ANTI-WOMAN-SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT, THE. 



15 



meetings were held, Oct. 14, for young people and 

 for choirs and choral societies. 



ANTI - WOMAN - SUFFRAGE MOVE- 

 MENT, THE. Theories advanced in the writ- 

 ings of Jean Jacques Rousseau gave the first in- 

 spiration to the idea of woman as a voter. He 

 held that only the savage is free, and if there 

 needs must be society the individual, not the 

 family, is its unit. During the French Revolution 

 Condorcet and Sieyes proposed that the ballot 

 be given to woman, and their theories influenced 

 Mary Wollstonecraft. Her Vindication of the 

 Rights of Woman was at once admired and con- 

 demned. Sympathy with the Revolution took 

 her to Paris, where she was deserted by her 

 American lover. Freedom from the marriage tie 

 was considered a necessary part of the scheme for 

 equal rights, as it was thus proclaimed; but so- 

 ciety opposed it and compelled Godwin to wed 

 Mary Wollstonecraft and Shelley to wed her 

 daughter. About 1820 Frances Wright, who 

 is called " the pioneer woman in the cause of 

 woman suffrage," came to the United States from 

 Scotland. She lectured throughout the country, 

 and established in New York city, in connection 

 with Robert Dale Owen, a newspaper called The 

 Free Inquirer. It was devoted to the promulga- 

 tion of communism, materialism, and state so- 

 cialism. She attacked state and church as the 

 enemies of woman, and state and church took in- 

 stant alarm. A party arose, calling itself " The 

 Christian Party in Politics," to oppose her doc- 

 trines. In 1836 Ernestine L. Rose, an exiled Pole, 

 came to this country to lecture. She was an ex- 

 treme communist, and had presided in Europe 

 over a body called " An Association of All Classes 

 of All Nations, without Distinction of Sect, Sex, 

 Party, Condition, or Color." She also was a 

 pioneer advocate of woman suffrage, and opposi- 

 tion to her teachings was strongly felt and openly 

 manifested. 



In 1840 the Antislavery Association was broken 

 up by the determined effort of a few radical 

 women to be heard publicly in its councils. In 

 that wing of the abolition party which estab- 

 lished " communities," which held that all human 

 government is sinful because it is founded on 

 force, the woman-suffrage theory found lodgment 

 and open advocacy. It attacked the home and 

 the state, as well as the church, in the supposed 

 cause of woman. The state and the home looked 

 upon these radicals as sincere but misguided ene- 

 mies, and the community life was frowned out 

 of existence. 



In 1848 a convention was called to meet in 

 Seneca Falls, N. Y., to discuss " the social, civil, 

 and religious condition and rights of woman," 

 and the teachings of fifty years had culminated in 

 the inauguration of a movement in which posses- 

 sion of the ballot by women was the main thing 

 to be struggled for. Strong disapproval was ex- 

 pressed by women of the land who were foremost 

 in education and philanthropy by Catherine 

 Sedgwick, Hannah F. Gould, Catherine Beecher, 

 Sara Josepha Hale, Dorothea Dix, Harriet Beecher 

 Stowe, Emma Willard, Lydia H. Sigourney, and 

 Mary Lyon but the first formulated protest 

 against woman suffrage was sent to the Massa- 

 chusetts Legislature, in 1860, by 200 women of 

 Lancaster. They prayed the Legislature to re- 

 frain from forcing the vote upon women, because 

 " it would diminish the purity, the dignity, and 

 the moral influence of woman, and bring into the 

 family circle a dangerous element of discord." 



In 1868 and following years frequent protests 

 were sent from women to the Illinois Legislature. 



In 1870 a protest was sent to the Ohio Legisla- 



ture from Oberlin College. Mrs. Henry O. Hough- 

 ton, of Cambridge, Mass., for years conducted an 

 organization that confined itself to issuing pro- 

 tests to the Legislature and to an occasional 

 printed appeal. In 1871 a movement, largely in- 

 spired by Emma Willard, was inaugurated by 

 Mrs. Dahlgren, widow of Admiral John A. Dahl- 

 gren. Associated with her as officers were Mrs. 

 William T. Sherman and Mrs. Almira Lincoln 

 Phelps. These ladies presented a protest to Con- 

 gress, signed by 15,000 women, many of them 

 notable, representing every walk in American life. 

 The protest gave the following reasons: 



" Because Holy Scripture inculcates a different, 

 and for us higher, sphere apart from public life. 



" Because as women we find a full measure of 

 duties, cares, and responsibilities devolving upon 

 us, and we are therefore unwilling to bear other 

 and heavier burdens, and those unsuited to our 

 physical organization. 



" Because we hold that an extension of the suf- 

 frage would be adverse to the interests of the 

 working women of the country, with whom we 

 heartily sympathize. 



" Because these changes must introduce a fruit- 

 ful element of discord in the existing marriage 

 relation, which would tend to the infinite detri- 

 ment of children, and increase the already alarm- 

 ing prevalence of divorce throughout the land. 



"Because no general law, affecting the condi- 

 tion of all women, should be framed to meet ex- 

 ceptional discontent." 



These ladies conducted a journal of protest for 

 several years. Individual States had thus made 

 quiet resistance, but it was not until 1894 that 

 organized effort to combat the suffrage movement 

 was begun. 



By that time the situation had become con- 

 fused. Many of the claims of suffrage advocates 

 had apparently blended themselves with the prog- 

 ress of a century that has been notable for wom- 

 en's advancement. First Mormonism, and then 

 the rise of the Populist party, had carried con- 

 stitutional suffrage for woman into three States 

 of the Union. In May, 1894, the Constitutional 

 Convention of New York met in Albany. The 

 suffragists asked that an amendment, striking 

 the word " male " from Article II, section 1, of 

 the State Constitution, be submitted to the peo- 

 ple at the next election. A woman in Brooklyn, 

 in the midst of the cares of a young family, began 

 to call the attention of her friends to what seemed 

 to her a grave danger, and she stirred sentiment 

 so deeply that a meeting was called and action 

 was decided upon. New York women were also 

 interested, and a committee of six were placed in 

 charge of a petition of protest. In less than three 

 weeks this was forwarded to the convention with 

 7,000 names appended, nearly 3,000 of which were 

 wage-earners. The protest said: 



" The signatures attached are those of women 

 who have given serious and intelligent thought to 

 the subject, and who have become convinced that 

 the movement for unlimited suffrage, if success- 

 ful, would undo much of the good which earnest 

 effort and untiring philanthropy have achieved 

 for their sex in the past twenty years. We have 

 held no public meetings, have made no speeches, 

 conducted no campaign, have made no effort to 

 impress the convention by mere number of names. 

 We have accepted the signatures of no men, of 

 no women under twenty-one years of age, of no 

 aliens or nonresidents of the State. The signa- 

 tures are confined to no class, and represent only 

 those women who are so seriously concerned at 

 the mere possibility of what they consider a most 

 alarming proposition that they have come for- 



