Black Thursday, November 1910. London. Emmeline Pankhurst. From her autobiography published in 1913.
“The Republican system, when not modified by drastic democratic devices, is an expensive, cumbrous, and highly inefficient method of carrying out the popular will; and casting a vote is not so much more as casting bread upon the waters. It shall return after many days. By voting, by exercising an infinitesmal pressure on our complex, slow-moving political mechanism, one cannot do much good. But one cannot do much harm, either.”
This is from a 1913 book called Modern Feminism, Women as World Builders by Floyd Dell, from the chapter comparing the methods of British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and American social worker Jane Addams.
Jane Addams ran Hull House, a progessive refuge for the poor, in Chicago’s 19th ward and Emmeline Pankhurst was the legendary suffragette leader.
Jane Addams was, also, the best known American supporter of women’s suffrage in the US.
Dell goes on to say that Addams was a ‘conciliator’ and that Pankhurst was a ‘fighter’ who was described as implacable, unable to enter into a dialogue.
Miss Addams’ gift was ‘to span the gulf between rich and poor, or those who have cultural opportunities and those who have not, with neighbourlyness.” She was unique for actually listening to the poor whom she was serving.
Addams “has never ceased to be serenely reasonable,” writes Dell.
The problem is, she says, that Miss Addams ‘has not been able to inbue the movement with her own spirit, her individual genius.” Addams’ Hull House set no example for the other such establishments that aimed to eliminate poverty, which were either ‘efficient, religious, or too afraid to be sympathetic to the plight of the poor’.
Mrs. Pankhurst, however, has called upon all women to be like herself, “to display her own Amazon qualities… And they did, they answered her call by the thousands. They have fought, and suffered, and some of them have died. (Well, one, Emily Davison.)
Dell continues: “If this all had been the result of individual genius, transforming peaceful girls into fighters, out of hand, Mrs. Pankhurst would be the most extraordinary person of the age. But it is impossible to believe that all this militancy was created out of the void. It was simply awakened where it lay sleeping in these women’s hearts.”
Well, all very interesting, in this day and age. I wonder what Emmeline Pankhurst would have thought of Sarah Palin. Not much, I imagine.
Of course, we live in the age of political spin-doctors and behind every political figure is a highly-efficient publicity machine, massaging every aspect of any prominent person’s public life. Individual genious has little to do with leaders in this day and age. (Or does it?)
Last week on Jon Stuart, he showed clip after clip of various Republicans saying “there has to be an adult conversation.” The same phrase over and over, spoken in puppet-like symmetry on different media outlets all over the land.
That phrase certainly sounds ‘very Jane Addams’, except for the fact that ‘adult conversation’ doesn’t really mean anything. If you want it to mean ‘open-minded’ it does. But it can also mean ‘ stern lecture.’ Jon Stuart pointed this out.
This is Madison Avenue style rhetoric, where words mean whatever you want them to mean, and are so slippery under scrutiny, so logic-defying, it’s impossible to hold anyone to his or her word. (Very important in an age of the instant-replay.)
Of course, the suffragettes were very good at manipulating the media of the time, too. Their demonstrations were carefully choreographed.
(I never thought democracy is about “one man, one vote.” To me it’s more “one man, one law.”)
Addams’ ends the chapter with this: “Can anyone doubt the effect that women entering into politics will have, on politics? The decorous example of men shall rule them first, but when they have become used to politics, we will find that we have unleashed an unruly Niagara…In women as voters we will have an element impatient of restraint, straining at the rules of procedure, cynical of excuses for inaction, not always by any means on the side of progress, making every mistake possible through ignorance and self-conceit, but transforming our politics from a vicious end to an efficient means. From a cancer into an organ. This is the historic mission of women.”
