: The Progress of the Women's Suffrage Movement Presidential Address to the Cambridge Branch of the C. & U. W. F. A. at the Annual Meeting on May 23rd 1913 by Sidgwick Eleanor Mildred - Women Suffrage Great Britain

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Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise Association.

The Progress of the Women's Suffrage Movement

Mrs. Henry Sidgwick

Presidential Address to the Cambridge Branch of the C. & U. W. F. A. at the Annual Meeting on May 23rd, 1913.

CAMBRIDGE

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THE PROGRESS OF THE WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT.

Moreover, what is much worse than injury to the special cause which our society exists to promote, the militants are injuring our country and the cause of civilization and progress. The very existence and usefulness of society depends on the maintenance of law and order. The protection of the weak, the possibility of development in well being generally, all that society stands for, depends on its members being law abiding--on their respecting law and life and property. And here we have women, while urging that their admission to a formal share in the government of the country would be for its advantage, at the same time teaching by the most powerful method they can use,--namely, example--doctrines subversive of all social order; teaching that persons who cannot get the majority to agree with their view of what is advisable in the interest of the whole should injure and annoy the community in every way they conveniently can--proceeding even to incendiarism, and apparently threatening manslaughter.

It is heartbreaking that such things should be done in a good cause--and it is especially hard for women to bear because it hurts their pride in their own sex. They have to see not only their country injured, and the cause of women's suffrage, in whose name these things are done, retarded, but they have to see the reputation of their sex for good sense and sober judgment draggled in the mud.

This is the most serious--indeed, I think the only serious set-back our movement has had. It has on the whole been sufficiently wisely conducted to secure almost uniformly steady progress from its small beginnings to its present great proportions.

In all--or almost all--big social movements ultimate success depends on the gradual conversion to benevolence of a large neutral majority. The movement in its beginning--and this was eminently true of our movement--is championed by a small body of pioneers. They make converts, and when they begin to be taken seriously a body of active opponents is probably stirred up, but so long as the active opposition is not too strong it does little harm--it may even do good by helping to interest people in the question. But for a long time the great mass of people remain neutral. Either they have never heard of the movement, or they do not think it serious and only laugh at it, or they think the question unimportant and do not much mind which way it is decided, or they think immediate decision is not called for, and that they may as well wait and see. In fact, for one reason or another they do not think very much about it, and are not actively interested on either side.

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