Appendix
Golden Rule
Jones on Women's Rights
Portions of
an article contributed by Samuel Milton Jones, mayor of Toledo, to the Woman's
Journal of July 21, 1900. The article was written in answer to the question:
"What can women do toward good city government?"
The
first thing that woman as well as man can and must do is to get an intelligent
conception of the purpose of government, why we want government, what we want to
be governed for, and what a well-ordered government would do for us if we had
one. This they must do if they propose to have any part in building the more
orderly society of the future.
It
is hardly probable that the founders of this government had any but the most
vague conception of equality when the Declaration of Independence was written,
but I can see that any scheme that proposes to develop a just social and
political order must be based on absolute equality. This thought has hardly
gained a foothold even yet among the people of the United States. We glibly say
that we believe in it; but, as a rule, our lives demonstrate that we have no
conception of it. Indeed, when we think of equality in connection with
government, our thoughts are mainly for equality among men. Men have thus far
held all, or nearly all, the sinecures, as well as the offices where real
service is performed, and, with the exception of a very few "progressive
women," there are none, I am sure, who ever think that an absolutely
essential first step towards liberty is the recognition of this principle of
equality of the sexes. The few women who understand this principle are making
their contribution to the cause of liberty by proclaiming it, but so complete
and abject has been the servitude of women that only quite recently, indeed, has
it become "respectable" for a woman to believe in such a heresy as I
am setting forth. Even today "the woods are full" (particularly the
fashionable woods) of women who pride themselves on their inequality, or,
better, inferiority; who freely say that they want to play the "clinging
tendril to the sturdy oak" to their husbands; they want to "feel that
they are cared for"; in short, they want to be regarded as a toy, or, what
is perhaps worse, a mistress. Although they do not say it in words, that is what
the position of such women amounts to in the world.
Men
are not responsible particularly for the limitations that are placed upon women
under our government. In a certain sense, our government -- municipal, State and
national -- is as good as we deserve. We have as much liberty as we will use,
and we cannot get more except as we use what we have. This is a law of nature
and a law of God: "To him that hath shall be given." The inferior
position of women politically is due to the lack of desire for a position of
equality. This longing must be awakened in the woman heart, and the men and
women, indeed, who have been born again, who have received the new light of the
higher life, have resting upon them a great responsibility to present properly
and adequately to the women of America their duty as equals, as coworkers
together with God and with man in the great scheme that is eventually to bring
forth the perfect woman, the perfect man, and the perfected democracy, the ideal
nation.
Whitman,
with prophetic vision, has told us that this is "not the man's nation only,
but the woman's nation, the land of splendid mothers, daughters, sisters,
wives.... The idea of the women of America (extricated from this daze, this
fossil and unhealthy air which hangs about the word lady), developed, raised to
become the robust equals, workers and, it may be, even practical and political
deciders with the men -- greater than man, we may admit, through their divine
maternity, always their towering, emblematical attribute -- but great at any
rate as man in all departments; or rather, capable of being, so soon as they
realize it, and can bring themselves to give up toys and fictions, and launch
forth, as men do, amid real, independent, stormy life."
