can be most accurately traced, there was a time when the landowning aristocracy controlled the franchise and elected the members of Parliament. The dawn of a sense of injustice in the minds of the mercantile classes brought with it a demand for the extension of the suffrage, which was of course vigorously combated. It was an illogical resistance, which ended in the admission of the tradesmen. Later the workingmen awakened to their political disability and asserted their rights, only to be promptly antagonized by both classes in power. Eventually logic and justice won in this issue. In the light of history none of the objections urged against the extension of the right of voting have been sustained by subsequent facts. On the contrary, the broadening of the suffrage base has been found to add stability to the superstructure of British government and to have been in the interest of true conservatism.
In the course of time the woman's hour has struck. Her cause is now going through the same ordeal suffered by the classes referred to. Her triumph is as sure as theirs. The social and industrial changes of constitutional government in all countries have revolutionized her condition. Fifty years ago the avenues of employment open to women were few and restricted. To-day, in every branch of manufacture and trade, and in the professions formerly monopolized by men, they are actively and successfully engaged. Every law put upon the statute books affects their interests directly and indirectly—undreamed of in a social order where household drudgery and motherhood limited a woman's horizon.
It is inevitable, therefore, that, feeling the pressure of legislation under which they suffer, a new intelligence should stir the minds of women such as stirred the once disfranchised classes of men in Great Britain. It leads to an examination of the principles of self-government and to their application on lines of equality and not of sex. In them is found no justification for the present enforced political disability. Therefore all legislative bodies vested with the power to change the laws are petitioned to consider the justice and expediency of allowing women to register their opinions, on the same terms with men, at the ballot-box.
The principles at stake are rarely alluded to by the opponents of woman suffrage. The battle rages chiefly upon the ground of expediency. Every argument formerly used by the English Tories is to-day heard in the mouths of men who profess a belief in a democratic form of government....
In the discussion of the rights of labor, the inadequacy of wages, the abuses of the factory system, the management of schools, of reformatory and penal institutions, the sanitary arrangements of a city, the betterment of public highways, the encroachment of privileged corporations, the supervision of the poor, the improvement of hospitals, and the many branches of collective housekeeping included in a municipality—women are by nature and education adapted to participate. In many States, certainly in Massachusetts, it is a common practice to appoint women to responsible positions demanding large organizing and directing power. If thus fitted to rule, are women unfitted to have a voice in choosing rulers?
The true advancement of common interest waits for the active and responsible participation of women in political matters. Indirect and irresponsible influence they have now, but indirection and irresponsibility are dangerous elements in governments which assume to be representative, and are a constant menace. If this whole question of equal political rights of women is considered in the light of common sense and common justice, the sooner will the present intolerable wrong be wiped out and self-government be put upon a broader and safer basis.
Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) discussed the Fitness of Women to Become Citizens from the Standpoint of Education and Mental Development.
From the close of the Revolution, we find all the distinguished American patriots expressing the conviction that a self-governing people must be an educated people. Hancock, Jay, Franklin, Morris, Paine, Quincy Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington, all urge the same argument in support of education. It is no longer to produce an educated ministry, but to insure educated citizens, that schools are maintained and colleges multiplied....
In this year of 1897-98 not less than 20,000,000 pupils and students of all ages, from the toddlers in the kindergartens to the full-grown candidates for post-graduate honors, are registered in the schools, academies, colleges and universities of the United States. The average length of time which girls spend in school exceeds by nearly three years the average length of time which boys stay there; while the number of girls graduating from high-school courses, those which include United States history and civil government, is almost double the number of boys. Thus, at the present time, largely more than one-half of the moneys spent by the governments, local and national, in support of free schools, is used in the education of girls. By what authority does the Government tax its citizens to support schools for the education of millions of women to whom, after they have received the education declared necessary to citizenship, this is denied?
Is it urged that the Government gets its return upon its investment in the education of women through the increased intelligence with which women rear their children, manage their homes and conduct the larger social affairs outside the boundary of their home life? I have no disposition to diminish the Government's recognition of such return, but I wish to remind you that no one has ever justified the maintenance of public schools, and an enforced attendance upon them, on the theory that the Government has a right to compel men to be agreeable husbands and wise fathers, or that it is responsible for teaching men how to conduct their own business with discretion and judgment. Quite in another tone is it urged that the schools are the fountains of the nation's liberties and that a government whose policy is decided by a majority of the votes cast by its men is not safe in the hands of uneducated voters. ....It is the political life of our nation which stands in the sorest need; yet this is the only department of our national life which rejects the aid of women.
If intelligence is vital to good citizenship in a republic, it would seem that, to justify the exclusion of the present generation of American women, whose intelligence is bought at so high a price and at the expense of the whole people, there must be some proof that they have qualities which so vitiate it as to render it unserviceable. Such proof has never yet been presented.
At the present moment the education and the intellectual culture of American women has reached a plane where its further development is a menace, unless it is to be accompanied by the direct responsibility of its possessors—a responsibility which in a republic can be felt only by those who participate directly in the election of public officers and in the shaping of public policies.
The Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer (R. I.) considered the Fitness of Women to Become Citizens from the Standpoint of Moral Development.
Government is not now merely the coarse and clumsy instrument by which military and police forces are directed; it is the flexible, changing and delicately adjusted instrument of many and varied educative, charitable and supervisory functions, and the tendency to increase the functions of government is a growing one. Prof. Lester F. Ward says: "Government is becoming more and more the organ of the social consciousness and more and more the servant of the social will." The truth of this is shown in the modern public school system; in the humane and educative care of dependent, defective and wayward children; in the increasingly discriminating and wise treatment of the insane, the pauper, the tramp and the poverty-bound; in the provisions for public parks, baths and amusement places; in the bureaus of investigation and control and the appointment of officers of inspection to secure better sanitary and moral conditions; in the board of arbitration for the settlement of political and labor difficulties; and in the almost innumerable committees and bills, national, State and local, to secure higher social welfare for all classes, especially for the weaker and more ignorant. Government can never again shrink and harden into a mere mechanism of military and penal control.
It is, moreover, increasingly apparent that for these wider and more delicate functions a higher order of electorate, ethically as well as intellectually advanced, is necessary. Democracy can succeed only by securing for its public service, through the rule of the majority, the best leadership and administration the State affords. Only a wise electorate will know how to select such leadership, and only a highly moral one will authoritatively choose such....
When the State took the place of family bonds and tribal relationships, and the social consciousness was born and began its long travel toward the doctrine of "equality of human rights" in government