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power, her enormous national wealth. Poor America, of

what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising

the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in

filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soilless

army of human prey.

It is generally conceded that unless the returns of any

business venture exceed the cost, bankruptcy is inevitable.

But those engaged in the business of producing wealth

have not yet learned even this simple lesson. Every year

the cost of production in human life is growing larger

(50,000 killed, 100,000 wounded in America last year); the

returns to the masses, who help to create wealth, are ever

getting smaller. Yet America continues to be blind to the

inevitable bankruptcy of our business of production. Nor

is this the only crime of the latter. Still more fatal is the

crime of turning the producer into a mere particle of a

machine, with less will and decision than his master of

steel and iron. Man is being robbed not merely of the

products of his labor, but of the power of free initiative, of

originality, and the interest in, or desire for, the things he

is making.

Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in

things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and

surroundings inspiring to live in. But if man is doomed

to wind cotton around a spool, or dig coal, or build

roads for thirty years of his life, there can be no talk of

wealth. What he gives to the world is only gray and

hideous things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence,—

too weak to live, too cowardly to die. Strange to say, there

are people who extol this deadening method of cen-

tralized production as the proudest achievement of our

age. They fail utterly to realize that if we are to continue

in machine subserviency, our slavery is more complete

than was our bondage to the King. They do not want to

know that centralization is not only the death-knell of

liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science,

all these being impossible in a clock-like, mechanical

atmosphere.

Anarchism cannot but repudiate such a method of

production: its goal is the freest possible expression of all

the latent powers of the individual. Oscar Wilde defines a

perfect personality as “one who develops under perfect

conditions, who is not wounded, maimed, or in danger.” A

perfect personality, then, is only possible in a state of soci-

ety where man is free to choose the mode of work, the con-

ditions of work, and the freedom to work. One to whom

the making of a table, the building of a house, or the tilling

of the soil, is what the painting is to the artist and the dis-

covery to the scientist,—the result of inspiration, of

intense longing, and deep interest in work as a creative

force. That being the ideal of Anarchism, its economic

arrangements must consist of voluntary productive and

distributive associations, gradually developing into free

communism, as the best means of producing with the least

waste of human energy. Anarchism, however, also recog-

nizes the right of the individual, or numbers of individuals,

to arrange at all times for other forms of work, in harmony

with their tastes and desires.

Such free display of human energy being possible only

under complete individual and social freedom, Anarchism

directs its forces against the third and greatest foe of all

social equality; namely, the State, organized authority, or

statutory law,—the dominion of human conduct.

Just as religion has fettered the human mind, and as

property, or the monopoly of things, has subdued and sti-

fled man’s needs, so has the State enslaved his spirit, dic-

tating every phase of conduct. “All government in

essence,” says Emerson, “is tyranny.” It matters not

whether it is government by divine right or majority rule.

In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of

the individual.

Referring to the American government, the greatest

American Anarchist, David Thoreau, said: “Government,

what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring

to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instance

losing its integrity; it has not the vitality and force of a sin-

gle living man. Law never made man a whit more just; and

by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are

daily made agents of injustice.”

Indeed, the keynote of government is injustice. With

the arrogance and self-sufficiency of the King who could

do no wrong, governments ordain, judge, condemn, and

punish the most insignificant offenses, while maintaining

themselves by the greatest of all offenses, the annihilation

of individual liberty. Thus Ouida is right when she main-

tains that “the State only aims at instilling those qualities in

its public by which its demands are obeyed, and its exche-

quer is filled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of

mankind to clockwork. In its atmosphere all those finer

and more delicate liberties, which require treatment and

spacious expansion, inevitably dry up and perish. The State

requires a taxpaying machine in which there is no hitch, an

exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public,

monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, moving

humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road

between two walls.”

Yet even a flock of sheep would resist the chicanery of

the State, if it were not for the corruptive, tyrannical, and

oppressive methods it employs to serve its purposes.

Therefore Bakunin repudiates the State as synonymous

with the surrender of the liberty of the individual or small

minorities,—the destruction of social relationship, the cur-

tailment, or complete denial even, of life itself, for its own

aggrandizement. The State is the altar of political freedom

and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose

of human sacrifice.

1292 ERA 7: The Emergence of Modern America

In fact, there is hardly a modern thinker who does not

agree that government, organized authority, or the State, is

necessary only to maintain or protect property and

monopoly. It has proven efficient in that function only.

Even George Bernard Shaw, who hopes for the mirac-

ulous from the State under Fabianism, nevertheless

admits that “it is at present a huge machine for robbing

and slave-driving of the poor by brute force.” This being

the case, it is hard to see why the clever prefacer wishes to

uphold the State after poverty shall have ceased to exist.

Unfortunately, there are still a number of people who

continue in the fatal belief that government rests on natu-

ral laws, that it maintains social order and harmony, that it

diminishes crime, and that it prevents the lazy man from

fleecing his fellows. I shall therefore examine these con-

tentions.

A natural law is that factor in man which asserts itself

freely and spontaneously without any external force, in

harmony with the requirements of nature. For instance,

the demand for nutrition, for sex gratification, for light, air,

and exercise, is a natural law. But its expression needs not

the machinery of government, needs not the club, the gun,

the handcuff, or the prison. To obey such laws, if we may

call it obedience, requires only spontaneity and free

opportunity. That governments do not maintain them-

selves through such harmonious factors is proven by the

terrible array of violence, force, and coercion all govern-

ments use in order to live. Thus Blackstone is right when

he says, “Human laws are invalid, because they are con-

trary to the laws of nature.”

Unless it be the order of Warsaw after the slaughter of

thousands of people, it is difficult to ascribe to govern-

ments any capacity for order or social harmony. Order

derived through submission and maintained by terror is

not much of a safe guaranty; yet that is the only “order”

that governments have ever maintained. True social har-

mony grows naturally out of solidarity of interests. In a

society where those who always work never have anything,

while those who never work enjoy everything, solidarity of

interests is non-existent; hence social harmony is but a

myth. The only way organized authority meets this grave

situation is by extending still greater privileges to those

who have already monopolized the earth, and by still fur-

ther enslaving the disinherited masses. Thus the entire

arsenal of government—laws, police, soldiers, the courts,

legislatures, prisons,—is strenuously engaged in “harmo-

nizing” the most antagonistic elements in society.

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that

they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the

State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written

and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the

form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an

absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed

utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of

its own creation.

Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as

every institution of today, economic, political, social, and

moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong

channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the

things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime

will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only

increase, but never do away with, crime. What does soci-

ety, as it exists today, know of the process of despair, the

poverty, the horrors, the fearful struggle the human soul

must pass on its way to crime and degradation. Who that

knows this terrible process can fail to see the truth in these

words of Peter Kropotkin:

Those who will hold the balance between the benefits

thus attributed to law and punishment and the degrad-

ing effect of the latter on humanity; those who will esti-

mate the torrent of depravity poured abroad in human

society by the informer, favored by the Judge even, and

paid for in clinking cash by governments, under the

pretext of aiding to unmask crime; those who will go

within prison walls and there see what human beings

become when deprived of liberty, when subjected to

the care of brutal keepers, to coarse, cruel words, to a

thousand stinging, piercing humiliations, will agree

with us that the entire apparatus of prison and punish-

ment is an abomination which ought to be brought to

an end.

The deterrent influence of law on the lazy man is too

absurd to merit consideration. If society were only relieved

of the waste and expense of keeping a lazy class, and the

equally great expense of the paraphernalia of protection

this lazy class requires, the social tables would contain an

abundance for all, including even the occasional lazy indi-

vidual. Besides, it is well to consider that laziness results

either from special privileges, or physical and mental

abnormalities. Our present insane system of production

fosters both, and the most astounding phenomenon is that

people should want to work at all now. Anarchism aims to

strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and

compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of

strength, of color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort

of a man should find in work both recreation and hope.

To achieve such an arrangement of life, government,

with its unjust, arbitrary, repressive measures, must be

done away with. At best it has but imposed one single

mode of life upon all, without regard to individual and

social variations and needs. In destroying government and

statutory laws, Anarchism proposes to rescue the self-

respect and independence of the individual from all

restraint and invasion by authority. Only in freedom can

Postwar Society 1293

man grow to his full stature. Only in freedom will he learn

to think and move, and give the very best in him. Only in

freedom will he realize the true force of the social bonds

which knit men together, and which are the true founda-

tion of a normal social life.

But what about human nature? Can it be changed?

And if not, will it endure under Anarchism?

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been

committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to police-

man, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler

in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human

nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more defi-

nite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of

human nature. Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with

every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded,

and maimed?

John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of

animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character,

their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transfor-

mation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With

human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into

submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?

Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all,

peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant

factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities.

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the

human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation

of the human body from the dominion of property; libera-

tion from the shackles and restraint of government. Anar-

chism stands for a social order based on the free grouping

of individuals for the purpose of producing real social

wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being

free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessi-

ties of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and incli-

nations.

This is not a wild fancy or an aberration of the mind.

It is the conclusion arrived at by hosts of intellectual men

and women the world over; a conclusion resulting from

the close and studious observation of the tendencies of

modern society: individual liberty and economic equality,

the twin forces for the birth of what is fine and true in

man.

As to methods, Anarchism is not, as some may sup-

pose, a theory of the future to be realized through divine

inspiration. It is a living force in the affairs of our life, con-

stantly creating new conditions. The methods of Anar-

chism therefore do not comprise an iron-clad program to

be carried out under all circumstances. Methods must

grow out of the economic needs of each place and clime,

and of the intellectual and temperamental requirements of

the individual. The serene, calm character of a Tolstoy will

wish different methods for social reconstruction than the

intense, overflowing personality of a Michael Bakunin or a

Peter Kropotkin. Equally so it must be apparent that the

economic and political needs of Russia will dictate more

drastic measures than would England or America. Anar-

chism does not stand for military drill and uniformity; it

does, however, stand for the spirit of revolt, in whatever

form, against everything that hinders human growth. All

Anarchists agree in that, as they also agree in their opposi-

tion to the political machinery as a means of bringing about

the great social change.

“All voting,” says Thoreau, “is a sort of gaming, like

checkers, or backgammon, a playing with right and wrong;

its obligation never exceeds that of expediency. Even vot-

ing for the right thing is doing nothing for it. A wise man

will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it

to prevail through the power of the majority.” A close

examination of the machinery of politics and its achieve-

ments will bear out the logic of Thoreau.

What does the history of parliamentarism show?

Nothing but failure and defeat, not even a single reform to

ameliorate the economic and social stress of the people.

Laws have been passed and enactments made for the

improvement and protection of labor. Thus it was proven

only last year that Illinois, with the most rigid laws for mine

protection, had the greatest mine disasters. In States

where child labor laws prevail, child exploitation is at its

highest, and though with us the workers enjoy full political

opportunities, capitalism has reached the most brazen

zenith.

Even were the workers able to have their own repre-

sentatives, for which our good Socialist politicians are

clamoring, what chances are there for their honesty and

good faith? One has but to bear in mind the process of pol-

itics to realize that its path of good intentions is full of pit-

falls: wire-pulling, intriguing, flattering, lying, cheating; in

fact, chicanery of every description, whereby the political

aspirant can achieve success. Added to that is a complete

demoralization of character and conviction, until nothing

is left that would make one hope for anything from such a

human derelict. Time and time again the people were fool-

ish enough to trust, believe, and support with their last far-

thing aspiring politicians, only to find themselves betrayed

and cheated.

It may be claimed that men of integrity would not

become corrupt in the political grinding mill. Perhaps not;

but such men would be absolutely helpless to exert the

slightest influence in behalf of labor, as indeed has been

shown in numerous instances. The State is the economic

master of its servants. Good men, if such there be, would

either remain true to their political faith and lose their eco-

nomic support, or they would cling to their economic mas-

ter and be utterly unable to do the slightest good. The

political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either

be a dunce or a rogue.

1294 ERA 7: The Emergence of Modern America

The political superstition is still holding sway over the

hearts and minds of the masses, but the true lovers of lib-

erty will have no more to do with it. Instead, they believe

with Stirner that man has as much liberty as he is willing to

take. Anarchism therefore stands for direct action, the

open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restric-

tions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and resis-

tance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man.

Everything illegal necessitates integrity, self-reliance, and

courage. In short, it calls for free, independent spirits, for

“men who are men, and who have a bone in their backs

which you cannot pass your hand through.”

Universal suffrage itself owes its existence to direct

action. If not for the spirit of rebellion, of the defiance on

the part of the American revolutionary fathers, their pos-

terity would still wear the King’s coat. If not for the direct

action of a John Brown and his comrades, America would

still trade in the flesh of the black man. True, the trade in

white flesh is still going on; but that, too, will have to be

abolished by direct action. Trade-unionism, the economic

arena of the modern gladiator, owes its existence to direct

action. It is but recently that law and government have

attempted to crush the trade-union movement, and con-

demned the exponents of man’s right to organize to prison

as conspirators. Had they sought to assert their cause

through begging, pleading, and compromise, trade-union-

ism would today be a negligible quantity. In France, in

Spain, in Italy, in Russia, nay even in England (witness the

growing rebellion of English labor unions), direct, revolu-

tionary, economic action has become so strong a force in

the battle for industrial liberty as to make the world realize

the tremendous importance of labor’s power. The General

Strike, the supreme expression of the economic conscious-

ness of the workers, was ridiculed in America but a short

time ago. Today every great strike, in order to win, must

realize the importance of the solidaric general protest.

Direct action, having proven effective along economic

lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individ-

ual. There a hundred forces encroach upon his being, and

only persistent resistance to them will finally set him free.

Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct

action against the authority of the law, direct action against

the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is

the logical, consistent method of Anarchism.

Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real

social change has ever come about without a revolution.

People are either not familiar with their history, or they

have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried

into action.

Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today per-

meating every phase of human endeavor. Science, art, lit-

erature, the drama, the effort for economic betterment, in

fact every individual and social opposition to the existing

disorder of things, is illumined by the spiritual light of

Anarchism. It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the

individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great,

surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and

that will usher in the Dawn.

Source:

Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE. The Emma Goldman Papers.

Available on-line. URL: http://sunsite. berkeley.edu/goldman/

writing/anarchism.html. Accessed November 2003.

Carrie Chapman Catt,

Woman Voter’s Manual, 1918

Introduction by Carrie Chapman Catt to

the Woman Voter’s

Manual

by S. E. Forman and Marjorie Shuler. The document

notes that more than a third of the women in the United States

had either partial or full voting rights at the time of publication

in 1918. According to Catt, these women, even more so than

men, who did not have to fight for their right to vote, wanted

to inform themselves about contemporary issues and the

workings of government.

Catt contrasts the state of woman suffrage in the United

States with that in Europe. She notes that one of the effects of

World War I, which was then being waged, was that it forced

countries, such as France and Italy, to accept woman suffrage;

out of sheer necessity, restrictions against women fell away.

Regarding the status of suffrage for women in the United

States, she provides answers to the question of what women

would do with the vote once they had it. She considers the

extent to which women voters have brought about social

change by initiating legislation to establish an eight-hour

working day for women, a minimum wage, a mothers’ pen-

sion, and a child welfare department. Finally, Catt allays fears

that women would organize politically in opposition to men,

a situation that the strength of women’s “nature and personal

affections” would not allow.

________________________

_______________________

Of the 27,011,330 women of voting age in the United

States, more than one-third are now enfranchised, either as

voters for presidential electors, or as fully as our present

national laws permit women to be enfranchised. No woman

in the United States is yet enfranchised as is her husband or

her father or her son or her brother, and will not be until

woman suffrage is incorporated in the national constitution.

Not even then, unless she can come to hold her naturaliza-

tion in her own person instead of as a cloak to be put on and

off as she marries, unmarries or is widowed.

Whatever the voting strength of these more than

900,000 women of voting age may be, the fact of practical

Postwar Society 1295

value for such a book as the present one is that a large and

ever increasing number of women citizen are avid for

information on the new questions of local, State and

national government which women and men must now

decided together. They are coming up to these questions

with a vivid new personal interest that bids fair to lift “civil

government” out of the cold aloofness of academic discus-

sion on the one side, and the “mire of politics” on the

other. To be bromidic, women are going to humanize

questions of government. That will not be, I think, because

only to woman is given the human outlook on life, but

because the human is composite of men and women and

the human in the outlook of both is stirred and developed

through cooperative rather than segregated work.

As emergent voters the women of America are to-day

facing the same fundamental questions as to the new

responsibility as are the young American man of twenty-

one and the immigrant. The enfranchisement of woman,

the coming of age of the young man, and the naturalization

of the immigrant-there you have the three agencies

through which the electorate of America is to be kept in a

sate of inquiry and action instead of in a condition of acqui-

escence and being.

A prime difference in the three cases is that the

woman is asking all the questions that the other two ought

to ask but do not. Of course it would be the woman who

would ask the questions. For one thing, it does not go so

hard with women to admit their ignorance as it does with

men. For another, woman was had to fight for suffrage

while the young man was acquiring it as he acquired his

moustache, by the simple expedient of getting older, and

the immigrant man was acquiring it by the simple expedi-

ent of living in America long enough to take on some of

those American ideals and commitments into which the

woman, if native, was born; and having fought for the suf-

frage, the fight has informed woman with a special sense of

the value in the thing fought for, and a special desire fully

to understand it. Suffragists alone would start the ques-

tions, but it is not suffragists alone among women who

want the answers. The antis mean to vote, the indifferent

mean to vote.

In the result, texts on civil government become at one

leap of intimate value. Instead of remote summaries of the

function of the “judiciary, the legislative, the administra-

tive,” that of which they treat is identified as breakfast

table talk-the mayor’s appointments, home rule for cities,

what the legislature is doing with the child labor bill, what

Washington will do with bills defining the authority of the

government in its war control of this, that, or the other.

There is an acute recognition of “the government” as a

matter of close contact and an immediate intention to

understand it better. And conversely, from now on, thanks

to woman’s enfranchisement, achieved or impending, it

will be necessary for the government to understand

woman better, so that the give-and-take, the reflex from

woman suffrage into the body politic, and out again upon

the community, may be better assimilated.

Woman Suffrage a War Measure

When the world war began shaking the existing ideas of

government about, it had the effect upon them that is pro-

duced by shaking a barrel of apples, the little ones went to

the bottom and the big ones came to the top. Consider

some of the first little apples to go out of sight. In Italy and

in France women had distinct civil disabilities such as the

necessity of getting their husbands’ authorization before

they could act in legal matters. These ideas have not only

sunk to the bottom of the barrel, but have apparently

shrunk to a size which has permitted them to fall through

cracks and disappear. In a cataclysm which has destroyed

class distinctions by demanding leadership from all classes,

sex discrimination could no longer endure in the light of

the complete sacrifice for service shown by both sexes. In

Italy and France municipal suffrage is in process of estab-

lishment. It is urged by statesmen as much as by woman

suffragists. In France it is indeed a necessity, since in many

communities the only people left to protect the standards

of life are loyal women who have served their country no

less ably than the front line soldiers who have given their

lives for France.

The fiercest opponents of woman suffrage in England

have demonstrated no little ingenuity in their lightning

changes from adamantine hostility to suffrage to fervid

acceptance of it.

Democracy has become a password. Every state paper

and suggested basis of peace drives home, as with bayonet

thrusts, the basic fact that for the word democracy, one

may now substitute the phrase “government derives its just

powers from the consent of the governed.”

Outside of Germany it would be hard to find a states-

man with the temerity to gainsay this. Up to date Germany

is the only great country which has failed to grasp the fact

that this is the real issue of the war. Outside of Germany

there are few political leaders-and those few mainly men

advanced in years-who do not now know that women are

among the “governed.” By its recent Franchise Reform

Bill, Hungary has demonstrated that the two vital issues,

“government by the people” and “women are people,” are

recognized as fundamental to the life of that nation.

What She Does with the Vote When She Gets It

In the United States the great suffrage victories of the year

1917 have urged the question on beyond interest in its

merits or the abstract justice involved in it, to the practical

application of it. Whether women vote when they can;

what they do with their votes when they get them; and the

1296 ERA 7: The Emergence of Modern America

effects of their enfranchisement upon home and commu-

nity are, fortunately, demonstrable propositions. In every

full voting State in which the records are sufficiently com-

plete to form a basis of judgment, three things have been

established: women register and vote in about the same

proportion as men; they show an intelligent interest in

elections, and they double the voting strength of their

states with a comparatively small increase in voting para-

phernalia.

Knowledge of the kinds of legislation attempted or

achieved by voting women likewise rests upon facts. The

legislation accomplished follows the psychology of women;

it follows the matters in which they are most vitally inter-

ested. If there is truth in the theory that men and women

in political life. In New Zealand, where woman have voted

for twenty-five years, the infant death rate is lower than in

any other part of the world. And the New Zealand meth-

ods of caring for the health of women and children are

cited as models by authorities. A burning grievance of

mothers for countless years was the fact that in the eyes of

the law the children they had borne did not belong to

them; they belonged to the fathers. When a controversy

arose over the disposition of the child, or its religious edu-

cation, or the right to inherit from it, the advantage has

always lain with the father. As soon as woman began to

emerge as a social entity, even before she had the vote, this

deep suffering of mothers found voice. For seventy years

mothers have struggled for an equal share with fathers in

the control of their own children. In almost every full suf-

frage state in the Union this matter has received a first

consideration and equal guardianship obtains in every

State where women vote on the same terms as men. It

does not obtain to any such extent where fathers only vote,

as only twenty-five per cent. Of the thirty-six male suffrage

States have this law. The District of Columbia’s equal

guardianship law is the result of the hard work of a woman

lawyer.

Six of the woman voting States have secured an eight-

hour day for women. Sixty-three per cent. of the full suf-

frage States (New York not included) have a minimum

wage law, less than fourteen per cent. of the man-suffrage

States have one. Every full suffrage State has a mothers’

pension law. Ninety per cent. of the full suffrage States

(New York not included) have the injunction and abate-

ment law.

Recently the Chicago Chief of Police sent out a call

for a woman protective police force as a war measure.

Behind this recognition of the fact that women can be

relied upon as a rear guard, lies an interesting history of a

movement to use women as police even in normal times of

peace. This movement, both in England and the United

States, was initiated by women, urged by women, and

steadfastly defeated in America until women got the vote.

The mere possession of the franchise by the women of

Chicago, before they had a chance to put it in practice,

acted as a lever to set the Chicago women police idea on

its feet. What the women police have meant in time of war

is a momentous chapter not yet written.

Women voters in Illinois, California, Colorado, Wash-

ington, and Montana are on record as having achieved

such domestic legislation as state-wide laws concerning

food inspection. Earl Barnes reports that he has seen

“nowhere else such statutes as fearlessly and vigorously

enforced as in Idaho.”

Montana is, next to New York, one of the youngest

children in the suffrage group. It gained enfranchisement

in 1914, yet by 1916, the first political campaign in which

the women voters participated, old political wheel horses

were astonished at the concentration of effort of and

energy exhibited by the whole woman electorate of Mon-

tana. A woman State Superintendent of Public Instruc-

tion, Who ran entirely upon her special qualifications and

was supported by the women because of her fitness was

elected by an overwhelming majority. Other legislation

worked for by women in their first campaign in Montana

included an eight-hour day for women, improvements in

the mothers’ pension law, establishment of a child welfare

division of the Department of Public Health and an expert

survey of the feebleminded of the State. Colorado’s Juve-

nile Court Law has been called by the head of the

National Child Labor Committee “one of the best, if not

the best.”

As she has become possessed of the vote, the female

of the species has proved herself rather fundamentally

averse to office-seeking. The practice of women in full suf-

frage States has been to occupy such public positions as

logically develop out of their special training. Women, who

make up eighty per cent. of the teaching profession and

who as parents are vitally in touch with the needs of child-

hood, have in all full suffrage States acceptably filled local

and state positions as superintendents of public instruction

or as members of school boards or as commissioners of

Public Welfare in connection with the labor of women and

children. In some instances marked ability or experience

in these lines has led them into legislative positions. In full

suffrage States the woman lawyer is naturally less impeded

in her advance from post to post in her own profession

than her professional sister in non-suffrage States. The

woman doctor mounts the rungs of her ladder less

weighed down with artificial burdens. The point in all this

is the reassuring fact that the state undergoes no volcanic

wrench when women participate in its political career.

What women are bound to do anyway, whether because of

natural abilities or personal inclinations or because of eco-

nomic and industrial pressure, they do with fewer handi-

caps when they have the franchise than when they haven’t

Postwar Society 1297

it. Experience also shows that the large social movements

by which all mankind is affected predetermine these mat-

ters for women as well as for men. When vast numbers of

women are needed in industry they go into it. If such a sit-

uation arises, justice and expediency both demand that

women should be protected by their own ballots, not by

so-called representative ballots, as on the face of it no one

ballot can be counted upon to express two persons’ “con-

sent” in government.

An obsession exists among some men lest women

begin at once to untie all the neat packages into which

political parties have tied their inherited traditions. A few

men are still shuddering lest women will want to revolu-

tionize banking legislation, throw the tariff overboard and

run amuck amongst stocks and bonds. In the first place,

they never have done anything of the sort in any State

where women vote, and in the second place, women are

conservative spenders. A reproach against them has been

their timidity in thinking in the gross. They have so long

thought in littles.

No Sex Segregation in Politics

Woman, the voter, disproves too, all along the line, the

contention that there will ever be a distinct woman’s party

in the history of the United States. Human interests find

few such vertical lines of cleavage between the sexes. It is

inconceivable that the thousands of homes in the country

could ever be split apart longitudinally. If the extraordinary

injustices against women permitted by men in past gener-

ations have never yet bred up a group of women combined

for attack, is it likely that, as those grievances are more and

more removed and men’s and women’s interests become

more and more identical, there will ever be a collective

strife of women against men? Human needs are normally

group needs, family needs, or needs of industrial units.

Society may split apart in horizontal sections with whole

groups of men and women will be found valiant in sup-

porting the measures they espouse. But because of the

very structure of human society it will never happen that

masses of women will have desire to cohere in opposition

to masses of men. Nature and personal affections would

soon prove too strong for such political differentiations. It

is together, as human beings, not as men and not as women

that the voters of the United States are moving forward

into the new democracy with its larger questions and its

finer and surer answers.

Source:

Catt, Carrie Chapman. Introduction to Woman Voter’s Manual,

by S. E. Forman and Marjorie Shuler. National American

Woman Suffrage Association Collection, Rare Book and

Special Collections. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Woodrow Wilson, Appeal to the U.S.

Senate to Submit the Federal Amendment

for Woman Suffrage, 1918

Speech delivered in person by President Woodrow Wilson to

the U.S. Senate, asking that the Senate vote to submit the

Nineteenth Amendment to the states for ratification. At the

time of this appeal, World War I raged in Europe, and the cost

of U.S. involvement had been severe. Although President Wil-

son had previously opposed women’s suffrage, in 1918 his

stance on the issue changed, in large part due to the enormous

contributions American women had made to the war effort.

This shift helped tip the balance of political sentiment in favor

of women’s suffrage. In his speech, Wilson states repeatedly

that granting women the right to vote is essential to winning

the war, and even goes so far as to say, “this war could not

have been fought . . . if it had not been for the services of

women.” He notes that the principle behind granting suffrage

to women is indisputable and that both parties had pledged to

support it; only the method by which it would be granted

remained in question. Wilson raises the issue of national cred-

ibility. Even Great Britain, he notes, has granted women the

vote; how can the United States lead the rest of the world in

democracy if it continues to refuse the vote to women? Since

Wilson argues that women deserve the vote due to their ser-

vice in the war, rather than as a right of citizenship, he needs

to supply a reason for suffrage when the war ends. Again

avoiding the political implications of woman suffrage, he

stresses “the sympathy, and insight and clear moral instinct of

the women of the world.”

In her 1917 book of essays,

Woman Suffrage by Federal

Constitutional Amendment

, with contributions by Mary Sum-

mer Boyd and Henry Wade Rogers, suffragist Carrie Chapman

Catt argued that a constitutional amendment was the best

course of action for achieving woman suffrage. Many suffrage

organizations were seeking to amend their state constitutions.

In response, Catt and her colleagues published this volume in

order to redirect the movement’s focus toward the passage of

an amendment to the federal Constitution. It was their belief

that a constitutional amendment would be easier to achieve

and would ultimately prove to be a more powerful measure,

and it was the course that, with Wilson’s help, eventually suc-

ceeded.

________________________

_______________________

Gentlemen of the Senate: The unusual circumstances of a

World War in which we stand and are judged in the view

not only of our own people and our own consciences but

also in the view of all nations and peoples, will, I hope, jus-

tify in your thought, as it does in mine, the message I have

come to bring you.

1298 ERA 7: The Emergence of Modern America

I regard the concurrence of the Senate in the consti-

tutional amendment proposing the extension of the suf-

frage to women as vitally essential to the successful

prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are

engaged. I have come to urge upon you the considerations

which have led me to that conclusion. It is not only my

privilege, it is also my duty to apprise you of every circum-

stance and element involved in this momentous struggle

which seems to me to affect its very processes and its out-

come. It is my duty to win the war and to ask you to

remove every obstacle that stands in the way of winning it.

I had assumed that the Senate would concur in the

amendment, because no disputable principle is involved

but only a question of the method by which the suffrage is

to be now extended to women. There is and can be no

party issue involved in it. Both of our great national parties

are pledged, explicitly pledged, to equality of suffrage for

the women of the country.

Neither party, therefore, it seems to me, can justify

hesitation as to the method of obtaining it, can rightfully

hesitate to substitute Federal initiative for State initiative

if the early adoption of this measure is necessary to the

successful prosecution of the war, and if the method of

State action proposed in the party platforms of 1916 is

impracticable within any reasonable length of time, if prac-

tical at all. And its adoption is, in my judgment, clearly nec-

essary to the successful prosecution of the war and the

successful realization of the objects for which the war is

being fought.

That judgment I take the liberty of urging upon you

with solemn earnestness for reasons which I shall state

very frankly and which I shall hope will seem as conclusive

to you as they seem to me.

This is a people’s war and the people’s thinking consti-

tutes its atmosphere and morale, not the predilections of

the drawing room or the political considerations of the

caucus. If we be indeed democrats and wish to lead the

world to democracy, we can ask other peoples to accept in

proof of our sincerity and our ability to lead them whither

they wish to be led, nothing less persuasive and convincing

than our actions.

Our professions will not suffice. Verification must be

forthcoming when verification is asked for. And in this case

verification is asked for—asked for in this particular mat-

ter. You ask by whom? Not through diplomatic channels;

not by foreign ministers; not by the intimations of parlia-

ments. It is asked for by the anxious, expectant, suffering

peoples with whom we are dealing and who are willing to

put their destinies in some measure in our hands, if they

are sure that we wish the same things that they do.

I do not speak by conjecture. It is not alone that the

voices of statesmen and of newspapers reach me, and that

the voices of foolish and intemperate agitators do not

reach me at all. Through many, many channels I have been

made aware what the plain, struggling, workaday folk are

thinking, upon whom the chief terror and suffering of this

tragic war fall. They are looking to the great, powerful,

famous democracy of the West to lead them to the new day

for which they have so long waited; and they think, in their

logical simplicity, that democracy means that women shall

play their part in affairs alongside men and upon an equal

footing with them.

If we reject measures like this, in ignorant defiance of

what a new age has brought forth, of what they have seen

but we have not, they will cease to believe in us; they will

cease to follow or to trust us. They have seen their own gov-

ernments accept this interpretation of democracy—seen

old governments like that of Great Britain, which did not

profess to be democratic, promise readily and as of course

this justice to women, though they had before refused it;

the strange revelations of this war having made many things

new and plain to governments as well as to peoples.

Are we alone to refuse to learn the lesson? Are we

alone to ask and take the utmost that our women can

give—service and sacrifice of every kind—and still say we

do not see what title that gives them to stand by our side in

the guidance of the affairs of their nation and ours? We

have made partners of the women in this war. Shall we

admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice

and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?

This war could not have been fought, either by the other

nations engaged or by America, if it had not been for the

services of the women—services rendered in every

sphere—not merely in the fields of efforts in which we

have been accustomed to see them work but wherever

men have worked and upon the very skirts and edges of

the battle itself.

We shall not only be distrusted, but shall deserve to be

distrusted if we do not enfranchise women with the fullest

possible enfranchisement, as it is now certain that the

other great free nations will enfranchise them. We cannot

isolate our thought or action in such a matter from the

thought of the rest of the world. We must either conform

or deliberately reject what they approve and resign the

leadership of liberal minds to others.

The women of America are too intelligent and too

devoted to be slackers whether you give or withhold this

thing that is mere justice; but I know the magic it will work

in their thoughts and spirits if you give it to them. I pro-

pose it as I would propose to admit soldiers to the suf-

frage—the men fighting in the field of our liberties of the

world—were they excluded.

The tasks of the women lie at the very heart of the war

and I know how much stronger that heart will beat if you

Postwar Society 1299

do this just thing and show our women that you trust them

as much as you in fact and of necessity depend upon them.

I have said that the passage of this amendment is a

vitally necessary war measure and do you need further

proof? Do you stand in need of the trust of other peoples

and of the trust of our own women? Is that trust an asset

or is it not? I tell you plainly, as the commander-in-chief of

our armies and of the gallant men in our fleets; as the pre-

sent spokesman of this people in our dealings with the men

and women throughout the world who are now our part-

ners; as the responsible head of a great government which

stands and is questioned day by day as to its purpose, its

principles, its hope. . . . I tell you plainly that this measure

which I urge upon you is vital to the winning of the war

and to the energies alike of preparation and of battle.

And not to the winning of the war only. It is vital to the

right solution of the great problems which we must settle,

and settle immediately, when the war is over. We shall

need in our vision of affairs, as we have never needed them

before, the sympathy and insight and clear moral instinct

of the women of the world. The problems of that time will

strike to the roots of many things that we have hitherto

questioned, and I for one believe that our safety in those

questioning days, as well as our comprehension of matters

that touch society to the quick, will depend upon the direct

and authoritative participation of women in our counsels.

We shall need their moral sense to preserve what is right

and fine and worthy in our system of life as well as to dis-

cover just what it is that ought to be purified and reformed.

Without their counsellings we shall be only half wise.

That is my case. This is my appeal. Many may deny its

validity, if they choose, but no one can brush aside or

answer the arguments upon which it is based. The execu-

tive tasks of this war rest upon me. I ask that you lighten

them and place in my hands instruments, spiritual instru-

ments, which I have daily to apologize for not being able to

employ.

Source:

Elizabeth Frost and Kathryn Cullen-DuPont, Women’s Suffrage

in America: An Eyewitness History. New York: Facts On

File, 1992.

Seattle General Strike, 1919

1919 was a year of great unrest, fed by racism and fear of anar-

chy. With the Great War over, Americans turned from anath-

emizing Germans to suspicion of Bolsheviks. (Two American

Communist Parties began in 1919.) On February 6, 1919,

workers in Seattle fed those fears by staging a citywide general

strike, the first such strike in the United States. After working

under strict wage controls during World War I, shipyard work-

ers were refused a promised postwar raise, and on January 21

more than 35,000 of them went out on strike. An additional

25,000 union members staged a sympathy walkout at the

urging of Seattle’s Central Labor Council, and the city was

effectively shut down, except for essential services. Mayor Ole

Hanson called the strikers “Bolshevik” revolutionaries and

threatened to impose martial law. By February 11, when the

Labor Council officially ended the strike, most workers had

already returned to their jobs.

The Seattle strike demonstrated the potential power of

labor unions, but it also worked against the unions by focus-

ing public attention on the more radical elements of the labor

movement, such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW,

or Wobblies). According to the preamble to its constitution,

the “working class and the employing class have nothing in

common,” and the mission of the working class is to eliminate

capitalism. It stated that the workers must organize to over-

throw the capitalists and to form the structure of a new, social-

ist society. At the organization’s fourth convention, in 1908,

the preamble was revised by the IWW’s radical members in

favor of more direct, physical action at the point of produc-

tion, rather than political effort.

The IWW considered itself a better friend to the worker

than the more conservative American Federation of Labor

(AFL), which consisted primarily of skilled craftspeople.

While never large in numbers, the IWW was most successful

among western miners, northwestern lumberjacks, and north-

eastern textile workers. The IWW accepted all wage-earners,

regardless of race, age, gender, or ethnicity. Especially in the

Far West, its organizers challenged free speech curbs. They

were not only imprisoned but allegedly tortured. Because

some Wobblies not only went on strike but burned farms and

sabotaged mine and lumber operations, the general public,

already inclined to oppose organized labor, supported gov-

ernment and private efforts against the IWW. Corporation-

labor clashes became so violent that President Theodore

Roosevelt, at management urging, sent troops to keep the

peace in Goldfield, Nevada, site of one of the IWW’s most

successful campaigns.

The IWW reached its height around 1907–08. Although

its opposition to World War I hurt the Wobblies, it played

a significant role in Seattle’s general strike, leading to the

government’s extreme reaction—more than 1,000 additional

police and another 1,000 armed deputies were sworn in to

prevent a possible Bolshevik revolution. However, the strike

passed without violence. Union members had arranged for

milk delivery and ambulance service, and unarmed union vet-

erans patrolled the streets to keep the peace.

Although the strikers failed to win their demands from the

shipyard owners, the Seattle general strike showed the power

of union solidarity, but it also paved the way for extreme and

often violent strike suppression by employers and government

officials.

1300 ERA 7: The Emergence of Modern America

________________________

_______________________

Anna Louise Strong, “No One Knows Where,” 1919

There will be many cheering, and there will be some who

fear.

Both these emotions are useful, but not too much of

either.

We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever

made by LABOR in this country, a move which will lead—

NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!

We do not need hysteria.

We need the iron march of labor.

* * *

LABOR WILL FEED THE PEOPLE.

Twelve great kitchens have been offered, and from

them food will be distributed by the provision trades at low

cost to all.

LABOR WILL CARE FOR THE BABIES AND

THE SICK.

The milk-wagon drivers and the laundry drivers are

arranging plans for supplying milk to babies, invalids and

hospitals, and taking care of the cleaning of linen for hos-

pitals.

LABOR WILL PRESERVE ORDER.

The strike committee is arranging for guards, and it is

expected that the stopping of the cars will keep people at

home.

* * *

A few hot-headed enthusiasts have complained that strik-

ers only should be fed, and the general public left to

endure severe discomfort. Aside from the inhumanitarian

character of such suggestions, let them get this straight—

NOT THE WITHDRAWAL OF LABOR POWER,

BUT THE POWER OF THE WORKERS TO MANAGE

WILL WIN THIS STRIKE.

What does Mr. Piez of the Shipping Board care about

the closing down of Seattle’s shipyards, or even of all the

industries of the northwest. Will it not merely strengthen

the yards at Hog Island, in which he is more interested?

When the shipyard owners of Seattle were on the

point of agreeing with the workers, it was Mr. Piez who

wired them that, if they so agreed—

HE WOULD NOT LET THEM HAVE STEEL.

Whether this is camouflage we have no means of

knowing. But we do know that the great eastern combina-

tions of capitalists COULD AFFORD to offer privately to

Mr. Skinner, Mr. Ames and Mr. Duthie a few millions

apiece in eastern shipyard stock.

RATHER THAN LET THE WORKERS WIN.

The closing down of Seattle’s industries, as a MERE

SHUTDOWN, will not affect these eastern gentlemen

much. They could let the whole northwest go to pieces, as

far as money alone is concerned.

BUT, the closing down of the capitalistically con-

trolled industries of Seattle, while the WORKERS ORGA-

NIZE to feed the people, to care for the babies and the

sick, to preserve order—THIS will move them, for this

looks too much like the taking over of POWER by the

workers.

* * *

Labor will not only SHUT DOWN the industries, but

Labor will REOPEN, under the management of the

appropriate trades, such activities as are needed to pre-

serve public health and public peace. If the strike contin-

ues, Labor may feel led to avoid public suffering by

reopening more and more activities.

UNDER ITS OWN MANAGEMENT.

And that is why we say that we are starting on a road

that leads—NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!

Ole Hansen, Mayoral Statement on the General

Strike, 1919

Two years ago 15,000 workmen were employed in the

industries of Seattle. There are now 65,000. The unions

have admitted to their ranks under the stress of war condi-

tions every Bolsheviki and I.W.W. who desired to join.

These men have secured control of many labor organiza-

tions. The conservative membership have shown their yel-

low streak by allowing the foes of organized government to

run their unions and their affairs.

When the shipyard strike was called, the men went

out unwillingly in most instances, although these is a feel-

ing that the lower paid men were not getting sufficient

wage when figured on the present cost of living.

Then the radicals, having read of the revolution in

Petrograd, tried to duplicate the initial steps of the same

here. They wanted to run our light plant and all industries,

believing that we would surrender because of economic

pressure and suffering of our people. They had forgotten

the lesson Germany acquired when they tried the policy of

ruthlessness. The city government told them to go to hell;

that all things would run as long as there was a government

and made no concession to the revolutionists. They closed

down the newspapers. Business, always cowardly, hunted

its hole for a little time until I announced that all people

would be protected to the last man and that we had 1,500

men armed with rifles to kill on sight anyone that caused

disorder. Yesterday I notified the strike committee that at

8 o’clock this morning everything would operate. Every-

thing is activity in Seattle this morning. Every municipal

car is running. Our light plant has never shut down one

minute. Neither has our water plant. Gathered together in

Seattle are Joe Ettar of Lawrence, Mass., fame: Mucky

Postwar Society 1301