The Greatest Day That Ever Dawned
The sun rose on the morning of the sixteenth upon the greatest day that ever dawned for women in Australia.1
So wrote Louisa Lawson on 1 January 1904, three years to the day after Australia became a nation and two weeks since the first election in which all white adult Australians could vote. Though the primary votes of the three parties were almost equally divided, the newly expanded citizenry of the Commonwealth had returned the incumbent Protectionist Party. The Protectionists, led by Alfred Deakin after Barton’s resignation to join the recently constituted High Court of Australia, were able to form government with the support of the Labor Party, led by Chris Watson. George Reid’s Free Trade Party remained in opposition. The Protectionists had lost five seats in the House, while Labor had picked up seven. Frederick Holder retained his seat as an independent.
For Louisa Lawson there were two reasons to celebrate the recent elections, despite the fact that she had not voted for any of the candidates representing the three major parties. First, the female voter was able to enjoy the sheer pleasure of exercising the just privilege so long denied her. And second, for someone who was better known as the mother of a famous poet than the political pioneer she was, the Australian woman had the blessed satisfaction of being seen as she is—not through the glasses of those interested in her suppression.
Press, public and parliament alike had to admit that the great experiment had been a success. Female electors had come out in great numbers. There had been no discord at polling booths, and no more than usual in homes. Women had voted in about the same numbers (proportionately) as men, which was not as exhilarating as it sounds, Vida Goldstein had to admit, given there had been a small voter turnout:2 1.7 million voters had registered on the rolls, and only nine hundred thousand went to the polls.
To the relief of many men, despite the great scale of the women’s vote (including those seven thousand extra votes in Victoria), female electors had not been moved by some great impulse to cast their ballot in a block and hence sweep the polls.3 Women had largely voted along class lines, not gender lines. It was widely acknowledged that the women’s vote had increased the Labor vote, setting up either heady anticipation of the coming domination of the ‘working man and voting woman’—or profound fear, depending on one’s political persuasion.4
Vida personally observed that there was an increase in political sentiment among so-called labour ranks. That is, women who earned their own living and women in country areas were far more likely to actually vote compared to the city toffs who were notoriously ignorant. The monied women of Melbourne, noted Vida, were too preoccupied with social matters to even bother to enrol. She deplored political apathy in anybody, but reserved her particular contempt for lazy, entitled (enfranchised) women.
Though women hadn’t voted en masse—no cataclysm, no sudden revolution, as one observer put it5—their presence as electors had changed political culture irrevocably. Male candidates had now to address women at their campaign meetings. Alfred Deakin, in his opening policy speech in Ballarat, frankly acknowledged that women were part of the federal electorate, about to cast their virgin vote. He added ‘women’ to his standard salutation: ‘Men of Australia’.6 Others observed that not only was the language of citizenship more superficially inclusive, but some politicians had also needed to quickly change their policy stripes. It was amusing to observe how some candidates who had fought against women’s suffrage with all their might, noted Lady Julia Holder, tried to show their supreme regard and esteem for the voters whose rights they had previously refused.7 Edmund Barton wasn’t the only politician to do a sharp U-turn in his campaigning, if not his fundamental thinking.
It was not only Australian election watchers who took stock of the situation. The results of the federal poll were reported around the world, and the lessons analysed and debated. Ida Husted Harper, reporting for the WASHINGTON POST, noted that what Australia had just witnessed was the most important event in the history of the world movement towards women’s suffrage.8
Tom Mann, with whom Vida had been accused of being in secret cahoots, reported the result for an English readership. Women were quite as keen to exercise their votes as the men, he wrote, aware that one of the most persistent arguments against women’s suffrage in Britain was that the majority of women did not want the vote. What’s more, the monotony of many a political meeting had been relieved by women, or men on their behalf, reminding candidates of their previous position on women’s suffrage then watching them wriggle.9 Mann was categorical in his conclusion: fate has decreed that these Australian States shall be the forerunners in a really triumphant democracy. The outcome of the election had demonstrated that this democracy would not be on the lines set forth by Mr Andrew Carnegie, the exploitative American industrialist, but along lines that would raise the standard of living of workers. He predicted that Australia would soon be enjoying a collectivist regime, with the common ownership of raw materials. (Mann expected the first nationalised industry to be tobacco, followed by iron and steel manufacturing.10)
There was another keen observer of the Australian experiment in England. From her home in Sussex, Dora Montefiore penned an essay on ‘Women Voters in Australia’ which she published less than two weeks after the election in the journal NEW AGE. Once again, she began,
have our Australian sisters vindicated through their vote the opinion [that] if you educate and enfranchise women, and give them equality of opportunity with men, you will be making giant strides towards progress in its best and most evolutionary form.11
The real victor at the 1903 election, Dora wrote, was the labour movement—and the labour victory was attributed largely to the women voters. This was a valuable lesson to the socialists in England who remained indifferent when successive Conservative governments failed to recognise women’s rights. Could the British Labour Party now fail to see the expediency (not to say justice) of enfranchising women? She was sick of the ill-conceived hostility of the men-comrades in their organisations and hoped they would finally see reason. Dora noted too the great amusement caused by watching former opponents of the cause now taxing their brains as to how to secure the votes of women. All up, she was most heartened by the actions of all female voters, no matter which party they voted for: their independence was shown and the right to do exactly as they pleased was freely claimed and acted upon.12
If the election results directly affected Australian voters, they also had a profound influence on global wannabe voters. In Britain prior to 1903, opined English author Brougham Villiers, the case for women’s suffrage had been confined to obscure corners of journals and drawing rooms. Now the question of women’s emancipation has suddenly become the most insistent political problem of the day. Even tariff reform and labour politics were less discussed in the press.13 The Australian experiment had proved that the denial of citizen rights to women is more than a mistake in detail; it is a blasphemy against the spirit of democracy.14
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But there was one step that had not been taken in this forward march of humanity, as Villiers termed it. For all their independence and freedom, Australians had not elected a woman to parliament. Of specific concern to the feminists, Australian women had not voted for one of their own sex.
Nellie Martel had barely got a look in. She gained just over 18,500 votes, coming eleventh of the twelve candidates. Mary Moore-Bentley, who was a complete unknown compared to Nellie, polled four hundred more votes, possibly because she drew the number one spot on the ballot paper. Either of them would have needed ten times these numbers to win a seat. Supported by trade unionists, Selina Anderson polled almost eighteen per cent of the vote for her House of Representatives electorate, enough to save her £25 deposit.
Louisa Lawson took a dim view of these results. Woman has allowed her birth right of freedom to be wrested from her, she declared of female electors’ refusal to support the female candidates. She had hushed her voice—which ought to have resounded through the earth. Louisa was particularly indignant about the treatment of Nellie. We supported her, she noted, but Mrs Martel suffered much misrepresentation from an action in which her enemies for interested reasons unduly involved her.15 The uncomfortable truth was that some of those enemies were former friends. It’s not known who Annie and Belle Golding voted for.
Vida Goldstein was characteristically upbeat and dignified, despite her election loss. She considered the 51,497 votes she had received a veritable triumph.
I polled magnificently in spite of all the odds against me…I stood for the sake of a cause, the cause of women and children. I stood as a protest against the dictation of the Press and against the creation of the ticket system of voting.
This latter goal, she conceded, was an unpopular crusade. Her chief aim in running had been educational, she claimed, and that objective had been roundly successful. Some women remained non-party aligned, as she advocated, others broke away and acted as organisers for women’s branches of political parties. She didn’t recommend this strategy if the elevation of the status of women and children was the ultimate goal of political activism, but she had to concede their right to follow it. Indeed, the chief lesson of the election was the necessity of organisation. The Labor Party had been the best organised, and the most effective at mobilising the women’s vote. Though she would never think to stand as a Labor candidate, abhorring the party machine, she believed that the labour cause deserved as much support as the women’s cause because the two were closely aligned. Both, in the widest sense, were the cause of humanity. Labour represented the material wing of this dove; woman the spiritual. Both looked to change the social order forever.
Ultimately Vida was proud of her achievement and not shy to trumpet her self-defined victory. The press had predicted the humiliating insults that would be hurled at her. But she had found nothing but courteous and warm support wherever she went. The press had predicted her physical breakdown but she stood up to the campaign trail better than most men. After a month on the hustings, others’ voices were tattered and torn. But mine was fresh and clear the night before the battle as it was when I started skirmishing three months previously. And she knew she had changed minds: about women in parliament, about the social and industrial injustices faced by women, about sex prejudice in general. Her conclusion: Veni, Vidi, Vida. They came, they saw, I conquered.16
Even Nellie Martel, who’d had three weeks, not three months, to marshal voters and who had been subjected to far worse than humiliating insults, was, in due course, confident that the direction of women’s emancipation had been set and there was no turning back.
It is coming like the mighty roar of the ocean, this great voice of the People…our movement is on the crest of that great wave and no power can stop it!