MOTHERS OF MEN.

White Ribbon, Volume 19, Issue 224, 18 February 1914, Page 1

MOTHERS OF MEN.

By Daniel A. Poling. National Temperance and C itizenship Superintendent of l nited Society of Christian Endeavour. (Address delivered before the National Convention of the Women s Christian Temperance Cnion, at Asbury l’ark, N.J., November 5 h, 1913 )

My memory is not keen enough to recail my first W.C.T.U. Convention. My mother wore over her heart a bow of white, and if I am correctly informed, l had a “speaking part” on several programmes at a very youthful age. The privilege of addressing this great Convention 1 coun. as one of the distinct honours of my life. Your history 1 know; your work 1 know; 1 am acquainted with .the lives of your leaders; your grea’est State Cnion gave my Candida* v support in a strenuous political campaign. A support that was of inestimable value and that l shall not forget. I have been gripped by your spirit and vision, and to this hour your uncompromising and martial declaration challenges me. “Total abstinence for the individual, prohibition for the State and Nation.” You have done —you arc doing—a mighty work. Of all the temperance organisations, yours is the strategic one. God bless you, and may your victories increase, to the consummation of our common purpose, “the destruction of the liquor traffic.”

Women compose music, but they are not music ians; they paint pictures, but they are not artists ; they find new stars, but tho\ are not astronomers; ;hcy chart the locks, but they are not geologists; they heal the sick, but they arc not physicians; they superintend the schools of great cities, but

they are no; cd ators; they enter with success well nigh every department of human end* n r our, but they are not administrators; they glorify the pulpit, but hey are not preachers; they exert a healthy influence on politics, but they arc not politicians;

they contribute largely toward the solution of problems between nations, but they arc not statesmen; they enter constructively every field of reform, but they are not reformers; East or West or North or South—and always—they are "Mothert of Men.' Hut the masculine mind approaches the feminist movement with inquiry and suspicion. He is a rash man who attempts to analyse a woman's mind, to invade with even friendly intent the sanctity of a woman’s soul. To-night it is my purpose to tread only a sure path. This is no place for extended metaphysical research and philosophical dissertation. 1 would answer the question of a man’s mind with a man’s question. You would say the feminist movemen: is woman’s quest for life, larger, fuller, more abundant life; it is the inexorable evolution of a woman’s soul; it is the world-old struggle of personality to realise itself. Hut with arguments such as hese men grope in’outer darkness. 1 searc h for the man's answer to a man’s question. And education is the hope of woman’s suffrage. “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make* you tree.” Millions think tha: they arc opposed to woman's suffrage, when by every finer instinct of their natures they are not. To answer the masculine question, “Why this feminist movement,” I must know woman’s dominating impulse, her supreme motive, her consuming passion. And 1 say to-night in this militant feminine presence, without fear of contradiction, that whether she bears children of her

own, . nr mothers another’s, or mother" a mrrrrminiTtv'OT a State, or a reform, or the world, the dominating impulse'of womanhood is the mother s- s * impure, tier motive is the mother motive, her passion is the mother passion. Always it is the impulse, the motive, the passion of motherhood —.hat her sons and daughters, the sons and daughters of the race, • shall be clean, \ve]J bodied, of unspoiled and worthy. You ask me where 1 found the answer? The winds did not carry it to me. * 1, did not read it in the stars. 1 saw it' first in my mother's Tyes, but then it was altogether a mystery. 1 found it in the brave eyes of the matchless woman, when with uncovered soul she came back to me from the valley and shadow of death bearing our first born. There in life’s holy of holies, with Heaven embattled all about it, 1 found the answer. but 1 did not understand, 1 did not fathom it, for it is given to no man to fully understand. Let no man say that die cry of womanhood is a sudden cry, the ex pr< ssion of a whim, the utterance of a just formed desire. We are at the concentric point of many generations; this is the conclusion of ages. Let me make myself pel feetly clear—for the good of the race, womanhood did not .i"k for the ballot one generation too soon. She has tried every other way. She has turned her heart and hand to in.|ny promising devices. Bravely >he h.i" ".ruggled through the long darkness of prejudice in men and tradition in women. Having tested her footing thoroughly, she knows that hei face is set in the only way. She has borne the iniquities of the double standard; she has gathered up the broken bodies of her sons from off the plains of war ; she has watched the virtue of her daughters burning at the stake of man’s lust; she habeen a beast of burden and a slav of passion. From the day of Noah s great debauch to this year of our Lord 1913 she has seen the race struggle down the years beneath its drunken load ; she has wept; she has prayed; she has petitioned; she his been a dinging vine; she has wooed; "he has gone to the last Jitch with sacrifice. To the unequal struggle she has brough. every resource >t her sex. And she has not failed. Against unnumbered handicaps she

has greatly prevailed. And she will prevail! For to-day her marching legions arc on the plains of Abraham; to-morrow the city fa”s! I have no quarrel wi.h the man who says that woman’s sphere is the home. Nor do you. i have no quarrel with the man who declares .hat the home sphere is big enough to command woman’s whole life. I agree. But what of the seven million women, at least, in industry, who have no homes, and what are the bounds of the modern home? What of the seven million women—Dean Sunnier says ten million--driven by necessity under conditions arising in a masculine government, into the wage-earning life? “IT is to protect the home by protecting themselves .fiat these workers outside the home, whether yet conscious or the fact or not, need the ballot.” It will take more than a sex prejudice to finally abridge freedom; it will take more than a sex tradition to finally defeat libtrty. And let us remember that a government of and for the people cannot be by the people while half the people are debarred. I hope that 1 am enough a man .0 op pose any conspiracy of ignorance or prejudice that would continue the political condition by which women are classed with criminals and aliens. And of men’s legislation without women’s aid, much is folly, and more, .1 mere one-eyed wisdom. Mrs l*ankhur"t for protesting—militantly, grant but for protesting a condition against which her soul revolted made herself liable to a sentence of 14 years. On one of her many days of arraignment she appeared in a Court where a fiend, convicted of an unspeakable crime agains. a little girl twelve years old, receiving the maxi mum sentence for his offence, was returned to prison for two l he fac t that I do not approve of militant me hods does not blind my eyes to the horrible shadows of such a picture. Women are imperatively needed today in the struggle for the solution of life’s big problems. And in the figh for human progress, where they so gladly join, is it the part ot chivalry, or wisdom, to engage them short of fully armed? But the master motive and passion of womanhood, the mother mo.ive, the mother passion. What of it? The sphere of womanhood is the

home, and to the ears of true women in comparison with the home, all o her things arc as the challenge of the incidental. But here again we are confronted by the facts and conditions cf society, society as it is to-day. We have come <>u. of the past, and the present is different! Agreeing th.it woman - sphere is the home, what is the modern home? What arc its present bounds? A great daily said recently: “The modern home is not a harem, shu. away from life around it.” And certainly it is not now as it was in the days when the narrow confines of a settler cabin and clearing contained it. “The modern home is a link in the chain of modern socie.y, and as such is exposed to every peril which confronts society.” It is bounded on the two sides of avarice by the tood doper, the peddler of poisonous drugs, the exploiter of child toilers, and the cheapener «>f labour. It is bounded on the two sides of passion by organised prostitution and the red-mawed liquor traffic. In combating these perils men need the help “which v\ise, courageous women want to give, and which alt women owe.” A Cleveland daily well says: “Man with ins.inc ts more largely selfish has over-emphasised his symbol ol power, the dollar. Woman, intentive, keener of conscience, surer of moral vision, and larger of human sympathy, <s trying to shift the emphasis upon humanity. Nature’s balance will be struck when male and female fully work together.” Yesterday the grain from which the family Hour was ground grew on the home ac res, was ground in the home mill, and mother baked the great, round loaves 111 the home oven. Today the grain grows in a thousand far away fields, is ground in ary one of ten thousand distant mills, and baked into loaves by any two of ten thousand more or less cleanly hands. Yesterday mother made candy for the clamouring children, from homegathered syrup, prepared in the friendly iron kettle under .he home maples; to-day it rushes from the seething pots of unhealthy cities to the most iemote hamlets of the land. You can buy New York “fresh today” c hocolates in San Diego. Yesterday mother made William’s suit and Sarah’s dress from flax grown, gathered, cured, corded, spun,

woven, designed, cut and fashioned all within a loud hello of the kitchen stooi>. To-day, perhaps a haggard - eyed consumptive fighting for bread and breath in a crowded sweat-shop of a distant city hastily stitched together with bleeding fingers, bending close her poor, diseased eyes, the li.tle dress your baby wears.

Yesterday we went to school on the hill where the school house roof was red, the shutters green, and the rule was the rule of three, and where no <hild was ever spoiled because Solomon’s warning was not heeded. Today our children find car tracks and diphtheria, the whim of an ever changing educational system, and in not a few instances, the procurers of vice districts, on the road that leads to knowledge. Yesterday mother settled the chi ’. labour problem with her slipper; jday the solution of it is at the em of a long road .hat leads by oyster beds, and cotton mills, through fa'tories into deep mines.

The problems of a minimum and living wage for women and the traffic called white slavery are creatures of the human modern environment, and the answers to their questions must be present tense answers.

And the liquor traffic, the home’s fiercest, concrete foe, stands in the road that leads .o the ultimate solution of every one of the vital social, economic, moral and political problems of this tremendous human crisis. And it gocth out oniy by the ballot.

And let me remind you to-night that woman’s suffrage has no more unrelenting enemy than the liquor .rattn ; that the enfranchisement of womanhood must become a fact in Government in spite of the liquor traffic. Call John Barleycorn all the hard names in the vocabulary of decern y and patriotism save one —never call him a fool. Jack London, in his compelling story, “John Barleycorn,” written in the form of an autobiography, relates that he rode down from his California ranch to vote for woman’s suffrage, because he knew that it would be another weapon for the smiting of the liquor traffic.

And let no suffragist make the mistake of silence in the hope of placating the “trade.” May the day speedily come when every woman’s club, e very female organisation in the United States, will stand outspokenly

with this incomparable White Ribbon host, for a saloonless nation and a stainless flag. Yes, the homa is woman’s sphere. Not the home as it was —the home as it is. No. the simple, shaded path of yesterday, but a toiler’s rugged read .hat lea~ds trom the door stoop, into every department of human endeavour, through every phase of sorie y’s unrest, and girdles the globe. For today the four posts of the home are the four corners of the earth.

Let us face the issue squarely. A great militant question challenges the women of the race. It rises from sweat shops, and factories, and brothels, and mines, and molten furnaces. It is the cry of the city, and •t i 1 the cry of the town. This is the question, “What arc you going to do about it?”

There are two possible answers to .he question. One is the answer of tradition, and the answer of tradition is, that woman’s political helplessness is her power, that woman’s weakness is her strength. The way .hat this answer opens is in the last anal>sis, the way of seduction. Not necessarily not generally gross, immoral seduction, but the seduction of smiles, and tears, the seduction of the wheedler and clinging vine. The other answer is the answer of woman’s strength, and it opens the road of equality by which in all the complexities of modern life, the sexe-» shall complement ea< h other.

Shall it be a resolution or a vote? Do you remember Frances Willard’s resolution? Did you see it under a table, in the tobacco filth of a national political convention’s platform committee room? 1 would ra her have my wife and mother and sisters and daughters go into the voting booth with a clean American ballot, than to the political boss, with tearful intercessions—a political boss, who would very likely have eyes for only their physical charms. V Sich of the two answers is the fair, clean, honest one? Which is the American answer? Which is the right answer?

What is society? Who arc society? Government ought to be society’s best expression of itself. It cannot be with society’s morally best part not speaking. What is government in the last analysis? Government is an institution of laws, powers, functions and spirit. And how is government

achieved? No man has oer weighed a prayer, or fa homed a tear, or valued a smile, bu. in the last analysis; government is not by tears, nor prayers, nor .smiles, but by votes. I’rayers numberless as the sands on the sea shore have shaken the Almighty’s throne, supplicating the des*ru« tion of the liquor traffic! An ocean of tears has Mowed, a billion hearts have broken, all the wiles of frantic mothers ready to sell their lives, if not to give their souls, have been employed, that sah on doors migh be dosed forever, and to-day the rum institution still rests in the protecting shelter of a masculine dollar sign. Only by stainless ballots will we ever achieve a stainless flag. When the women of America are granted the voting privilege of citizenship, we will bury the liquoi *raftie beneath an avalanche of votes, ue p pe r than the foundation of the earth ! Bu let no one here think that 1 grant the contention that woman’s suffrage wnere it is in the process of dtmonstrt.ion is a failure. In Washington at least nine progressive laws must be »redited largely to woman’s suffrage, in Oregon twelve, in Utah thirteen, in Colorado sixteen, in Idaho rune, in Wyoming nine, and in California nine ten. These laws have it> d ,x with the home, the school, reform nstitu.ions and asylums, Juvenile Courts, pure food and drugs, working conditions of men, women, and children public health and m< rals, the conservation of na ural resources and th< greatest conservation of all—the conservation of humanity. In nearly all of ’he suffrage States th? age of con>en. has been raised to eighteen years. It 1- hard to realise that in some instances it used to be as low as seven yearand that it is still as low as twelve years in a few S ates. 1 he blows of suffrage fall naturally for humanity’s uplift. It strikes and will strike against child labour and white slavery, tor mothers’ pensions and vocational training in public schools, for parks and ;he shortening to a proper length of the hours of toil. And it will speed the day when women will say to men, in the words of Dean Sumner, of Chicago, “No longer shall you exploi* n y >ex in vie ious marriage* selection. Children of women no longer shall be compelled to suffer with blind e>e<, wisted limbs, and idiotic brains, because of the sins of their fathers. 1 he double standard of morality must go, and the immoral

dance and immodest dress, leading teasons why boys go wrong, must not survive. liu l am charged with unfairness. Have I not ignored many of the strong, direct arguments against woman’s suffrage. 1 hu> far I have tried to deal with basic principles. A mas of inc idental contentions 1 have brushed by. S lould he responsibilities of the vo’e be thrust up m women who do not want it, who are c p|K)scd to having it? Yes, if woman’s suffrage is right. Ilu* only *nne a male citizen has any right to deliberately remain away from the polls is when the candidates or principles before the people give him no opportunity to express himself, do not in any way represent Evan then It is a tragedy! Any citizen who stays away from the polls for any other reason than conscience or physical disability, should be temporarily disenfranchised. We who enjoy for ourselves and our child ren the benefits of a free government are required by the moral law, and ough to be so required by the law of the land, to pay the price of our Only thus can gjv* eminent survive.

Men have been woefully slow in dis covering that women, to whom by common consent, is delegated he major portion of the moral, religious, educational, and patriotic training of flu- youth, are actually deprived of the one prac i< al text book b> whic h the vital lessons c*t citizenship arc* taught. Thus far we have demanded of women in the training of our sons for c iti/enship, that they no only c arry the greater portion of our load, but hat they give what they themselves do not possess, that they impart what they themselves have not received. That mothers have borne and reared Presidents and o her honourable men, in spite of the terrihc handicap is a glorious tribute to womanhood, but a mighty mean argument o use against suffrage.

And 1 would remind you .hat when a husband and wife grow not together they grow apart. In proportion as husband and wife have mutual interests, do the years hind their hearts and blend .heir lives. 1 he privileges and responsibilities of citizenship have and should have a large place in the development of the normal man, and men and women will not be as well

mated as the Creator intended they should be, until women arc men’s copar, tiers in the State. Women have led personally some of the mightiest movements in human progress. Joan of Arc, Mary Lyons, and Trances Willard were women. Mrs Stevens and Jane Addanis arc* women, and women have* been the* fountain heads of every great move ment, tor they have borne the* soldiers of every reform, the cap.ains of every emane ipation. 1 his last is to my mind greater than the bearing of arms. Hut be careful how you apply the blood test, my masc uline interrogator. I have come up through the cosmopolitan school of the average Ame rican young man. 1 have seen courage, the courage of the gridiron and hunt, the courage tha beards the* character assassin in his political lair of graft, the* courage that marches in khaki, beneath streaming banner-* and be hind pounding drums, and 1 have seen the* courage <»f the hum drum the rarest of all but I never saw courage until a brown-eyed bit of feminine pure gold, brave enough to say “yes' when I wooed he r in an old Ohio homestead the mother of my children, (iod bless her showed it to me. Do jou insist that 1 go to the inexorable end with my argument i Do you say equal .it the |h>lls, then equal in toil, equal in vices When true womanhood carries a hod, she carnet it with all the dignity of a quest.. Hut where true* men arc* will never again carry a hod. T.qual in vices? Hut r.o man -.ays that, and anyhow (iod made true* womanhood different.

La>t summer 1 went home back to he old home. A Fourth of July parade? e> ! And to the question that your eyes Ha-h, l would answer that a few months before, for the fust time in history, he women of Portland voted! lhey went to the polls and elected a reform administration. They swept the city clean. The women did. My mo her and my sis’er helped. Father c ast his one vote, and the* “females of the species” in our clan c.»>t their two! The great, good men of the city had tried again and again. Standing alone, they had failed. The day that saw women vote for the first time in the* metropolis of Oregon was Por land’s great emancipation day.

That night 1 went to bed in the old home, and by my side slept a little fellow, bearing my name and carrying my blood in his veins. Just such a lit.le fellow as 1 was before 1 grew up and went away. \l id mg lit tame and I had not slept. My heart was stirred by a hundred emotions and my mind was memory’s picture gallery. I hen ac ross the* threshold of the quit, room swept soft as an angel a figure in white. Ihe cold comes down at night in the North west. No sweltering there through sleepless, humid terrors! Mother feared that I might be uncovered and e hilled in my sleep. Often she had found me thu*. Close by my bed she tame, and in the dim moon that crept under the blinds I sensed her s.ooping low. I closed my eyes. I felt her lingers touch the* coverlet. She tucked it deftly the n a pause—and there as light as a breath from the milky way, her lips brushed my fore head. Mother, voting citizen of Oregon, had not changed! And so, fighting comrades of the W.C.T.I ~ here is my conclusion for tin- whole matter. lam profoundly convinced that ihe ballot will be a weapon of uplift and freedom in ihe white hands of the Mothers at Men. “The greatest battle that ever was fought, Shall I tell you where and when, (hi .he maps of the world you will find it not, 1 was fought by the mothers of men.’* 'I was fought by uncrowned womanhood, who, when the clouds of battle hung he.ivy oYi the land, drew from bleeding finger tips the food for babes a. home; who have stood with Spartan fortitude, unbow ic.g through a thousand gales of compromises; trom whose wombs haw -prung the empires of freedom, and at whose breasts have nursed the soldiers of liberty and the leaders of every righteous cause, since time began; who have kindled and rekindled in the* breasts of men the fires of truth and patriotism; mothers, wives, sisters, sweethearts, who with the mingled light of devotion and sacrifice shining from their eyes, have sent their sons and loved ones, on fields of blood and greater fields of peace, courageous down to all the* wars of humanity,