Part 12

At first the law was construed to admit single women only, but afterward it was made to include females eighteen years old, married or single, without distinction of race. But as most of the women were on the side of the Federation and always delivered a heavy vote, a Democratic legislature, to defranchise Federalists, passed in 1807 an act defining the qualifications of electors, excluding women and free colored men by the use of the words “White =male= citizens.” This was a partisan piece of legislature, clearly in violation of the constitutional guarantee, and made under the pretext that male voters, by disguising themselves as women and negroes, had voted several times. It was on the strength of this pretext that the unconstitutional act was passed and upheld.

It is on record that in Virginia likewise women at an early day exercised the right of voting. But it is unknown, for what reason this right was not preserved.

WOMEN OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

There are few events in history that created such world-wide interest as the triumphant success of the American War for Liberation. The deepest impression was made on the French nation, which for centuries had suffered under the tyranny and coercion of extravagant kings, corrupt officials, greedy clergy and feudal nobility. In sharp contrast to the prodigality and lasciviousness of the court and its armies of courtiers and courtesans, who all revelled in luxuries, there was among the people a general feeling of misery and despair. Finances were in a frightful condition; public scandals were every-day occurrences; famines were frequent; the old creeds had lost their power to arouse enthusiasm, while out-worn institutions and customs still encumbered the land, and with their dead weight pressed men down. The deep longing to be delivered from all these parasites and encumbrances, the urgent need of reforms and relief was evident everywhere. In the streets, in all cafés, clubs and salons the discussion of politics was the foremost topic.

The most conspicuous among such political salons were those of =Théroigne de Méricourt=, =Marie Olympe de Gouges=, and =Madame Roland=.

The first of these three ladies was a quick-witted, strikingly handsome woman, intensely passionate in temper, and commanding an almost volcanic power of eloquence. Her salon was the birth-place of the “Club des Amis de la Loi,” the most noteworthy members of which were Jerome Pétion, author of “Les Lois Civiles,” and Camille Desmoulins, author of “La France Libre.” Both writers were among the leaders of the revolution, and it was Desmoulins, who in July, 1789, inflamed the people by his violent speeches to take up arms and storm the Bastille. At the fall of this ill-reputed prison Théroigne de Méricourt came prominently into notice and it was she who proposed to erect a temple for the National Assembly on the site of the razed fortress.

With her friends she also had a hand in framing the “Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme,” which, together with the American Declaration of Independence, ranks among the greatest human documents of history. The most important points of this charter of the French Revolution are: that all men are born and continue free and equal in rights; that Society is an association of men to preserve the natural rights of men; that Sovereignty is vested in the nation; that all Authority, held by an individual or a body of men, comes expressly from the nation; that Liberty is the power of doing what we will, so long as it does not injure the same right of others; that the law can forbid only such actions as are mischievous to society; that Law is the expression of the general will; that all citizens have a right to take part, through their representatives, in the making of laws; that laws must be equal to all; that all citizens have equal rights to fulfill all offices in the state; that society has a right to demand from every public servant an account of his administration; that all men are free to hold what religious views they will, provided that they are not subversive of public order; that freedom of speech, of writing and printing is one of the most precious of the rights of man and that public force is needed to guarantee these rights; that property is an inviolable and sacred right, of which no one can be deprived, save when public necessity, legally established, evidently demands it, and then only with the condition of a just and previously determined indemnity.

With the adoption of this declaration by the national assembly, all hereditary distinctions, such as nobility and peerage, feudal regime, titles, and orders of chivalry were abolished, also venality or hereditary succession in offices, feudal privileges, religious vows or other engagements which might be at variance with natural rights or the constitution.—

Early in October, 1789, Théroigne de Méricourt also took a leading part in the march of the women to Versailles and it was she who by the violence of her speech won the royalist soldiers over to the revolution and so enforced the return of the royal family to Paris.

Being accused of dangerous conduct and of having been engaged in a plot against the life of the queen Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Empress Maria Theresia of Austria, during a visit to Liége she was seized by warrant of the Austrian Government and for some time interned at the fortress of Kufstein. After her release in January, 1792, she returned to Paris, where she was hailed as a martyr of liberty. Resuming her former role she again became very active in all public affairs. On June 20, 1792, she even commanded in person the 3d Corps of the so-called army of the Faubourges, and marched with them to the palace, where the king, wearing the red cap, met the revolutionists and assured them “that he would do whatever the constitution ordained that he should do.” But as soon afterwards the king’s secret connections with Austria and Prussia became public, the insurrection broke loose again, resulting in the massacre of the national guard on August 10th, in the Place Véndome. It was here, that Théroigne sprang at Suleau, a pamphleteer in royal service, and dragged him among the infuriated mob, where he was instantly killed.—

It was a year before these incidents that Madame Roland opened a salon in Paris, whither her husband had been sent as the deputy from Lyons to the constituent assembly. Her salon had nothing in common with those frequented by people seeking recreation in conversation and belle esprit. Generally there were no women present except the hostess. But her salon was the rendezvous of such fiery spirits as Mirabeau, Brissot, Vergniaud, Robespierre and others, interested in the great movement, which was soon to reach its climax. It was in this salon that Madame Roland impressed her enthusiasm for a republic upon those men who likewise strove for progress and liberty. Here also she conceived the plan of a journal, entitled “The Republican,” which, however, was suppressed after its second issue. Here she penned that famous letter to the king, which, as it remained unanswered, was read aloud by her husband, the king’s appointed Minister of the Interior, in full council and in the king’s presence. Containing many terrible truths as to the royal refusal to sanction the decrees of the national assembly and as to the king’s position in the state, this letter initiated the dethronement of the king and the abolition of royalty.—

It was in these troubled times, also, that another remarkable woman attracted great attention by matching the “Declaration of the rights of man” with a “Declaration des Droits de la Femme,” a declaration of the rights of women. In this document she preached for the first time not only the principle of equality of both sexes but she also demanded the right of women to vote and to hold public offices. This document was published just at the time when the equality of both sexes before the law and the guillotine had become a recognized fact, when not only the head of the king but also that of the queen Marie Antoinette had rolled into the dust. Pointing to these events Olympe de Gouges closed her manifesto with the flaming words: “When women have the right to ascend the scaffold then they must have the right to mount the platform of the orator!”

When Olympe de Gouges wrote these lines, she hardly anticipated her own fate. Provoking in some way the anger of Robespierre, this rabid tyrant did send her also to the guillotine.—

Théroigne de Méricourt likewise fell a victim of the furious hostility, which in 1793 arose between the two leading parties, the Girondists and the Montagnards, the latter party led by those most extreme autocrats as Marat, Danton and Robespierre. When Théroigne, being aware that her own party, the Gironde, was in peril at the hands of these bloodthirsty men, one day urged the mob to moderate their courses, she was seized, stripped naked and flogged in the public garden of the Tuilleries. This infamous affront affected her so that she became a raving maniac, never recovering her reason.—

For Madame Roland and her husband too the day of darkness was soon to come. They found that they could no longer control those passions which they had helped to call forth. Repulsed by the incredible excesses, which were committed during the progress of the revolution, Mr. Roland sent in his resignation on January 22, 1793, the day after the execution of the king. But all his and his wife’s efforts to regulate and elevate the Revolution failed. Both became more and more the butt of calumny and the object of increasing dislike on the part of the ultra-revolutionists, whose leaders, Marat and Danton, heaped the foulest falsehoods upon them. At the instigation of these men Madame Roland was arrested early on the morning of the last of July, 1793, and thrown into the same prison cell, that had been occupied by Charlotte Corday a short time before. On November the 8th she was conveyed to the guillotine. Before yielding her head to the block, she bowed before the statue of Liberty, erected in the Place de la Revolution, uttering her famous apostrophe: “O Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name!”—

After the elimination of the three leading spirits of woman’s emancipation all attempts to claim political rights for women were sternly repressed. The bold deed of Charlotte Corday, who on July 17th, 1793, killed Marat, the chief of the Mountain party, had given to his followers a warning of what resolute women were able to do. And so all female clubs and political meetings were forbidden by the Convention. Women were even excluded from the galleries of the hall where it sat, and Chaumette warned them that by entering into politics they would violate the law of nature and would be punished accordingly. French girls were also entirely excluded from all educational reforms that were instituted by the Convention and, later on, by Napoleon, who always maintained that female education should be of the most rudimentary description.

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At the same time that Olympe de Gouges, Théroigne de Méricourt and Madame Roland took such a conspicuous part in the French Revolution, there appeared in England a most remarkable book, which might be called the first comprehensive attempt to establish the equality of the sexes. Its authoress was =Mary Wollstonecraft=, a woman of Irish extraction, born at Hoxton on April 27, 1759. Compelled to earn her own living, she, together with her sisters, had conducted a school for girls. Later on she held a position as governess in the family of Lord Kingsborough, in Ireland. Among her early publications are “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters” (1787) and “The Female Reader” (1789). That she followed the events of the French Revolution with the utmost interest, appears from her book: “An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, and the Effects it has Produced in Europe.” It was intended to comprise several volumes, but after the first one had been published in 1790, the work remained unfinished. Two years later, in 1792, appeared the work with which the name of Mary Wollstonecraft is always associated, as from this book was born one of the grandest movements which exists in the world to-day—the =Woman Suffrage Movement=.

This book, entitled “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” was a sharp protest against the assumption that woman is only a plaything of man. It is also a demand on her to become his equal and his companion.

In the preface the authoress states the “main argument” of her work, “built on this simple principle that, if woman be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge, for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence or general practice.” In carrying out this argument she explains that woman can never be free until she is free economically; it makes no difference how poetic, romantic and chivalrous we become,—the fact is, there can be little equality between the sexes as long as the male partner has entire charge of the purse. Woman may be free socially; she may get rid of all sexual superstition, and she may crack and cast from her all theological trammels: but of what value is all this if she is still dependent upon man for food, raiment and shelter? What good does it do her to say “My body is my own, subject to the whims and lusts of no man,” if upon that very man depends her livelihood? Woman’s economic dependence is the root of that tree which nourishes the poisonous fruits of her subjection and abject slavery. Only when woman is on equal terms with man, can she be really virtuous and useful. But this result can only be obtained by rejecting the fallacious idea of weakness and refusing man’s help.

After that the authoress states, that woman by open air exercise can become healthy and strong. By study she can acquire a solid education and useful knowledge, and thus become fit to earn her own living. Marriage will then cease to be her sole hope of salvation. If she marries she must not expect infinite romantic love from her husband, that would be an endeavor to perpetuate what is transitory in its very essence. From her husband she should require esteem and friendship. But before she can ask for or inspire these sentiments she must have shown herself a lofty mind and a sincere, benevolent, and independent temper.

“But this ideal will remain a myth unless the system of education is entirely changed. It is the duty of the Government to organize schools and colleges, for boys and girls, both rich and poor, and of all ages.”

Mary Wollstonecraft recommends that boys and girls should study together. She does not regard as an evil the attachment which might result under these conditions. On the contrary, she is an advocate of early marriage, and believes that the physical and moral health of young people would be greatly benefited thereby. “Do not separate the sexes, but accustom them to each other from infancy!” she demands. “By this plan such a degree of equality should be established between the sexes as would break up gallantry and coquetry, yet allow friendship and love to temper the heart for the discharge of higher duties.”

Thus asking the widest opportunities of education for women, she demands also her participation in industry, political knowledge, and the rights of representation.

While Mary Wollstonecraft in this manner advanced progressive ideas, she also discussed several questions, dangerous and explosive at that time. In regard to marriage she recommended emancipation from the coercions and ceremonies imposed upon all Christians by the Church. And where love had ceased, divorce should be made easy. These points, together with her extraordinary plainness of speech and her denial of the eternity of the torments of hell, caused an outcry of all classes, to whom the dust of tradition was sacred, or who saw their assumed authority endangered. The air grew thick with insults and insinuations, hurled at the champion of such principles by churchmen feeding on their worn-out thistle-creeds. There were also the shrill, polished shrieks of society, whose antiquated dogmas Mary Wollstonecraft had repudiated. But the impulse, given by her, did not die. It became the heritage of later and more advanced generations, who have tried to realize the ideas of this most remarkable woman of the 18th Century.

WOMAN’S ENTRY INTO INDUSTRY.

Since the stirring years of the American War of Independence and of the French Revolution the question of woman’s rights and woman suffrage has remained constantly before the public. Its significance greatly increased when with the invention of steam-engines, with the rapid growth and extension of trade and commerce, and with the introduction of modern methods all conditions of industrial life likewise became revolutionized. Many of those industries in which women participated, were transferred from the homes to factories, where the workmen and women were placed at machines, producing within one day greater quantities of goods than the laborers formerly had manufactured within weeks or months.

With this industrial revolution came, however, also many evils. The laborers remained no longer masters of their own time and efforts. While hitherto they had been the owners of their little industry, now the factory owners and the great industries began to own them. They found themselves bound by strict rules, not of their own making, but prescribed and enforced by their employers, many of whom had not the slightest consideration for the people that worked for them. Just as soulless as their machines, and thinking only of gain, they abused their employees wherever possible, and in doing so often resorted to the meanest tricks.

Nowhere did such evils become so appalling as in England, where the politicians subordinated all other considerations to industry. It was here that in order to reduce the small wages of the workman cheap woman- and child-labor was first introduced on a large scale, and feeble, defenseless creatures, without experience and organization, were subjected to the most cruel oppression and exploitation.

At the end of the 18th and during the first half of the 19th Century large numbers of women and pauper children were shipped from the agricultural districts of Southern England to the northern districts to work in the factories which had been established there in consequence of the superior water-power.

Tender women and girls, and even children from six to ten years were placed in cotton mills, where they were compelled to work in overcrowded rooms thirteen to fourteen hours daily. Robert Mackenzie in his book “The Nineteenth Century,” p. 77, states, that the accommodations provided for these people were of the most wretched nature. “If such children became over-tired and fell asleep they were flogged. Sometimes through exhaustion they fell upon the machinery and were injured—possibly crushed,—an occurrence which caused little concern to any except the mothers, who had learned to bear their pangs in silence. These children, who were stunted in size and disposed to various acute diseases, were often scrofulous and consumptive.”

The Encyclopædia Britannica, in an article on Socialism, describes the conditions of the working people in England at that time as follows: “The English worker had no fixed interest in the soil. He had no voice either in local or national government. He had little education or none at all. His dwelling was wretched in the extreme. The right even of combination was denied him. The wages of the agricultural laborer were miserably low. The workman’s share in the benefits of the industrial revolution was doubtful. Great numbers of his class were reduced to utter poverty and ruin by the great changes consequent to the introduction of improved machinery; the tendency to readjustment was slow and continually disturbed by fresh change. The hours of work were mercilessly long. He had to compete against the labor of women, and of children brought frequently at the age of five or six from the workhouses. These children had to work the same long hours as the adults, and they were sometimes strapped by the overseers till the blood came. Destitute as they so often were of parental protection and oversight, with both sexes huddled together under immoral and unsanitary conditions, it was only natural that they should fall into the worst habits and that their offspring should to such a lamentable degree be vicious, improvident, and physically degenerate.”

A report, delivered at the “International Congress of Women,” held in July, 1899, at London, states that the weak legs of those children, which were not strong enough to support the body for hours, were sustained by boots of wood and lead, in which they were obliged to stand. Hence the high scale of mortality among the children.

Most revolting conditions prevailed in the English coal mines. Married women, girls and children worked here, harnessed to trucks and nearly naked, dragging on their hands and knees loads of coal through long low galleries to the pit mouth.

When some philanthropists made complaints about these conditions, Parliament instituted a commission to inquire into the state of working women in these mines and the wages paid them. From its official report we quote the following: “Betty Harris, one of the numerous persons examined, aged thirty-seven, drawer in the coal-pit, said: ‘I have a belt around my waist and a chain between my legs to the truck, and I go on my hands and feet. The road is very steep and we have to hold by a rope, and when there is no rope, by anything we can catch hold of. There are six women and about six boys and girls in the pit I work in; it is very wet, and the water comes over our clog-tops always, and I have seen it up to my thighs; my clothes are always wet.’—

“Margaret Hibbs, aged eighteen, said: ‘My employment after reaching the wall-face (the place where the coal is broken) is to fill my bagie or stype with two and a half or three hundred-weight of coal; I then hook it on to my chain and drag it through the seam, which is from twenty-six to twenty-eight inches high, till I get to the main road, a good distance, probably two hundred to four hundred yards. The pavement I drag over is wet, and I am obliged at all times to crawl on my hands and feet with my bagie hung to the chain and ropes. It is sad, sweating, sore and fatiguing work, and frequently maims the women.’

“Robert Bald, the government coal-viewer, stated: In surveying the workings of an extensive colliery underground a married woman came forward groaning under an excessive weight of coal, trembling in every nerve, and almost unable to keep her knees from sinking under her. On coming up she said in a plaintive and melancholy voice: ‘Oh sir, this is sore, sore, sore work!’

“And a sub-commissioner said: ‘It is almost incredible that human beings can submit to such employment—crawling on hands and knees, harnessed like horses, over soft, slushy floors, more difficult than dragging the same weight through our lowest sewers.’”—