‘What constitutional means have the women left untried to prove they want the vote?’

– Pro-Victorian suffrage pamphlet

By the end of 1905 Victoria was the only state in Australia whose women did not have the right to vote in state elections. The second last was Queensland, and when women of that state were successful Vida sent her counterparts a telegram: ‘Sincere congratulations from the envious women of Victoria, the first Australian colony to have a woman suffrage organisation, the last state to enfranchise its women.’

For Vida and the Women’s Political Association, it must have seemed as though the fight for the state vote would never end. The WPA put together a pamphlet, ostensibly seeking support from the men of Victoria but really intended for members of the state’s upper house of parliament:

WOMAN SUFFRAGE!

WOMEN’S APPEAL TO THE MEN OF VICTORIA!

Friends, in appealing to you to help us in our Struggle for Justice, we beg to remind you of the following facts:

Victoria was the first Australian colony to have an organised Woman Suffrage movement. The Victorian Parliament was the first in Australia to deal with Woman Suffrage.

The women of Victoria vote for School Boards, Municipal Councils, and the Federal Parliament, and they are the only women in the Commonwealth who do not possess the State Suffrage.

. . . There are 144,668 women breadwinners in Victoria, over 24 per cent of our women – 50,982 – are employed in country pursuits alone.

Women are compelled to pay Income Tax.

. . . Four-fifths of those members who oppose Woman Suffrage are in favour of making it compulsory for men to vote.

OUR CAUSE IS JUST!

The pamphlet also pointed out that a woman suffrage bill had been before the Victorian government seventeen times in fifteen years, always rejected by the upper house: ‘No other measure has been passed so often by the Assembly, no other measure has been vetoed so often by the Council, which is constitutionally only a house of review. Are you men satisfied that the Council should just flout the Assembly?’

It was a question whose answer, ‘Yes’, had been obvious for many years. And it’s worth looking at the campaign for the Victorian vote in some detail here because it forms such a perfect microcosm of the arguments pro and contra women having any legislative power – as well as the tactics adopted by each side.

Now the biggest obstacle was the premier, Sir Thomas Bent, who flatly refused to countenance the state vote for women. In 1907 the Woman Suffrage Declaration Committee, of which Vida was the secretary, acknowledged this by presenting a ‘living tableau’ at a pageant. It showed the women of Victoria kneeling chained at the feet of Premier Bent, while the unbound representatives of the other states gazed upon him in scorn.

Frustration about the state vote was causing Vida’s perfect manners to slip. She declared that Bent had insufficient character to compel the Legislative Council to yield to the popular will. Bent met this attack by overwhelming Vida with condescension, saying her ‘manner, language and style of argument were nice’ and totally ignoring her accusation.¹

Vida asked Alfred Deakin for support. He said he would be delighted to help, offering to increase pressure on the state government by telling the correspondent of the London Times about the parlous state of woman suffrage in Victoria. However, he was unaware of which Australian states had granted the state vote and which had not, which annoyed Vida intensely. She therefore had her doubts whether he would do anything useful.

Vida must have wished that the women of Victoria would rise up in righteous wrath and demand their right to vote. She recorded in her diary that a supporter of the cause had asked her, ‘When are you going to smash the windows of the Legislative Councillors?’ – a reference to the activities of England’s militant suffragettes, whose destruction of property had been making headlines. Vida did not believe her rallies needed to be broken up by mounted police, as in London, or that support for the suffrage movement in Victoria would result in fines or even imprisonment, but on principle she strongly supported the suffragettes. She had already written to their leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, ordering bound copies of Votes for Women, the paper published by Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union. She also liked the WSPU colours of white, green and purple, thinking the shades ‘soft and truly expressive . . . lavender [representing] fragrance of all that is good in the past; green, growth, the unfolding and development of all that makes life rich in purpose and achievement; purple, the royalty of justice, the equal sovereignty of men and women.’²

However, the WPA’s appeal to the men of Victoria was not entirely in vain. On 2 July 1908, Labor Party leader George Prendergast announced his intention of introducing yet another private member’s adult suffrage bill in the lower house. James Marion, who described himself as a travelling ‘social reform lecturer’, urged Vida to organise a women’s march on parliament. In return she suggested he form a Men’s League for Woman Suffrage, and he was as good as his word. The new group had its first meeting late in July, chaired by the Reverend Charles Strong.

But Bent continued to resist all calls for the state vote. He had other things to worry about: there were allegations of corruption against him because of government land purchases. On 4 August Vida led a deputation to his office, asking politely whether he would reconsider. Once more, Bent refused. According to Vida’s account, he explained that changing his mind would seem weak, and he could not go against the wishes of an old friend in the Legislative Council. Vida’s waspish comment in her diary was: ‘It is argued that women should not have the vote because they will always regard public questions from a personal standpoint.’ She also underlined a promise Bent made: ‘He would do a thing he had not done before in regard to woman suffrage. He would think over it.’³

Things seemed to be looking up when Vida discovered there was a vacancy in the Legislative Council and her contacts told her that all that was needed for the suffrage bill to pass was one Council vote. She and her colleagues questioned those seeking to be appointed about their views on suffrage (the kind of questioning on women’s issues that members of the Women’s Electoral Lobby gave to male parliamentary candidates two generations later). Vida was cautiously optimistic, especially when a deputation from the Men’s League waited on Bent and that evening the Melbourne Herald announced that the premier’s opposition was softening.⁴

But still Bent dithered. Vida believed that there was now sufficient support in the upper house for the bill to pass, but that the premier didn’t want Prendergast and Labor to get the credit for it. He and his conservative colleagues feared that the women’s vote would strengthen the Victorian Labor Party: the first Commonwealth Labor government, under John Watson, had come to office in 1904 and Bent was convinced that the women’s vote had been crucial to its success.

And there matters stood until early in October, when Bent and Vida happened to come across each other at the studio of Talma, a well-known Melbourne photographer (Vida was having her photograph taken with other Old Collegians of PLC). As Bent passed Vida on the way to the dressing room, she asked him, ‘What about the suffrage bill?’ According to her diary, ‘He started as if shot and then said, “Humph! It’s you, is it?” and passed on. Then he came back and said, “You ought to get your photograph taken with a copy of the Bill in your hand.” I replied, “You give it to me, Sir Thomas, and I’ll be delighted to do so!” Bent laughed and said, “I’ll let you know on Thursday. I’ve been trying to get old Pitt round.”’⁵

On 7 October Bent finally capitulated. This might have been because the Australian Women’s National League had convinced him and his colleagues that women’s votes need not necessarily lead to radicalism. Indeed in July, at an 800-strong AWNL meeting, one speaker had urged the League to support the state suffrage because members could use their votes to combat socialism.

The bill became law on 20 October, with only five Members of the Legislative Council voting against it, and Bent announced that his government would introduce state suffrage as soon as possible. Someone suggested to Vida that there should be ‘a statue of your noble self (rampant) with your fairy foot posed on the prostrate form of Thomas Adolphus Bent’. It was ironic – as Vida must have known – that the state’s largest conservative and anti-feminist women’s group, the AWNL, headed by Janet, Lady Clarke, had more than likely been decisive in getting the vote for the women of Victoria.

It was not a complete triumph. At first, only women ratepayers had the automatic right to vote – other women had to apply. This was probably intended to deter poorer and presumably pro-Labor women from voting. The restriction was removed before the next state election two years later. However, women in Victoria were unable to stand for state parliament until 1923: once again, Victoria was the last state in the Commonwealth to grant a right to its women.

 

So one large obstacle had been removed, and a newly energised Vida had to decide what her next move would be. She decided to stand for the Senate again. Now the franchise had been won for Victoria’s women, nobody could accuse her of splitting the state vote, which had been a bone of contention in 1903; having a woman from Victoria in federal parliament might encourage the state’s women to enter politics too. Great strides had been made in workers’ rights, thanks partly to the Harvester Case, and she thought the times were with her. She was still young – only forty – and full of energy. She needed a cause, a project, and could think of none better.

In August 1909 Vida started a new paper. The Woman Voter, which appeared every month, was intended to have a wider remit than its predecessor, covering women’s issues in Australia and elsewhere, and adding reviews of feminist books and plays and reports of WPA activities. By 1911, Henry Hyde Champion reported proudly to Rose Scott that the new paper had 800 paid subscribers.⁶

Vida announced her intention of standing for the Senate as an independent in the election scheduled for 13 April 1910. As before, she was nominated by the WPA. Every candidate in this election was given £250 to help with campaign expenses; Vida spent £144, some on election material. This time, instead of preparing a long manifesto, she had postcards printed that summed up her views. On one side was a photograph of a demure, unsmiling Vida with the words ‘Vote for the woman candidate who polled 51,497 votes in 1903’, and on the other a summary:

Three reasons why a Woman Should Enter Parliament

1. Because men cannot represent Home and Children as a woman can
2. Because all Public Questions must be decided from the Feminine as well as the Masculine standpoint
3. Because the Home System of Government is the best system – men and women co-operating for the general good.

The importance of family life, and the welfare of women and children expressed in legislation, including equitable divorce: these were the main issues she campaigned on. Perhaps mindful of the criticism she had endured from the newspapers seven years before, Vida was very careful to play down any suggestion that by standing for parliament she was inviting antagonism towards men. In a talk at Malvern Town Hall she said, ‘If parliament consisted entirely of women, they would probably have perpetrated just as many injustices as the men.’ She added, ‘I look forward to the day when the Commonwealth will have a lady prime minister.’ The very idea caused a great deal of mirth.

Vida was the only woman standing for federal parliament at this election. She seems to have modified the fearless rhetoric that had been so much a part of her campaign in 1903: ‘If I thought an all-night sitting was fixed up for party purposes, I would go home to bed. But if the business was of national importance, I would sit it out as the rest. Why, I’ve been up all night at a ball, and surely I could keep awake as a duty to the country.’ She would never have made such a frivolous remark seven years before, and it was greeted with approving applause.⁷

The old anti-woman arguments were duly trotted out. Women had no political judgement, the life of a legislator could be very demanding, women were not by nature fitted for hard work, women standing for parliament would cause dissension in the home. As she had done before, Vida quickly disposed of these: ‘Women enter the medical profession, do disagreeable nursing work – and it is a womanly thing to guard the interests of other women. Women electors owe a solemn duty to their sex on polling day.’ There was a certain amount of weight behind her rebuttal to the argument that women would cause the ship of state to head for the rocks: ‘If the ship Australia could find more rocks to bump into than I have already struck, I would be surprised.’

The most contentious part of Vida’s platform was her ambition to abolish state parliaments and governments – quite a radical declaration only ten years after Federation, with the issue of states’ rights very much alive. But even that did not create much controversy in the local press, and several journalists commented on the lack of excitement surrounding this particular election. The reigning conservative Commonwealth Liberal Party, also known as the Deakinite Liberals or the Fusion (so called because the two non-Labor parties, one free trade, one protectionist, had merged), was apparently securely in office. Vida had a more difficult road to the Senate than she had had seven years before. And this time, too, her candidacy lacked novelty value.

The criticism she faced was just as condescending, as well as tougher and more hostile: there were no jaunty little verses in newspapers celebrating a woman standing for parliament. Liberty and Progress called her an ‘acknowledged Socialist’ – hardly a compliment in the days of the Fusion government – who had been ‘very properly placed towards the bottom of the poll’ in 1903.⁸ A correspondent named ‘Vesta’ started a column for female electors in The Argus, urging women to ‘select one man’ for the Senate and deploring independents who ‘exaggerate their own importance and refuse allegiance to any party’. Vida’s adherence to Christian Science was praised as ‘in a certain sense laudable, and “ought” to have nothing to do with politics, but as our nurses taught us “ought” stands for nothing, and prejudice stands for a great deal. However, it matters nothing, for neither Miss Goldstein nor any other independent candidate has the slightest chance.’⁹ And once more Vida was accused of wanting to split party tickets because of her policies.

She cut back on the gruelling schedule she had followed in her previous campaign, spending a week speaking in the Western District, one in Gippsland and one in Melbourne. As before, she charged a silver coin admission for her public appearances, and as before, her meetings were packed, with people often having to be turned away. Members of the WPA canvassed for her and sometimes spoke on her behalf when she chose not to appear in some of the towns she had visited in 1903. Though Vida had learned how to deal with hecklers, her substitutes were not always so fortunate or practised, and one or two of them were given a hard time.

Close to the poll, with the growing feeling that Labor was likely to win, the conservative press brought out the brass knuckles. On 11 April, two days before the election, The Argus published a letter by Eva Hughes, co-founder of the AWNL: ‘I cannot believe there is any chance of Miss Goldstein being elected, but there is grave danger that she will embarrass our side. Every vote given to Miss Goldstein is a vote given to Labor.’ The Argus republished that letter on election day, along with another praising Vida and her candidacy. That approving letter bore an editor’s note: ‘This is the sort of gush relied upon by Miss Goldstein to secure her votes.’¹⁰ Vida’s reaction was to declare to an audience in Essendon that she thought her opponents were ‘deadly frightened that I shall head the poll’.

The 1910 federal election result was a milestone in Australian political and electoral history. The Labor Party under Andrew Fisher won with a 13 per cent swing, becoming the country’s first elected federal majority government and the world’s first labour party majority government at a national level. However, once again Vida failed to enter the Senate – though she improved her 1903 tally by about 3000 votes.

As before, she shrugged off her disappointment and told her supporters that all was not lost. ‘I succeeded in consolidating the Women’s Political Association, I have attracted new members and increased people’s political awareness,’ she wrote in the Woman Voter. ‘It may be that I am never to have a place in that august body [the Senate]. If so, I am quite content to be a pioneer, to blaze the track for other women. That I have made the pathway easier for them is my rich reward . . . had I attempted to gratify personal goals I would have joined a party and probably been elected.’ She vowed she would try again.

In April Catherine Helen Spence died in Adelaide, aged eighty-five. For Vida, the representative of the new generation of suffragists, it was a melancholy time, a passing of the baton. Spence, though she had occasionally been severe in her judgements of Vida and her campaigns, had nevertheless ‘watched with the intensest interest Miss Vida Goldstein’s election contests, invariably regretting her non-success. This was due not to any shortcoming in Miss Goldstein, for she is not only a charming woman and a very fine and courageous platform speaker, but to an innate conservatism and prejudice against women in public life, which is much more noticeable in Australia than in either America or Great Britain.’ This was probably as succinct and accurate a summary as anyone, including Vida, could have expected.¹¹

In the same month, Annie Lowe also died. Her passing was recognised in the May issue of the Woman Voter, which commented that the last time she had had a pen in her hand was on 12 April, when she was ‘just able to sign her postal ballot’. It must have been a source of satisfaction to those who knew her that Lowe had been able to exercise the right she had so long campaigned for.

Vida resumed her social work. As a former teacher, she was heavily involved in trying to gain equal pay for men and women teachers, and to make their workloads fairer. She also wanted to build on the work of Annette Bear-Crawford, who had managed to get the age of consent for women to be raised from fourteen to sixteen in 1891. Vida wanted it to be twenty-one, arguing that as a girl’s money and land were protected by law until her twenty-first birthday, her body should be too.

On 21 September 1910 Jacob Goldstein died, aged seventy-one. He suffered a stroke and collapsed in a city street, was recognised – he was still a well-known figure in Melbourne – and taken back to his living quarters, where he died two days later. His obituary in the Melbourne Herald gave due weight to his position in the Victorian militia, and also said that he had been prominent in various charitable causes.¹²

The death of a parent is almost always an occasion for mixed feelings. Given Jacob’s lack of support, Vida must have regretted that her second attempt to enter parliament had not succeeded: her father might even have been one of those to say ‘told you so’. The Goldstein family accepted condolences from many people, and Vida and her mother and sisters no doubt sent out notes of thanks. Jacob’s obituaries were courteous and respectful rather than warm, but that was partly the style of the times.

Vida, who was not a sentimental woman, did not dwell on the death of her father, at least in public. But though she had always been closer to Isabella than to Jacob, and had always looked to her mother for support while her father provided family discipline and criticism, she owed more to her father’s example than perhaps she was willing to admit. It was Jacob – headstrong, opinionated Jacob – who had insisted on fashioning organisations to suit him, who was always sure of his convictions, who was prepared to lead others. Surely the impulse that drove Vida to run for parliament and to publish two newspapers, as well as to establish her own feminist organisation, owed more than a little to Jacob.

There is a poignant postscript to Jacob’s story. Selwyn, his only son, who had left the family to become a mining engineer, at his wedding in Western Australia in 1906 wore a tie decorated with shamrocks, in deference to the only member of his family to have been born in Ireland, and perhaps to the parent to whom he had been closest.