Anthony / Cady Stanton / Gage An Introduction to the History of Women's Suffrage

1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-913724-84-9
Verlag: Renard Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

In 1881, three writers and rights activists, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, came together to publish the first volume in their groundbreaking History of Woman Suffrage series - a series that eventually went on to fill 5700 pages and lend weight to a movement that changed the course of history for ever. Taking its dedication from the first volume of the History - to the memory of pioneering women whose 'earnest lives and fearless words have been, in the preparation of these pages, a constant inspiration' - this volume collects together four essays that give an insight into the work as a whole, and provide a rounded introduction to the history of women's suffrage on both sides of the Atlantic.

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) was a writer and activist who was pivotal in the women's suffrage movement in America, best remembered today for the six-volume encyclopaedia series she produced in collaboration with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Ida Husted Harper, History of Woman Suffrage.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Anthony, Susan B.

Cady Stanton, Elizabeth

Gage, Matilda Joslyn

Fawcett, Millicent

Husted Harper, Ida

Leseproben

preceding causes

As civilisation advances there is a continual change in the standard of human rights. In barbarous ages the right of the strongest was the only one recognised; but as mankind progressed in the arts and sciences intellect began to triumph over brute force. Change is a law of life, and the development of society a natural growth. Although to this law we owe the discoveries of unknown worlds, the inventions of machinery, swifter modes of travel and clearer ideas as to the value of human life and thought, yet each successive change has met with the most determined opposition. Fortunately, progress is not the result of pre-arranged plans of individuals, but is born of a fortuitous combination of circumstances that compel certain results, overcoming the natural inertia of mankind. There is a certain enjoyment in habitual sluggishness, in rising each morning with the same ideas as the night before, in retiring each night with the thoughts of the morning. This inertia of mind and body has ever held the multitude in chains. Thousands have thus surrendered their most sacred rights of conscience. In all periods of human development, thinking has been punished as a crime, which is reason sufficient to account for the general passive resignation of the masses to their conditions and environments.

Again, ‘subjection to the powers that be’ has been the lesson of both Church and State, throttling science, checking invention, crushing free thought, persecuting and torturing those who have dared to speak or act outside of established authority. Anathemas and the stake have upheld the Church, banishment and the scaffold the throne, and the freedom of mankind has ever been sacrificed to the idea of protection. So entirely has the human will been enslaved in all classes of society in the past that monarchs have humbled themselves to popes, nations have knelt at the feet of monarchs and individuals have sold themselves to others under the subtle promise of ‘protection’ – a word that simply means release from all responsibility, all use of one’s own faculties – a word that has ever blinded people to its true significance. Under authority and this false promise of ‘protection’, self-reliance, the first incentive to freedom, has not only been lost, but the aversion of mankind for responsibility has been fostered by the few whose greater bodily strength, superior intellect or the inherent law of self-development has impelled to active exertion. Obedience and self-sacrifice – the virtues prescribed for subordinate classes, and which naturally grow out of their condition – are alike opposed to the theory of individual rights and self-government. But as even the inertia of mankind is not proof against the internal law of progress, certain beliefs have been inculcated, certain crimes invented, in order to intimidate the masses. Hence the Church made free thought the worst of sins and the spirit of inquiry the worst of blasphemies, while the State proclaimed her temporal power of divine origin, and all rebellion high treason alike to God and the king, to be speedily and severely punished. In this union of Church and State mankind touched the lowest depth of degradation. As late as the time of Bunyan* the chief doctrine inculcated from the pulpit was obedience to the temporal power.

All these influences fell with crushing weight on woman; more sensitive, helpless and imaginative, she suffered a thousand fears and wrongs where man did one. Lecky, in his History of Rationalism in Europe,* shows that the vast majority of the victims of fanaticism and witchcraft, burned, drowned and tortured, were women. Guizot, in his History of Civilisation,* while decrying the influence of caste in India, and deploring it as the result of barbarism, thanks God there is no system of caste in Europe – ignoring the fact that, in all its dire and baneful effects, the caste of sex everywhere exists, creating diverse codes of morals for men and women, diverse penalties for crime, diverse industries, diverse religions and educational rights, and diverse relations to the Government. Men are the Brahmans, women the Pariahs* under our existing civilisation. Herbert Spencer’s Descriptive Sociology of England,* an epitome of English history, says: ‘Our laws are based on the all-sufficiency of man’s rights, and society exists today for woman only in so far as she is in the keeping of some man.’ Thus society, including our systems of jurisprudence, civil and political theories, trade, commerce, education, religion, friendships and family life, has all been framed on the sole idea of man’s rights. Hence, he takes upon himself the responsibility of directing and controlling the powers of woman, under that all-sufficient excuse of tyranny, ‘divine right’. This same cry of divine authority created the castes of India; has for ages separated its people into bodies with different industrial, educational, civil, religious and political rights; has maintained this separation for the benefit of the superior class, and sedulously taught the doctrine that any change in existing conditions would be a sin of most direful magnitude.

The opposition of theologians, though first to be exhibited when any change is proposed, for reason that change not only takes power from them, but lessens the reverence of mankind for them, is not in its final result so much to be feared as the opposition of those holding political power. The Church, knowing this, has in all ages aimed to connect itself with the State. Political freedom guarantees religious liberty, freedom to worship God according to the dictates of one’s own conscience, fosters a spirit of inquiry, creates self-reliance, induces a feeling of responsibility.

The people who demand authority for every thought and action, who look to others for wisdom and protection, are those who perpetuate tyranny. The thinkers and actors who find their authority within are those who inaugurate freedom. Obedience to outside authority to which woman has everywhere been trained has not only dwarfed her capacity, but made her a retarding force in civilisation, recognised at last by statesmen as a dangerous element to free institutions. A recent writer, speaking of Turkey, says: ‘All attempts for the improvement of that nation must prove futile, owing to the degradation of its women; and their elevation is hopeless, so long as they are taught by their religion that their condition is ordained of Heaven.’* Gladstone, in one of his pamphlets on the revival of Catholicism in England, says: ‘The spread of this religion is due, as might be expected, to woman;’* thus conceding in both cases her power to block the wheels of progress. Hence, in the scientific education of woman, in the training of her faculties to independent thought and logical reasoning, lies the hope of the future.

The two great sources of progress are intellect and wealth. Both represent power, and are the elements of success in life. Education frees the mind from the bondage of authority and makes the individual self-asserting. Remunerative industry is the means of securing to its possessor wealth and education, transforming the labourer to the capitalist. Work in itself is not power; it is but the means to an end. The slave is not benefited by his industry; he does not receive the results of his toil; his labour enriches another – adds to the power of his master to bind his chains still closer. Although woman has performed much of the labour of the world, her industry and economy have been the very means of increasing her degradation. Not being free, the results of her labour have gone to build up and sustain the very class that has perpetuated this injustice. Even in the family, where we should naturally look for the truest conditions, woman has always been robbed of the fruits of her own toil. The influence the Catholic Church has had on religious free thought, that monarchies have had on political free thought, that serfdom has had upon free labour, have all been cumulative in the family upon woman. Taught that father and husband stood to her in the place of God, she has been denied liberty of conscience and held in obedience to masculine will. Taught that the fruits of her industry belonged to others, she has seen man enter into every avocation most suitable to her, while she, the uncomplaining drudge of the household, condemned to the severest labour, has been systematically robbed of her earnings, which have gone to build up her master’s power, and she has found herself in the condition of the slave, deprived of the...