THE MODERN
WOMAN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENT

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO

THE MODERN
WOMAN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENT

A HISTORICAL SURVEY

BY

DR. KAETHE SCHIRMACHER

TRANSLATED FROM THE
SECOND GERMAN EDITION
BY
CARL CONRAD ECKHARDT, Ph.D.
INSTRUCTOR IN HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1912
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1912,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1912.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

“Unterdrückung ist gegen die menschliche Natur”
“Oppression is opposed to human nature”

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

PREFACE

The first edition of this book appeared in 1905. That edition is exhausted,—an evidence of the great present-day interest in the woman’s rights movement. This new edition takes into account the developments since 1905, contains the recent statistical data, and gives an account of the woman’s suffrage movement which has been especially characteristic of these later years. Wherever the statistical data have been left unchanged, either there have been no new censuses or the new results were not available.

The facts contained in this volume do not require of me any prefatory observations on the theoretical justification of the woman’s rights movement.[1] From the remotest time man has tried to rule her who ought to be comrade and colleague to him. By virtue of the law of might he generally succeeded. Every protest against this law of might was a “woman’s rights movement.”

History contains many such protests. The modern woman’s rights movement is the first organized and international protest of this kind. Therefore it is a movement full of success and promise. Leadership in this movement has fallen to the women of the Caucasian race, among whom the women of the United States have been foremost. At their instigation were formed the World’s Christian Temperance Union, the International Council of Women, and the International Woman’s Suffrage Alliance.

In many lands, even in those inhabited by the white race, there are, however, only very feeble beginnings of the woman’s rights movement. In the Orient, the Far East, and in Africa, woman’s condition of bondage is still almost entirely unbroken. Nevertheless, in these regions of the world, too, woman’s day is dawning in such a way that we look for developments more confidently than ever before.

In all countries the woman’s rights movement originated with the middle classes. This is a purely historical fact which in itself in no way implies any antagonism between the woman’s rights movement and the workingwomen’s movement. There is no such antagonism either in Australia, or in England, or in the United States. On the contrary, the middle class and non-middle class movements are sharply separated in those countries whose social democracy uses class-hatred as propaganda. Whether the woman’s rights movement is also a workingwomen’s movement, or whether the workingwomen’s movement is also a woman’s rights movement or socialism, depends therefore in every particular case on national and historical circumstances.

The international organization of the woman’s rights movement is as follows: the International Council of Women consists of the presiding officers of the various National Councils of Women. Of these latter there are to-day twenty-seven; but the Servian League of Woman’s Clubs has not yet joined.[2] To a National Council may belong all those woman’s clubs of a country which unite in carrying out a certain general programme. The programmes as well as the organizations are national in their nature, but they all agree in their general characteristics, since the woman’s rights movement is indeed an international movement and arose in all countries from the same general conditions. The first National Council was organized in the United States in 1888. This was followed by organizations in Canada, Germany, Sweden, England, Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia (with five councils), Switzerland, Italy, France, Austria, Norway, Hungary, etc.

As yet there are no statistics of the women represented in the International Council. Its membership is estimated at seven or eight millions. The National Council admits only clubs,—not individuals,—the chairmen of the various National Councils forming the International Council of Women solely in their capacity of presiding officers.

This International Council of Women is the permanent body promoting the organized international woman’s rights movement. It was organized in Washington in 1888.

The woman’s suffrage movement, a separate phase of the woman’s rights movement, has likewise organized itself internationally,—though independently. Woman’s suffrage is the most radical demand made by organized women, and is hence advocated in all countries by the “radical” woman’s rights advocates. The greater part of the membership of the National Councils have therefore not been able in all cases to insert woman’s suffrage in their programmes. The International Council did sanction this point, however, June 9, 1904, in Berlin.

A few days previously