Wheeling majority. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1907-192?, 1910-04-14
The Division
Of Labor
BY Alice Stone Blackwell

Among the better class of oppon-
ents of woman suffrage, there is a
growing tendency to drop the old ar
gument that women have not enough
intelligence to vote, and to base oppo-
sition mainly On the division of la
bor.'
4 We are told the prQgress>Qf civil
lization is marked by a growing di-
vision of labor and specialization of
/ industry; that it. is in accordance
I with this to have men take charge of
the political work and women of the
domestic work, and that to admit
women to the ballot would be re-
turn toward berbarism.
1t is true that the progress of civil
lization has been marked by a grow
ing division of labor between man
and man and woman and woman, but
not between men and women. Thus
in the early days every man cut down
trees and built his own house, raised
! animals and killed them for meat;
and himself cured their hides Now
this work is divided among the car
penter, the butcher, the tanner. In
the old days every housewife spun
and wove cloth, dyed it, and made it
/ ap into garments for her family, and
also made butter and cheese, soap
md candles. Now this work is di-
/ vided up among dozen. women and
men. The division of labor between
individuals has been constantly in
creasing, but not the division of labor
between the sexes. There the trend
of things has just been the other
way.
A hundred years ago hardly any
occupations were open to women ex-
cept homework and sewing. Now the
1censue of 1900 shows that out of the
hundreds of trades and professions
followed by men, the only ones in
which no women are found are the
work of soldiers and sailors, and tel
Eegraph and telephone men. Nothing
could be more untrue than to say
that the progress of civilization is
marked by more and more rigid di-
vision of labor between the sexes.
i Some people admit that the trend
of the times has been to open more
employments to women. but declare
that it is calamity for women to en-
gage in wage-earning occupations
outside their homes; and, by~an odd
confusion of ideas, they make this
an argument against equal suffrage.
But this is to mix up political ques-
ton with a purely economic one.
Whether it Is right for woman to
vote is one thing; whether it is wise
for her to work for money outside
her home is quite another. There is
mo evidence that more women are
wage-earners outside their homes in
the States where women vote than in
the States where they do not. Wy
oming has had full woman suffrage
ever since 1869; yet, according to the
census of 1900, Wyoming has the
smallest proportion of unmarried wo--
men to it's population of any state in
the Union, and, presumably, the
smallest proportion of women who
are obliged to engage in wage-earn-
ing occupations outside their homes.
On the other hand, Massachusetts,
and New York, where women do not
vote, have an enormous plumber of
unmarried women Wage-earners.
The specialization of industry"
has no bearing on the question. Vot-
ing is not an industry. The progress
of civilization has not been to restrict
the suffrage more and more narrowly,
but to extend it to one class after
another. The most advanced nations
today are not those where all polit-
ical power is concentrated in the
hands of single despot, but those in
which it is most widely shared among
the people And the best government
is found where the largest ,number of
the people actively perform their po-
litical duties, not where they neglect
to vote and leave public affairs to be
managed by small class of PRO.
fessional politicians.