October 4, 1912, To the Editor of The Morpeth Herald, “The Woman Suffrage
Question”
The most protracted and most detailed debates Emily Davison entered into in the
pages of the press occurred during the fall of 1912 with a Mr. A. Knox. Their letters
and thoughts were exchanged in The Morpeth Herald, the local newspaper read
in both Longhorsley and Bedlington, two villages close to Morpeth. The exchange
began quietly enough, with the letter below which contains a series of positions
Davison had advocated in print before, and concludes with one of her clearest visions
of how woman suffrage would ultimately affect British society for the better. For all
her militancy, she took the long view of history and of social change. Davison was a
tactical militant whose rhetoric of the tools of militancy, of rocks, stones, and window-
smashing describe the regrettable means by which a larger strategy can gain its goal.
In this letter she lays out a vision of a unified suffrage movement, and acknowledges
the cooperation of the militant and the more conservative constitutionalist suffragists
as central to achieving their common, ultimate goal. After discussing the politics
of the situation, and the likeliest means of leveraging them, she turns to A. Knox’s
more domestic and personal arguments. Doing so, she enters on the topic that will
dominate their future exchanges, the size of women’s brains, and, by extension, the
sphere in which women are by nature equipped to move. Both Knox and Davison
were indefatigable in advancing their arguments, neither willing to surrender a point.
The exchange was finally ended by the Editor of The Morpeth Herald who publicly
announced that the paper would give no more room to them.
Here is her first letter:
Sir, — Your correspondent, Mr. A. Knox, in a courteous letter in your last issue,
raises gently many of the favourite ‘anti’ contentions to which he evidently awaits
a reply. In the beginning of his letter, however, it is amusing how he owns that
we have a harder rock to assail [? ] in the Cabinet than in the Cabinet’s agents,
though he strikes an excellent note in the hint that we shall probably suddenly
come ‘to a triumphal conclusion.’ When Mr. Knox congratulates me on gaining a
strong advocate he is probably putting too high a value on words which are cheap
and easy compared with deeds, which are not.
But Mr. Knox comes to the gist of the matter when he asks the
question, ‘Why go to the Cabinet Ministers?,’ though probably he knows as well
as I do the answer, namely that it is the Cabinet which pro tem rules, and which
has it in its power to bring woman suffrage to pass. Mr. Knox advises that [it is]
‘not in the country, and not the House of Commons, that the work must be done.’
Here we part issue. In suffragettes’ opinion, both the House of Commons and
the country are to be made to move, and we must neglect neither. Hence, when
smashing windows, we have not confined our activities to Government glass
only, but have also paid attention to the private citizen. Whilst we are actively
bringing pressure to bear on ‘the powers that be’ for the nonce, we never forget
to educate the country itself, knowing well that though the country delegates its
power to the Cabinet for the moment, the ultimate power itself lies with the
sovereign people. Hence our tremendous constitutional programme, which runs
on side by side with the active militant campaign. Hence also, whilst we act in a
strictly legitimate way by the long-established political method of putting
questions and making pertinent interjections at public meetings(which are met by
such ‘political chivalry’ as that lately shown at Wrexham and Llanystumdwy, or
in the even more efficacious method, longer established by ancient usage and
precedent of stone throwing, quite logically aimed at the direct source of power,
the Cabinet, and the indirect source of power, the people, we have never
neglected the equally necessary political method of holding public meetings for
educational purposes.
In the next paragraph, Mr. Knox allows himself to be drawn aside by that
old ignis fatuus that the average male brain is larger than the average female
brain, and therefore that the male is cleverer than the female. In so asserting,
Mr. Knox renders himself liable to many criticisms, especially on the score
of ‘scientific basis.’ The fallacy has been so long exploded that it is strange to
see it resuscitated. It is not wise to isolate statistics from their context. Thus, for
example, Mr. Knox is ignoring the very important fact that the average man is
relatively larger and heavier than the average woman, and there have not been
wanting important scientists who assert that taking into consideration the
question of relative size, female brains are proportionately larger than male
brains. Another point of view is that even if the female brain may be smaller than
the male brain, the quality of the all-important grey matter is superior. Finally, as
to this point, it is impossible to avoid adding that the greater number of anti-
suffragists seem to have a most holy (or unholy!) terror of the superior mental
capacity of woman, for how else can we explain their dread of the absorption of
all power by the ‘female of the species’?
Mr. Knox lightly touches on another equally antediluviin [sic] ‘anti’ theory,
that women, if recognised as citizens of this country, will neglect their home
duties and what he terms woman’s sphere, apparently ignoring the fact that
women, poor souls, have never been allowed to rule, even in the sphere that is
perfunctorily called their[s], the home. Has Mr. Knox forgotten that other oft-
quoted dictum that ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle,’ where he certainly sees
to it that he rules? Let Mr. Knox reassure himself that woman suffrage is partly
the outcome of the fact that the Englishwoman intends to see that she does get
possession of her at present pseudo sphere, and means to see that the home
has a chance, but nationally as well as socially.
Mr. Knox raises the old bogey that woman suffrage means adult suffrage
forgetting that Messrs. Asquith and Lloyd George very astutely, last November,
brought in manhood suffrage to ‘torpedo’ woman suffrage. He puts what he
evidently considers a clincher in, asking ‘what would happen if we men had to
face the prospect of a woman governed country?’ Let Mr. Knox just turn the
question the other way round, and consider that for centuries women have been
groaning under a man-governed country and ask if it is not about time that the
nation consulted two heads instead of one?
Mr. Knox winds up by painting a drab picture, which has as little warrant
for its justification as has the rose-coloured view put before our eyes by some
enthusiasts who think that the millennium will arrive when women have votes.
No millennium or revolution will occur any more than it did in 1832, 1867, or in
1884, but merely a gradual education and upliftment of public opinion in the
direction of a genuine living democracy, the ideal towards which all modern
progressive minds must move, where the concern of one is the concern of all,
and where all women as well as men have a place in the sun. In that day the
problem of the child and the future of the race will have a reasonable chance of
solution, because the expert in the child will have the opportunity to make her
opinion felt and valued. This fight is not for the present only, but for all time,
Yours, etc.
EMILY WILDING DAVISON
Longhorsley