Carrie Chapman Catt (Carrie Lane at the time) retired from teaching after the end of the 1884 school year and married Leo Chapman, publisher and editor of the Mason City Republican newspaper, in February 1885. In the March 5 issue of The Republican, Catt’s name appeared in the masthead as co-editor of the paper with Chapman, and on March 19, the first installment of her new column, “Woman’s World,” was published. The Mason City Public Library has microfilm of every issue of The Republican from 1885 except one, and Catt’s column appears nearly weekly through early November. The Chapmans sold the newspaper in April 1886, and there are no extant copies of the paper from that year.
In the July 16, July 23, July 30, August 6, August 13 and August 20 columns, Catt addresses a number of objections to women's suffrage posed by anti-suffragists.
The opponents of Woman’s Suffrage have several other objections ready at their command which are of less importance and not so commonly urged.
(6) Women are already represented by fathers and husbands. Not so. No man can represent a woman unless his views are exactly a counterpart of hers which does not often happen. Then too, there are many women, unmarried ladies and widows, who have no male relatives to represent them. It is these women who need the ballot more than any other class, as they are more apt to be property-holders.
(7) Only cranks have ever favored woman’s suffrage. Among eminent men who have fearlessly given their support to this cause are: Abraham Lincoln, Chief Justice Chase, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendall Phillips, Samuel g. Howe, John G. Whittier, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, President Hayes, Governors Banks, Boutwell, Claflin, Washburn, Talbot, and Long, Senators Geo. F. Hoar, and Henry Dawes, Rober Collyer, Bishops Haven, Bowman, and Simpson, etc.
Among eminent women who favor suffrage are Margaret Fuller, Lydia Maria Child, Frances Gage, Lucretia Mott, Florence Nightengale, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Julia Ward Howe, Mary A. Livermore, Louisa Alcott, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Clara Barton, Frances Willard, Lucy Stone, Frances Cobb, Harrie Prescott Spofford.
(8) On account of “woman’s nervous sensibility and delicate organization” they would be liable to use narcotics and stimulant were they to vote. In view of the fact that women perform duties in the household and sick room every day which taxes their systems more than anything else could, and yet have never resorted to narcotics or stimulants, is proof enough that the trifling care of casting a ballot would not completely demoralize them. Nearly all the tobacco and liquor is consumed by men, and that condition of the thing would not be likely to change because women expressed their views on political subjects at the polls instead of in their parlors.
(9) Women would be unsexed. Time has very nearly eliminated this objection from all minds. Women have proved they could perform the duties of lawyers, doctors, ministers, platform speakers and yet retain their womanhood. Casting a vote would be much less apt to make woman unwomanly.
(10) It would lessen respect for women. Woman armed with the ballot would have a power which would create a deference and respect for her and which she could never hope to gain while she remains a political nonentity.
(11) It would put our government into the hands of foreigners. There are two American born women for every foreigner, male or female. How could such a minority govern the majority?
(12) It would make of women political intriguers. If true, this objection ought to find facts for its substantiation in those localities where women have voted. But neither in Wyoming or Washington Territories, nor the municipalities of England do we find anything of this kind.
(13) Political meetings occur in the evening and women could not safely attend them alone. Women attend church, theaters and lectures in the evening without male attendants and no harm arises.
(14) Women would neglect their household duties and children and gather into groups upon the street corners to discuss politics. Street corner discussions are not all the habit of men voters as a class. Those who live upon the principal streets of a town may congregate into groups for such purposes but the vast majority do not. It is no more likely the majority of women would neglect their business.
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The New Era is a paper published in the interest of women, at Evanston, Ill., by Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Habert, formerly editress of the Woman’s Kingdon in the Inter Ocean.
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The home is woman’s to make and to guard; and she will do her work in it all the better with trained faculties and an educated and adequate conscience to aid and guide her in her work.—Jennie June, in The Woman’s Magazine.
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Women vastly outnumber men everywhere in Massachusetts except in her prisons. On the first day of October there were 4,389 convicts in that State, of whom 3,586 were men. The “superfluous” women of the old Bay State pay their proportion of taxes to convict and punish this large number of criminals who are their political superiors, and year after year, their prayer for equality in political matters is denied by legislators whom the criminal class, before their incarceration and after discharge, help to choose.—New York Evening Telegram.
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According to the Lanterne, the Austrian police is redoubling its vigilance in order to put an end to the exploits of a veritable firm of Galician woman-merchants. They reckon there are about thirty men and ten women who are scouring Austria, enticing away young women and girls, who are afterwards sent off to Brazil or the Argentine Republic. The Consul-General of Austria-Hungary, at Bordeux, has informed the police that he has succeeded in bringing about the arrest of a couple of these woman-merchants just as they were about to cause the embarkation, for Brazil, of four Austrian women aged from seventeen to twenty-one years, all of whom were provided with false passports. Germany, Austria and Switzerland are, it appears, the countries from which these dealers in human flesh make provision for places in South America; and there is not a steamship which has not on board some of these poor creatures.
Notes About Women
—Last week patents were granted to Eugenia Kilbourn for a folding basket and to Josephine St. Claire for a corset, both residents, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
—The Northwestern Journal of Education is a new weekly journal, edited by Miss Ella A. Hamilton. It is printed at Des Moines, and the subscription price is $2 per year.
—Mrs. Mary Ditmar, of New York, manufactures the giant gunpowder that is used for blasting. Mrs. Ditmar is a successful business woman; she buys, sells and deals with men of very different grades, but she is always a lady, and always commands respect.
—Miss Helen Taylor, at the urgent solicitation of a deputation from political committee of the Camberwell (England) Radical Club, has consented to be a parliamentary candidate for North Camberwell at the general election. Miss Taylor said there was no law in existence to prevent a woman sitting in Parliament. She would feel it an honor to contest the constituency as an earnest supporter of woman’s suffrage, as well as on other political grounds. If, however, there was a fair chance of a genuine working-man candidate being returned by the Radicals, she would not like to oppose him. This point was discussed for some time, and eventually Miss Taylor consented to accept the invitation, and to go to the poll.
Chapman, Carrie Lane. 1885. “Woman’s World.” Mason City Republican, August 20.
PDF version, courtesy of Mason City Public Library
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