The Justice of Woman Suffrage
Carrie Chapman Catt
[A Speech Before the United States Congress, 1917]
Woman suffrage is inevitable. Suffragists knew it before November 4,
1917; opponents afterward. Three distinct causes made it inevitable.
First, the history of our country. Ours is a nation born of
revolution, of rebellion against a system of government so securely
entrenched in the customs and traditions of human society that in 1776
it seemed impregnable. From the beginning of things, nations had been
ruled by kings and for kings, while the people served and paid the
cost. The American Revolutionists boldly proclaimed the heresies: "Taxation
without representation is tyranny." "Governments derive
their just powers from the consent of the governed." The
colonists won, and the nation which was established as a result of
their victory has held unfailingly that these two fundamental
principles of democratic government are not only the spiritual source
of our national existence but have been our chief historic pride and
at all times the sheet anchor of our liberties.
Eighty years after the Revolution, Abraham Lincoln welded those two
maxims into a new one: "Ours is a government of the people, by
the people, and for the people." Fifty years more passed and the
president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, in a mighty crisis of
the nation, proclaimed to the world: "We are fighting for the
things which we have always carried nearest to our hearts: for
democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a
voice in their own government."
All the way between these immortal aphorisms political leaders have
declared unabated faith in their truth. Not one American has arisen to
question their logic in the 141 years of our national existence.
However stupidly our country may have evaded the logical application
at times, it has never swerved from its devotion to the theory of
democracy as expressed by those two axioms...
With such a history behind it, how can our nation escape the logic it
has never failed to follow, when its last unenfranchised class calls
for the vote? Behold our Uncle Sam floating the banner with one hand,
"Taxation without representation is tyranny," and with the
other seizing the billions of dollars paid in taxes by women to whom
he refuses "representation." Behold him again, welcoming the
boys of twenty-one and the newly made immigrant citizen to "a
voice in their own government" while he denies that fundamental
right of democracy to thousands of women public school teachers from
whom many of these men learn all they know of citizenship and
patriotism, to women college presidents, to women who preach in our
pulpits, interpret law in our courts, preside over our hospitals,
write books and magazines, and serve in every uplifting moral and
social enterprise. Is there a single man who can justify such
inequality of treatment, such outrageous discrimination? Not one...
Second, the suffrage for women already established in the United
States makes women suffrage for the nation inevitable. When Elihu
Root, as president of the American Society of International Law, at
the eleventh annual meeting in Washington, April 26, 1917, said, "The
world cannot be half democratic and half autocratic. It must be all
democratic or all Prussian. There can be no compromise," he
voiced a general truth. Precisely the same intuition has already
taught the blindest and most hostile foe of woman suffrage that our
nation cannot long continue a condition under which government in half
its territory rests upon the consent of half of the people and in the
other half upon the consent of all the people; a condition which
grants representation to the taxed in half of its territory and denies
it in the other half a condition which permits women in some states to
share in the election of the president, senators, and representatives
and denies them that privilege in others. It is too obvious to require
demonstration that woman suffrage, now covering half our territory,
will eventually be ordained in all the nation. No one will deny it.
The only question left is when and how will it be completely
established.
Third, the leadership of the United States in world democracy compels
the enfranchisement of its own women. The maxims of the Declaration
were once called "fundamental principles of government."
They are now called "American principles" or even "Americanisms."
They have become the slogans of every movement toward political
liberty the world around, of every effort to widen the suffrage for
men or women in any land. Not a people, race, or class striving for
freedom is there anywhere in the world that has not made our axioms
the chief weapon of the struggle. More, all men and women the world
around, with farsighted vision into the verities of things, know that
the world tragedy of our day is not now being waged over the
assassination of an archduke, nor commercial competition, nor national
ambitions, nor the freedom of the seas. It is a death grapple between
the forces which deny and those which uphold the truths of the
Declaration of Independence...
Do you realize that in no other country in the world with democratic
tendencies is suffrage so completely denied as in a considerable
number of our own states? There are thirteen black states where no
suffrage for women exists, and fourteen others where suffrage for
women is more limited than in many foreign countries.
Do you realize that when you ask women to take their cause to state
referendum you compel them to do this: that you drive women of
education, refinement, achievement, to beg men who cannot read for
their political freedom?
Do you realize that such anomalies as a college president asking her
janitor to give her a vote are overstraining the patience and driving
women to desperation?
Do you realize that women in increasing numbers indignantly resent
the long delay in their enfranchisement?
Your party platforms have pledged women suffrage. Then why not be
honest, frank friends of our cause, adopt it in reality as your own,
make it a party program, and "fight with us"? As a party
measure--a measure of all parties--why not put the amendment through
Congress and the legislatures? We shall all be better friends, we
shall have a happier nation, we women will be free to support loyally
the party of our choice, and we shall be far prouder of our history.
"There is one thing mightier than kings and armies"--aye,
than Congresses and political parties--"the power of an idea when
its time has come to move." The time for woman suffrage has come.
The woman's hour has struck. If parties prefer to postpone action
longer and thus do battle with this idea, they challenge the
inevitable. The idea will not perish; the party which opposes it may.
Every delay, every trick, every political dishonesty from now on will
antagonize the women of the land more and more, and when the party or
parties which have so delayed woman suffrage finally let it come,
their sincerity will be doubted and their appeal to the new voters
will be met with suspicion. This is the psychology of the situation.
Can you afford the risk? Think it over.
We know you will meet opposition. There are a few "women haters"
left, a few "old males of the tribe," as Vance Thompson
calls them, whose duty they believe it to be to keep women in the
places they have carefully picked out for them. Treitschke, made world
famous by war literature, said some years ago, "Germany, which
knows all about Germany and France, knows far better what is good for
Alsace-Lorraine than that miserable people can possibly know." A
few American Treitschkes we have who know better than women what is
good for them. There are women, too, with "slave souls" and "clinging
vines" for backbones. There are female dolls and male dandies.
But the world does not wait for such as these, nor does liberty pause
to heed the plaint of men and women with a grouch. She does not wait
for those who have a special interest to serve, nor a selfish reason
for depriving other people of freedom. Holding her torch aloft,
liberty is pointing the way onward and upward and saying to America, "Come."
To you and the supporters of our cause in Senate and House, and the
number is large, the suffragists of the nation express their grateful
thanks. This address is not meant for you. We are more truly
appreciative of all you have done than any words can express. We ask
you to make a last, hard fight for the amendment during the present
session. Since last we asked a vote on this amendment, your position
has been fortified by the addition to suffrage territory of Great
Britain, Canada, and New York.
Some of you have been too indifferent to give more than casual
attention to this question. It is worthy of your immediate
consideration. A question big enough to engage the attention of our
allies in wartime is too big a question for you to neglect.
Some of you have grown old in party service. Are you willing that
those who take your places by and by shall blame you for having failed
to keep pace with the world and thus having lost for them a party
advantage? Is there any real gain for you, for your party, for your
nation by delay? Do you want to drive the progressive men and women
out of your party?
Some of you hold to the doctrine of states' rights as applying to
woman suffrage. Adherence to that theory will keep the United States
far behind all other democratic nations upon this question. A theory
which prevents a nation from keeping up with the trend of world
progress cannot be justified.
Gentlemen, we hereby petition you, our only designated
representatives, to redress our grievances by the immediate passage of
the Federal Suffrage Amendment and to use your influence to secure its
ratification in your own state, in order that the women of our nation
may be endowed with political freedom before the next presidential
election, and that our nation may resume its world leadership in
democracy.
Woman suffrage is coming--you know it. Will you, Honorable Senators
and Members of the House of Representatives, help or hinder it?
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