Speech or Document 3 

WOMAN'S PLACE IN POLITICS

ANYTHING that the women of this country want, I want to give them.  Now, I base my hope and base my firm belief in the future of the American Nation because I think that the average American is a pretty good fellow and that his wife is a still better fellow.

The New York Times, in an interview attributed to a prominent citizen who has repudiated it, criticized me and denounced Jane Addams for nominating me, and also criticized the Progressive Party for permitting women to be in the Progressive convention.  It attacked Miss Addams' conduct as “spectacular" and” in very bad taste," and also criticized me as being spectacular because I had "the bad taste to publicly compliment her on her action and thank her."

My only reference to Miss Addams was contained in the following sentence: “I wish to tell those who proposed and seconded my nomination that I appreciate to the full the significance of having such men and such a woman put me in nomination." It will be noticed that in this sentence I did not even mention Miss Addams' name, and if this allusion to Miss Addams is considered as being spectacular and in bad taste I should feel a mild curiosity to know just what would be regarded as non-spectacular and in good taste.

It would not be worth while to pay any heed to this article in itself; but it illustrates an attitude of mind sufficiently common to deserve consideration.  Among the other sentences in the article were the following: “Women have no proper share in a political convention.  We need women to bear children and attend to their homes.  The men ought to be able to regulate their own politics and meet all needs without direct assistance of the women."

Of course, it is entirely right to say that we need women to bear children and attend to their homes; just as it would be right to say that we need men to beget children and make the homes in which the women can live and the children be brought up.  One statement is as true as the other and both come under the head of the obvious.

I have said not once but scores of times that I put the domestic life above every other kind of life, that I honor the good and wise mother as I honor no other woman and no man, and that the perpetuity of the Nation depends primarily upon the average man and the average woman therein being the father and mother of healthy and happy and wisely brought-up children; children trained, boys and girls alike, in industry and decent conduct, and to the habit of meeting with wisdom and with high courage the many and difficult problems that confront each of us in his everyday individual life and all of us in our collective life.

I think the highest life, the ideal life, is the married life.  But there are both unmarried men and unmarried women who perform service of the utmost consequence to the whole people; and it is equally foolish and wicked for a man to slur the unmarried woman when he would not dream of slurring the unmarried man.  Bishop Brent in the Philippines is unmarried.  He has done admirable work there just as Jane Addams has done at Hull House.  When the Times says that it dislikes to see Miss Addams " held up in the limelight as an example for all other women to follow," it speaks offensively, and its words are true only in the sense that they would be true if it had used them about Bishop Brent or the late Phillips Brooks.  Again and again I have heard Bishop Brent held up as an example, and I have held him up as an example myself; and so of the late Phillips Brooks.  And in just the same way, I am heartily glad to say, I have heard Jane Addams held up as an example and have thus held her up myself.  The cases of the three stand on the same plane: all three by their lives have added to or are adding to our heritage of good in this country, and it is an absurdity to say that in recognizing this fact as regards any one of them we are in any shape or way explicitly or implicitly failing to take the position that we ought as a matter of course to take about marriage and the happy married life.

Now for the statement about women having no proper share in a political convention, and that men ought to be able to regulate their own politics and meet all needs without direct assistance from the women.

That man knows little of our political, social and industrial needs as a Nation who does not know that in political conventions the politics that ought to be " regulated " are the politics that affect women precisely as much as they affect men; and he must be unfortunate in his list of acquaintances if he does not know women whose advice and counsel are preeminently worth having in regard to the matters affecting our welfare which it is of the utmost consequence to have dealt with by political conventions.

I suppose that the trouble is that the Times fails to understand that we intend from now on to make participation in " politics " a method of applying ethics to our public life and both ethics and economics to our industrial life.  Such a theory of public conduct is wholly incomprehensible both to those who dominated the Republican convention at Chicago and to those who dominated the Democratic convention at Baltimore.  The Progressive Party is the one party which since the War has dealt with real issues, and these real issues affect women precisely as much as men.  The women who bear children and attend to their own homes have precisely the same right to speak in politics that their husbands have who are the fathers of their children and who work to keep up their homes.  It is these women who bear children and attend to their own homes and these men, their husbands, who work for their wives and children and homes, whom the Progressive Party is endeavoring to represent and in whose interest the Progressive Party proposes that the Governmental policy of this Nation shall hereafter be shaped.  Such being the case, it is eminently wise that women should share in the political conventions, and that they should join with the men in regulating the politics, which are in no proper sense only " the politics of the men " as the Times says, because they are of as vital concern to the women as to the men.

I doubt if there ever was a convention more really representative of the people, and with a higher average of individual character among the representatives, than was the case with the Progressive National Convention at Chicago.  The spirit in which it met was a spirit of deep and genuine religious fervor, using the word religious in its broadest and truest sense.  A spirit which found expression in singing the noble " Battle Hymn of the Republic," a hymn by the way, which was written by a woman, Mrs.  Julia Ward Howe, who as wife and mother, and in all her relations of both public and private life, was one of the best citizens this Republic has ever brought forth.

I am glad to say that among the representatives in our convention were a number of women; and not only in high purpose, but in wisdom, in character, in cool-headedness and in far-sighted understanding of the needs of the Nation, they stood on an exactly equal footing with the men.

One of the memories of the convention which I shall always cherish is the fact that Jane Addams seconded my nomination.

I grew to believe in woman suffrage not because of associating with women whose chief interest was in woman suffrage, but because of finding out that the women from whom I received most aid in endeavoring to grapple with the social and industrial problems of the day were themselves believers in woman suffrage.  For a long time I have been interested in such questions as the betterment of tenement-house conditions, the abolition of sweat-shop factories in tenement-houses, the betterment of the conditions of work and life of working girls in industry, the establishment of children's courts, the establishment of playgrounds, the putting a stop to the employment of children in industry, and dozens of other like matters.  Now, the way I get into touch with each different kind of such work was to get hold of some man or woman who knew about it and could guide and instruct me and enable me to see for myself what the facts were.  The man to whom I owe most in this matter is Jacob Riis, and I shall never forget all he did for me during the time I was Police Commissioner.  In exactly the same fashion I have profited by the teachings and experience of Judge Ben Lindsey of Colorado, of Judge DeLacey of Washington, of Charles Stelzle, of Father Curran, of Homer Folks, of Paul Kellogg, of Mannis, of Raymond Robbins, of Weyl and McCarthy and Kingsbury — of many, many men connected with the work of organized charity and with private or religious charity, and of many, many clergymen, priests and rabbis — I can not begin to enumerate all of them.

Well, in precisely the same way I grew acquainted with women who were doing the same kinds of work, with Miss Addams, with Miss Kellor, with Mrs.  Kelly and with many others.  I talked with them and worked with them just as I did with the men.  I found that they had the same zeal and earnestness and judgment that the, men had, and differed among themselves just as the men did.  I also found that as a result of their actual experience they felt that working girls would be helped by the suffrage just as working men are helped, and that in our warfare against certain dreadful evils of our social life the help of the women would be of peculiar value.  Very much of what I learned to believe from them they were quite unconscious of having taught me, and it was this largely unconscious teaching of theirs and my study of what had been done in the States where suffrage exists that gradually turned me into a believer that women should have the same right to vote that men have.  I do not believe that there is identity of function between men and women, but I do believe that there should be equality of right.  I see no reason why voting should interfere with women's home life any more than it interferes with the everyday work of the man which enables him to support the home.

Of all the planks of the Progressive platform, and they are all of them good, the two which most go to my own heart are the one which deals with social and industrial justice and the one on country life.  Not only the present Republican and Democratic platforms fail in any way to deal with these matters as our platform deals with them, but no platform previous to ours has ever shown an intellectual understanding of what social and industrial justice was.  Our proposals are definite and concrete, and they are absolutely practical.  We treat our whole platform as a covenant with the people, binding upon ourselves and upon our candidates in State and in Nation.  We pledge ourselves to legislation looking to the prevention of industrial accidents and occupational diseases.  We intend to deal with the problem of involuntary unemployment and of overwork.  We intend to secure compensation for men or women who are killed or crippled in industry; to prohibit sweated labor; to secure a minimum wage standard for working women, and a living wage in all industrial occupations.  We pledge ourselves to secure one day's rest in seven for all wage-workers, and an eight-hour day in continuous twenty-four hour industries, the prohibition of night work and the establishment of an eight-hour day for women.  We pledge ourselves to the abolition of the convict contract labor system, and the application of prisoners' earnings to the support of their dependent families.  We recognize that in all matters such as these women are as vitally concerned as men.  We recognize that there can not be identity of function, but that there should be equality of right, between men and women, and we are therefore for equal suffrage for men and women.