Woman's World Column - July 30, 1885

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.”

The third objection, and one usually pronounced with much gusto and triumph, is “that the majority of women do not desire to vote; that the women of best character and best ability are opposed to woman’s suffrage; that the movement is kept alive by a few persons of one-ideas; that even where suffrage has been granted women, but few avail themselves of the opportunity.” Here are four objections in one.

(1) A large proportion of our women come to us from foreign countries, where the governments are illiberal and the civilian of slight importance. In nearly all European countries, women occupy an inferior position, are uneducated, have few privileges and are little more than menials. It is no wonder when they come to us they have no desire to have a hand in the government or to raise a voice against evils of which they know nothing. But let anyone answer who has a sense of justice about him, is it right that for the reason these women have no desire to vote, intelligent, educated, property-holding American-born women should be disfranchised? Assuredly not. There is another class of women who are opposed to suffrage. They are women, who either in their father’s or husband’s household, have always been tenderly cared for, who have never known a responsibility outside of a house, whose chief occupation is drumming on a piano, reading novels or making themselves look pretty, who shudder at the sight of a working-woman, who, because they are contented in their own useless and selfish lives, fancy no other woman has any need of a ballot. The remaining class, including the working-woman, the property-holding woman, and the intelligent, well-read woman, stand up for suffrage one and all. It is they who are to be benefited by it and it is an imposition to keep them disfranchised because silly, thoughtless or ignorant women do not want to vote.

(2) This is decidedly untrue. Were a canvass to be made of every town in our State upon this question, the women of character, ability and sense would be ranged on the side of woman’s suffrage and the women who do not read, or think, against it.

(3) It is quite true that many women suffragists appear to be possessed of but one idea. Reformers have always been extremists. William Lloyd Garrison said many violent things against slavery and won many enemies thereby but time has proved him right and his enemies wrong. No one who knows anything of Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Stone, Mrs. Stanton, Wendell Phillips, and James Freeman Clark will dare call them people of one-idea. However, it if was true that they had but one idea if that one was correct, it would be far better than to entertain forty incorrect ones.

(4) In the territories, where women have been allowed to vote, nearly all have used the privilege. In those States where they have only been granted the privilege to vote at school elections the number of women voters has been small. It is this fact which gives the basis for the objection. It is, however, easily explained. School elections poll a smaller vote than any other. Unless some question arises over which there has been controversy there is scarcely ever more than one-tenth the full male vote polled. It is not to be expected, therefore, that the full female vote would be cast. When they have been given the ballot in elections where the interest is more general, they have demonstrated that the privilege was appreciated.

The one conclusion to be drawn from this objection is that the women who need a ballot are made to suffer an injustice and are deprived of a right, because those women who are so fortunate as to be projected from the world’s abuse, express themselves satisfied with their condition.

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Whatever may be said of the motives of the Pall Mall Gazette in the furnishing to the public the shocking revellation of the condition of London society, it cannot but accomplish much good. Think of it, you good women, who fancy women are well enough off as they are, these London men, who have been carrying on these fiendish practices are voters. It is they, who frame the laws, who form the city government, hire the police and order them to secrecy. What laws have they made, do you ask? They have permitted girls of thirteen years of [age] to legally consent to the run of their character and life-long disgrace, while the men who accomplished their ruin are not liable to punishment. It matters not what force or strategy has been employed to seek their destruction the law refuses to protect these little girls. The law, however, does not consider a girl sufficiently matured to make a contract, use her own wages or so much as buy a ribbon without cash, until she is twenty-one. Why then should she be considered to possess intelligence enough at thirteen to barter away so priceless a thing as character? Ah, it is because these Londoners have made their laws to minister to their own brutal natures, and have been devoid of that solicitude to the “tender sex” which has been their boast.

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Woman’s Work is a journal published monthly at 354 Gates Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y. Its name indicates its mission. It is made attractive and interesting and will prove a boon to many a girl, who desires a means of earning her own livlihood. Here are suggestions and reports by the score of what others have done and are doing. Every one, who is interested in the industrial progress of women, will desire an immense circulation for this admirable little paper.

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The women of Ottumwa, Iowa, presented to the city government a petition bearing 792 names of women asking the enforcement of the dram-shop laws. The council passed a resolution that the prayer of the petitioners be complied with. But the mayor declared, in a written speech, that it was not his duty. The women were not voters.—Manstee Standard.

Chapman, Carrie Lane. 1885. “Woman’s World.” Mason City Republican, July 30.

PDF version, courtesy of Mason City Public Library