Address by Chief Justice Walter Clark Before the Federation of Women's 
Clubs, New Bern, N. C., 8 May, 1913: The Legal Status of Women in North 
Carolina: Past, Present, and Prospective

Published: 1913

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                                 ADDRESS
                                    BY
                        CHIEF JUSTICE WALTER CLARK
                                BEFORE THE
                        FEDERATION OF WOMEN'S CLUBS
                        NEW BERN, N.C., 8 MAY, 1913
               THE LEGAL STATUS OF WOMEN IN NORTH CAROLINA:
                      PAST, PRESENT, AND PROSPECTIVE.


   Ladies of the Federation:--I appreciate the high compliment of being 
asked to address you on this occasion. When Edmund Burke, the great orator 
of the House of Commons in England, came to address the student body at 
the University of Edinburgh, he faltered, hesitated, and stood speechless. 
You may imagine, therefore, the embarrassment of a mere man in being asked 
to appear before this audience.

   You are to be congratulated that your sessions are held in this 
beautiful, hospitable, and historic city, the city of De Graffenried, the 
home of William Gaston, and the Athens of North Carolina. But for the 
discrimination against our towns by the railroad systems in this State to 
the extent of many millions of dollars annually, New Bern would now 
doubtless have 50 to 75 thousand inhabitants. Whatever may be said against 
Woman's Suffrage, it is certain that if the women of our State had a share 
in its government they would not have tamely submitted, as the men have 
done, to this oppression, with the resultant dwarfing of our towns, the 
depression of our business interests, and the injury to our farmers.

   The subject on which I have been requested to speak to you does not 
admit of rhetoric or well rounded periods. In truth, it is one which 
requires the admission of shortcomings and apologies on the part of those 
who have prescribed the legal status of your sex.

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   What I shall say to you will be necessarily dry and uninteresting, for 
you have asked a lawyer to talk to you about law, and they are always 
prosy--to other people. They make it lively for one another.

   The present status of women, imperfect and in many respects still 
unjust, is an evolution. It has been attained by the slow, gradual uplift 
of humanity, which having raised the masses of men to happier conditions, 
could not fail to alleviate somewhat the condition of the other half of 
the race.

   The legal status of women under the common law may be briefly stated. 
It was simply that of a slave. A married woman under the common law owned 
no property, except after the death of her husband. She could make no 
contracts, not even for necessaries and not even with the consent of her 
husband. She could not will or devise her property. Upon her marriage the 
husband and the wife became one--and that one was the husband. He was 
master, the wife was a nonentity. The moment she married, he became 
entitled to all her personal property. He was entitled to the rents and 
profits of her real estate, which he could sell for his lifetime, or it 
could be sold for his debts. If she died, the husband still possessed the 
right to the rents and profits of all her realty for the rest of his life, 
while at his death she received only a child's part of his personalty and 
a life right, called a dower, in only one-third of his realty, and for a 
long time under North Carolina law she could be deprived of even this, 
for, if he chose, he could sell his realty without her consent and deprive 
her of dower. She could not appoint a guardian for her children even when 
she outlived her husband.

   As to her personal rights, the married woman came under the absolute 
control of her husband, who could chastise her if he saw fit, provided the 
chastisement inflicted no permanent injury. The reason given for this by 
Judge Pearson as late as 1868 was that it was the husband's duty to "make 
the wife behave herself," and if he beat her without good cause it was 
held that the courts would not punish him, because it was too small a 
matter to take notice of, unless she was permanently injured. The reason 
seems to be worse than the decision. The husband had the right to imprison 
his wife, and if in her terror she was 

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driven to take his life, she was guilty of petty treason, as was a slave 
who took the life of his master, and the penalty as to both was to be 
burned alive at the stake. This last law was not repealed in North 
Carolina till 1793, and even after the Revolution, in Iredell County a 
widow was thus "drawn and burned at the stake" for the murder of her 
husband. There were doubtless other cases if the records have not been 
destroyed by the lapse of time. This was the law in England for many 
centuries.

   This condition of married women was not created by any legislative 
body, but was made entirely by judicial decisions, that is, by the "common 
law," which was simply "judge-made" law, and this was implicitly followed 
by the courts of this State down to 1848, when the first change was made 
by statute, which provided that as to women married thereafter, their real 
estate could not be sold by the husband nor for his debts.

   In 1868 our Constitution contained a new provision, in accordance with 
enlightened legislation in England, and in most of our sister states, 
which was intended to emancipate married women by providing that 
henceforward a married woman should own her property as fully as if she 
had remained single; that she might will it, and that she could sell her 
personalty, but it was still required that she must get the written assent 
of her husband to convey her realty. This last restriction still holds in 
this State, though it was abolished in England and nearly everywhere else 
30 years ago.

   Up to the Constitution of 1868, the property and personal rights of 
married women in North Carolina had remained substantially as Shakespeare, 
who was a fairly good lawyer, stated the law of England to be in his day 
when he made Petruchio say of his wife (Taming of the Shrew, Act II, se. 
2): 

"I will be master of what is; mine own. 
 She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, 
 My household stuff, my field, my barn, 
 My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything."

   The famous John Stuart Mill, in his work on the "Subjection of Women," 
said that under the English law the legal status of a wife was that of "a 
personal body servant of a despot," and that her actual treatment was 
better than her legal position, 

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because men were better than the law on this subject, and that the power 
of public opinion forced even bad men to act better than the decisions of 
the courts permitted them to do. At Manchester, England, in 1856, occurred 
an instance which had a powerful effect in revolutionizing the law as to 
the property rights of women. A husband having failed in business, his 
wife went into the millinery business and not only supported him and their 
children, but accumulated quite in estate. He died, leaving all that she 
had made to his illegitimate children, and she had to start life again 
without a dollar for herself and children. This under the "common law"--
the judge-made law of - England he was fully entitled to do, for her 
earnings were his property. Public opinion was aroused and soon forced the 
enactment of a statute which gave to married women their property of all 
kinds and their earnings. Our Constitution of 1868 did the same. Yet as 
construed by our courts, the wife was still denied her earnings, which 
until the statute passed this year belonged to her husband, and such an 
instance as that at Manchester which aroused the conscience of England and 
compelled Parliament to overrule the decision of the courts would have 
been legal in this State.

   If conditions becoming intolerable, a wife left her husband, at common 
law be had the unquestioned right to bring her back by force, like any 
other runaway slave. About twenty years ago, in the famous "Clitheroe
case," this was done, but the highest court in England, without any change 
by statute, reformed the common law and set the woman free. Old-fashioned 
lawyers were shocked, and asserted that this was the end of marriage; but 
the prophesied evil has not materialized.

   The intention of the Constitution of 1868 to emancipate women fully as 
to their property rights was as clear as the English language could make 
it. But, unfortunately, it had to be construed by judges who bad been 
raised up in the old belief as to the total incapacity of married women. 
The common-law idea was that the wife was the chattel, the property, of 
her husband. The judges raised up in that idea construed the Constitution 
as nearly as possible into the likeness of that which had been. It was a 
case of "putting new wine into old bottles." It 

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is no impeachment of the ability or honesty of the judges to say this. The 
same contest between the judges and the new Constitutions went on all over 
the country, and is well described by Chief Justice Thatcher of Colorado 
in Wells v. Caywood, 3 Col., 491. He said: "The courts, which have ever 
been conservative have always been inclined to check with an unsparing 
hand any attempted departure from the principles of our law which were 
borrowed from England, and have regarded the enactments enlarging the 
rights of married women as a violent innovation and have construed them in 
a spirit so narrow and illiberal as to almost entirely defeat their 
intention. But succeeding legislatures have reasserted, in a more 
unequivocal form, the same principles which the court had before expounded 
almost out of existence."

   It has taken act after act of our Legislature to secure to married 
women the rights which were conferred on them by the Constitution of 1868, 
and they have not yet quite reached the full enjoyment of the rights given 
them by that Constitution. The Constitution provided that all the property 
to which a married woman after marriage might become in any manner 
entitled "should be and remain the sole and separate estate and property 
of such female." Yet the courts placidly proceeded to hold that the 
earnings from her needle, or cooking, or other wise acquired by her labor 
should nevertheless become absolutely the property of her husband, and 
that she could not sue for it. It was not til this year that this was 
revoked by the Legislature giving a married woman the right to her 
earnings and to recover for her own use damages for injuries to her 
person. This law was passed at the instance of Senator V. S. Bryant and J. 
Frank Ray in the House. Another act passed a few years ago authorized her 
to appoint, after the death of her husband, a guardian for her children.

   It was not until 1911 that an act, passed by the efforts of Senator 
Julius C. Martin of Buncombe, authorized her to make contracts, tho for 
more than 40 years the Constitution had decreed that she should possess 
the sole control, of her property. An act of the Legislature which had 
been brought over from former times, provided that a married woman could 
contract for necessaries, 

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etc., without the assent of her husband, and thereupon the courts created 
a Judge-made statute that a married woman could not contract for anything 
else, even with the assent of her husband except in writing specially 
charging her property. This was without a line of a statute to authorize 
it, and was directly against the purport of the constitutional provision. 
It required a statute in 1891 to allow a married woman to check her own 
money out of bank, tho the Constitution had nearly 25 years before 
guaranteed to married women the absolute control of their property as 
fully as if they had remained single. It was also held (in S. v. Jones, 
132 N. C., 1043) that notwithstanding this constitutional right, a husband 
of bad character could go into a house his wife was renting out and by his 
conduct and character prevent her renting it. Yet they say women do not 
need the suffrage to secure statutes guarding their rights.

   As to the personal rights of married women, I have already mentioned 
that one was burned at the stake as late as 1787, in this State. As late 
is 1868 it was held by our Supreme Court that if a husband whipped his 
wife with a switch no larger than his thumb he could not be punished. 
Once, in England, when a judge held this, the ladies sent to get the 
measurement of his Honor's thumb. In 1874 Judge Settle in S. v. Oliver, 70 
N. C., 60, declared that this State had "advanced from that barbarism." No 
statute had ever given a man the right to thrash his wife with a switch of 
any kind. It was created by the judges in England centuries ago, whose 
decisions, as I have said, constitute what is called "the common law" 
which you hear lawyers talk about so much. Our North Carolina judges 
followed this without any statute until Judge Settle, also without any 
statute, wisely and justly said that we could no longer be so barbarous. 
But that did not end the matter. In 1886 the Court reverted to the former 
barbarism, and held in S. v. Edens, 95 N. C., 693, that a husband was not 
indictable for an assault upon his wife unless he put her life in peril or 
inflicted permanent injury or was prompted by a malicious or revengeful 
spirit. Notwithstanding this last qualification, the Court proceeded to 
hold that he could not be punished for maliciously slandering and 
destroying the good name of his wife. 

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In 1908 the matter again came up in S. v. Fulton, 149 N. C., 485, when 
three of the Court, following the decision in S. v. Edens, held that a man 
could not be punished for maliciously destroying the character of his wife 
by slandering her. Two of the judges (one of them the accomplished judge 
who now presides over the U. S. Court for this district) held that there 
was no exception in our statute which would exempt such a rascal from 
punishment. One of the three judges, however, held that hereafter such 
conduct of the husband should be punished in North Carolina, but that 
Fulton was exempt because he had a "vested right" to slander his wife 
under the previous decisions of the Court. It looks more like a "vested 
wrong." It is, however, by this narrow margin that the good women of this 
State achieved judicial permission to be protected in future against false 
and infamous slanders on the part of a husband who has taken an obligation 
at the altar to "love, cherish, and protect."

   As matters now stand in North Carolina, married women have thus at last 
obtained from the courts the assurance that they can no longer be thrashed 
or slandered with impunity by a brute who is called husband. As to their 
property rights, while they have not yet achieved the full measure of the 
control of their property given them by the Constitution of 1868, they 
have been empowered by acts of the Legislature, overruling the decisions 
of the Court, to make contracts of all kinds; to sue for and recover their 
personal earnings and damages for injuries to themselves or their 
property, and appoint guardians of their children after the death of their 
husbands. Tho contested at one time, it is no longer denied that they can 
convey their personalty at will, give checks upon funds in banks, devise 
and bequeath their property--all this without the consent of their 
husbands--and that they can convey realty with the written assent of the 
husband, and this assent has been dispensed with by act of the Legislature 
when the husband is a lunatic, idiot, or has abandoned her. But the Court 
has recently held that, the of age herself, she cannot convey her own 
property at all if the husband is a minor, and they have held by a vote of 
3 to 2 that she is not a "freeholder," no matter how much real estate she 
owns, within the meaning of a statute which requires a petition for an 
election to levy a tax or assessment upon her 

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property. In most of the other states she now votes, and not merely 
petitions, upon all such propositions.

   At common law, to avoid imposing capital punishment, which at one time 
was prescribed for 204 offenses, a man, however illiterate, was permitted 
to plead "benefit of clergy," that is, that be could read, and therefore 
was presumably a clergyman, and hence was exempt from punishment by death 
for most of these offenses. But a woman was never allowed to save her life 
in this way, on the technical ground that a woman could not be a 
clergyman. Yet, my Lord Coke said that "woman was a favorite of the common 
law"!

   When they burnt and drowned witches in Massachusetts and elsewhere the 
"witch" was always a woman, never a man. We still hear from anti-
suffragists of the "witchery of woman."

   Moreover, at common law it was a crime to abduct an heir, but no crime 
to abduct a woman or girl against her will for immoral purposes; nor is it 
yet a crime in this State, unless she is married, and even then she is 
disqualified as a witness.

   In this State there still prevails a gross difference as to the grounds 
of divorce. One act of infidelity on the part of the wife entitles the 
husband to a divorce, but his unfaithfulness must be habitual. Those who 
care to learn the discrimination have but to read the cases of Everton v. 
Everton, 50 -N. C., 202, and Miller v. Miller 78 N. C., 102, to be 
enlightened and very much astonished.

   Long in advance of our tardy bestowal of property rights upon married 
women it had been given them even in Russia, and it may surprise yon still 
more to learn that, tho under the Mohammedan religion it is held that 
women have no souls, yet 1,200 years before we gave our women all equality 
of property rights with the men, it was guaranteed to their women by 
Mohammed in the Koran. You will remember that he was not a Turk, but from 
the fierce, free wilds of Arabia, and that he owed his start in his 
career, like some other men, to the wealth and the wisdom of his wife. 
This feature of his laws still obtains in the Mohammedan world and is a 
tower of strength. It is their check upon the man's power to divorce his 
wife at will. The weakness of their system is in the seclusion of women, 
of whose aid they are thus deprived. It has been well said that 

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the result in the late Balkan war was due to the freedom, the education, 
and the practical cooperation of the women among the allies and the lack 
of it among the Turks.

   Among the Romans, 1,700 years ago, married women controlled their civil 
property, and further back this was true among the Hebrews. You will 
recall instances lit the Old Testament, among them this: "In all the land 
there were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job; and their 
father gave them inheritance among their brethren." Job, 42 :15. And in 
Numbers, 27:6, the Lord gave the direct commandment to Moses to allot an 
inheritance to the daughters of Zelophehad. You will recall also that in 
an idyllic scene (Judges, 1:15) Achsah, Caleb's daughter, asked an 
inheritance and obtained of her father a "southland with the upper springs 
and nether springs"--a goodly inheritance in a thirsty land. Yet when the 
movement to give property rights to our women began it was denounced (and 
is still by some) on the ground that it would make them immoral, and 
create dissensions and divorces, because husbands could no longer control 
their wives.

   The last General Assembly also, for the first time, authorized women to 
hold certain positions, as trustees on school boards and text-book 
commissions. This was long since the case in Kentucky, Mississippi, 
Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and a majority of the other states. In all 
matters that concern the schools the mothers are much more interested and 
better informed than the fathers. A very large proportion of the teachers 
are also women. It is therefore peculiarly appropriate that they should be 
authorized to hold these positions. Those who are opposed to any change 
whatever of course were quick to claim that this act was unconstitutional. 
But the Legislature, containing a large number of able lawyers, held 
otherwise. Our Constitution recognizes three grades of government agents: 
(1) Mere employees, such as clerks, servants, and the like, as to which no 
one will deny that women are eligible. (2) Places of trust or profit, as 
to which no one can contend that the Constitution requires the incumbent 
to be a voter, and for which the Legislature can prescribe the conditions 
of eligibility. (3) Offices, as to which many contend that only voters are 
eligible.

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   The line between "places of trust and profit" and "offices" is not 
clearly defined, but it is for the Legislature and not for the courts to 
draw this line, and it cannot be contended that the Legislature cannot fix 
the test for eligibility for places of trust or profit. As to the offices, 
the Constitution does prescribe that "ever voter" (except convicts, 
paupers, and duelists) is eligible to office. But this simply prohibits 
the Legislature from disqualifying any eligible voter from holding office. 
No one whose mind is not biased by preconceived opinions will say that 
that constitutional provision prohibits the Legislature from admitting 
women to office. It makes "voters" eligible, but it does not forbid the 
Legislature to admit others than voters to office, if public opinion so 
demands.

   In more than 30 states the women are eligible to positions on school 
boards and to similar positions. Their admission to that right in this 
State was a distinct step in advance, and was brought about by the 
organized support of your Federation of Women's Clubs, aided by the 
unanimous vote of the State Convention of teachers, and by Dr. Joyner, the 
head of the School System of the State, who knows well the intelligence, 
public spirit, and patriotism of the women of the State and the great aid 
he is giving to education by securing their active cooperation on these 
school boards.

   In the United States Government we have postmistresses, and they 
usually manage the offices well. In England even under the common law 
women were eligible to every ministerial office, and were only excluded 
from being judges and members of Parliament. Under the Act of 1907, in 
England, Ireland, and Scotland, women are eligible as mayors, aldermen, 
and to all other offices outside the judiciary and Parliament. The contest 
of the militant suffragettes seems unaccountable to us at this distance. 
But it is based upon the fact that in the present and the last Parliament 
there was a large majority pledged to confer the right to vote for members 
of Parliament upon women, and a majority of the Cabinet also favored it, 
and that by a subterfuge the Government broke faith and refused to allow 
the vote to be taken on the third reading, after it had passed the second 
reading by nearly 200 majority. You may recall that 

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Woman's Suffrage has seven times passed its second reading in Parliament, 
but the Government has always prevented its coming to its third reading. 
On Tuesday of this week it was defeated by a small majority because the 
Prime Minister threatened to resign and throw everything into confusion if 
it passed. But such a defeat is a victory.

   As to the capacity of women for government, you all will remember that 
Deborah was "Judge over all Israel." And passing by the brilliant reigns 
of many other female sovereigns, in modern times, two of the longest and 
most brilliant reigns in England were those of Elizabeth and Victoria. 
Then there was Isabella of Spain, by whose aid Columbus discovered this 
Continent, Maria Theresa of Austria, and Catherine the Great of Russia. 
Yet I have heard a lawyer state in a legal argument that at common law a 
woman could hold no office in England!

   Besides conferring on women the right to sit as trustees on school 
boards and colleges, the last Legislature created two commissions and 
selected the women to fill them. This was the first time this has ever 
been done in North Carolina. Moliére tells us of a newly rich man who set 
himself to study grammar and was delighted to find that he bad been 
"talking prose all his life, tho he did not know it." Our Legislature 
"broke their record," without knowing it. They were unconsciously 
permeated by the spirit of the times.

   In this State, down to 1899, in at least two sections of our Code 
"married women, infants, idiots, lunatics, and convicts" were placed in 
the same category. Practically they have been more or less deemed in that 
category, in all respects, by decisions of the courts til these have been 
overruled by the Constitution or by legislative enactment.

   A single woman was held fully capable of contracting and controlling 
her property. On marriage she instantly lost that capacity. The fact of 
marriage proved her in the eye of the law fit to be classed with idiots 
and lunatics. In view of the legal status of married women at that time, 
it may be that there was some force in the idea.

   In England, Scotland, and Ireland, and in most of our states, and in 
all the provinces of Canada, women have the municipal suffrage, tho they 
have not yet attained to the right of full 

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suffrage. There is nothing in the Constitution of North Carolina which 
forbids the people acting thru the Legislature to, grant the women 
municipal suffrage. It would not be practicable without considerable 
agitation and education to procure an act conferring municipal suffrage on 
the women thruout the State. But the Legislature might well provide by a 
general statute that any city or town, upon petition of a specified number 
of the voters, shall vote upon an amendment to the charter which if 
adopted will entitle the women of that town to vote in the city elections 
thereafter under the same rules and regulations as the men. No one can 
doubt that the result would be highly beneficial in procuring cleaner 
cities and cleaner governments for the cities, for this has been the case 
wherever it has been tried. Should this prove true here as to those towns 
first adopting it, it would soon become universal thruout the State.

   It is well known that the judge-made law, which is generally known as 
"the common law" of England, was harsher and more unjust to married women 
than even the customs among the barbarians who were our ancestors several 
hundred years further back, when Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, drove back 
the Roman legions. It may interest the ladies present to give the 
explanation which an interesting writer has related as accounting for 
this. There was a very great and learned lawyer in England some 300 years 
ago named Sir Edward Coke. He was Chief Justice of the King's Bench and 
wrote several law books at a time when that accomplishment was rare. 
Critical research was unknown, and he formulated the law much to suit 
himself. The nephew and sole heir of Lord Chancellor Hatton had left a 
young and beautiful widow and an estate which, estimated in the money 
value of our time, amounted to many millions. As the law then stood, this 
would become absolutely the property of her husband. Coke was a 6 months 
widower with several young children and a suitor for her hand. His rival 
in this, as in other matters, was Sir Francis Bacon, one of the brightest 
men of all the ages. By feminine dispensation, which like a dispensation 
of Providence no man can understand and none dare impeach, she accepted 
the crabid Coke instead of the brilliant and versatile Bacon. But he soon 
found that tho he could 

Page 13

lay down the law in the courtroom and in the law books, Lady Coke laid 
down the law at home, and that without appeal. As a result every night, 
when sulking over his defeats, he wrote into the English law what he 
thought married women deserved, and for three, centuries your sex has paid 
the penalty for Lady Coke's eloquence. She was another Eve, in that your 
sex has suffered vicariously for her sins.

   In tracing the development of the law, I have necessarily criticised 
some decisions of the courts, but let it not be supposed that I have 
censured any judge, here or elsewhere, for his opinion, which is a very 
different matter. When Judge Settle rose superior to the barbarous rulings 
of a ruder age he is to be commended; but if other judges have found 
themselves unable to do the same, they are not to be blamed. They have 
acted honestly, tho you and I think, unadvisedly.

   A gentleman not long since entered a church in New York after the 
sermon began. Getting restive at the length of the sermon he leant over 
and asked the gentleman on the bench in front, "How long has he been 
preaching?" This gentleman, not understanding the question, replied, "I do 
not know exactly, but I think about 35 years," to which the first man 
replied, "If that is so, I will stay a little longer, for he must be most 
thru." You doubtless think that I have been talking a long time already, 
so I will detain you only to touch upon the question of the prospective 
status of women.

   It is quite certain that the majority of women in North Carolina do not 
yet desire what is known as equal suffrage. But it is as certain, as 
anything in the future can be, that the time is not far distant when, the 
world around, women will be consulted in the direction of government as 
fully as men. They now pay taxes without representation. They bear the 
burdens of bad government even more than men. Had they possessed the right 
of suffrage the liquor traffic and cognate evils would long since have 
been abolished by law and the law enforced. With the aid of women's votes, 
we should have had a better educational system, laws against child labor, 
better sanitation, and other enactments for the betterment of the 
conditions of the home and of the more helpless part of society. It is 
certain 

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that the main force which has opposed the adoption of equal suffrage has 
come from the whiskey trust, the vice trust, and the political machines 
which have been operated with money furnished by the great interests which 
have derived revenues from the adulteration of food products and other 
abuses. It is said that in Michigan last fall, woman's suffrage really 
carried the State by 7,000 majority, but when these Interests, especially 
the whiskey trust, found that to be the result, they bought the returns in 
the more distant counties and thus showed a majority some 700 against the 
woman's suffrage amendment. When the amendment was again submitted 
recently to the people, these Interests were organized and with abundant 
funds defeated the amendment. But it will yet be adopted.

   Full woman's suffrage and eligibility to all offices was adopted in 
Wyoming over 40 years ago. Later Colorado followed. It was afterwards 
adopted in all the Australian states and New Zealand. It has now been 
adopted in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and by 9 states and 1 
Territory of this Union, and even in the great new Republic of China with 
its 400 millions of people. The fact that the movement is spreading is 
evidence conclusive that it has worked satisfactorily. The progress that 
has been made by women in obtaining their property and personal rights is 
an evolution. Further progress along that line and further betterment of 
social conditions will largely depend upon the admission of women to the 
right of suffrage.

   We have heard much of the "Submerged Tenth." I have the honor now to 
speak to the representatives of the "Disfranchised Half." Mr. Seward more 
than half a century ago declared that this country "could not live half 
slave and half free." He was a true prophet. Our civilization cannot 
progress to its ultimate end with half our population, the equals in 
intelligence in patriotism, and in public spirit of the other half, and in 
some respects its superior, utterly denied all share in the direction and 
control of the government which bears alike upon all parts of society. 
Ought we to deprive ourselves of the powerful influence to be derived from 
the participation in the government of one-half of our people?

Page 15

   I shall not make an argument in favor of woman's suffrage. It will work 
its way without any help from me or others, and in spite of opposition, 
from whomsoever it may come. I will merely give briefly some of the 
reasons that have been debated pro and con.

   1. The objection is made that the enfranchisement of the women is 
unnecessary, because every woman can vote thru her husband. This cannot be 
true. Who casts the vote for the drunkard's wife? Then there are a large 
number of women who are either widows or have never cared to marry who 
casts their vote? There are 9,000,000 unmarried women in this country. 
There are 8,000,000 of unmarried men in the United States. What woman's 
views does each of them express? If the supposed "Indirect influence" of 
married women is legitimate why should it not be expressed directly by the 
ballot?

   2. It has been urged that the ballot is a substitute for physical 
force. And that each ballot represents a musket. But half of the soldiers 
in every war are under 21 and are not voters. Few soldiers are over 35, 
but all adult males are voters. The argument that voters are substitutes 
for muskets is therefore untenable. Besides, if men bear arms, the women 
raise the men, and train them to be brave and patriotic. The women do 
their full duty to their country thereby.

   3. Another argument is that women should employ themselves with their 
home duties and the raising of their children. It will hardly interfere 
much with these duties for a woman to take an hour off once every two 
years to record her opinion by dropping her ticket in the ballot box. Are 
they so overworked that they cannot be spared that much time? If so, they 
need the ballot. We know that the churches are largely kept up and 
maintained by the activity of the women, who constitute two-thirds or more 
of church membership. This does not interfere with their home duties.

   4. It is said that women ought not to go into the filth and mire of 
politics. If there is filth and mire in politics, it is due entirely to 
the men, who so far have had sole charge of it. It is time that the women 
had taken a hand and given us a political house-cleaning, as they did in 
Seattle, and other places. 

Page 16

Wherever woman's suffrage has been tried it has broadened and benefited 
the women and the suffrage has been benefited by them.

   5. It is said that women have no experience in electoral matters. But 
when a boy becomes 21 he has no experience, yet he is admitted at once to 
the suffrage. When his sister becomes 21 she has had exactly the same 
opportunities and the same lack of experience. Why should there be any 
discrimination?

   6. It is stated as an objection to women's suffrage that our negro 
cooks could vote. As much and no more than the cook's husband can. And I 
have not yet heard it asserted that white men should not vote because the 
negro might. If the negro cannot vote, neither will his wife. If he does 
vote, we ought not therefore to disfranchise white men to get rid of him. 
Nor should we disfranchise white women to keep their cooks from voting.

   7. Then there is the outworn argument that we should put woman on a 
pedestal. Has any one ever seen it done? "When Knighthood was in Flower" 
the sisters were often put in convents that their brothers might have the 
estates to squander in brutal and licentious pleasures. Whenever the law 
has been administered solely by men, there has been gross discrimination 
against women. As some poet has well said, "Man to man so oft unjust, is 
always so to woman." Indeed, Lord Coke, the bright particular star of the 
common law, in speaking of one instance in which the law discriminated 
most unjustly against women, uses this expression, "Herein the common law 
shaketh hands with divinitie." He had doubtless just lost out in some 
debate with his beautiful but eloquent wife.

   8. One great motive that is urging on suffrage for women is the demand 
of "equal pay for equal service." Justice demands this, but it has not 
been and never will be granted except where women can make their influence 
felt by the ballot.

   In every land, civilization has been measured by the status of women. 
Among barbarians, they are beasts of burden. Among the semi-civilized, 
they are secluded; and among the fanatic followers of the fiery prophet of 
Mecca embracing nearly one-third of the people of the globe, it is held 
that they have no souls. If the same belief were entertained among us our 
churches would soon go to ruin.

Page 17

   The average man is thoroughly imbued with the idea of his superiority 
to women. There is nothing to base it upon except superiority of brute 
force, and not always that. It is due most largely to the fact that it was 
not spanked out of them by their mothers when they were little. In the 
language of Scripture, "If You bray him in a mortar, yet will not his 
folly depart from him." Even good men are obsessed by it. Matthew and 
Mark, the evangelists, in speaking of the mother of the apostles James and 
John, do not name her, but in quite a superior manner refer to her as the 
"mother of Zebedee's children." What she did is remembered to this day. 
But what did Zebedee do that his name should come sounding down to us 
across the centuries above the wreck of empires and the crash of 
dynasties? I would like to know that woman's name. She stood for 
something. I never did care a fig for Zebedee.

   Then there is Augustine, a really great man whom some call St. 
Augustine, as if a man could be a saint. He owed everything to the 
training of his mother, St. Monica, who was truly a saint and a great 
woman, but even he speaks of women as "a necessary evil, an agreeable 
calamity." I do not like to talk slang, but when a man speaks of women in 
that way I think he is "biggety," if he is a saint.

   They call you "the weaker sex." But you will remember that in Luke (ch. 
xiv, v. 17-20), when invitations were sent out to supper, "They all, with 
one consent began to make excuse." One said he had bought a piece of 
ground and must go and see it, and he prayed to be excused. Another said 
he had bought 5 yoke of oxen, that he must prove them, and therefore he 
prayed to be excused; but another said: "I have married a wife, and 
therefore I cannot come." So you see that there is Scripture that a wife 
is stronger than 5 yoke of oxen.

   Thoughtful men everywhere are beginning to believe that the exclusion 
of the intelligence, public spirit, and patriotism of one-half of our 
people from a share in the Government is a great injury and a serious 
detriment to progress. We must recall, as one qualification for equal 
suffrage, that criminal statistics show that criminals are five times more 
numerous among men and that the proportion of women criminals is smaller 
still where they have property rights, suffrage, and equal pay.

Page 18

   No argument has yet been used against the admission of women to the 
suffrage that is not based upon one of two grounds. Either it is based on 
the fears of bad men, who know that the ballots of women will abolish the 
abuses by which they live and profit, or it is based on the opposition of 
good men, who are by nature opposed to any change in anything. These last 
do not realize that the world turns completely over in every twenty-four 
hours.

   There are those who think that they have exhausted ridicule and 
destroyed all claim of women to any rights by speaking of them and their 
friends as "long-haired men and short-haired women." I am sure that none 
of these slanderers will be atrocious enough to call me a "long-haired 
man." And as to "shorthaired women," I would recall that at the siege of 
Saguntum, at the siege of Carthage, at the siege of Tyre, and many 
another, the women cut off their long, beautiful tresses to make 
bowstrings to speed the arrows which saved their city and their country. 
Your sex has never been wanting in devotion to country and to public duty. 
And as to courage and fidelity-- 

"Not she with trait'rous kiss her Savior stung, 
 Not she denied Him with unholy tongue; 
 She, when apostles fled, could dangers brave, 
 Last at the cross, and first at the grave."

   The common law esteemed her a slave, but as was said of Epictetus, the 
philosopher, "He was oppressed, and a slave, but dear to the immortals."

   When the evolution began which will give women just and equal rights of 
property and person, the opposition was as fierce, and prophecies of evil 
to come therefrom were as dreadful as those which are now made in regard 
to their admission to the suffrage. A writer of that day, answering this 
argument, said: "We read in Gibbon that, 'After the edicts of Theodosius 
had severely prohibited the sacrifices of the pagans, they were still 
tolerated in the city and temple of Serapis; and this singular indulgence 
was imprudently ascribed to the superstitious terrors of Christians 
themselves, as if they feared to abolish those ancient rites which could 
alone secure the inundations of the Nile, the harvests and the subsistence 
of Constantinople. But the temple 

Page 19

was at last destroyed and the statue of Serapis was involved in ruin. It 
was confidently affirmed that if any impious hand should dare to violate 
the majesty of the god, the heavens and the earth would instantly return 
to their original chaos. An intrepid soldier, animated with zeal and armed 
with a heavy battle-axe, ascended the ladder; and even the Christian 
multitude expected, with some anxiety the event of the combat. He aimed a 
vigorous stroke against the cheek of Serapis; the cheek fell to the 
ground; the thunder was still silent, and both the heavens and the earth 
continued to preserve their accustomed order and tranquility. The 
victorious soldier repeated his blows; the huge idol was overthrown and 
broken in pieces; and the limbs of Serapis were ignominiously dragged thru 
the streets of Alexandria.' The law of the status of woman is the last 
vestige of slavery. Upon their subjection, it has been thought, rests the 
basis of society; disturb that, and society crumbles into ruins. By the 
married woman's property acts, the first blow has been struck. The cheek 
of the idol has fallen to the ground; the thunder is silent, and the earth 
preserves its accustomed tranquility. The huge idol will sooner or later 
be broken in pieces."

   The movement for the equality of women is as irresistible as the tides 
which the followers of Canute endeavored to stay with words. The reasoning 
of a woman who opposes it reminds one of the woman at Marble Head, whose 
relatives were engaged in the whale oil business and who opposed the 
introduction of gas by saying, "What will become of the poor whales?"

   We cannot envy any man who deems that his mother, his wife, and his 
daughter are inferior to himself. With some men, it may be truly said that 
they are not subject to this reproach, but it is with them mostly the 
inertia of ideas. History shows few great, or good, men who did not 
greatly owe their success to their mothers or their wives.

   Some one has quaintly said that when woman was formed she was not taken 
from the head of the man, lest she rule over him, nor from his feet, lest 
he trample upon her, but from his side, that she might be his equal.

   Those who see the beginning of a revolution do not always recognize 
that they are already in the midst of one. When in 

Page 20

1830 Charles X. of France issued his Ordonnances he expected some slight 
opposition, and removed his court to the Palace of St. Cloud on the edge 
of Paris. When the resistance became decided and the discharge of cannon 
shook the palace windows, he remarked to a former marshal of Napoleon who 
stood on the lawn beneath him: "Why, this is a revolt!" The veteran whose 
trained ear had caught the regular roll of musketry which showed that 
troops of the line had gone over to the people, replied: "Your Majesty, it 
is not a revolt; it is a Revolution." Before sunrise the last of the 
Bourbons was on his way to the frontiers and that long exile from which 
the dynasty has never returned.

   Those who have observed closely the management of the movement for 
women's rights which is going on all around the world have noted the 
method and consummate skill with which it is being handled. It is no 
longer in the hands of mere enthusiasts but it is being managed with 
ability and skill, and with a success that no temporary check can defeat.

   Among savage tribes the club of the husband was logical. And under the 
common law so was the lash, because women being kept in ignorance and 
deprived of property rights could be thus governed. But when they were 
educated and given the right to own property these things became illogical 
and impossible. The men of former days were well aware of this, and they 
showed much more judgement in opposing the conferring of property rights 
and education upon women than do the men of this day who oppose giving 
them the suffrage. The first schools for women in this country are not 
much over a hundred years old. And the first woman's college was 
established by Mrs. Emma Willard in 1821. Those who will turn to the 
literature of that day will see that the opposition to the education of 
women was as violent, as much ridicule was used and as many prophecies of 
evil to come, as are now employed against giving them the suffrage. When 
education was followed by the gradual bestowal of property rights and the 
abolition of the husband's right to chastise and imprison his wife, 
exactly the same arguments were used with exactly the same foolish talk of 
putting women on pedestals and the like.

Page 21

   Under the old system a woman above the grade of a day laborer had only 
two careers open to her--marriage or needlework. Now in North Carolina we 
have women lawyers, and bank presidents, doctors, preachers, teachers, 
journalists, clerks, college presidents, and everything else. In the Union 
there are now 3,000 women lawyers, 4,000 women preachers, and as many 
women doctors; 3,000 journalists, and indeed they fill every vocation. For 
some vocations they are better adapted than men. For others men are better 
fitted, but the choice of a vocation should be freely left to every woman, 
as well as to every man, to be determined by the individual, and success 
therein should depend upon merit and not be arbitrarily decided by the 
accident of sex or birth. If a woman can make a good poem, a good speech, 
or a good song, she should be free to do so, and the world should not be 
deprived of the benefit.

   Notwithstanding the boasted chivalry of the Southern States, they were 
the slowest to give women freedom from the husband's lash or their 
property rights. And they now are the last to give them that right of 
suffrage to which their intelligence and patriotism entitle them. In 
Kentucky, Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma they have the right 
to vote in school elections and on assessments of taxes and the issue of 
bonds. In Arizona they have full suffrage. In some of the other Southern 
States they are trustees on school boards.

   The "rights of women" may be well summed up as follows: Equal pay for 
equal services; equality of property rights, so that a wife may have the 
same control over her property as her single sister or her husband; the 
repeal of all judicial decisions that give the husband the right to 
chastise or imprison her, which give him more control over her than she 
has over him; equality of right in the custody of children and in the 
appointment of guardians; the same grounds of divorce for wife as for 
husband; and finally, all equal share in the conduct of the Government by 
the equal right to the ballot in the selection of officers or in taxing 
her property, and equality of right to hold office. There is nothing wrong 
in demanding equality in these matters. Now that women are educated and 
hold property, equality of right to the suffrage and to hold office cannot 
long 

Page 22

be denied them. In states where women have the right of suffrage equality 
of pay for equal services and regard for her wishes in the conduct of the 
Government are maintained. Women will rarely desire to hold office, but it 
is insulting to be held by law unfit for it.

   The most powerful weapon of the great Napoleon was not his artillery, 
but his declaration that his Government stood for the principle of "an 
avenue open to merit without distinction of birth." This kept the Bourbons 
out for 25 years. In our country, certainly, we should call to the aid of 
the Government and of our civilization every power of the intellect and 
proclaim "an avenue open to merit without distinction of sex."

   The vote of the women, if cast solidly, can already decide a 
Presidential election, or the balance of power in Congress, both in the 
Senate and House. Their demand for votes has passed the stage of ridicule. 
One great National Party has already placed a demand for equal suffrage in 
its platform and the Chairman of the Senate Committee states that his 
committee will report favorably the constitutional amendment to confer the 
suffrage. There is a stronger sentiment for it, even in North Carolina, 
than politicians dream, or you yourselves may be aware of. I claim no 
special sources of information, but I have some knowledge of human nature. 
I know that those who have mental capacity equal to others will not be, 
and are not, satisfied to be deprived of equal opportunities and equal 
compensation. I know that this is a world movement, and that the same 
reasons and influences which are driving it on everywhere else will 
operate here.

   The effect of the ballot has been shown recently in the Washington 
incident, when the women made their march the day before the Inauguration 
down Pennsylvania Avenue. At the instance of the liquor interests and the 
vice trust, all the roughs and hoodlums of the town were collected to 
break up the march. The police, which in large cities are usually in 
league with these Interests, thought it great fun, and were much amused at 
the outrage; but they have not laughed since. The members of Congress and 
Senators from 9 states were dependent upon the women's votes, and there 
were several other states in which 

Page 23

constitutional amendments to give them the suffrage are pending. Besides, 
the sense of decency of the public was roused at the outrage, with the 
result of an investigation, and in a march the women have since made, in 
that city, they have been treated with as much respect as the President 
himself.

   Col. Henry Watterson gives an interesting account of the first occasion 
when an advocate of Woman's Suffrage appeared before a Democratic National 
Convention. He had been elected president of that body, in 1876 at St. 
Louis, where Tilden and Hendricks were nominated. A committee asked him to 
permit a lady to appear before the Convention to ask for the insertion of 
a plank favoring equal suffrage. He told them it would create a big row, 
but he was a Kentucky gentleman and did not know how to refuse a lady 
anything, and said he would do his best. During a lull in the Proceedings, 
he sent a committee out to bring Miss Cousens, the representative of the 
movement, to the platform. He told the Convention what he had done. 
Immediately there was tumult all over the hall, for the idea of Woman's 
Suffrage was then new, and he said he thought they would take him out of 
the chair by force. Just then he saw the committee coming down the aisle 
with the lady at their head. He says that to his intense relief at a 
glance he saw that she was a beauty and dressed to kill. As she rose the 
platform and faced the audience, the tumult immediately ceased and there 
was a buzz of admiration, except one man immediately in front, who yelled 
at the top of his voice, "Point of order, Mr. Chairman! point of order." 
Raising his gavel as if about to throw it at him, he shouted, "Sit down 
thar! There is no point of order when a lady has the floor." The 
Convention cheered, and the man subsided. When Miss Cousens concluded, she 
had an ovation. From that day to this no request of that kind has been 
denied by any National Convention. Indeed, at least one National party 
(Progressive) has put a demand for "Equal Suffrage" in its platform, and 
if the Prohibition Party has not done the same, it is very ungrateful.

   We may well say of this movement for equality of rights, as Curran, the 
impassioned orator of Ireland, when he thrilled his audience, by declaring 
that he looked forward to the time when 

Page 24

he would see his country, in all its majesty and loveliness, "redeemed, 
regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible might of universal 
emancipation."

   After the defeat at Cunaxa, the Greek contingent, deprived of their 
generals, found themselves in the midst of the Persian empire surrounded 
by millions of their enemies. Like brave men, they determined not to 
surrender, but to cut their way out. They could not return over the long 
route by which they had come, and set out across the mountains to find the 
nearest sea by which they could return to Greece. After weeks of daily 
battles, the head of the column, led by Xenophon, climbing the mountains 
of Kurdistan, caught sight of the wide waste of waters which would bear 
them back to Argos, to Athens and to Sparta. They shouted "Thalatta! 
Thalatta!"--"The sea! The sea!" The, cry rolled back down the mountain 
along the struggling columns, cheering the weak, the weary, and the 
wounded with the hope of home, at last. The women have made a brave and 
gallant fight, not only for justice to themselves, but, in their 
unselfishness, for justice and salvation for the little children and for 
justice to all the poor and oppressed. Your advancing columns have caught 
sight of that immortal sea of justice which enwraps the globe, and you 
have seen glimmering upon it, in ever-broadening circles of light, the 
rosy auroras of the coming dawn, for all mankind, of a brighter and a 
happier day.