In 1885, Catt (Carrie Lane) resigned from her position as superintendent of schools in Mason City, Iowa, and married Leo Chapman, editor of the Mason City Republican, a weekly newspaper. She became co-editor of the newspaper and started the column “Woman's World,” which she wrote would be “devoted to the discussion of such questions as purport to the welfare, the social, political and intellectual position of women.”
It is the design of the “Woman’s World” to answer each such objection as are urged against woman’s suffrage presenting one objection and its rebuttal each week. There is no means so appropriate to educate people in a reformatory movement as calm discussion. It will be our pleasure to receive any objection, or argument in favor of, or opposing the subject at issue, from any one. It is not our desire to conceal any fact, or to underestimate any argument. To those who have either been indifferent toward this reform, or who have rejected it altogether, we call your attention to these articles and ask that they shall be carefully read. If in any case an answer shall appear not to be complete, any statement to that effect will be gladly received.
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One of the most frequent objections urged against woman’s suffrage is that recently given by Gail Hamilton, in her article in the North American Review upon “Prohibition in Practice” that, “a ballot means a bullet, a bayonet, forced marches, digging trenches, sleeping on the ground, and carrying a knapsack.” That if necessary, every vote must be defended by physical force; that any election might have to be decided by battle; that those who vote and thus formulate our laws, must be physically able to enforce those laws.
“It is a poor rule which will not work both ways.” If women cannot vote because they cannot bear arms, then surely those who cannot bear arms ought not to vote. The self-same reasoning which would rule out women from suffrage would also exclude a large number of other persons who are exempt from military duty. The laws of both United States and all States exempt the members of legislative, executive and judicial departments in order that the government shall be carried on without interruption; clergymen, teachers, physicians, editors, firemen, etc. that the homes within which exists the basis of our Country’s civilization and prosperity, shall be protected. Upon the same argument, women, who are at the heads of families would be exempted that homes be maintained and the government provided with worthy citizens for its future. Women physicians, clergymen, teachers, editors, etc. would be pitted against men in those vocations. The laws also exempt all men who have defective eye-sight. Women, who have this same defect would be exempted on the same ground. Old women would be pitted against old men, who are ruled out because of failing strength. Women Quakers would be pitted against men Quakers, who are exempted because they do not approve of war. Men who are physically unable to bear arms, never perform military duty; women who are physically disable would also be ruled out. After these various classes have been excepted, few women remain and these could serve their country quite as effectively as “bearing arms” and yet entirely within their own “sphere.” There are the wounded soldiers to be cared for which these women are best fitted to do. If, also, the hospitals were filled with women, so many more men would be free to increase the forces of the army. Then, too, the weaker ones who by law would be exempted from military duty, could prove of great value,, and did in the Rebellion, by donations of money and other supplies. Troops are of no consequence, whatsoever without arms, ammunition and food. The women of Ohio alone raised $4,000,000 and who is there shall say, they did not perform needed service for the defense of their country?
Again, among our most brilliant men, those who are most competent to cast intelligent votes, are many unable to bear the hardships of army life, while on the other side there are many women, mostly among the ignorant and debased classes, who are quite capable of enduring a military life. If physical strength is to be the test for suffrage, then these intelligent men should be denied the ballot and these ignorant, but strong women, put in their places.
Possibly, it might be said that in cases of the direst necessity the excepted classes of men might be called into service. True, but if a war could be possible where every man would be demanded for actual service, women, too, would come to the rescue in fighting trim. Nothing of this kind has happened in the history of our own times but in the history of the world it has often occurred. One of the most notable instances was the seige of Leyden, where women and men fought side by side until food and ammunition were exhausted and men were on the point of surrender. It was the women who refused to yield and invented a new means of offense in the form of hoops covered with pitch which was set on fire and hurled into the camp of the enemy. It was they, who when these could no longer be supplied, mounted the walls and pitched rocks down upon the besiegers with deadly aim.
In view of these facts, the objection that women ought not to vote because they could not defend that vote, is of no value.
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A writer in the New Orleans Times-Democrat offers some suggestions to the young women who have just completed their school course, which are worth careful consideration.
“Graceful graduates should learn that they have missions to fill, that there is something better in life than looking pretty or attracting the admiration of men; that an art, or a science, or a trade, well learned, is worth more than all the chivalrous nonsense admirers pour into their credulous ears. They must realize that they can never unsex themselves as long as they are gentle, and modest and self-respecting. They may do a man’s work in a man’s way. They may be as punctual, as faithful to duty, as ambitious to excel as any male worker among them all. They may labor behind the counter, in the laboratory, at the easel, or even in the dissecting-room, without losing their delicacy or refinement. It is idleness and vacuity, not study or labor, that thrust from a woman’s heart those indisputable qualities, and invite discontent, great, vanity, to take the vacant places.
The graduate from a fashionable girls’ school does not need, she will say, to labor. Papa is there to give her all she wants and when she marries of course her husband will take care of her. Nearly every boarding-house keeper and widowed teacher, many of the shop women who serve on tired feet through the long summer days their exactly customers, thought ten or twenty years ago, precisely the same thing. They, too, have passed through the Little Ellie stage of day-dreams, and like her have found their swan’s eggs stolen, their singing reeds gnawed by the cruel rats of poverty and hunger.
The moral of this little homily, my sweet rosebud, is not that you are wrong to dance upon your stems, to bloom as gaily and sweetly as rosebuds may; but that you must do that and something else. If you have a taste for anything in particular, cultivate it and be ready to use it when necessity compels.
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Over 3,000 women are employed in the railroad offices in Austria. They get from $15 to $30 a month. Nearly all of them are widows of men who have died in the railroad service.
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Thirty years ago, Dr. Earnest Gahl, professor in the Royal Academy of Arts in Germany, had collected the names of a thousand women who had become self-supporting artists. Of these there were about fifty sculptors, two hundred engravers, some architects, wood-carvers, etchers, wax-workers and the remainder painters.
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Marion Harland says, “If I were asked, ‘What is most prolific and general source of heart burnings, contention, harsh judegment, and secret unhappiness among respectable married people who keep up the show, even to themselves, of reciprocal affection?’ my answer would not halt for an instant. It has been ready for thirty years! it is the crying need of a right mutual understanding with respect to the ownership of the family income.”
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The young men of the future have got to look sharp. In the seminaries and colleges whose doors have been opened to girls it is a notable fact, that this year the girls have got away with the honors, by a large majority. As there is no institution thus opened to girls which will close its doors against them, young men will do well to take their lesson in time. The girls have knocked the college doors open to stay, and what is more, they are to make good use of the opportunities.—Inter-Ocean.
Chapman, Carrie Lane. 1885. “Woman’s World.” Mason City Republican, July 16.
PDF version, courtesy of Mason City Public Library
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