The Lancaster news. [volume] (Lancaster, S.C.) 1905-current, 1919-06-24
BY Carrie Chapman Gait.

Inc passage or the federal SUI
frage amendment by the United
States congress on June 4 should be
credited to no man or woman, nor
group Of men or women, nor to any
one political party. 1t should be
credited to no particular method of
form Of campaign, nor even to our
own generation. Any attempt so to
limit the credit betokens gross igno-
rance of American and world his
tory. The passage OF the amendment
is the result of fifty years or more
of concerted, never-ceasing effort.
Some pronounce it evolution.
evolution there have been evolutors
hundreds, thousands Of them, who,
in order to push the demand for wo-
man suffrage forward, gave every
possibility of their lives to the
canse. All that they had and all
that they were went to the service
of woman's emancipation. Although
women were the chief workers, there
have been men who, like the women,
lived in strictest economy so that
there should be more to give to the
woman's cause. A long array Of
such noble souls rises in memory as
one looks backward over the years;
women who had the vision of the
Righteousness of the equality of
rights between the sexes, men who
dare to espouse despised cause.
The victory at Washington is,
therefore, no sudden development,
no unexpected event On the con-
trary, it is a long-overdue climax.
The federal suffrage amendment
was introduced in congress in 1878,
forty years ago, by the National Wo-
mans Suffrage association, and has
been pending ever since, each new
session Witnessing its early introduce
ton, while with weary watching and
working the years have succeeded
each other
The Constitution or the United
States is not an easy instrument to
change, but it has been amended
three times between 1878 and 1919.
Had the federal suffrage amendment
been passed and ratified when it was
introduced, it would have been the
sixteenth amendment. AS its case
stands it will be the nineteenth
when ratified, amendments that pro-
vide for an income tax, the direct
election of senator's, and prohibition
having successfully displaced it.
The impatient, uniformed new
conner into the movement has justi-
fiably failed to understand the delay.
One not closely acquainted with
the entire history OF the movement,
and especially our political psychol-
ogy. could not do otherwise.
The delay has been due to four
main causes, all others being sub
sidiary.
% In the beginning of the
movement the entire world. includ-
ing women, believed confidently that
women were mentally, physically,
morally. spiritually. inferior to men,
with minds incapable Of education.
capacities too rudimentary to per-
nit of their even looking after their
own property bodies too feeble to
perform the simplest tasks for which
men earned wages.
ca The illiteratc, undeveloped
man held the view OF the cave man
that the woman belonged to him to
do with as he pleased. She existed
for him to dominate. In the refined,
educated man this primitive instinct
developed into a chivalrous, high
minded spirit of protection. Between
these extremes the views of men to-
ward women ranged all the posi-
bilities
The very suggestion that woman
should control her own property
served as a reaction upon mans
honesty or ability to do it for her.
For a woman to want education
doing the necessary thinking for the
females of his family.
To propose that women should
speak in public implied that they had
ideas which could not be expressed
by their natural protectors.
To ask for vote was equivalent
to declaring the government of