Florida Ruffin Ridley gave this speech at the Brookline Women’s Suffrage Association. It was later published in The Woman's Journal.
I was talking recently with Harriet Tubman about her acquaintance with Col. Shaw. She was telling me of the breakfast she took with him on the morning of the day of his death. I asked if there were other women in camp. She said there were supposed to be no others but at roll-call in the morning one of the privates, who had responded to the call the night before, was reported to have just given birth to twins, and upon investigation there were to be found fifty-seven women in the ranks. Perhaps many of you have heard her tell the tale.
This incident convinced me of two things that are commonly disputed — first, that the sphere of women is not so circumscribed as commonly supposed, and, using Harriet Tubman as an example, that character should be the only test for citizenship. She is illiterate, poor, a woman, and black— every one of these distinctions being held, and with strong argument, a disqualification in the opinion of many. Although she did fine service as a scout and a nurse all through the war, has the unequaled record of rescuing over three hundred people from slavery, is now the eightieth year of her age, founding a home for the aged, she is still distinctly womanly, and more entitled to the rights and privileges of citizenship, if service to the country counts, then half the man who now enjoy those rights.
I do not believe that suffrage should be a privilege to be granted or withheld by the State at will. The State is made up of the people, and no group of men should have the power to say who should or who should not exercise the rights of freedom.
The suffrage question is like so many other so-called “questions”--no question at all if faced in its nakedness. It is not only when complicated by questions of expediency and questions of experience and taste that people get “mixed” about it. In their heart of hearts, the remonstrance know and cannot deny the justice of the principle of equal human right; and I believe they have a conviction of what we know, that equal suffrage is a matter of time only. Consequences are not worth the consideration that is usually given to them. Let the right thing be done, and the consequences left to take care of themselves.
Although we know that women’s suffrage is inevitable, and feel that society is daily preparing for and adjusting itself toward this end, yet there is still a marked want of interest in the question per se. Women are crowding into the educational institutions which have grown from the seeds sown by women suffragists. They are eagerly taking up the business opportunities which have been opened by these same women. They are gaining health and strength through participation in those outdoor sports which were only recently condemned as mannish or tomboyish, and were left to the “strong minded” women and their children. All this is surely leading to one end-- a more active participation in public affairs and although we feel convinced of this, and that the future is sure, we cannot help considering why it is that the great majority of women, to quote them, don’t want to be bothered about women suffrage. They frankly tell you that in so many words why is it so hard to rouse interest on a question so vital?
For one thing the young women of today have not realizing sense of “the pit from whence they were dug.” They are carried away with present privileges in opportunities, and consequently not sensitive to any lack. Besides this and it seems to me the gray obstacle in the way of arousing interest in any great question, is women’s growing devotion to fads and the tyranny of small things. I say, growing interest. My experience has not been a long one, but it seems to me impossible that women could ever before have devoted so much time, spent so much force, wasted so much feeling upon matters that are not of real vital importance. I am sure that the women of fifty years ago were not obliged to lie awake nights and spend days in planning not to get too far behind in the style of their dress.
These are the two enemies within our ranks. The tyranny of dress is a real one. It causes all of us more worry and more thought than we care to acknowledge, and we seem to be strangely indifferent to the hard fact that dress is the life and breath of the ordinary working girl. How can she give time to anything higher when out of working hours there are always sleeves to be altered and skirts to be made over? And how can she be condemned when the woman of better opportunities set the example? If we could look at the statues of Grecian and women and say honestly, “We give up more time to the details of our costume, but we are compensated, we are wiser, we are happier, we look more beautiful than you,” there might be an execute for us; bit is there a woman that can say it?
Then there is a devotion to fads. At a recent meeting of church women, the amount of feeling aroused over the slaughter of birds for plumage was to me amazing. No thoughtful woman can be indifferent to the cause of the birds, but it is puzzling, to say the least, to see a woman who is known calmly to trample on human feelings, and to have no interest in humanity outside of her own circle, go into mild hysterics over the birds. I believe in “movements” but I believe we should realize their relative value and assign them to their proper place. I do not think we should cultivate our emotions at the expense of our reasoning faculty, and I think that we should choose those things of vital importance upon which to spend vital force.
Well it is our absorption in smaller things that is shutting us out from the consideration of large things, we shall only learn to live a large life by having it thrust upon us. As much of the women’s clubs have done for women it will take a revolution like that of suffrage to free her entirely from trivialities well it is our absorption in smaller things that is shutting us out from the consideration of large things, we shall only learn to live a large life by having it thrust upon us. As much of the women’s clubs have done for women it will take a revolution like that of suffrage to free her entirely from trivialities it seems to me that when we are obliged to consider the large questions of public good, we shall be applied to neglect, as our enemy say, some of these things which we now called duties, and it will be a good thing for us, and for them to. When our lives are made simpler and freer, when we realize that true womanhood as well as manhood does not need to hedge itself about, and that the best wives and mothers are those who will let their floors go bare rather than spend their days picking lint off the carpet; then shall we begin to see and to feel the great ennobling, uplifting influence of equal suffrage. And when we have the ballot, and are all convinced of its power to broaden, to develop, to educate as well as protect, I hope we, as women who know its value, shall never give any serious consideration to any project to withhold it from any human being of mature age and sane mind if it gives power, Shirley the week will need it. If it educates, let the ignorant have it. Neither race sex money nor education is a guarantee of character and universal suffrage is one step toward that universal brotherhood of which were here so much.
This incident convinced me of two things that are commonly disputed — first, that the sphere of women is not so circumscribed as commonly supposed, and, using Harriet Tubman as an example, that character should be the only test for citizenship. She is illiterate, poor, a woman, and black— every one of these distinctions being held, and with strong argument, a disqualification in the opinion of many. Although she did fine service as a scout and a nurse all through the war, has the unequaled record of rescuing over three hundred people from slavery, is now the eightieth year of her age, founding a home for the aged, she is still distinctly womanly, and more entitled to the rights and privileges of citizenship, if service to the country counts, then half the man who now enjoy those rights.
I do not believe that suffrage should be a privilege to be granted or withheld by the State at will. The State is made up of the people, and no group of men should have the power to say who should or who should not exercise the rights of freedom.
The suffrage question is like so many other so-called “questions”--no question at all if faced in its nakedness. It is not only when complicated by questions of expediency and questions of experience and taste that people get “mixed” about it. In their heart of hearts, the remonstrance know and cannot deny the justice of the principle of equal human right; and I believe they have a conviction of what we know, that equal suffrage is a matter of time only. Consequences are not worth the consideration that is usually given to them. Let the right thing be done, and the consequences left to take care of themselves.
Although we know that women’s suffrage is inevitable, and feel that society is daily preparing for and adjusting itself toward this end, yet there is still a marked want of interest in the question per se. Women are crowding into the educational institutions which have grown from the seeds sown by women suffragists. They are eagerly taking up the business opportunities which have been opened by these same women. They are gaining health and strength through participation in those outdoor sports which were only recently condemned as mannish or tomboyish, and were left to the “strong minded” women and their children. All this is surely leading to one end-- a more active participation in public affairs and although we feel convinced of this, and that the future is sure, we cannot help considering why it is that the great majority of women, to quote them, don’t want to be bothered about women suffrage. They frankly tell you that in so many words why is it so hard to rouse interest on a question so vital?
For one thing the young women of today have not realizing sense of “the pit from whence they were dug.” They are carried away with present privileges in opportunities, and consequently not sensitive to any lack. Besides this and it seems to me the gray obstacle in the way of arousing interest in any great question, is women’s growing devotion to fads and the tyranny of small things. I say, growing interest. My experience has not been a long one, but it seems to me impossible that women could ever before have devoted so much time, spent so much force, wasted so much feeling upon matters that are not of real vital importance. I am sure that the women of fifty years ago were not obliged to lie awake nights and spend days in planning not to get too far behind in the style of their dress.
These are the two enemies within our ranks. The tyranny of dress is a real one. It causes all of us more worry and more thought than we care to acknowledge, and we seem to be strangely indifferent to the hard fact that dress is the life and breath of the ordinary working girl. How can she give time to anything higher when out of working hours there are always sleeves to be altered and skirts to be made over? And how can she be condemned when the woman of better opportunities set the example? If we could look at the statues of Grecian and women and say honestly, “We give up more time to the details of our costume, but we are compensated, we are wiser, we are happier, we look more beautiful than you,” there might be an execute for us; bit is there a woman that can say it?
Then there is a devotion to fads. At a recent meeting of church women, the amount of feeling aroused over the slaughter of birds for plumage was to me amazing. No thoughtful woman can be indifferent to the cause of the birds, but it is puzzling, to say the least, to see a woman who is known calmly to trample on human feelings, and to have no interest in humanity outside of her own circle, go into mild hysterics over the birds. I believe in “movements” but I believe we should realize their relative value and assign them to their proper place. I do not think we should cultivate our emotions at the expense of our reasoning faculty, and I think that we should choose those things of vital importance upon which to spend vital force.
Well it is our absorption in smaller things that is shutting us out from the consideration of large things, we shall only learn to live a large life by having it thrust upon us. As much of the women’s clubs have done for women it will take a revolution like that of suffrage to free her entirely from trivialities well it is our absorption in smaller things that is shutting us out from the consideration of large things, we shall only learn to live a large life by having it thrust upon us. As much of the women’s clubs have done for women it will take a revolution like that of suffrage to free her entirely from trivialities it seems to me that when we are obliged to consider the large questions of public good, we shall be applied to neglect, as our enemy say, some of these things which we now called duties, and it will be a good thing for us, and for them to. When our lives are made simpler and freer, when we realize that true womanhood as well as manhood does not need to hedge itself about, and that the best wives and mothers are those who will let their floors go bare rather than spend their days picking lint off the carpet; then shall we begin to see and to feel the great ennobling, uplifting influence of equal suffrage. And when we have the ballot, and are all convinced of its power to broaden, to develop, to educate as well as protect, I hope we, as women who know its value, shall never give any serious consideration to any project to withhold it from any human being of mature age and sane mind if it gives power, Shirley the week will need it. If it educates, let the ignorant have it. Neither race sex money nor education is a guarantee of character and universal suffrage is one step toward that universal brotherhood of which were here so much.