men and women alike, in perfect equality, a world more readily open to ideas than the world of party politics, a world where all reforms be gin, and which provides the force which ultimately carries them. Every capacity of women can find, if we will, free scope in that world, and within it women's influence and women's power depend entirely upon what women aro themselves.

"Well, now, we have to give practical effect to this belief. We have to carry the organization of the League throughout the country; we have to provide good and adequate literature; we have, above all, to break down the 420 pledges that have been given to Woman Suffrage in this Parliament;

and if Men's Societies for the promotion of Woman Suffrage' have been already formed-as they have been formed in the north-we must call on men to form Associations of voters 'in opposition to Woman Suffrage.' In short, we must fight-with good humor. Nineteenth Century and After.

I hope, and with constant respect for those-often dear friends of our own-who differ from us, but with a determination to make our voice heard, and to save England, if we can, from a national disaster."

Mary A. Ward.

COUNT LYOF TOLSTOI.

The writer, who, perhaps more plausibly than any other, has concentrated his powers on a construction of the impressions which may precede violent and premature death, has now reached the confines of his eightieth year in physical and mental well-being. Alone among the eminent Russian authors of the last century, Tolstoi has reached positive old age. Lermontov died at 30 and Pouchkine at 38. Gogol was no more than 43 when his ecstatic vigils wore him to the grave. Dostoievsky scarcely lived to be 59, and even Tourgéniev, whom not a few of us still remember standing like an oak in the forest, was felled at 65. Tolstoi alone, before whom the image of death has been perpetually present, defies it still in a green and vigorous maturity. In these days to be very old and still distinguished for energy is to achieve a pre-eminence the honors and glory of which are almost excessive. The result of Tolstoi's permanence, added to his talent, is to lift his fame, at all events for the moment, to a prophetic height. We have seen the splendor of octogenarians soar up in the heavens before; we have seen Tennyson and Victor Hugo and Ibsen blaze like meteors on the firmament, and to ordinary eyes darken the fame of all slightly younger contemporaries. In the case of Tolstoi, the concentration of worship is almost more tremendous still. Such praise is a graceful and proper tribute to the crown of length of days,

but it is apt to disturb calm critical judgment. We may find the exact analysis of so forced a reputation difficult, yet we ought, at all events, to find the effort to obtain it interesting.

In the case of Tolstoi the difficulty is unusual, because of the diverse attitudes which the subject of our inquiry has taken up towards life and thought. The author of Anna Karenina is also the author of The Kingdom of God is Within You, and the student is agitated at the outset of his inquiry by the discovery that Tolstoi himself attributes vastly more importance to his utterances on social, political and religious questions than he does to his novels. In this he is supported by a body of disciples which may be, in this country at least, not very numerous, but is extremely dictatorial and dogmatic. The artist is looked upon by this group of devotees as the unregenerate chrysalis out of whose nihilism the inspired Prophet has broken forth in evangelical beauty. Against this aspect of Tolstoi's career it is needful for any one who desires to examine his work rationally to appeal with firmness. Tolstoi himself declares, and the deep-mouthed priesthood round him deliriously repeat, that the novels and stories which he wrote before 1880,-and this includes everything of importance except the Kreutzer Sonata and Resurrection,-are evil in their tendency and negligible as litera`ture. He himself has said that such

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