264

The Nation

[Vol. 111,No. 2879

e Vote?
By STELLA CROSSLEY DALJORD

NE of the most important results of the long suffrage

fight just ended is the education in the fundamentals
of American social life t h a t thousands of women have received. We have learned as much, perhaps more, in seeking
the vote as we shall learn for a long time in using it. For
nothinghasbrought
so many women of different classes
together on a common workingbasis a s suffrage.True,
the women who work long hours and the poor with large
families have had little time for the
active suffrage work
done by those with some margin of leisure; but in the campaigns, with their widely conducted house-to-house canvass,
we have come to know each other a s we could not otherwise,
and have had our eyes opened to the economic struggle in
these United States. We havelearned
to throw to the
winds the things we have been told and to reason first hand
fromour own observations. It is likely, therefore, that
a large share of the energy formerly in suffrage work will
be redirected intothe channels of the labor movement.
This is particularly true of the younger sufTrage worker.
Not so long ago, after her feminist baptism of fire, she
was convinced that the ills chiefly afflicting the community
were the gross inequalities of women. T-hese adjusted, she
believed, with women having a voice in government, that
wars would be avoided, social evils remedied and the world
generally a fitter place to live in.
But after campaigning in cities, small towns, and outlying rural districts, she begins to have grave doubts about
the feminist program as a panacea for social ills, or even
for the ills of women. She begins to see that perhaps the
feminist program of readjustment should be but a part of
a larger,moreembracingprogram
of economic readjustment. Just Votes for Womenma.y not amount t o much,
but the votes of women cast intelligently in the struggle
againstthepresent
sick economic ordermay make considerable difference.
Perhaps thissame youngwoman has worked f o r suffrage in
mill town. Most mill towns are much alike. Here isone with
a population of thirteen or fourteen
thousand and, per capita,
a very rich town, but the suffrage worker learns that most
of the wealth is in the hands of a score of the towns families, while the vast majorityof the folks, who do most of the
work to produce this wealth, live in poverty and dirt. Sometimes this majority, who-according to the stated rules of
democracy as the suffrageworkerlearnedthemin
school
and the Declaration of Independence-should have some say
as t o how things should be in their
town, hasprotested
against insufficient wages and unsanitary housing; but ugly
things have been done t o them when they have spoken for
themselves, though their protests have all been of
peacefulsort; and at present the Mayor,usually one of the
large manufacturers and millionaires of the town, will not
even allow the workingmen to parade. It might lead to
trouble, trouble, really meaning changing the status quo
in the little town which is very comfortable for the handful
of its first families.
When the suffrage worker watches the several thousand
of women mill workers come out of the mills a t night, the
older ones withered and bent, the younger ones with some

of the -bloom, that the mill will soon steal,still on their

cheeks ; when she reflects that virtually all of these women
are working for a wage f a r below the minimum of decent
living,sherealizes
that perhapsmere votes will not help
so materiallyintheir
lives after all. Somethingmore is
needed. In her suffrage canvass this ardent young worker
comes across the wife of a mill worker, mother of seven
children, five of them unwanted, bendmg over a wash tub
in a grimy house, and cheerily gives this hopeless woman a
Better Babies leaflet as an argument forsuffrage,but
the woman, unbending from the wash tub, saysquerulously:
[Babies-aw, babies ! Cunnin babies, yesay!
Ive had
seven 0 them cunnin thingsand Im sickand tired of
em. Id like to know some way of not havin any more and
how tofeed them Ive got! Again the suffrageworker
begins t o doubt whethermere votes will help. She goes
home from her days work discouraged and a t sea. She has
been face to face that day with the bare and ugly struggle
for existence in a world that the ma.jority of women in
America face; and votes do not seem of such great moment.
In the larger citieswhere she has done organization work
in the Polish section, the Italian section, and the Jewish section, sherealizes, from her intimate contactwith
the women folk of these would-begood Americans, something of the cant of so-called Americanization work. She
feels that true Americanization work would be the Golden
Rule applied t o those men and women of other countrieswho
come to our shores, not the exploitation of their labor that
usually takes place. She learns from the tired women with
whom shehasspent
her day that teachingforeigners
American ways should begin with paying them wages that
will allow them to cultivate American ways.
And the campaigner incountrydistrictshas
gained a
sympatheticunderstanding of herruralsister
whom she
may have regarded with impatience heretofore. She knows
she, too, would be dumb, inarticulate and sometimes hopeless if she started the day at four oclock, took care of six
children, four hired hands, ten cows, and seventy-five chickens, all with her two hands.
Or perhaps campaigning in the South the suffrage worker
isbroughtfacetofacewiththegravenational
problem
of gross injustice and cruelty to the Negro. She is told that
i t is
right to talk of suffrage for white women, but she
must pretend that Negro women will be kept from the vote
as have the Negro men. She may have even witnessed the
orgy of a lynching. She realizes that asking for votes f o r
women on the ground of democracy is a farce if, in the same
breath, that democracy is denied the fellow American with
a darker skin.
It is likely that manysuffrageworkers
will turnthe
energies, reIeased from suffrage work, into reform work of
a mild sort; but among the younger ones many of marked
ability, genius for organization, and political acumen, especially in the militant group, will plunge deeply into the
economic movement. Many of them, intheStates where
suffrage exists, have done so already and more will follow,
Most of them are by nature rebels. And the influence they
may wield with their large following of new voters, will be
considerable.