Woman and the Republic | Page 2

"Progress" are not synonymous terms. In evolution there is
degeneration as well as regeneration. Only the work that has been in
accord with the highest ideals of woman's nature is fitted to the
environment of its advance, and thus to survival and development. In
order to learn whether Woman Suffrage is in the line of advance, we
must know whether the movement to obtain it has thus far blended
itself with those that have proved to be for woman's progress and for
the progress of government.
I am sure I need not emphasize the fact that, in studying some of the
principles that underlie the Suffrage movement, I am not impugning the
motives of the leaders. Nor need I dwell upon the fact that it is from the
good comradeship of men and women that has come to prevail under
our free conditions, that some women have hastily espoused a cause
with which they never have affiliated, because they supposed it to be
fighting against odds for the freedom of their sex.
The past fifty years have wrought more change in the conditions of life
than could many a Cathayan cycle. The growth of religious liberty,
enlargement of foreign and home missions, the Temperance movement,
the giant war waged for principle, are among the causes of this change.
The settlement of the great West, the opening of professions and trades
to woman consequent upon the loss of more than a half million of the
nation's most stalwart men, the mechanical inventions that have
changed home and trade conditions, the sudden advance of science, the
expansion of mind and of work that are fostered by the play of a free
government,--all these have tended to place man and woman, but
especially woman, where something like a new heaven and a new earth
are in the distant vision.

To this change the Suffragists call attention, and say, "This is, in great
part, our work." In this little book I shall recount a few of the facts that,
in my opinion, go to prove that the Suffrage movement has had but
little part or lot in this matter. And because of these facts I believe the
principles on which the claim to suffrage is founded are those that turn
individuals and nations backward and not forward.
The first proof I shall mention is the latest one in time--it is the fact of
an Anti-Suffrage movement. In the political field alone are we being
formed into separate camps whose watchwords become more unlike as
they become more clearly understood. The fact that for the first time in
our history representatives of two great organizations of women are
appealing to courts and legislatures, each begging them to refuse the
prayer of the other, shows, as conclusively as a long argument could do,
that this matter of suffrage is something essentially distinct from the
great series of movements in which women thus far have advanced side
by side. It is an instinctive announcement of a belief that the demand
for suffrage is not progress; that it does array sex against sex; that
woman, like man, can advance only as the race advances; and that here
lies the dividing line.
How absolute is that dividing line between woman's progress and
woman suffrage, we may realize when we consider what the result
would be if we could know to-morrow, beyond a peradventure, that
woman never would vote in the United States. Not one of her charities,
great or small, would be crippled. Not a woman's college would close
its doors. Not a profession would withhold its diploma from her; not a
trade its recompense. Not a single just law would be repealed, or a bad
one framed, as a consequence. Not a good book would be forfeited. Not
a family would be less secure of domestic happiness. Not a single hope
would die which points to a time when our cities will all be like those
of the prophet's vision, "first pure and then peaceable."
Among the forces that are universally considered progressive are: the
democratic idea in government, extinction of slavery, increase of
educational and industrial opportunities for woman, improvement in
the statute laws, and spread of religious freedom. The Woman-Suffrage

movement professed to champion these causes. That movement is now
nearly fifty years old, and has made a record by which its relation to
them can be judged. What is the verdict?
CHAPTER II.
IS WOMAN SUFFRAGE DEMOCRATIC?
As the claim of woman to share the voting power is related to the
fundamental principles of government, the progress of government
must be studied in relation to that claim in order to learn its bearing
upon them. It is possible to suggest in one brief chapter only the barest
outline of such a far-reaching scrutiny, and wiser heads than