USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 5
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contract whatever. The legal custody of the children was in the father, and by feudal law after the father's death, unless he had by his will appointed a guardian, the lord of the manor became the custodian of the person and property of the orphaned child. The consent of the lord was necessary to the marriage of a female ward, and in England the lord could dispose of her in marriage, exacting a heavy fine if she refused to marry according to his commands. Where, as in England, the possession of landed property qualified its owner to vote and hold public office, the husband of a woman who owned land, voted and sat in parliament by right of his joint ownership in his wife's land. This right of the husband has disappeared from American law, except in Rhode Island, where it still lingers only slightly modified by recent legis- lation. The condition of the widow under this regime was truly pitiable. She had no claim whatever upon the personal property of her late husband, not even though she had brought that property to him at her marriage.
In England the widow had from very early times a right to the income of one- third of the deceased husband's lands, during her life, and this life interest, known as "the widow's dower," was all that she could claim, unless, indeed, she had been so fortunate as to possess a marriage settlement. By a deed to trustees before her mar- riage, her property could be preserved to her and her heirs, free from any claim of her husband. This device of the English equity courts relieved in some degree the hardships of the common law, but obviously could only benefit the wealthy women of the kingdom. The widow under the civil law of Europe had no claim upon her deceased husband's property. It all went to his heirs. Under the feudal system, at least in England, a widow could remain for forty days in the mansion house of her husband without paying rent. At the end of this time her dower was assigned and she was then turned adrift upon the world at the mercy of her family and friends. If she married again, the lord of the manor could exact a fine from her for so doing, and it was no uncommon practice for these feudal masters to compel a widow to re-marry, in order to obtain the fine to replenish their exhausted treasuries.
The single woman under English law possessed all the legal rights of a man. On the Continent, the idea of woman's mental incapacity affected the legal condi- tion of the single woman, as well as that of the wife. She had not the freedom of her English spinster sister. She had very limited contract powers, and could only make contracts to pay in money or in kind for purchases made by her. On the other hand, she had, by reason of this same conception of mental inferiority, less criminal responsibility, and where the English woman suffered the same penalties for her crimes that a man would do, the European woman had but half the penalty. As an old law quaintly says : " A woman shall suffer but half the punishment, where a man
suffers the full penalty. * * * Thus, a woman should not be put in irons, nor sent to the galleys, nor placed in a prison, which might enfeeble her body or wound her, or cause her to lose her memory, for women are frail by nature."
Offenses against the person of woman were not severely punished. One could scarcely expect that they would be when the social inferiority of woman was so clearly marked. A husband could chastise his wife by right of his position as head of the family. The degradation of marriage under the Roman law left its stain upon later generations. The monastic ideas of the middle ages sympathizing with the Roman theory, incorporated into the canon law the principle of the inferiority and subjection of woman.
At the time that the Renaissance began to clevate woman's social condition, the Reformation began to sweep away the errors that had collected around the original ecclesiastical conception of woman's sphere. The advancement of woman was assured when her intellectual and spiritual equality with man began to be perceived. Her social elevation thus secured, her legal enfranchisement must follow.
Let us pause and think how small a portion of this vast globe of ours shared in this great awakening of the fifteenth century. Not more than half of the European Continent saw this light. In Asia, in Africa, in the New World, lying unknown in an
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unknown ocean, in the undiscovered islands of the sea, what intellectual and moral darkness! Can we bear to think of, much less to relate in detail, the social degrada- tion of woman in these dark places of the earth! Even where the heathen civiliza- tion had reached its highest mark, the condition of woman was scarcely one to be desired in point of personal respect and protection.
In the interval between 1492 and 1892 the social and legal development of woman was slow. The leaven of new ideas was working, but the mass of ignorance and prejudice, the accumulation of centuries, was not easily permeated. In England the condition of the widow was improved by granting to her a fraction of her husband's personal property, in addition to her dower in his real estate. The power of the lord over the widow and children of his vassal disappeared with the complete abolition of the feudal system in the seventeenth century. On the Continent the contract capacity of woman was enlarged, and greater.personal protection accorded to her by law. A few persistent women secured for themselves the benefit of a liberal education. Italy continued to honor women as professors in her University of Bologna. Mary Somerville in England won recognition for her attainments, and here and there other women less known to fame gave proof of their ability and skill. But the gains of three hundred and sixty years were little compared with those of the last forty years. The long, slow process of seed sowing, the ages of germination, have been crowned in our time by wonderful fruitage. The inventions of science, which have brought together into closest relationship the nations of the earth, have also opened a high- way for the advancement of women.
In order to get any adequate idea of the legal condition of woman in 1892 we must know of her present and past social condition and trace the history of the an- cient laws affecting her. For these ancient laws, some of which are still in force, are responsible for the present anomalies of woman's legal condition. When enacted, they may have justly reflected woman's social condition, but now they should give place to new laws, framed to meet the existing social environment. To go into minute detail is impossible, and this address would become a mere catalogue were it to be at- tempted. We shall consider first the higher education of woman at the present day; secondly, the professions and occupations open to her; thirdly, her political status; fourthly, her personal rights; fifthly, her property rights, and lastly shall attempt to draw some lessons and conclusions from this historical survey of the legal condi- tion of woman.
I. THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN.
On the Continent of Europe women are admitted to the universities in Italy, France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Spain, Roumania, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, and may in some of them receive university degrees.
In Great Britain the following are open both for instruction and degrees: The University of London, the universities of Ireland, and the Scottish universities of Edinburgh and of St. Andrews, the two latter very recently.
Women are excluded from the universities by express prohibition of law in Ger- many, Austria and Russia. In the latter country a medical school for women stu- dents, which was for a time suspended on account of political complications, is about to be re-established through the exertions of the czarina. While the conserv- ative universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England do not admit to their lect- ures or degrees, they do permit women to take the university examinations, and we have not yet forgotten the triumph of Philippa Fawcett, who in 1890 over- topped the senior wrangler in the mathematical examinations at Cambridge. Under the shadow of these venerable universities, the colleges for women, Girton Newham and St. Margaret's are distinguished by the high attainments of their students.
In our own land there are over a hundred first class colleges and universities open to women. Some of these, like Vassar, Wellesley, Smith and Bryn Mawr, are for women exclusively; some like Barnard College of Columbia University and the
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Woman's College of Brown have an organic connection with a university for men; some like Tufts College have after establishment opened their doors to women on the same terms as men, while many others, like Michigan University, Boston Uni- versity, Cornell and nearly all the universities and colleges of the Western States, like the youngest of all, the great Chicago University, have been co-educational from their very foundation. Of our older universities, Brown in 1891, and Yale and the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania in 1892, are the latest to open their post-graduate courses and degrees to women. Harvard, the oldest of all, seems to stand alone in its refusal to recognize officially the eligibility of women for the Harvard Annex, so-called, has no official connection with the university.
Nearly all the universities and colleges of Canada are open to women, and all those of Australia. In India the universities of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. Opportunities are also increasing in Japan for the higher education of women.
Since Oberlin College in Ohio granted, in 1838, apparently the first collegiate diploma ever given to a woman in this country to this time, when in nearly every civilized country women may obtain degrees on the same terms as men, how great has been the advance! And nearly all this advance has been made within thirty years.
II. PROFESSIONS AND OCCUPATIONS OPEN TO WOMEN.
It naturally follows that the professions should be entered by women. Appar- ently the medical profession was the first sought by her. Sixty years ago the first woman medical student began her course of study, and now countless thousands of women practitioners of the healing art are scattered over the world, pursuing their profession with most signal success. In the East Indian zenanas, the homes of the helpless foot-bound Chinese, as in the homes and hospitals of Europe and America, they are doing a work that no man could possibly accomplish.
The profession of theology has attracted fewer women, and it has been less easy for them to obtain recognition as pastors and preachers, but the theological schools of Switzerland, and some of those in the United States, notably those of the Unitarian and Methodist Episcopal churches, admit women as students. There are ordained women preachers in the Baptist, Congregational, Universalist, Unitarian, " Christian," Prot- estant, Methodist, and Primitive Methodist denominations, and over three hundred and fifty women preachers among the Society of Friends. There are perhaps seven hundred women preachers to-day in the United States.
The legal profession was the last of the three so-called learned professions to be opened to women; not because of reluctance on the part of the courts, but because women did not so early apply for admission. Although isolated instances may be cited from the Roman Calphurnia to our own time of women who have pleaded causes in court, it was not till 1869 that a woman was formally admitted as an attor- ney and counselor at law. To the United States belongs this honor. Mrs. Arabella A. Mansfield was admitted without objection to the bar of the Supreme Court of Iowa in that year (1869). About the same time women students were received into the law schools of Washington University, St. Louis, and the Union College of Law at Chicago. There are now not less than eleven law schools in the United States open to women. Twenty-five States and Territories admit women to the bar. As to the rest we cannot safely say that they exclude women, for as a matter of fact no woman has as yet applied, except in Virginia, which has for three years steadfastly refused to grant admission to a lady lawyer. There are probably over two hundred women lawyers in the United States to-day, nine of whom are admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States.
The universities of Paris, Brussels and Zurich have within five or six years gradu- ated women from their law departments. The three graduates at Paris have not applied for admission to the bar. At Zurich Dr. Emilie Kempin, although denied admission to the bar, is a lecturer upon law in the university. Dr. Marie Popelin, a graduate in law at Brussels, has been formally denied admission to the bar. Italy,
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Russia and Denmark have also refused the petition of women for admission as advo- . cates at the bar. India, Japan and the Hawaiian Islands recognize the woman lawyer. The Royal University of Ireland has recently conferred the degree of Doctor of Laws upon a woman; and in Canada, in the Province of Ontario, women have very recently been made eligible to admission to the study of the law. In England, no attempt to gain admission to the bar has yet been made. Several ladies, practicing as attor- neys and solicitors, are patiently waiting for a change in public sentiment before asking for admission to plead as barristers.
Every known profession, occupation and trade seems now to be open to woman in some part of the civilized world. She can be a minister, doctor, lawyer, professor, lecturer, journalist, mechanic, architect, sculptor, painter, merchant, day-laborer. In fact, whatever she chooses to undertake she is permitted to do, if not in one country then elsewhere. In view of this entire revolution in her social status, should she not logically possess the same civil and legal rights, and be subject to the same civil and legal liabilities as a man in the same position.
III. POLITICAL STATUS OF WOMEN.
After this preliminary glance at the social condition of women in 1192, let us look at her legal condition, and see whether her legal emancipation has kept pace with her social emancipation. The political status of women will first be considered. Women enjoy a more or less extended right of suffrage in a majority of all the civilized nations of the world. In the United States they have full suffrage in Wyoming and municipal suffrage in Kansas. In Montana, women have school suffrage, and if tax- payers, they can vote upon all questions involving the levy or disbursement of moneys for public purposes. In twenty more states they have a right to vote for school offi- cers or upon school matters, and in at least six more states they may vote by petition upon certain local matters, such as local improvements, or the granting of liquor licenses; so that there are at least twenty-nine out of a total of forty-eight states and territories of our Union where women enjoy some form of suffrage. In Canada women can vote for all municipal officers throughout the length and breadth of the Dominion, although no married woman can vote except in Manitoba and British Columbia. The women of all the colonies of Great Britain, from Australia to Canada and from Cape Colony to New Zealand, enjoy municipal suffrage, including the presidencies of Madrasand Bombay in India, if taxpayers, and the same is true of the rural districts of British Burmah. In England, Scotland and Wales single women and widows vote for all officers except members of Parliament. In Ireland they vote for guardians of the poor. In Continental Europe women are also to some degree enfranchised. In France women teachers vote for women members of boards of education. In Italy widows and wives separated from their husbands vote by proxy for members of Parliament (law of 1882). In Austria they vote by proxy at all elections, including elections of members of provincial and imperial parliaments. In Russia, and in all Russian Asia, women who are heads of households vote by proxy at municipal and village elections upon all local questions. (Law of 1870.) In Sweden, for many years, women have voted at local elections, and since 1862 they have had municipal suffrage. In Norway they have merely school suffrage. In Finland, all women, except wives living with their husbands, can vote for all elective officers save one. (Law of 1865.) In Iceland, as in Wyoming, and also on the Isle of Man, women enjoy full and equal suffrage with men. (1882.)
Woman's right to the ballot is recognized even in some very conservative countries, countries so conservative that by the same law which extends the franchise to woman she is herself excluded from occupying the offices voted for. This is the case in Italy, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Austria, except as to a few petty positions.
The general principle of American law seems to be that where no express excep- tion is made by law, the electors for an office are qualified to fill the office. Thus in Wyoming women are eligible to every public office on the same terms as men; in
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Kansas to municipal offices, and in the states where women may vote for school officers they are generally eligible to election to the office. Many of the states of the Union admit women to public office even though they refuse to them the ballot. A few of the strictly public offices now held by women in America are county recorder of deeds, assistant register of deeds, notary public, town clerk (Vermont ), county clerk ( Missouri), assistant clerk of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, receiver of public moncys in Mississippi, custodian of the Mississippi state capital, mayor of cities in Kansas, and all kinds of school offices. Many offices connected with the public chari- ties are held by women in this country. Thus they are members of state boards of charities in Massachusetts and Connecticut, visitors, managers and trustces of reformatory and penal institutions, physicians, visitors and trustees of state insane hospitals, overseers of the poor, and police matrons. By act of Congress in 1870 the clerkships of the Executive Department of the United States Government were opened to women, who now make up a large percentage of the total number of government clerks.
In England women serve as poor-law guardians, visitors to and physicians in gov- ernment hospitals and insane asylums, as assistant commissioners of the Labor Com- mission, and the position of meteorologist at the Government Observatory at Hong Kong is now held by a lady. In France women are members of the boards of education. In the Austrian provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina women have recently received appointments as government medical officers.
The political condition of woman to day may be briefly summed up thus: While she is not yet admitted to the full exercise of political rights, except in Wyoming and a few small islands, still she possesses very generally some right to vote upon local matters more or less closely affecting her as a citizen, and to hold many executive offi- ces. Legislative and judicial offices are not as yet granted to women, except in a very few countries and states, and even where granted are not actually occupied by women.
IV. PERSONAL RIGIITS OF WOMEN.
With respect to the personal protection of woman by law, there has been a change for the better, as the dignity and sacredness of her person is more com- pletely recognized. Severe punishments are inflicted for offenses against women, but still in many instances they are altogether too slight for the gravity of the offense. The "age of consent," which in many states was placed at the age of ten years, has been raised by very recent legislation to fourteen, sixteen, and in some states, eighteen years. For the better protection of women under arrest, police matrons have been placed in the station-houses of some of our American cities, to take charge of such women during the time of their deten- tion. In New York and Massachusetts, by state legislation, all cities having a stated population must provide police matrons. Much of the recent labor legislation is in favor of women. The laws forbidding women to be employed about dangerous machinery, those requiring shopkeepers to provide seats for saleswomen, and the statutes requiring the appointment of women factory inspectors may be cited. As to the law in many states prohibiting women from making a contract to work more hours a week than the time fixed by law, while by the same law a man is free to contract for as many hours' labor as he chooses, one may question whether it does not really work an injustice, since, by interfering with her individual freedom to contract it places her at a disadvantage. An employer prefers to take an employe who is legally free to make agreements for extra work. Therefore, the woman's wages are likely to be decreased and her opportunities for employment lessened by this restriction. A married woman is now protected from the violence of her husband by the legal right given her to prosecute him for assaults upon her. The old theory of the hus- band's right to chastise his wife has disappeared from English and American law.
In the famous Jackson case in England the Lord Chief Justice, in setting free a
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woman whose husband had deprived her of her liberty, said, that he did not believe that it ever was the law of England that a husband could restrain his wife of her liberty, and that it certainly is not English law today. In India, under the power of a Christian government, the burning of a widow upon her husband's funeral pyre is forbidden by law, and the day seems not far distant when the seclusion of the zenana and the prac- tice of child-marriages will also disappear. In Japan, where women are more respected than among many Eastern nations, a wife may still be divorced upon the very slightest grounds, even if she talks too much to suit her lord and master. The codes of Con- tinental Europe fail to do justice to woman in respect to her personal protection in the matter of divorce for certain criminal offenses, where the privileges of the man are greater than those of the woman, making it less easy for her than for him to obtain a divorce. This seems to be a vestige of the ancient conception of woman's inferiority.
V. PROPERTY RIGHTS OF WOMEN.
The subject of the present property rights of women is lastly to be considered.
In England and America the unmarried woman is now, as she was four hundred years ago, possessed of all the property rights of a man. She can buy and sell her property, carry on business, bind herself by her contracts of every kind, make a will, and adopt a child if she chooses, just as her brother may do. She can sue and be sued in court, is a competent witness in all cases, and can be executrix of a will, administra- trix of an estate, and guardian of children. On the Continent of Europe the unmar- ried woman is still hampered in some degree by the former legal conception of the essential frailty and incapacity of woman. She is bound by her contracts and may do business as a public merchant. She can make a will and adopt a child. But she cannot, except in Italy and Russia, sign her name as a witness to. any legal document; neither can she, with a few exceptions, be a guardian of children, or act as a legal member of family councils. As to the property rights of the married woman, a most radical change has taken place within the last fifty years. Every state in the Union has passed statutes widening to some extent the legal powers of the married woman; and in England, by the Married Woman's Property Act of 1882, all legal restrictions are removed from the wife, who is capable of holding and transferring property, and can sue and be sued as if unmarried.
Rhode Island appears to have led in this reform in 1841, which gave to a wife coming into the state as a resident, being already separated from her husband, the sole ownership and control of her property. This was followed, in 1844, by an act securing to the wife her own property, including her earnings, so that it could not be taken for the husband's debts, and providing that in case she survived him it was to be her sole and separate property. Massachusetts followed, in 1845, with a similar statute, and New York, in 1848, passed a much more liberal one.
It is impossible to trace the history of or give in detail the law of each state. Only the general features can be presented. In every state of the Union, except Ten- nessee, the wife's property is so far secured to her that it cannot be taken for her hus- band's debts, and if she survives him it becomes her sole and separate property. But many, indeed a majority, of the states go much further than this, and give to the wife the sole ownership and control of her property as if she were unmarried. In nearly all the states, however, the real estate of the wife cannot be sold without the joinder of her husband in the deed, both signing it. In California, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, New York and Wisconsin the wife's deed is good without the husband's signature. All the rest of her property she is free to dispose of as if she were single. In all the states a wife may make a will. In some of these she cannot by any means by her will deprive her husband of the legal share in her property which he would take if she made no will; but in a few, as in Massachusetts, she may cut off her husband's legal claim by securing his written consent thereto. The earnings of the wife belong to her in all but nine states and territories. In (4)
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