[-72-]
CHAPTER VIII
ENGLISH WOMEN AND THEIR AFFAIRS
(1895)
WHILE women in the United States are in
advance of those in England in the professions and in opportunity to earn a
living in any calling which they may select and for which they have talent and
training, English women are vastly their superiors in political knowledge and
experience. It is expected in Great Britain that every woman of intelligence
shall be at least passively interested in politics, and a very great number are
actively interested as well; the higher their position and the wider their
influence the more it is demanded of them that they shall do their part in
public affairs. Their duty is not confined to what is called "influencing"
votes, for where the father, husband or brother is a candidate, the wife and
daughters and their women friends and relatives frequently go upon the hustings,
hold meetings and make an energetic house to house canvass.
The latter is a method of electioneering that is considered
peculiarly effective, and it is one of the means most highly approved by those
two great political organizations, the Liberal Club and the Primrose League. In
addition to speaking and visiting and persuading householders, women canvassers
loyally display the party colors of their candidate. In short, among the higher
classes, a canvass means for the English woman, very frequently, quite as much
labor and anxiety as for those whom we have always regarded in England as the
voting population. In [-73-] Great Britain women
householders vote everywhere for boards of guardians, the officials who have
charge of parish business; a parish corresponding somewhat to a ward in an
American city, each having its own public library, caring for its own poor, and
collecting its own rates. Women not only vote for this important office, but are
themselves eligible as members of such boards and there are several hundred now
filling this responsible post with great ability. The experiment has been so
successful, women showing such fitness and capacity for the work, that their
numbers upon parish boards are being constantly increased, and in several
instances the management of affairs has been largely left in their hands. Women
householders also vote in municipal elections in London, for what are called the
"County Council" and its counterpart in other cities, a body
corresponding in its functions, to the board of Aldermen in an American city.
With other duties the County Council of London supervise the repair and cleaning
of streets, public improvement in which the British government is not involved,
sanitation and other matters pertaining to the well-being of the public.
The police of London, it should be explained, are controlled
by Parliament-one of many illustrations of the odd mingling of its local and
imperial functions. In the annual elections for County Council, which are held
in November, women selected by both Conservative and Liberal committees make a
house to house canvass for several weeks before the election; and, where voters
are difficult to convince, they make not one, but several visits. They also
attend public meetings during a canvass, which are far more turbulent and
lawless than anything that is ordinarily permitted in the United States,
notoriously lax as our election methods are known to be. Speakers are
interrupted not only with rude questions, but with missiles [-74-]
of a still more unpleasing nature, an expression of disfavor rarely ever
resorted to by an American audience, however they may object to the principles
and oratory of the speaker. An instance was related where a woman of high rank,
who had always espoused the Liberal cause, saw fit to canvass for a Conservative
candidate in the great election of 1895. She went into a hall in one of the
smaller towns where a meeting was held, and was hissed and hooted until she was
forced to take her seat. The animosity which she had roused did not expend
itself there, and she had, finally, to retreat to her carriage by a back door
and thence to the railway station through an obscure street. Before she reached
the station, though the horses were driven at the bent of their speed, she was
overtaken and a heavy bottle came crashing through one of the carriage windows
filling her lap with splintered glass. Had she leaned forward she would have
been seriously hurt, or possibly killed.
All of these difficulties, however, are of slight consequence
to plucky English women, who consider it their duty to do their part in the
elections since partial suffrage has been granted them and is likely to be
extended, whether they desire it or not.
Only householders can vote, and these only in municipal
elections, but it is agreed that, since the property of women is taxed to pay
for public improvement, they are entitled to have some voice in the disposition
of funds which they have been forced to contribute. Having conceded this much,
arguing from the same premise, it is difficult to understand how they can be
legally debarred from Parliamentary suffrage. In the latter part of 1897,
however. the Liberal party boldly endorsed equal Parliamentary suffrage and
stands pledged to its fulfillment.
The polling places are always in reputable quarters; the
elections being held in the Town Hall of each [-75-] parish.
Police are stationed at the entrance and exit, who, however stormy and turbulent
the preliminary meetings may have been, are rarely called upon to interfere
during the polling. No loungers are permitted near the polling places and there
is very little excitement of any kind. The woman voter passes in at the door,
gives her name and residence to the officer in charge; the name is then looked
up on the registration list, as is the law in the United States, and if it
correspond to that which has been officially recorded, the woman voter is
furnished a ballot. She then retires to a desk and places a cross marked plainly
in ink after the name of her chosen candidate. The ballot is then folded and
stamped with her number and deposited, folded with the number uppermost, in the
ballot box which is locked and sealed, to be opened and the ballot counted when
the polls are closed.
While the Liberal party has taken the initiative in publicly
declaring itself in favor of Parliamentary suffrage for women, many of the
Conservative leaders are pronounced in its favor, Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour
having openly and repeatedly expressed their approval, and having been for many
years loyal adherents of the cause.
Strangely enough, the most active enemies of political
equality for women are to be found in Radical ranks. In the United States men of
this class have a certain magnanimity; in England, while they do not object to
the highest educational advantages, some even going to the extreme of advocating
degrees for women who have fulfilled all the conditions and passed the
examinations at the Universities, they manifest a strong determination to keep
the reins of government in their own hands and to resist all division of
authority. In other words, their position is that of American politicians, who
consent willingly enough that women shall bear their full portion of the burdens
of government without an equivalent recognition of [-76-]
rightful authority. They profess to believe that since women are so rapidly
taking their places in the industrial field, being clothed with such
responsibility as is consistent with their womanly attributes, no further
extension of privilege is necessary. To this it need only be said that the
widely different position of English women to-day from that which they held
fifty years ago is due, not to the efforts of those who oppose equal suffrage,
but to those men and women who have labored without ceasing for its
accomplishment; and the same is equally true in the United States.
While there are yet many economic, political and educational
inequalities to overcome, the trend of events in Great Britain, as throughout
the world, is in the direction of justice which shall make intelligence and
honesty and reasonable responsibility, not class nor sex, the only
qualifications for the exercise of the franchise. In the furtherance of this end
English women, like those in the United States, have been aided and counseled at
every step by wise and liberal-minded men.
The attitude of English men
in what are called literary pursuits, however, toward women of the same
profession furnishes much food for reflection. The spirit which they betray
toward their women rivals has no counterpart in the United States, although it
has been evidently acquired by several who have taken up their residence in
London. This attitude may be described as either actively hostile or
patronizingly tolerant, and there are apparently very few intermediate degrees
of opinion; the great and notable exceptions are George Meredith, Thomas Hardy,
Zangwill and Hall Caine, and with these, Moore and Gissing and Grant Allen. From
the standpoint of abstract genius, they are more than a majority, as opposed to
mere superiority of numbers.
Phillipa Fawcett who stood far higher than her rival [-77-]
who is enjoying honors and perquisites which she had fairly earned in the
mathematical tripos at Cambridge in 1890, is said to be only one of many women
as highly endowed, studying or teaching at Newnham and Girton.
The illiberal monopoly of educational advantages has tended
to the intellectual development of English men at an apparent sacrifice of broad
and general intellectual training for English women. In the United States the
difference is not so marked, which accounts for the equality and comradeship
between the sexes that it is so difficult for a foreigner to comprehend. To-day,
in both England and the United States at least one-third of the successful
writers are women. This means, to put it bluntly, a division of the patronage of
the reading public, and a liberal share of publishers' royalties - a sufficient raison
d'être for unfriendliness and disapproval-the survival of mediaeval
supremacy that it will require several generations to overcome.
Some of the best pictures in the
recent annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy were painted by Mrs. Alma Tadema,
Lady Butler and Henrietta Raeburn, while a large canvas: "Colt-hunting in
the New Forest," by Lucy Kemp-Welch, one of the greatest works in the
exhibition of 1897, was purchased by the Academy "under the terms of the
Chantry Bequest."
There is no special unfriendliness, but perhaps the reverse,
between men and women painters; but the attitude of the Academy in refusing to
admit women to the full rewards of excellence, in withholding the coveted honor
of the Associate Royal Academician and Royal Academician, where there is no
question as to merit, is parallel with the conservatism of the Universities. It
is, of course, an expression of human limitation, but where the whole political
and educational system has been devised by men for men, in which justice and
fair dealing toward women are still [-78-] an after
thought, one cannot censure its defects with too much severity. Where custom has
been fixed for centuries, rooted in the very soil, it is difficult to displace
the old and establish the new, whatever the claims of the latter to the approval
of a wise and more tolerant generation. But that justice will prevail, that
tremendous reforms have been already achieved cannot be disputed, and there are
many thousands who agree with the Head-Master of one of the great Public Schools
who said in a public address: "it is the part of wisdom to confer as a
favor that which, ultimately, will be exacted as a right."