Miss CHITTENDEN. The foreigner who comes to this country must live here five years. The wife of the naturalized American need only live in New York one year before she becomes a voter. If suffrage is extended to women in New York State and you ask the foreign men to live here five years before you think they are qualified to vote, why should you only oblige the foreign women to live here one year before allowing them to exercise the full privileges of voting?

We claim that it is for the voters of New York State themselves to determine whether governmental conditions in that State will be improved by adding over 2,000,000 votes to the present electorate of nearly 3,000,000. This is not a question to be decided for New York by the legislatures of 36 other States, which might possibly vote for a Federal constitutional amendment to extend the suffrage to all the women in all the States.

Mr. DYER. I believe it was stated this morning that the question of suffrage for women is to be voted on in New York State next year. Is that the fact?

Miss CHITTENDEN. In 1915, probably, the amendment will be brought before the voters of New York, so that they may vote upon it. Mr. DYER. Did I understand that your position is that that is the proper course to be taken?

Miss CHITTENDEN. That is the proper course.

Mr. DYER. What position did your organization take?

Miss CHITTENDEN. Our New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage took the position at the Republican convention at Saratoga in 1913 and later at the Democratic convention at Syracuse that the time had come in New York State when the question should be submitted to the voters at the polls, and we withdrew our opposition to the passage of the woman-suffrage constitutional amendment by the Legislature of New York State. It went through the legislature last year without the slightest opposition from our association. Mr. NELSON. If you favored the people of New York State having the right to vote upon that question, why not let the people of the other States do the same thing?

Miss CHITTENDEN. Why should the peopel of other States decide the question of suffrage in New York State, when the Federal Constitution leaves the regulation of suffrage to each State?

But leaving aside the question of the alien woman voter, are we going to strengthen or weaken our Government by admitting women to the electorate and according them full political authority without full political responsibility?

Has it ever occurred to you, gentlemen, that the vote of women might initiate policies which might plunge this county into war? Herbert Spencer says in his book on Social Ethics:

Unless, therefore, women furnish a contingent to the Army and Navy such as men furnish it is manifest that, ethically considered, the question of equal political so-called rights of women can not be entertained until there is reached a state of permanent peace.

Suppose, on the other hand, that women voted against a war policy which had been adopted in order to save the Nation from dishonor. Upon whom would then devolve the task of reestablishing the honor of the State?

Has not the State been built up by man? Are not its institutions, its commerce, its industries dependent in the last resort upon the strength and courage of men? Therefore the real responsibility of maintaining the State rests with men. Does not law become enfeebled unless there is knowledge that there is force back of it?

We are told that woman can fight. But should they? Is a fighting Amazon or an abusive, self-asserting Xantippe a high ideal of womanhood? The wise State recognizes that woman's strength must be conserved for the great work she only can do for the State, and therefore keeps her off the firing line by exempting her from governmental and political responsibility.

Mr. DYER. If women had the right to vote, do you not believe they would exercise that right for peace to a greater extent than men would, speaking of war? Is it not a fact that women are more in favor of keeping peace with foreign nations than men are?

Mr. CHITTENDEN. That may be theoretically so; I do not know that we have any practical illustrations to show that it is so.

Mr. DYER. Do you not think that the women of the North and the South did as great service for the respective causes for which the men fought in 1861-1865 as did the men themselves?

Mr. CHITTENDEN. How about the French Revolution? not think the women played a large part in that?

Do you

The application of democratic principles is frequently brought into a discussion of this question of woman suffrage. We are told that it is contrary to democracy to withhold suffrage from women. But in the fervor of extolling democracy two points are overlooked: First, that, while our Government may be a democracy in a popular sense, it is not one as a political mechanism, and, secondly, democracy is more than a government; it is a spirit of life, which, in its unfoldment and development, comes to a realization of the great brotherhood of man. We may double our electorate by giving every woman a vote or by giving two votes to every man, and we will not get one bit more democracy, but in so far as woman is developing this spirit in the minds of the future citizens she is doing her part toward building up a better and more enduring State.

And then we must not forget that the real aim of democracy is to obliterate arbitrary and artificial distinctions. Democracy does not attempt to efface distinctions which nature has created. And who shall deny that nature has created a difference between the male and the female? We can not accept the dictum that woman suffrage is a great step in woman's progress, as we are sometimes told, when we recognize that the increasing tendency on the part of woman to assume the responsibilities and activities of man is at distinct variance with two natural laws.

First, the essential and intended difference in sex activity, and, second, the great law of evolution, which teaches us that the development of the race has been a continuous growth in civilization. The history of civilization shows that as civilization advances the respective functions of men and women are more definitely developed and subtle differences of temperament or nature are more pronounced. A recognition of this difference does not imply superiority of one sex or the inferiority of the other, for in this dualism of human life one supplies what the other lacks.

The very differentiation of the functions of man and woman has developed in all these ages, a differentiation of temperament which is reflected in the manner in which they do their work. A woman

does her work through sympathy; a man does his work through action; a woman through her instincts; and a man through reason. When a woman attempts to fight with a man's weapons she is almost sure to be defeated.

Does woman need the ballot? Has she needed it? Turn back the pages of history for 50 or 60 years and see the changes that have taken place in woman's position in this country during that period. Under the old common law, which we inherited from England, woman suffered from many legal disabilities, but these have been removed in most of the States until to-day woman stands superior to man in the eyes of the law in many respects.

Woman has had a chance to enter the fields of higher education, the professions, and the industries. All these things have opened up to her without the ballot. If it were known to-morrow that no woman would vote except in the States where woman suffrage already prevails not a single activity in which woman is now engaged would be curtailed in any way; neither would her influence be lessened. She has not needed the ballot to reach her present state of development, and she does not need it to develop her still further.

I deny absolutely that the antisuffragists are on the negative side of the woman-suffrage question. We are in the entrenched position from which the others are trying to drive us. The burden of proof is with them, and they have not proved yet that woman needs the ballot to do her work in the world, and neither have they proved to anyone's satisfaction, except their own, that they have accomplished anything in the States where they have had the ballot which has not been accomplished in the States where only men vote.

A man in public life here in Washington-and it may be one of the gentlemen sitting before me on this committee now, because I have never been able to fix a name to this quotation, so some of you may recognize the quotation, which is from a public man here in Washington. This man said, two or three years ago, in regard to the subject of woman suffrage, "Somewhere within the borders of this country to-day there are mothers who are bringing up 4 Presidents, 100 Cabinet officers, 300 Senators, and 5,000 Representatives who between the years of 1930 and 1950 will be making the history of this country and, measurably, the history of the world. Woman can have her share in politics if she will. The ballot is not all. The mere ballot she is so eager to clutch does not in the balance of politics count for more than an ounce in a ton."

I thank you very much, gentlemen, for giving me your attention. Mrs. DODGE. Mr. Chairman, in addition to our organizations opposed to woman suffrage-and we have had them for several yearsthere have recently been formed in several of the States men's leagues. There is one in Boston and one in New York and now nine others in different States. When we go into a campaign it is quite natural that we should turn to the men for cooperation.

We are also forming wage earners' leagues, according to the demands in the various States, and this first one has been formed in New York.

I now want to introduce to the committee as the next speaker Miss Marjorie Dorman, the secretary of the Wage Earners' Antisuffrage League of New York.

STATEMENT OF MISS MARJORIE DORMAN, SECRETARY OF THE WAGE EARNERS' ANTISUFFRAGE LEAGUE OF NEW YORK.

Miss DORMAN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, representing as I do an organization of self-supporting women, my approach to the question of woman suffrage must necessarily be a practical one. Our town and city governments are large public business corporations formed for the purpose of transacting civic affairs by means of the public funds. Women, as compared with men, have had but little experience in private or trust or corporate business affairs. In the Report on Statistics of Women at Work issued by the Department of Commerce and Labor through the Bureau of the Census in 1907, it is stated that while 90 per cent of the males of 16 years of age and over in this country are wage earners, only 20 per cent of the females of 16 years of age and over are engaged in any kind of gainful pursuits. So long as this relative inexperience of women in business affairs continues and unless the home is to be neglected, gentlemen, it must always continue-it is not to be expected that the combined votes of men and women will give as good results as the votes of men alone. As an organization of business women, the Wage Earners' Antisuffrage League maintains that the rights and property of all citizens, female as well as male, are more intelligently cared for at present than would be the case if women were added to the electorate. So much for the effect of the votes of women upon the general welfare.

Considering the question as to whether or not the ballot would confer any individual and material benefit upon the 20 per cent of women in industrial and professional life, we have only to recall the fact that millions of male voters are out of work in this country today to realize the absurdity of such a question. Nevertheless, the belief that the ballot would materially aid the women who toil leads many estimable but illogical women to join the suffrage movement. We realize, however, that the ballot does not control the laws of supply and demand, and that education and personal efficiency are the only methods leading to individual success.

Relative to the 20 per cent of women who are bread winners in this country, it is interesting to note that 40 per cent of them are engaged in personal and domestic service. Therefore my sex, without the medium of the ballot, already possesses the power to effect beneficent changes in the lines of nearly half the women who toil in the United States. Moreover, 23 per cent of this 20 per cent are under voting age. Hundreds of thousands of girls enter the industries at 14 and 16 years of age and leave them to enter homes of their own before they are 21. Women's relation to labor markets of the world is transient and accidental, not permanent like that of man. It has been stated by suffragists that we working women need the ballot in order to secure adequate laws for our protection. Since only one woman in every five is a working woman, and since force of numbers control all elections, it would be difficult for the 25 per cent of working women to outvote the 90 per cent of working men or to

obtain any legislation favorable to themselves without the aid of men's votes. This statement, that working women must vote in order to obtain juster legislation is, moreover, a libel on American manhood, which American women are quick to resent.

The moment women entered the industries and attempted to become the economic competitors of men they at the same time became an object of solicitude to the general public. We also resent the constant attempts made by the suffragists to exploit the working girl and to use her as an excuse for their own self-seeking propaganda.

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Every labor law which men have placed on the statute books of this country is a blanket law and protects the woman who toils besides the man. Such laws, like the splendid employers' liability law which was recently passed in New York State, read "all employees,' any employee," "every employee," "no employee." There is nowhere to be found any law which discriminates against working women in favor of workingmen. On the contrary, in every section of the country, but particularly in the East, special sex legislation has been and is devised which discriminates against the workingman in favor of the working woman-and this has been effected by the men themselves, gentlemen. The workingmen of this country have given the working women every protection possessed by themselves, plus numerous laws by which they, on the contrary, are not protected. Already the abolition of night work for women is assured in several States (none of them suffrage States). It must be abolished in all States. It can never be abolished for men. Certain dangerous occupations such as the running of elevators, the cleaning and oiling of heavy machinery, the handling of explosives, etc., are prohibited to women of some States. These should be prohibited to women in every civilized country. The same is true of all occupations requiring constant standing. Provision for seats for female employees in stores and shops has been made by the laws of numerous States, but men neither ask nor receive such protection. Women have obtained some sort of minimum-wage legislation in one form or another in many other States. Men have never secured a minimum wage. Moreover, in minimum States the votes of men have given us an 8, 9, or 10-hour day in occupations in which men's hours are not so limited. Thus, without the vote, working women have obtained protective laws which men, with the vote, have not secured. The suffragists, when they demand legal equality for men and women, are the worst enemies possessed by the working woman to-day. It is because working women realize this fact that they are organizing against woman suffrage. Since the organization of the Wage Earners' AntiSuffrage League in New York three months ago, we have received requests from many States that we establish branches there. Ninety per cent of the 12,000 members of the New Jersey Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage are self-supporting women.

Far from wishing to abrogate these laws which discriminate in favor of working women and so place the workingman and woman on a legal equality, we seek still greater protection and privilege from the law for women in every occupation. It is obviously impossible, for the sake of future generations, that the law abolish the distinctions hitherto made between the strength of men and the weakness of women. Honorable women, however, can not confront abstract