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DEAR LADIES: Being prevented by domestic circumstances
from attending your assemblies personally, I am glad to entrust a few words
of greeting to my dear and honored friend, Mrs. Steward, who has consented
to cross the Atlantic, at my earnest request, as a delegate from our
Ladies' National Association. That Association was formed in the
winter of 1869, having for its definite aim the obtaining of the repeal of
the Acts of Parliament of 1866-'69 for the State regulation of
vice; or, in other words, for the provisioning of the army and navy (not in
Great Britain alone, but in our Indian Empire and all our colonies)
with selected and superintended and healthy women. A
celibate soldiery, it was said by our heathen
legislators of that day, required such a provision as urgently and as
regularly as they required daily rations.
___________________Letter of Mrs. Josephine E. Butler to
the International Council of Women at Washington.
Page 2
Now, I have no reason to suppose that this special subject (always a
mournful and repellant one) will be formally brought forward in your
convention, although the kindred and closely allied subject of personal and
social purity will surely be so. It would, however, be impossible for me
either to appear at or write to your convention in the aim of furnishing a
contribution to your deliberations except in connection with my own
life-work, and the deep convictions which instigated that
life-work, and which have become even more and more profound as
I continued in it.
The Committee of our Ladies' National Association, therefore,
strongly desired that a delegate should be selected from our midst who had
been associated in that work from an early period; and such an one is Mrs.
Steward, who has been an indefatigable worker, not only in England, but in
Belgium, in pursuit of and for the saving of the English girl victims who
were bought, stolen and destroyed under this diabolical system of
State-protected vice in that country. There is now a crowd of
younger workers who are bravely preaching the purity crusade and doing
excellent vigilance work; but there are few of the veterans left who
inaugurated in 1869 the fierce contest with our Government, the
Houses of Lords and Commons, the medical boards, the press, and the upper classes generally, in order to gain the abolition of the vice-protecting laws, and to assert the equality of the moral law for the two sexes, as well as the dignity and sacredness of womanhood. Among those veteran workers were included the names of Florence Nightingale, Harriet Martineau, Mary Somerville, Mary Carpenter, and others. Some are gone to their rest, others are aged and worn, and waiting for their call home. Those who remain hold together and work together still, bound to each other by strong affection, and by the memory of past suffering and conflict shared together. Of this group Mrs. Steward is one, and I commend her to your sisterly kindness and hospitality.
It may not be out of place here, in order to set forth the motives which
drove us to devote ourselves to this crusade before all others, to quote
some words of mine which were drawn from me at a great meeting in Leeds in
July, 1870. Some of us had been long working for the "Higher
Education of Women." A council for that end had been formed,
embracing members from all the northern parts of England.
I was for three years the President of that Council.
But in 1870, feeling impelled to resign the Presidentship, I thought it right to give my reasons for doing so. I venture to give words spoken on that occasion:
The President said "there were gentlemen
present who would give some account of the educational movement now going
on in our country in its different branches. She proposed to give a short
sketch of the educational efforts now being made on the Continent under the
auspices of the International Association of Women. They had arrived at a
period of the world's history when the injunction, "Look not
every one to his own things, but to the things of others also," had
become applicable to nations as well as to individuals. In fact, England
could not safely live any longer for itself only, nor could any country;
and she thought there was an exclusiveness peculiar to our insular
character as a nation, which required correction before we could hope to
give and receive all the benefit we might, and to get rid of war and other
disturbances of progress and happiness.
The objects of this International Association were the amelioration of
the social position of women, and their moral and intellectual elevation
through education, and the granting of the various rights which they
claimed.
Mrs. Butler detailed the practical steps which have been taken in the direction of this education, both at home and in Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Russia, France, and Constantinople; and in proceeding to consider the relation of this educational movement to a more general and a very great social movement, including innumerable interests, a movement which she trusted would result sooner or later in a purer and juster state of society, she said: "I proposed at our meeting yesterday to resign the office of President of this Council as soon as may be convenient to this Council to allow me to do so. It is not because I am not deeply interested in the cause which this Council represents. I may say I am more deeply interested than ever, for I see in the education of women one of the most necessary means of freeing poorer women from the awful slavery of which I have seen so much lately; nor do I undervalue the higher culture of the individual as a means towards the attainment of the highest personal happiness. The strangely Providential guidance of all our schemes has lately been deeply impressed on my mind.
We started our educational schemes, I believe, in an honest and humble
spirit, and they appeared to us the readiest path towards aiding our
fellow-women, the
distressed, the needy, and the wronged; and I believe our labor has not been in vain. But in this, as in all our work on earth, we need further enlightening and teaching. Looking back on my own experience of the past year, it appears to me as if God in his goodness had said to me, "I approve your motive and your work; but you are trying to lay on the topmost stones while there is an earthquake shaking your foundations. You must first descend to the lowest depths before you can safely build up," and then He showed us a plague spot. He showed us a deadly poison working through the wholesale, systematic and now legalized degradation of women to the service of vice. He showed us the ready elements for a speedy destruction of society, which the highest education itself would not be able to stem. Not that our work in the cause of education has in any sense been a failure; far from it; but we need a still larger infusion into these noble schemes for educating the masses, of the spirit of self-sacrifice, even of martyrdom. We need to have our hearts more deeply penetrated with pity, and to be more resolutely bent on making all our practical efforts tend to the revival of justice and of a pure and equal moral standard and equal laws.
While, therefore, I continue to regard the cause of
education as a most sacred cause, I come to the present meeting with a saddened heart, and I only propose to relinquish the office I now hold because I feel that God has called me to a more painful one. All members have not the same office; all are not called to descend to the depths of woe, to clear out moral sewers and to cast in their lot among wretched slave gangs in order to help the slaves to carry the weight of their chains if not to break them away. This work, I think, is mine, but there is other work not less holy, and which aims not less directly at a future emancipation; so while I feel all the deeper gratitude to you, my fellow-workers in this Council for the work you are doing in the cause of humanity, I am obliged to confess to you that, for my own part, I fear I may not in future be able to give the needful time to this work which it demands. I wish to leave it in abler and freer hands. It has my deepest sympathy. It points to one of the most important of all the means by which we hope to undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free and inaugurate a purer and sounder national life. To keep pace, however, with this portion of the great work, one requires to have the head and heart free, and that cannot be the case with one who is called to deal with the most miser-
able, to walk side by side, hand in hand, with the outcast, the victim of our social sins, whose names one scarcely dares to name in refined society. I am full of hope for the education cause, and for the anti-slavery cause, in which we are engaged. Nevertheless my very soul grows faint before the facts of 1870, and though that faintness of soul may complete one's fitness to be a fellow-sufferer with the slave, it does not increase one's capacity for a work which requires intellectual energy."
It is impossible, and would not be right, that I should trouble you with
a report of the arduous work which our Women's Abolitionist Society
accomplished between 1869 and 1874. Suffice it to say that we shook the
Government and aroused the whole nation. Mountains were removed by the
energy imparted by a gigantic faith.
In 1874 a "new departure" was inaugurated. The battle was
carried across the channel to France--where, under the First Napoleon,
this abominable and impure tyranny had first been instituted in the end of
the eighteenth century--to Italy, to Switzerland, to Germany, and to
the Netherlands. It afterwards spread to Spain, Holland, Denmark, Austria,
Hungary, and Sweden and Norway. We now have friends in Russia, but
no association is yet formed there. In the first report of the Continental work the movement was described by our Financial Secretary, Professor Stuart, M.P.:
"It was indeed a wise intuition which led the women of England to
carry into its original strongholds the campaign against the system of
regulated vice, against whose encroachments we are contending in this
country. That move will benefit the agitation for repeal in this country
not only by the vast strengthening and encouragement which the knowledge of
the sympathy and co-operation of persons of all tongues and
countries has brought to so many of our workers here, but also because it
has opened up an attack upon the whole vicious system in its rear; and,
drying up the sources and roots, so to speak, will cause the system to fall
more easily in this country, and not least because it has called forth in
many countries the co-operation of new workers who may, confident of
success, and with united force and power, carry on the work against
profligacy itself throughout a Christendom united for that end.
Not only have we seen, during the year of work just concluded, refuges
for the fallen established throughout many cities of Europe, and men and
women of many languages joining together to call for and work for the
abolition of regulated prostitution, and to aim through that at the abolition finally of prostitution itself; but we have seen whole cities shaken as it were with the wind of a new revival, recognizing the crime that they have committed before God in regulating and licensing the destruction of His image; we have seen through the length and breadth of nations societies formed, actively working in a cause which had before laid dormant; and we have seen the whole great nation of Italy, called as it were by the voice of God through His poor and weak servants, recognizing that virtue and purity alone can be the basis of future greatness."
In a brief time we had won the public adhesion to our cause of many of
the most distinguished persons on the Continent, among whom we counted
Joseph Mazzini and Garibaldi, in Italy; Jules Favre, Jules Simon, and
Victor Hugo, in France; the Count Agenor de Gasparin and the Countess
de Gasparin, of Geneva; Baron de Bunsen and Count Ungern Sternberg, in
Germany; M. Emile de Laveleye, the well known writer and economist, of
Belgium, and many others. But it is not so much to the adhesion of the
great men that we hold as to the active concurrence of the thousands
of women on the Continent of Europe who have been awakened on this
question, and who have formed numerous and ever-increasing associations for working out our aims, more especially in Switzerland, Holland, France, and the Scandinavian Peninsula.
Our Continental Secretary, M. Humbert,
writing on this subject after 14 years' experience, says:
"Happy are those nations in which women themselves have taken the
initiative in this great movement, for in such cases the movement will
never die; whereas in countries where the work is left entirely to men,
although some reforms may be achieved, the movement is fitful and never
possesses the same life."
This brings to me the most recent expansion of our work in the Colonies
and in India. It is in allusion to this new expansion that M. Humbert
writes the letter just quoted. He continues: "How are we to
proceed successfully for the emancipation of women from the hateful
thraldom imposed on them by the civilization of conquering races, (the
thraldom of compulsory and State regulated prostitution,) among Buddhists,
Brahmins, Mahometans, or Pagans where the fate of women in this world, at
least, depends absolutely on the will of man, their master? This is a
difficult question to answer. We see occasionally a spark kindled amongst
those nations,
but the light is short lived, and it continually requires to be rekindled." In spite of these difficulties, however, we are pushing forward our work in Egypt and in the French Colonies of North Africa, as well as in other directions.
We believe that the question is coming rapidly to the front in India.
The present mission of Mr. Dyer to India is producing an awakening there
that will be productive of very decided results from a parliamentary and
governmental point of view. We as women are more especially concerned with
the awakening of the women of India on the subject of this imperially
imposed degradation of their race and to kindred questions vitally
concerning womanhood. On this side we are full of hope. It is affecting to
see the petitions which are now in the hands of some of our Members of
Parliament this session. These petitions are from Anglo-Indian and
native women, and many are signed in Hindoo characters. The prayer of the
petition is for relief from this degrading law. We receive also privately
very touching appeals from Indian ladies, and to these our Association
responds with eager sympathy. The following quotation from one of the
replies sent from the Leeds branch of our Abolition Society will show you
the spirit with which the women of the world are communicating with each
other on this subject:
"Do let us assure you, dear Indian friends, that we have found
that so long as our motives are pure, no evil
knowledge can hurt us. We have seen, on the contrary, that work of this kind undertaken in the spirit of consecration (and in no other spirit can anyone endure to continue the work) may lead to a higher and purer knowledge of life and the human heart. That many have found (as all must do sooner or later) that intellectual force alone cannot guard against the horror of this evil and have thus been driven to seek more spiritual means of warfare and so have passed into a higher life.
Do be sure, dear friends, that whatever your enemies may say of you, in
the invisible Kingdom of Righteousness you can but be purified by this
labor of love.
And when you most greatly doubt success, when the power and will of the
enemy seem indeed to be too powerful for the feebleness of your hands, we
feel sure you will find, as we have found, that from quarters least
expected, from the darkest parts of your sky, from the weakest parts of
your army, help and light and strength will come to you. Our victories do
not often come to us in the manner or at the time that we expect, any more
than do our defeats.
We cannot direct the whole order of the conduct of life; we can only
fight in our own place, obeying the nearest word that reaches us, knowing
that no army can be beaten of which each individual soldier refuses to
accept defeat."
Thus the women of the world are reaching out their hands to each other,
and banding themselves together so
that when councils, rulers, and lords of science endeavor by decrees or by social tyranny to give a continuance to the most degrading institution which has defiled the history of the human race, they will have the power to say: "You shall not slay us or our sisters." They have struck a note for which the ages have been waiting, and which even the Church itself in its organized ecclesiastical forms has never yet intoned.
There is a point on which I have sometimes thought (possibly without
reason) that American women feel less strongly than we do. I allude to the
physical treatment forcibly imposed, the personal outrage on women which
lies at the root of the practical working of the whole system of the state
regulation of vice. You have happily not had in America the practical
experience which we, in the Old World, have had of the degrading effects of
this outrage. It is the final and most complete expression of the foul idea
of woman as a chattel, a slave, an instrument, a mere vessel, officially
dedicated to the vilest uses.
At our last International Congress, held at Lausanne in September, 1887,
some of our less-instructed followers had been occupying too much of
our time in an attempt to defend up to a certain point the State's
action in tyrannizing over women. Thinking that the moment had come for a
decided word on the part of women themselves, I gave utterance to
the thoughts which were in my mind, and in doing so I proclaimed in the
name
of all women that whatever subtlety of argument might weigh with certain doctors, legislators, etc., this was nothing to us, and we women solemnly declared again the principle of our own dignity, and our determination never to sanction the enslavement of any woman by the outrage perpetrated under this system. At the close of my few words Mme. de Morsier, of Paris, rose, and with uplifted hand asked earnestly that every woman present who agreed with and re-echoed from the depths of her heart the words of Mrs. Butler should stand up. The large hall was crowded with women as well as men. The men continued sitting, but every woman rose, and with right hand uplifted high, followed the action of Mme. de Morsier and Mme. de Gingins, responding to the solemn words uttered by her: "In the name of God, amen." There was a significant silence of a few moments. Some of the gentlemen were surprised, most were deeply moved, and to every woman present, I feel convinced, it was a ratification of our principles never to be forgotten. The sound of it went far abroad beyond the mere hall of meeting itself.
I mention this incident merely as an illustration of the spirit of our
women in their jealous guardianship of the sacredness of womanhood even in
the persons of the most degraded of their sisters. I myself believe this
spirit to be thoroughly in accord with that of our Master, Christ.
As an inevitable and necessary accompaniment of the
establishment of licensed houses of ill-fame under Government patronage all over the world there exists, as you all know, the most extensive slave traffic in the interest of vice. This fact has become so fully acknowledged during the last few years as to have given rise to that admirable and much-needed Society, the "International Association of Friends of Girls," originating in Switzerland and now spreading all over and far beyond Europe. That Society has been greatly strengthened in England since the Congress held in London in 1886; and this fact is brought home to us by the reassuring sight at various railway stations and landing places of the warnings and friendly placards so diligently distributed and put up by the English branch of the Society, informing all girls and women of where they may find friends, and of what dangers they must beware. Our Federation has collected carefully many facts and statistics concerning this world-wide slave traffic.
People in Europe speak with indignation of the traffic in negroes. It
would be just as well if they would open their eyes to what is going on
much nearer throughout the whole of Europe, especially in Germany and
Austria, where the exportation of white slaves is carried on on a large
scale. A terrible picture is presented to us of the enforced movement to
and fro upon the face of the earth of these youthful victims of human
cruelty. Numbers are embarked at Hamburg,
whose destination is South America, Bahia, and Rio de Janeiro. The greater number are probably engaged for Montevideo and Buenos Ayres; others are sent by the Straits of Magellan to Valparaiso. Other cargoes are sent to North America, some being forwarded to England, others direct. The competition which the traders meet with when they land sometimes constrains them to go further ahead; they are found, therefore, descending the Mississippi with their cargoes to New Orleans and Texas. Others are taken on to California.
In the market of California they are sorted and thence taken to
provision the different localities on the coast as far as Panama. Others
are sent from the New Orleans market to Cuba, the Antilles, and Mexico.
Others are taken from Bohemia, Germany, and Switzerland across the
Alps to Italy, and thence further south to Alexandria and Suez, and
eastward to Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. The
Russian official houses of vice draw their slaves in a great measure from
Eastern Prussia, Pomerania, and Poland. The most important Russian station
is Riga; it is there that the traders of St. Petersburg and Moscow sort and
get ready their cargoes for Nijni-Novgorod, and from this latter
place cargoes are sent on to the more distant towns of Siberia. At Tschita
a young German was found who had been sold and resold in this manner.
You in America are happily free from the State
regulation of vice; but undoubtedly there is an extensive traffic in white slaves in your midst, and a constant importation of poor foreigners to your shores who are destined to moral and spiritual destruction. I trust you will, from your Congress, put out strong hands for the abolition of this traffic.
It may be that I am writing to some who have been accustomed to think of
the poor outcasts of society as beings different from others, in some way
tainted from their birth, creatures apart, without the tenderness and
capacities for good possessed by your own cherished daughters.
You may have imagined them to be for the most part reckless and willful
sinners, or, if in the first instance betrayed or forced into sin, now at
least so utterly destroyed and corrupted as to have become something
unmentionable in polite society. Now, all who have had a practical
acquaintance with the lives of poor and tempted women, know how mistaken is
such a judgment, how cruelly false in most cases. But granting for the
moment that women who have fallen from virtue have become so degraded as to
be repulsive or uninteresting to you, what have you to say concerning
outraged children? And thousands of these are but children in age and in
knowledge.
Who will dare to say that any child is determinedly, willfully wicked
and degraded; that any child in the world is further from God's
kingdom than we grown-up
people are, however virtuous we may be? Nay, but "of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." One who never errs has said it. We are not told that He selected an exceptionally pure and holy child when He set a little child in the midst of the multitude and said that, except we become as such a little child we shall in nowise enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Verily, "their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in Heaven, and woe be to that man, to that nation, to those mothers of men and of nations, who, seeing that little child fallen among thieves, robbed, wounded, murdered, dying, shall calmly pass by on the other side!" A day is coming in which it will not avail any of us to say we knew it not; for now we know it. The means of knowing it, and the means of helping to redress this wrong, are within our reach, at our very hand. I cherish the hope and the belief that the time is at hand when all women who are indeed at heart mothers and worthy of the name, will give up the chilling reserve which seems too much like acquiescence in evil, and will come forward to the rescue, not only for the sake of the innocent and betrayed, but for the sake of their sons and of our national life.
This letter is sent forth with earnest prayer that while pardoning the
imperfections of my poor appeal, God would make use of it to fan the holy
and purifying fire which I feel sure is already kindled in your hearts.
When I kneel in my chamber to plead for the deliver-
ance of these little ones for whom Christ died, I seem to see the childish faces gathering in crowds around me, filling the space on every side--the faces of the slaughtered dead as well as of the living. These victims, voiceless and unable to plead their own cause, seem to make their ceaseless and mute appeal from their scattered, unknown graves and from out those dark habitations of cruelty where they are now helplessly imprisoned.
But their weeping has been heard in Heaven, and judgment is at hand. Of
their destroyers it may be said: "They murder the fatherless;
yet they say the Lord shall not see it." Of you, O friends, let it be
said, and let the Saviour Himself speak the words "Inasmuch as ye
have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it to
me."
I am yours in the service of God and of humanity. Josephine
E. ButlerPrice by mail, postage paide 10 cents per copy; $7.00 per
hundred. Address The Philanthropist, P.O. Box 2554 New
York.