Rosenfeld Susan. Encyclopedia of American Historical Documents

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And any Chinese person found unlawfully within the

United States shall be caused to be removed therefrom to

the country from whence he came, by direction of the

President of the United States, and at the cost of the

United States, after being brought before some justice,

judge, or commissioner of a court of the United States and

found to be one not lawfully entitled to be or remain in the

United States.

Sec. 13. That this act shall not apply to diplomatic and

other officers of the Chinese Government traveling upon

the business of that government, whose credentials shall

be taken as equivalent to the certificate in this act men-

tioned, and shall exempt them and their body and house-

hold servants from the provisions of this act as to other

Chinese persons.

Sec. 14. That hereafter no State court of the United

States shall admit Chinese to citizenship; and all laws in

conflict with this act are hereby repealed.

Sec. 15. That the words “Chinese laborers,” wherever

used in this act, shall be construed to mean both skilled

and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining.

Source:

United States Statutes at Large, Vol. 22, pp. 58–61.

Jacob A. Riis,

How the Other Half Lives, 1890

Jacob Riis, a Danish-born journalist, published his scathing

description of New York City tenement life in 1890, awaken-

ing public opinion to the slum conditions that nurtured disease

and crime.

How the Other Half Lives

was the first of a number

of influential works by Riis and others bringing the living and

working conditions of urban dwellers, especially immigrant

women and children, to the attention of civic reformers and

health and social workers on the eve of the Progressive Era.

After reading his book, Theodore Roosevelt, then a civil ser-

vice commissioner, left his card with Riis, on which he wrote

“I have read your book and I have come to help.” Today read-

ers are put off by Riis’s undisguised anti-Semitism, but the

book remains as one of the most influential of the late 19th

century.

________________________

_______________________

Introduction

LONG ago it was said that “one half of the world does not

know how the other half lives.” That was true then. It did

not know because it did not care. The half that was on top

cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate of those

who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them

there and keep its own seat. There came a time when the

discomfort and crowding below were so great, and the

consequent upheavals so violent, that it was no longer an

easy thing to do, and then the upper half fell to inquiring

what was the matter. Information on the subject has been

accumulating rapidly since, and the whole world has had

its hands full answering for its old ignorance. 1 In New

York, the youngest of the world’s great cities, that time

came later than elsewhere, because the crowding had not

been so great. There were those who believed that it would

never come; but their hopes were vain. Greed and reckless

selfishness wrought like results here as in the cities of older

lands. “When the great riot occurred in 1863,” so reads the

testimony of the Secretary of the Prison Association of

New York before a legislative committee appointed to

investigate causes of the increase of crime in the State

twenty-five years ago, “every hiding-place and nursery of

crime discovered itself by immediate and active participa-

tion in the operations of the mob. Those very places and

domiciles, and all that are like them, are to-day nurseries

of crime, and of the vices and disorderly courses which

lead to crime. By far the largest part—eighty per cent. at

least—of crimes against property and against the person

are perpetrated by individuals who have either lost con-

nection with home life, or never had any, or whose homes

had ceased to be sufficiently separate, decent, and desir-

able to afford what are regarded as ordinary wholesome

influences of home and family. . . . The younger criminals

seem to come almost exclusively from the worst tenement

house districts, that is, when traced back to the very places

where they had their homes in the city here.” Of one thing

New York made sure at that early stage of the inquiry: the

boundary line of the Other Half lies through the tene-

ments. 2 It is ten years and over, now, since that line

divided New York’s population evenly. To-day three-

fourths of its people live in the tenements, and the nine-

teenth century drift of the population to the cities is

sending ever-increasing multitudes to crowd them. The fif-

teen thousand tenant houses that were the despair of the

sanitarian in the past generation have swelled into thirty-

seven thousand, and more than twelve hundred thousand

persons call them home. The one way out he saw—rapid

transit to the suburbs—has brought no relief. We know

now that there is no way out; that the “system” that was the

evil offspring of public neglect and private greed has come

to stay, a storm-centre forever of our civilization. Nothing

is left but to make the best of a bad bargain. 3 What the

tenements are and how they grew to what they are, we

shall see hereafter. The story is dark enough, drawn from

the plain public records, to send a chill to any heart. If it

shall appear that the sufferings and the sins of the “other

half,” and the evil they breed, are but as a just punishment

upon the community that gave it no other choice, it will be

because that is the truth. The boundary line lies there

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Cultural Diversity and National Unity 1033

because, while the forces for good on one side vastly out-

weigh the bad—it were not well otherwise—in the tene-

ments all the influences make for evil; because they are the

hot-beds of the epidemics that carry death to rich and poor

alike; the nurseries of pauperism and crime that fill our

jails and police courts; that throw off a scum of forty thou-

sand human wrecks to the island asylums and workhouses

year by year; that turned out in the last eight years a round

half million beggars to prey upon our charities; that main-

tain a standing army of ten thousand tramps with all that

that implies; because, above all, they touch the family life

with deadly moral contagion. This is their worst crime,

inseparable from the system. That we have to own it the

child of our own wrong does not excuse it, even though it

gives it claim upon our utmost patience and tenderest

charity. 4 What are you going to do about it? is the ques-

tion of to-day. It was asked once of our city in taunting

defiance by a band of political cutthroats, the legitimate

outgrowth of life on the tenement-house level. 1 Law and

order found the answer then and prevailed. With our enor-

mously swelling population held in this galling bondage,

will that answer always be given? It will depend on how

fully the situation that prompted the challenge is grasped.

Forty per cent. of the distress among the poor, said a

recent official report, is due to drunkenness. But the first

legislative committee ever appointed to probe this sore

went deeper down and uncovered its roots. The “conclu-

sion forced itself upon it that certain conditions and asso-

ciations of human life and habitation are the prolific

parents of corresponding habits and morals,” and it rec-

ommended “the prevention of drunkenness by providing

for every man a clean and comfortable home.” Years after,

a sanitary inquiry brought to light the fact that “more than

one-half of the tenements with two-thirds of their popula-

tion were held by owners who made the keeping of them

a business, generally a speculation. The owner was seeking

a certain percentage on his outlay, and that percentage

very rarely fell below fifteen per cent., and frequently

exceeded thirty. 2 … The complaint was universal among

the tenants that they were entirely uncared for, and that

the only answer to their requests to have the place put in

order by repairs and necessary improvements was that

they must pay their rent or leave. The agent’s instructions

were simple but emphatic: ‘Collect the rent in advance, or,

failing, eject the occupants.’ Upon such a stock grew this

upas-tree. Small wonder the fruit is bitter. The remedy

that shall be an effective answer to the coming appeal for

justice must proceed from the public conscience. Neither

legislation nor charity can cover the ground. The greed of

capital that wrought the evil must itself undo it, as far as it

can now be undone. Homes must be built for the working

masses by those who employ their labor; but tenements

must cease to be “good property” in the old, heartless

sense. “Philanthropy and five per cent.” is the penance

exacted. 5 If this is true from a purely economic point of

view, what then of the outlook from the Christian stand-

point? Not long ago a great meeting was held in this city,

of all denominations of religious faith, to discuss the ques-

tion how to lay hold of these teeming masses in the tene-

ments with Christian influences, to which they are now too

often strangers. Might not the conference have found in

the warning of one Brooklyn builder, who has invested his

capital on this plan and made it pay more than a money

interest, a hint worth heeding: “How shall the love of God

be understood by those who have been nurtured in sight

only of the greed of man?”

Note 1. The Tweed band of municipal robbers.

Note 2. Forty per cent. was declared by witnesses before a

Senate Committee to be a fair average interest on tene-

ment property. Instances were given of its being one hun-

dred per cent. and over.

Source:

Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives. New York: Charles Scrib-

ner’s Sons, 1890.

Frances E. Willard,

“The Do Everything Policy,” 1893

Address by Frances Willard, the president of the National

Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), delivered to

the Second Biennial Convention of the World’s Woman’s

Christian Temperance Union, and the Twentieth Annual Con-

vention of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union

at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in October

1893. According to WCTU’s “Do Everything Policy,” a woman

will do everything possible “to antagonize the alcohol habit

and the liquor traffic.” Her speech also suggests that the tem-

perance movement is dependent upon the suffrage movement.

Willard believed that the vote for women needed to be

secured before any legislation that would prohibit the con-

sumption of alcohol could be enacted.

In the second half of her speech, Willard notes that in

general, support for woman suffrage has increased. She con-

cludes with a list of achievements made by women over the

course of the past year, such as the growth of the number of

women in religious office and other professional fields.

________________________

_______________________

Beloved Comrades of the White Ribbon Army:

WHEN we began the delicate, difficult, and danger-

ous operation of dissecting out the alcohol nerve from the

body politic, we did not realize the intricacy of the under-

taking nor the distances that must be traversed by the

scalpel of investigation and research. In about seventy days

from now, twenty years will have elapsed since the call of

battle sounded its bugle note among the homes and hearts

of Hillsboro, Ohio. We have all been refreshing our knowl-

edge of those days by reading the “Crusade Sketches” of its

heroic leader, Mrs. Eliza J. Thompson, “the mother of us

all,” and we know that but one thought, sentiment and

purpose animated those saintly “Praying Bands” whose

name will never die out from human history. “Brothers, we

beg you not to drink and not to sell!” This was the one wail-

ing note of these moral Paganinis, playing on one string. It

caught the universal ear and set the key of that mighty

orchestra, organised with so much toil and hardship, in

which the tender and exalted strain of the Crusade violin

still soars aloft, but upborne now by the clanging cornets of

science, the deep trombones of legislation, and the thun-

derous drums of politics and parties. The “Do Everything

Policy” was not of our choosing, but is an evolution as

inevitable as any traced by the naturalist or described by

the historian. Woman’s genius for details, and her patient

steadfastness in following the enemies of those she loves

“through every lane of life,” have led her to antagonise the

alcohol habit and the liquor traffic just where they are,

wherever that may be. If she does this, since they are

everywhere, her policy will be “Do Everything.”

A one-sided movement makes one-sided advocates.

Virtues, like hounds, hunt in packs. Total abstinence is not

the crucial virtue in life that excuses financial crookedness,

defamation of character, or habits of impurity. The fact that

one’s father was, and one’s self is, a bright and shining light

in the total abstinence galaxy, does not give one a vantage

ground for high-handed behaviour toward those who have

not been trained to the special virtue that forms the central

idea of the Temperance Movement. We have known per-

sons who, because they had “never touched a drop of

liquor,” set themselves up as if they belonged to a royal line,

but whose tongues were as biting as alcohol itself, and

whose narrowness had no competitor save a straight line.

An all-round movement can only be carried forward by all-

round advocates; a scientific age requires the study of every

subject in its correlations. It was once supposed that light,

heat, and electricity were wholly separate entities; it is now

believed and practically proved that they are but different

modes of motion. Standing in the valley we look up and

think we see an isolated mountain; climbing to its top we

see that it is but one member of a range of mountains many

of them of well-nigh equal altitude.

Some bright women who have opposed the “Do-

Everything Policy” used as their favourite illustration a

flowing river, and expatiated on the ruin that would follow

if that river (which represents their do-one-thing policy)

were diverted into many channels, but it should be

remembered that the most useful of all rivers is the Nile,

and that the agricultural economy of Egypt consists in the

effort to spread its waters upon as many fields as possible.

It is not for the river’s sake that it flows through the coun-

try but for the sake of the fertility it can bring upon adjoin-

ing fields, and this is pre-eminently true of the

Temperance Reform.

Joseph Cook, that devoted friend of every good cause

has wisely said: “If England were at war with Russia, and

the latter were to have several allies, it would obviously be

necessary for England to attack the allies as well as the

principal enemy. Not to do this would be foolishness, and

might be suicide. In the conflict with the liquor traffic, the

policy of the W.C.T.U. is to attack not only the chief foe,

but also its notorious and open allies. This is the course

dictated not only by common sense, but by absolute neces-

sity. If the home is to be protected, not only must the

dram-shop be made an outlaw, but its allies, the gambling

hells, the houses of unreportable infamy, the ignorance of

the general population as to alcoholics and other narcotics,

the timidity of trade, the venality of portions of the press,

and especially the subserviency of political parties to the

liquor traffic, must be assailed as confederates of the chief

enemy of the home. . . . It is certain that the broad and pro-

gressive policy of the W.C.T.U. in the United States makes

the whiskey rings and time-serving politicians greatly

dread its influence. They honour the Union by frequent

and bitter attacks. It is a recognised power in international

affairs. If its policy were made narrow and non-partisan, its

influence would immensely wane in practical matters of

great importance.

“The department of Scientific Temperance Instruc-

tion, conducted by the W.C.T.U., and led by Mrs. Mary

H. Hunt, of Boston, has now made such instruction man-

datory in thirty-six States of the Republic. This is a very

large and substantial triumph of the broad and progressive

policy. Instead of the National W.C.T.U. having lost the

confidence of the churches by its broad policy, I believe,

after much travel and years of observation, that it never

had more of that confidence than at the present hour. At a

recent Congressional Hearing, in Washington, I heard a

distinguished Presbyterian Professor of Theology, Rev.

Dr. Herrick Johnson, of Chicago, call the W.C.T.U. the

most powerful, the most beneficent, and the most success-

ful organization ever formed by women. Similar testimony

abounds in all the most enlightened circles of the land.”

Let us not be disconcerted, but stand bravely by that

blessed trinity of movements, Prohibition, Woman’s Liber-

ation and Labour’s uplift.

Everything is not in the Temperance Reform, but the

Temperance Reform should be in everything.

There is no better motto for the “Do-Everything-

Policy,” than this which we are saying by our deeds: “Make

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Cultural Diversity and National Unity 1035

a chain, for the land is full of bloody crimes and the city of

violence.”

If we can remember this simple rule, it will do much

to unravel the mystery of the much controverted “Do-

Everything-Policy,” viz: that every question of practical

philanthropy or reform has its temperance aspect, and

with that we are to deal.

Methods that were once the only ones available may

become, with the passage of years, less useful because less

available. In earlier times the manly art of hunting was

most helpful to civilization, because before fields could be

cleared and tilled, they had to be free from the danger of

wild beasts, and no method of obtaining food was more

important than the chase; but when the forests have been

cleared away and the pastoral condition of life has super-

vened, nay, more, when the highest civilization peoples the

hills and valleys, it certainly evinces a lack of imagination

to present such a spectacle as do the hunters who in Eng-

land to-day place a poor stag in a van, convey him on four

wheels to a wood, let him out through a door, and set

trained dogs upon him, while they follow with guns and

halloos, and call it “sport”! The same absurdity has been

illustrated by Baron Hirsch, who recently imported 6,000

caged partridges to his country place, let them loose in the

groves, and set himself and friends peppering away at

them. Surely such conduct is the reverse of manly, and

must bring what was once a noble occupation into con-

tempt. But, in a different way, we illustrate the same prin-

ciple, when we forget that

“New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient

good uncouth.”

We are too apt to think that what makes for us makes

for the truth, and what makes for the truth must be true.

Such a circle of reasoning leaves us, so far as logic goes, in

the attitude said to have been assumed by the coffin of

Mohammed-suspended between earth and heaven. A

reformer is very apt to fall into this line of argumentation,

a tendency which is perhaps most likely to be corrected by

studying the correlated movements of other groups of men

and women equally excellent, and by allying to the reform

of which he is an advocate as many others germaine to it as

may be practicable, always asking this question as the

touchstone of the natural selection he would make “What

is the Temperance aspect of this cognate reform and what

its aspect toward the liquor traffic?”

The Temperance cause started out well night alone,

but mighty forces have joined us in the long march. We are

now in the midst of the Waterloo battle, and in the provi-

dence of God the Temperance army will not have to fight

that out all by itself. For Science has come up with its glit-

tering contingent, political economy deploys its legions,

the woman question brings an Amazonian army upon the

field, and the stout ranks of labor stretch away far as the

eye can reach. As in the old Waterloo against Napoleon, so

now against the Napoleon of the liquor traffic, no force is

adequate except the allied forces.

The Quenchless Woman Question.

Perhaps the novel is the barometer of women’s rise. Pro-

fessor Swing, in his famous lecture on the novel, set forth

his favourite theory that it is the apotheosis of woman, a

creature far too bright and good to be cribbed, cabinned

and confined within the conventional limits of the sphere

that man’s selfishness had circumscribed for her, and

hence she expanded into the wider circle of the novel,

where she played the public part denied her in real life;

for she was made and meant to be a thing of beauty and a

joy for ever, not to her home alone, but to the great world;

and this is so true that in the less-developed ages, when

man’s self-restraint did not permit her to be a figure on

the stage, young men and beautiful were attired in

women’s garb to act her part. When she became the cen-

tral figure of the novel, it grew to be the most fascinating

of all books, hence the most widely-read, in all the wilder-

ness of literature. But this was only a figure of things to

come, and predicted her admission to all the world con-

tains. It was a sort of dress rehearsal for her part on the

stage of life, wide as the planet and high as human need

and sympathy. It is to be regretted that the woman, who

in these regnant days of scientific Christianity and Chris-

tian science is not only “the coming woman,” but has

already come, should be a character so individual that the

old-line novelists cannot adapt their concept or their style

to her bright, new lineaments; but we, as women, should

be devoutly thankful that the novelist of the future has

some forerunners, in our own country, Mrs. Elizabeth

Stuart Phelps Ward, and in England George Mered-

ith, who, as one of our ablest woman journalists has said,

“shows that it is possible for women to despise incon-

stancy and weakness, and not to cling to unworthiness in

men with that blind doting love ascribed to them; that the

rigid demand of a higher moral standard for women than

for men frequently has its origin in the desire of brute

force for absolute possession; that the faults and the

virtues of women are the faults and virtues of the race;

that a woman in her best estate is not an angel, nor in her

worst worse than a bad man.”

I wish we did not so much use the expression “eman-

cipated woman.” Its associations and history are not to our

advantage. It would be far better to combine our efforts to

make the term “awakened woman” current coin in the

world’s great exchange of speech.

Of all the fallacies ever concocted, none is more idi-

otic than the one indicated in the saying, “A woman’s

strength consists in her weakness.” One might as well say

that a man’s purity consisted in his vileness, or that his

sobriety consisted in his drunkenness! When was ever

strength discounted, except by those who would have

women kept in a condition of perpetual tutelage, or igno-

rance glorified except by those who desire her as a para-

site? Nothing proves more conclusively the wretched

nonsense of the conservative position on the “Woman

Question” than that so noble an expression as “strong

minded” should have become a synonym of reproach. It is

the off-set of “weak minded,” and to be weak minded is the

greatest calamity that can fall upon a human being. Let us

have done with this nomenclature, and the shallow wit that

gives it currency, and let us insist first, last, and always that

gentleness is never so attractive as when joined with

strength, purity never so invincible as when leagued with

intelligence, beauty never so charming as when it is seen to

be the embellishment of reason and the concomitant of

character. What we need to sound in the ears of girlhood is

to be brave, and in the ears of boyhood to be gentle. There

are not two sets of virtues; and there is but one greatness

of character; it is that of him (or her) who combines the

noblest traits of man and woman in nature, words, and

deeds.

One of our leading literary men in America, recently

put forth the theory that the reason that the male bird

sings is because he is a male, and the reason why no

woman has been a great poet-which premise we will not

for a moment grant him-is that she is a female. He does,

however, except Sappho, explaining her by this remarkable

sentence: “There may have been at some time a chance

female mocking bird which sang the dropping song, if one

ever did this she performed a masculine act, a function of

the male nature.” But perhaps the male bird would not let

the female sing, any more than priests in the high church

to-day will permit that women shall chant the services. At

least nobody can prove the contrary, and our argument

stands on the same foundations as that of our brother who

thinks that all art is an irradiation of masculinity. It seems

unreasonable that the female thrush, as our logician states,

“has just as perfect a singing box as the male, not a valve,

not a muscle, intrinsic or extrinsic, not a line of contour in

the whole windpipe, from the glottis down to the lowest

bronchial extremities, yet the female thrush never sings a

real song.” But the fact that she has a throat made for

singing proves that she is capable of song. The Creator has

provided for it, and it is altogether probable that the male

thrush, like the “male man,” has preferred that she should

“be in quietness.”

But the time is past when any woman of sense rings

the changes on the old phrase, “Our enemy, man.” Noth-

ing is more apparent than that the movement for our equal

participation in all phases of the great world-life is as

warmly, and perhaps more strenuously advocated by an

army of progressive men than by any other class.

A London grand jury has recently declared that it

finds nearly 20% of the prisoners with whose cases it has to

deal, have been committed for assaults on women and

girls, and the suggestion is made that some severer pun-

ishment than fines and imprisonment should be inflicted.

Flogging is suggested, but doubtless a time will come

when an effectual and reasonable, even if severe remedy

will be ordained, namely, one that will in the nature of the

case render impossible a recurrence of the crime.

It is said that Norway has a law by which the man must

stand side by side with the woman as equally responsible

for making away with their child. When such a law

becomes general, infanticide will practically cease.

Words go a long way, phrases make epochs, and it is no

small indication of progress that in the course of the hear-

ing of a petition for divorce before Sir Francis Jeune in

London within a few months past, it was agreed between

the husband and wife that they should live apart, the hus-

band receiving an allowance of 30s. a week so long as “he

remained chaste.” The judge said it was the first time he

had seen such an expression in relation to the man in a

contract of legal separation. We are glad to believe it will

not be the last.

Social Purity.

When a man would rob a woman of her virtue or a woman

is about to sell herself in the most degraded bargain that

the mind can contemplate, what does he give her, and

what does she take? Strong Drink.

Mrs. Josephine Butler says that in the early days of

Queen Victoria the British Government wished to intro-

duce a Contagious Diseases Act, but could not make up its

mind to ask the virgin queen to sign such a bill. England

has carried the Bible, alcoholic drink, and legalized har-

lotry to every country she has conquered. This has been

the work of man: if woman were added to the Government

she surely could do no worse, and in simple self-defence

would be likely to do a great deal better. It is significant

that the conception of legalized vice was, so far as we

know, hatched in the brain of Napoleon Bonaparte that

arch-despiser of women.

The cause of Social Purity has grown in the year past

like “the stone cut out of the mountain.” The history of the

reform has not a parallel to the heroic undertaking of those

brave, true-hearted women, Mrs. Elizabeth Wheeler

Andrew and Dr. Kate Bushnell, whom I am proud to

have had as my fellow-townswomen for twenty years or

more. Their three months in India, during which under

the most difficult conditions they followed the subtle intri-

cacies of officialism in its illegal and covert relation to

legalized vice, even as the hound follows the hare, have

written their names high on the white arch of our roll of

honour. But the secular press in both countries has over-

1036 ERA 6: The Development of the Industrial United States

Cultural Diversity and National Unity 1037

looked the fact that they were sent out by the general offi-

cers of the World’s W.C.T.U., and made their investigations

in India by the special request of Mrs. Josephine Butler,

World’s W.C.T.U. superintendent of Social Purity work.

There are three sets of slaves that we women are

working to emancipate. They are, white slaves, that is

degraded women; wage slaves, that is the working classes;

and whiskey slaves, that is the product furnished by brew-

ers and distillers.

Dr. Mary Wood Allen has vindicated the choice that

I suggested and you confirmed in making her our National

Superintendent of Social Purity Work last year: she has

invested a year of work memorable in the annals of our

Society, and unique in that she has traversed several of the

Southern States to which the message of the department

had not before been carried save by the printed page.

The generous gifts of Charles N. Crittenton, Esq.,

of California, have enabled us to found five Florence Crit-

tenton Homes (named for the little daughter he loved and

lost), in as many leading cities this year. Our Chicago

“Anchorage” is one of these, and Mr. Crittenton is com-

ing to England, where, under the auspices of the B.W.T.A.,

he will soon found another in London.

Woman’s Ballot.

He who knows what ought to be knows what will be, and

we know that the home vote ought to be let loose on the

saloon; as our English leader has said, “She who is life-

giver ought to be law-giver.” The Michigan Liquor Dealers

Association have decided to do their utmost to destroy the

law that arms women in that State with the municipal bal-

lot and declares that “when the Legislature granted this

power to women (with an educational restriction) it struck

a blow directly at the Liquor Dealers interests and rights.”

“The eye of the law” is a correct phrase, for up to date

the law has but one eye, it needs two, and women must

furnish the other.

Local control of the Liquor Traffic by all the people

(as Abraham Lincoln said, “by no means excluding wo-

men”) is believed in England to be the best practicable

measure that can be sought, and our forces there, much as

they are divided on other lines, have united upon this.

There is a tendency among temperance workers every-

where to the opinion that as a wise general first recruits

and drills his troops, then marches them on to the enemy,

it would be wiser in the Temperance forces to unite their

efforts to secure the ballot for women before they further

expend their energies in seeking the submission of consti-

tutional amendments to be voted down by men. I have

never made any secret of the opinion that if our forces

could but have seen this as the wiser way, it would have

been to our advantage, and I have heard Professor Dickie-

that trusted leader of the Prohibition party-make the same

declaration; but it has been our view that the loyal thing to

do was to march with the army and abide the decision of

the majority as to methods of work, trusting that time, with

its logic of events and its argument of defeat, would lead us

all, sooner or later, to the right path, the true method of

attack, and unite us in its application to the pulverization

of the rum power.

Progress of Women in 1892–93.

If we think the cause of woman is not progressing as

rapidly as it should for the interest of men and women, we

must look back and see from what degradation she has

escaped; for example, take this account from the London

Times, July 18th, 1797, less than a hundred years ago. It

reads as follows:

“On Friday a butcher exposed his wife for sale in

Smithfield Market with a strap about her waist which tied

her to a railing. A drover was the purchaser at three

guineas and a crown.” But Petruchio is still at large, that

famous creation of Shakespeare, who said of his wife,

“She is my goods, my chattels,

She is my house, my household furniture,

My field, my barn, my anything.”

At the inauguration of the World’s Columbian Exposition,

in Machinery Hall, with an audience of one hundred and

twenty-five thousand persons present, women shared in

the speaking-a woman architect received the prize for

designing the Woman’s Building, and women partici-

pated equally with men throughout the exercises which

were presided over by the Vice-President of the United

States.

Women were represented as officers and speakers in

the World’s Columbian Congress of Religions, at which

noted representatives of the ten great Religions were par-

ticipants.

At the World’s Catholic Congress (Columbian Exposi-

tion), women were not only on the platform, but on the

programme—for the first time in the history of that great

hierarchy.

The province of Nova Scotia has this year made the

greatest advance that has been noted along ecclesiastical

lines. Miss M. Dauphinie was elected as a lay delegate to

the Methodist Annual Conference. There was no contro-

versy concerning her admission; it was a ruling of the chair.

The Rev. Dr. Moore, President of the Conference,

should receive the thanks of all awakened women for hav-

ing taken a position so honourable to himself and to us.

Best of all, the Wesleyan Methodist Journal of the mar-

itime province of Canada, says: “The ruling of the chair

was received with great enthusiasm, and the report of the

committee adopted.”

The New Church (Swedenborgian) has authorised

women to preach.

At our last National Convention, thirty-five women on

a single Sunday occupied pulpits as preachers in Denver,

Colorado. At the Autumn Conference of the National

B.W.T.A. in Cardiff (Wales), nineteen pulpits were occu-

pied by women.

An agitation is beginning among the Jews for the equal

representation of women as voters and office holders in

the congregation, and an influential Jewish journal de-

clares this to be right, and claims that there is no valid

obstacle in the way of its being carried into effect.

In two or more of the United States the Episcopal

Church has voted to strike the word “male” from the con-

stitutional provisions for the election of vestrymen and

wardens.

The title of D.D. has been conferred upon a woman

minister.

“The Foresters” is a benefit Society in England having

a very large membership and great influence. At its recent

annual meeting, a resolution was carried forbidding the

women (who are now beginning to form auxiliary

branches,) to hold their meetings in liquor shops, although

the men have always done so, and do still. But it may be

reasonably predicted that since the men so clearly perceive

the demoralization likely to result from having their

“women folks” meet in such an environment, they will in

time cease to do so themselves, and we have every confi-

dence that the women will help them to attain the higher

standard by which they are now “unequally yoked.”

Women are employed at railway switches and cross-

ings in Italy because they do not get intoxicated.

Finland has 50,000 women who are total abstainers, in

a population of two million persons.

The Queen Regent of Holland was the patron and

official president of the recent International Temperance

Congress at The Hague. She however delegated her duties

to a man!

The National Republican League at its Convention in

Louisville, Kentucky, May 11th, recommended to the

favourable consideration of the Republican Clubs of the

United States, the question of granting the women of the

State and nation the right to vote at all elections on the

same terms and conditions as the male citizens.

Kansas and Colorado have submitted amendments to

their constitutions giving women the full ballot.

One of the best phases of the Temperance question in

England just now is, that when the Direct Veto is

obtained—and it seems quite sure to be given to the peo-

ple before the year 1894 is out—it will be backed up by the

municipal ballot for women, and thus local option will have

a far better chance to win than it has ever known in the

Republic.

The Legislature of Michigan has given to all women

the municipal ballot.

New Zealand stands at the head of the list this year,

having given the ballot to women, married and single, on

all questions that affect the Government.

In Connecticut, the women vote this fall on school

matters.

The American Federation of Labour, representing

700,000 working men, has declared for Woman’s Suffrage.

The Farmers Alliance in most of the States adopts res-

olutions favourable to the ballot for women.

For the first time, a woman has been heard officially

in Austria. A socialistic leader of Vienna, Fraulein Dwor-

zak, was invited by the Minister of Commerce to speak as

an expert before the Austrian Board of Trade, on the posi-

tion of the working women of that country. She spoke for

three hours, and described all the horrors of the working

women’s status.

The participation of women from almost all the lead-

ing European countries in the International Socialist

Congress at Zurich, and the fact that a woman presided

over one of the public sessions is a significant item in our

progress for this year.

When Bryn Mawr College opened for instruction in

the fall of 1885 there were 44 students, now there are over

200, and many are refused admission for lack of room. This

is typical of the growth in all the leading women’s colleges.

The first congress of lady-lawyers ever held, met at the

Columbian Exposition, on August 3rd. There are 110

ladies in America who have been called to the Bar, and

eight have earned the right to practise before the Supreme

Court of the United States after having for three years

pleaded at the Bar of the state or territory without any flaw

in their public or private career.

Twenty-five years ago women writers were excluded

from the Charles Dickens banquet in New York City by

the Press Club. These women were individually indignant,

and there the matter would have ended had they not had

the wit to organize themselves into what has become the

greatest, as it was the first notable literary society of

women in the New World. Recently, this Society (the

famous “Sorosis”) has celebrated its “quarter-centennial,”

and the record of its successful work for the development

and enfranchisement of women is known to all thoughtful

minds throughout the world.

Nearly all the northern States have lady pharmacists.

Illinois has over one hundred.

There are 30,000 women cyclists in America. France

has 10,000; 9,000 of them living in Paris. There was

recently in that city a cycling wedding party who went to

church and thence to breakfast on their safeties. A French

lady has established a record for herself by riding 17 1/2

miles in one hour.

1038 ERA 6: The Development of the Industrial United States

Cultural Diversity and National Unity 1039

Perhaps the most remarkable programme for the

future relations of women to public affairs is the manifesto

issued by the Women’s Rights Party in Paris in connection

with the recent elections. They declare that the existing

state should be replaced by what they call the Mother

State, which, by its foresight and solicitude would insure

certainty of work to all able-bodied men, assistance to chil-

dren and to the aged, the sick, and the deformed. They

declare that

“The State, thoroughly informed with regard to the

requirements of production in every industry, should, in

accordance with this knowledge, enlist workers, and

should provide for their being classed in society according

to their talents, just as she classes them in the army accord-

ing to their stature. The Mother State would suppress the

liberty to die of hunger.

“There should be really universal suffrage—that is to

say, exercised by both men and women.

“The revision of the Constitution by an assembly com-

posed of both men and women.

“Free access, without distinction of sex, to all public

employment and offices.

“The lightening of the burden on women, who have

charge of and responsibility for human lives, the grant to

every mother, married or not married, of an indemnity to

be called the maternal indemnity.

“Obligatory military service for men, obligatory

humanitarian service for women; the defence of the terri-

tory entrusted to men, the Philanthropies confided to

women.”

Source:

Library of Congress. Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection.

Booker T. Washington,

“Atlanta Compromise Speech,” 1895

Controversial speech delivered by African-American educator

Booker T. Washington in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 18,

1895, that accepted a socially subordinated position for

African Americans in the South. While calling for economic

opportunity for his people, Washington stated that blacks

should accept that they must climb up from the bottom of the

economic ladder. He urged Southern whites to encourage and

educate African-American laborers while maintaining social

separation: “In all things that are purely social we can be as

separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essen-

tial to mutual progress.” He also called agitation for social

equality “the extremist folly.” Blacks, he argued, must earn and

prepare for social “privileges.” The speech gained national

acclaim from whites, but some black leaders—most notably

W. E .B. DuBois—denounced Washington’s position.

________________________

_______________________

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of Directors

and Citizens:

One-third of the population of the South is of the

Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or

moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of

our population and reach the highest success. I but convey

to you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment of the

masses of my race when I say that in no way have the value

and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly

and generously recognized than by the managers of this

magnificent Exposition at every stage of its progress. It is a

recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of

the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our

freedom.

Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will

awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. Igno-

rant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first

years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the

bottom; that a seat in Congress or the state legislature was

more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the

political convention of stump speaking had more attrac-

tions than starting a dairy farm or truck garden.

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a

friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel

was seen a signal, “Water, water; we die of thirst!” The

answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, “Cast

down your bucket where you are.” A second time the sig-

nal, “Water, water; send us water!” ran up from the dis-

tressed vessel, and was answered, “Cast down your bucket

where you are.” And a third and fourth signal for water was

answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The

captain of the distressed vessel, at least heeding the injunc-

tion, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh,

sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To

those of my race who depend on bettering their condition

in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of

cultivating friendly relations with the southern white man,

who is their next-door neighbour, I would say: “Cast down

your bucket where you are”—cast it down in making

friends in every manly way of the people of all races by

whom we are surrounded.

Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce,

in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this

connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other

sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to

business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro

is given a man’s chance in the commercial world, and in

nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in empha-

sizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great

leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that

the masses of us are to live by the productions of our

hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in

proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common

labour and put brains and skill into the common occupa-

tions of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw

the line between the superficial and the substantial, the

ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can

prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling

a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we

must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our

grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

To those of the white race who look to the incoming of

those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the

prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat

what I say to my own race, “Cast down your bucket where

you are.” Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes

whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have

tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the

ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these

people who have, without strikes and labor wars, tilled

your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and

cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the

earth, and helped make possible this magnificent repre-

sentation of the progress of the South. Casting down your

bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them

as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of

head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your

surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields,

and run your factories.

While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in

the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by

the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful

people that the world has seen. As we have proved our loy-

alty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching

by the sickbed of your mothers and fathers, and often fol-

lowing them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in

the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with

a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay

down our lives, if need be, in defence of yours, interlacing

our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with

yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races

one. In all things that are purely social we can be as sepa-

rate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essen-

tial to mutual progress.

There is no defence or security for any of us except in

the highest intelligence and development of all. If any-

where there are efforts tending to curtail the fullest growth

of the Negro, let these efforts be turned into stimulating,

encouraging, and making him the most useful and intelli-

gent citizen. Effort or means so invested will pay a thou-

sand percent interest. These efforts will be twice blessed—

“blessing him that gives and him that takes.”

There is no escape through law of man or God from

the inevitable:

The laws of changeless justice bind Oppressor with

oppressed; And close as sin and suffering joined We march

to fate abreast.

Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling

the load upward, or they will pull against you the load

downward. We shall constitute one-third and more of the

ignorance and crime of the South, or one-third of its intel-

ligence and progress; we shall contribute one-third to the

business and industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall

prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing,

retarding every effort to advance the body politic.

Gentlemen of the Exposition, as we present to you our

humble effort at an exhibition of our progress, you must

not expect overmuch. Starting thirty years ago with owner-

ship here and there in a few quilts and pumpkins and

chickens (gathered from miscellaneous sources), remem-

ber the path that has led from these to the inventions and

production of agricultural implements, buggies, steam-

engines, newspapers, books, statuary, carving, paintings,

the management of drugstores and banks, has not been

trodden without contact with thorns and thistles. While we

take pride in what we exhibit as a result of our indepen-

dent efforts, we do not for a moment forget that our part

in this exhibition would fall far short of your expectations

but for the constant help that has come to our educational

life, not only from the southern States, but especially from

northern philanthropists, who have made their gifts a con-

stant stream of blessing and encouragement.

The wisest among my race understand that the agita-

tion of questions of social equality is the extremest folly,

and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that

will come to us must be the result of severe and constant

struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has

anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long

in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all

privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more impor-

tant that we be prepared for the exercises of these privi-

leges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now

is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a

dollar in an opera-house.

In conclusion, may I repeat that nothing in thirty

years has given us more hope and encouragement, and

drawn us so near to you of the white race, as this oppor-

tunity offered by the Exposition; here bending, as it were,

over the altar that represents the results of the struggles

of your race and mine, both starting practically empty-

handed three decades ago, I pledge that in your effort to

work out the great and intricate problem which God has

laid at the doors of the South, you shall have at all times

the patient, sympathetic help of my race. Only let this be

constantly in mind, that, while from representations in

1040 ERA 6: The Development of the Industrial United States

Cultural Diversity and National Unity 1041

these buildings of the product of field, of forest, of mine,

of factory, letters, and art, much good will come, yet far

above and beyond material benefits will be that higher

good, that, let us pray God, will come, in a blotting out of

sectional differences and racial animosities and suspi-

cions, and in a determination to administer absolute jus-

tice, even in the remotest corner; in a willing obedience

among all classes to the mandates of law and a spirit that

will tolerate nothing but the highest equity in the enforce-

ment of law. This, then, coupled with our material pros-

perity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and

a new earth.

Source:

John Scott, ed. Living Documents in American History. New

York: Washington Square Press, 1964–68.

National Association of Colored Women

(NACW), Resolutions, 1895

Resolutions presented by the National Association of Colored

Women (NACW) upon its formation in 1896. The NACW, an

amalgamation of several black women’s groups, was estab-

lished in response to the increasing social welfare needs of the

African-American community. Aligning itself with white

women’s reform movements, the organization taught child-

rearing methods, raised money for the poor, and promoted

education. These resolutions establish “Lifting as We Climb” as

the NACW’s motto and also address a variety of concerns: con-

demning lynchings and segregation, thanking various political

benefactors including Theodore Roosevelt, and endorsing the

Women’s Christian Temperance Union, an organization that

favored the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

________________________

_______________________

The National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs in the

fourth convention assembled, with gratitude acknowledge

the Divine guidance of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe

and thank Him for the preservation of our President, exec-

utive officers and other members.

We pledge renewed efforts and loyalty along all lines

in this, our national organization, continuing to stand for

adherence to our motto “Lifting as We Climb,” for we

believe that in it lies the future hope of the race.

In view of the fact of the numerous lynchings and the

many victims burned at the stake, extending even to

women, which have occurred in nearly every section of our

country;

Be it Resolved, That we, the representatives of Negro

womanhood, do heartily deplore and condemn this bar-

barous taking of human life, and that we appeal to the sen-

timent of a Christian world to check and eradicate this

growing evil; and be it further

Resolved, That we do all in our power to bring crimi-

nals to justice, and that we appeal to all legislative bodies

and courts of justice to see that all persons are protected in

their rights as citizens.

Whereas, Our people throughout the South are dis-

criminated against by railroads, being compelled to ride in

offensive and inadequate cars, after paying first-class fares;

and,

Whereas, Some of the Southern cities have intro-

duced separate street cars,

Be it Resolved, That this body condemn such action,

and that in all such states and towns the club women unite

in trying to induce our people to refrain from patronizing

street cars and running excursions from town to town, thus

encouraging the railroads to continue their unjust discrim-

ination.

Be it Resolved, That a vote of thanks be extended to

Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, for

his fearless and manly stand in defense of the Negro race,

in declaring that he would not shut the door of hope and

opportunity in the face of any one, on account of race,

color or previous condition.

Be it Resolved, That we commend the action of the

National Republican Convention in the adoption of that

part of its platform which asserts that any state disfran-

chising its voters shall be limited in its Congressional rep-

resentation.

Be it Resolved, That the women of our Association

prepare themselves by the study of civil government and

kindred subjects for the problems of city, state and national

life, that they may be able to perform intelligently the

duties that have come to some and will come to others in

the natural progress of the women’s suffrage question.

Be it Resolved, That the Colored Women’s Clubs

endorse the W.C.T.U., and urge that we emphasize more

fully the work among the young people, and do all in their

power to create a sentiment against the practice of taking

them to places of amusement where intoxicants are sold,

and further that we do all in our power to prevent the dif-

fusion of improper and pernicious literature that saps the

vitality of the moral life of our young people.

Believing that the mother is the rock upon which the

home is built, therefore, be it

Resolved, That we pledge ourselves to hold and

encourage mothers’ meetings whenever practicable, in

order to instruct mothers in all that pertains to home

building and child-life.

Source:

African-American History and Culture. CD-ROM. Facts On

File, 1999.