The History of Woman Suffrage Volume V Part 33

Talbot and Miss Lucy Price (O.), Miss Eliza Armstrong, Miss Emmeline Pitt and Miss Julia Harding (Penn.), Miss Alice Edith Abell, president "Wage-earners' Anti-Suffrage League" (N. Y.); Everett P. Wheeler and Charles L. Underhill, representing the Men's Anti-Suffrage Leagues of New York and of Ma.s.sachusetts. Letters were read from Miss Elizabeth McCracken (Ma.s.s.) and Arthur Pyle (Minn.). Mrs. Scott introduced as speakers Dr. and Mrs. Rossiter Johnson and John C. Ten Eyck of New York. Representative J. Thomas Heflin (Ala.) spoke over an hour on his own initiative.

As the anti-suffragists had entirely disregarded the agreement to confine the hearing to the purpose of obtaining a special committee and had covered the whole field of woman suffrage itself, the Committee on Rules willingly granted time for a reb.u.t.tal. Miss Alice Stone Blackwell (Ma.s.s.), editor of the _Woman's Journal_, was selected as the princ.i.p.al speaker because of her extensive knowledge of the subject and another large audience a.s.sembled for the fifth time, both suffragists and opponents. Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch (Ills.) presided and Miss Blackwell said in beginning:

Gentlemen of the committee, it is difficult in a short time to review the arguments that have been made during nine or ten hours, therefore I shall take up only the most important points.

The argument has been made over and over that you ought not appoint this committee because there is not a sufficient public demand and because the number of women who oppose suffrage is greater than the number who favor it. It is an actual fact that we represent a very much larger number. The opponents say that only 8 per cent. of the women of this country favor suffrage.

They have no authority for this, n.o.body knows how many there are, but it is a fact that less than one per cent. of the women of the United States have expressed any objection to equal suffrage. The anti-suffragists claim to be organized in seventeen States. The suffragists are organized in forty-seven; the only State without an organization is New Mexico. The anti-suffrage movement maintains only three periodicals--two monthlies and one quarterly. The suffrage movement maintains seven weekly papers, one fortnightly and four or five monthlies.

In every State where pet.i.tions for suffrage and remonstrances against it have been sent to the Legislature, the pet.i.tioners have always outnumbered the remonstrants and generally by 50 or 100 to one. At the time of the last New York const.i.tutional convention as far back as 1894 the suffragists obtained more than 300,000 individual signatures to their pet.i.tions. Suppose only one-half of those were women, that would make 150,000. At the same time the anti-suffragists obtained only 15,000, men and women. In Chicago, a few years ago, 104 organizations, with an aggregate members.h.i.+p of more than 100,000 women, pet.i.tioned for a munic.i.p.al woman-suffrage clause in the new city charter, while only one small organization of women pet.i.tioned against it ...

One of the opposing speakers claimed that the majority of the grangers were opposed to suffrage. The National Grange pa.s.ses a strong resolution in favor of woman suffrage every year and a long list of State granges have done the same. Individual working women have appeared before this committee and have said that they believed that the majority of working women were opposed to suffrage, but all the great organizations of working men and working women have repeatedly pa.s.sed strong resolutions in favor of it.

We have been told that all kinds of terrible things will happen if suffrage is granted. With the exception of Illinois, every State that has adopted it borders directly upon some State which has it. If, as has been claimed here, homes were broken up and made desolate, if husbands found that their wives were neglecting their home duties and their children, it is not likely that suffrage would spread from the State which first adopted it to one adjoining State after another. You have had one California woman here who claimed that woman suffrage there does not work well. California adopted the initiative and referendum at the same time with woman suffrage. The "antis" immediately started an initiative pet.i.tion for the repeal of woman suffrage. They said that 80 per cent. of the women of California were opposed to it and that they would repeal it. Both men and women were eligible to sign the repeal pet.i.tions; but out of the 1,591,783 men and women they failed to get the 32,000 signatures necessary. It has been a.s.serted that the women in all the equal suffrage States would like to repeal it. In any one of these States they could repeal it if they wished to. A great effort was made by the editor of the _Ladies' Home Journal_ to find Colorado women who would express themselves against it and the fact that he wanted adverse opinions was widely announced in the papers. Out of the more than 200,000 women he succeeded in finding only nineteen who said they did not think much of woman suffrage and of these three said it had not done any harm.

A few years ago Mrs. Julia Ward Howe took a census of all the ministers of four leading denominations in the four oldest suffrage States--Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho--and of all the editors, asking them whether the results of woman suffrage were good or bad. She received 624 answers, of which 62 were unfavorable, 46 undecided and 516 in favor. The answers from the editors were favorable more than 8 to 1: those from the Episcopal clergymen more than 2 to 1; from the Baptist, 7 to 1; from the Congregationalists about 8 to 1; from the Methodists more than 10 to 1; and from the Presbyterians more than 11 to 1.

Miss Blackwell disproved thoroughly the charges made by the opposition disparaging to the laws for working women in the equal suffrage States and many other charges, giving full proof of the accuracy of her statements. The committee asked her many questions and gave her leave to print as much of her argument as she wished. Her carefully prepared data filled thirty-five pages of fine print in the published hearing.

James Lees Laidlaw (N. Y.), president of the National Men's League for Woman Suffrage, showed that the att.i.tude of the opponents expressed a distrust of democracy. He refuted many of their a.s.sertions, among them the one that U. S. Senator John D. Works (Calif.) had declared woman suffrage a failure in that State. He read a letter received from the Senator the preceding day as follows: "I did not make any statement anywhere that woman suffrage in California has proved a failure. Such a news item was sent out over the country but it was entirely without foundation and was based on a false headline in a newspaper not borne out by the quotation from my speech even in that paper. You may say for me that the statement is wholly without foundation and that woman suffrage has not proved to be a failure in my State."

Mrs. McCulloch referred to the "poor, misguided working girl" among the "antis" who said wage-earning women didn't want the vote and asked Miss Rose Winslow, a prominent working woman, to read the resolution demanding the suffrage which was pa.s.sed by the National Women's Trade Union League. She did so and in a few sentences scored one of the flowery anti-suffrage speakers, saying: "I have not had any choice as to whether I should walk on the Bowery or on Fifth Avenue, because I walk nowhere in the suns.h.i.+ne. I am one of the millions of women who work in the shadow of these women of whom men speak as though they are the only ones in the country, in order that they may parade the avenue in all the beauty and glory of everything brought from all over the world for their decoration, but I do not come with merely my personal opinion and experience. I have the opinion of the organized working women of America in convention a.s.sembled. These women represent all the trades that women work at in the United States and they have pa.s.sed this resolution demanding the ballot without a dissenting vote."

Mrs. Emma S. South, wife of former Representative Oliver South of Illinois, said the opponents had given alleged facts that would require weeks of investigation to prove or disprove. She answered their favorite a.s.sertion that women had more influence without the vote by convincing ill.u.s.trations of what the women of Chicago had been able to accomplish with even their partial suffrage, retaining Mrs.

Ella Flagg Young as superintendent of schools, for instance. She showed how in the appointment of the new school board the fact that their power had been doubled and trebled by the recently granted Munic.i.p.al vote was manifest. Mrs. William Kent, after showing why the women of California had asked for the ballot, gave her time to Miss Helen Todd, who said in the course of an impa.s.sioned speech: "My conversion to suffrage came through six years of work as factory inspector in Illinois. I have always thought that the reason there could be such a thing as women 'antis' was simply that the screen of ignorance and the comfort and protection of home were so thrown around them that they never had to face the realities.... No one can go, as I have gone, through the factories of a great State and see the suffering just of the children and not want the women who create human life to have the power to protect that life."

Mrs. Ella S. Stewart (Ills.), Mrs. John Rogers, Jr. (N. Y.), Mrs.

Katharine Houghton Hepburn (Conn.), Mrs. Ida Porter Boyer (Penn.) and Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton (O.) spoke briefly but strongly and an effective letter was read from Miss Constance Leupp (D. C.). The women present from the South were deeply incensed at the long, opposing speech of Representative Heflin, who claimed to represent the women of that section, and he was severely answered by Mrs. Pattie Ruffner Jacobs, Mrs. Oscar Hundley and Mrs. Felix Baldwin of his own State; Mrs. S. D. Meehan of Louisiana; Mrs. L. Crozier French and Miss Catharine J. Wester of Tennessee and Mrs. Lulu Loveland Shepherd of Utah, formerly of Tennessee. Mrs. Harper cited the three cla.s.ses enfranchised since the founding of the Government, the working men, the negroes and the Indians, and said: "There was never any question as to whether they would improve things or hurt things; now, in the President's Message, he asks you to bring in the Porto Rican men. Are you going to do this because you think they are needed in the electorate and because they will make conditions better? We women are the only cla.s.s who have ever asked for suffrage in this country to whom all these objections have been made and in regard to whom all these fears have been expressed. There is not a cla.s.s of voters in the United States today which has lifted one finger to get the ballot, yet the women of this country have been struggling sixty-five years for the right to a voice in the Government. You must admit that they are the best-equipped cla.s.s that have ever asked this privilege and yet you have kept them out. All we ask of you is to make it a little less hard than it has been by giving us a committee from whom we can get some consideration."

Mrs. Frank W. Mondell, wife of the Representative from Wyoming, said in the course of a very comprehensive address: "We do not desire to base our request for the appointment of a Committee on Woman Suffrage solely on the proposition that the subject is one of greater importance than those included within the jurisdiction of many committees of the House but rather on the ground that it has never, so far as my recollection and information go, failed to provide by general or special committee for the study and consideration of any vitally important question that has arisen in the growth and development of the nation." A review of the different committees was made and she concluded: "We do not ask or expect a committee const.i.tuted to represent our views but we ask for one whose special duty it shall be to consider the question. We feel that we are only asking the House of Representatives to follow its usual rule and procedure."

Mr. Mondell closed the hearing with a sarcastic review of the objections made by the opponents during which he said: "I had the privilege and pleasure of listening to the exceedingly strong and forceful argument in favor of woman suffrage made this morning by the gentleman from Alabama, or was it intended for an argument against it?

I think, taking it as a whole, that it was the most conclusive argument I have ever heard in favor of it.... We have a committee whose business it is to inquire how much further we should extend the franchise to the little brown brother over in the Philippines, some six or seven millions of him, and the President considers that a sufficiently important matter to refer to it in his Message. I hope it was through forgetfulness and not deliberate intent that he seemed to fail to realize that it is of vastly less importance than the question of granting the franchise to the mothers, wives and sisters among the 95,000,000 of the folks here in the United States." Mr. Mondell ridiculed the sentimental effusion of Mr. Heflin and his solicitude lest the harmony of family life might be disturbed and said: "If the testimony of one who speaks from experience is worth while I can say with full realization that it is a sweeping statement: In twenty-seven years' wide knowledge of a people where woman suffrage prevails I have never known a solitary case where a difference of political opinion resulted in family quarrels or misunderstanding, not a single one....

Are we to understand that men elsewhere--in Alabama, for instance--are less considerate than with us and that they would make trouble if their women folks did not vote as they wanted them to?... The exercise of the franchise is a privilege and a right but above and beyond the question of right or privilege stands the fact that as time goes on and we are attempting to meet wisely the mult.i.tude of questions that arise in government, many of them social and economic, we need the a.s.sistance of the best half of mankind."

The Rules Committee met January 24, 1914, with eight of the fourteen members present and Mr. Lenroot moved to report favorably the resolution for a Woman Suffrage Committee. Representatives Foster (Ills.), Campbell (Kans.) and Kelly (Penn.) joined him; Representatives Hardwick (Ga.), Pou (N. C.), Cantrill (Ky.) and Garrett (Tenn.) opposed. Mr. Lenroot then moved to report it without recommendation and there was a tie vote. Enough signatures were secured for the calling of a Democratic caucus on February 3 but just before it convened a meeting of Democrats was held in the office of Representative Oscar J. Underwood (Ala.) and it was decided by a vote of 123 to 55 that suffrage was a State and not a Federal question and no further action on a special committee was taken.

FOOTNOTES:

[78] Call: For the forty-fifth time in its history the National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation summons its members together in council. By thus a.s.sembling, one more united step toward the final emanc.i.p.ation of the women of this country is made practicable.... To the wise and courageous, to those not fearful of the changes demanded by the vital needs of growing humanity, this Call will have two meanings: first, it will speak of loyalty to work and to comrade workers; of large undertakings worthily begun and to be worthily finished; of the stimulus of difficulty; of joy in the exercise of talents and strength; of the self-control and ability required for cooperation.

Second, it will express--like other summons of women to women throughout the ages--the need not alone for counsel and comfort but also for the preservation of all they hold most high--for that to which they gladly give their lives. It will speak of the struggle for development which individual women have made; of the opportunities they have won for each other; of the unequivocal demand for the best, to which the few have led the many....

To you who grasp the underlying meaning of this struggle; to you who know yourselves akin to those who have preceded and to those who will follow; to you who are daily making this ideal a reality, this Call is sent.

ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President.

JANE ADDAMS, Vice-President.

CHARLOTTE ANITA WHITNEY, Second Vice-President.

MARY WARE DENNETT, Executive Secretary.

SUSAN WALKER FITZGERALD, Recording Secretary.

KATHARINE DEXTER MCCORMICK, Treasurer.

HARRIET BURTON LAIDLAW,} LOUISE DEKOVEN BOWEN, } Auditors

[79] The first delegation received by President Wilson after his inauguration was a group of eight or ten suffragists. It was arranged by Miss Alice Paul, chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National Suffrage a.s.sociation. They stated their case in a few words and quoted freely from his book, The New Freedom. The President was very courteous but his att.i.tude was one of amused curiosity.

[80] When the board met after the convention it was disclosed that the Congressional Union, instead of being merely a local society to a.s.sist the committee in its efforts with Congress, as Miss Paul had said, was a national organization to work for the Federal Amendment. That is, it was to duplicate the work which the National a.s.sociation had been formed to do in 1869 and had brought to its present advanced stage.

The a.s.sociation's letterheads had been used for this purpose and persons from all parts of the country had sent their names and money, many supposing they were a.s.sisting the National a.s.sociation. Miss Paul had been obtaining names for members.h.i.+p in the Union during all the sessions of the convention. The board decided that there must be complete separation of the work of the committee and the Union; that the same person could not be at the head of both and that the plans of the Union must be regularly submitted to the Board. Miss Paul refused to accept these conditions and she was at once relieved from the chairmans.h.i.+p of the Congressional Committee and the other members resigned. The Union was continued as a separate organization. Another committee was appointed by the National American a.s.sociation consisting of Mrs. Ruth Hanna McCormick, chairman; Mrs. Antoinette Funk, Mrs. Sherman Booth, all of Illinois, Mrs. Desha Breckinridge (Ky.), Mrs. Helen H. Gardener (D. C.), Mrs. H. Edward Dreier (N. Y.), Mrs. James Tucker (Calif.). Headquarters were opened in the Munsey Building, Was.h.i.+ngton, with the Illinois women in charge.

[81] Hubert L. Henry (Tex.), Chairman; Edward W. Pou (N. C.); Thomas W. Hardwick (Ga.); Finis J. Garrett (Tenn.); Martin D. Foster (Ills.); James C. Cantrill (Ky.); Henry W. Goldfogle (N. Y.); Philip P.

Campbell (Kans.); Irvine L. Lenroot (Wis.); Edwin A. Merritt, Jr. (N.

Y.); M. Clyde Kelly (Penn.).

CHAPTER XIV.

NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1914.

The Forty-sixth annual convention of the National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation had the honor and privilege of holding its sessions in Representatives' Hall at the State Capitol in Nashville, Tenn., Nov. 12-17, 1914.[82] Dr. Anna Howard Shaw was in the chair and it was officially and cordially welcomed in the name of the city by Mayor Hilary Howse; of the State Suffrage a.s.sociation by its president, Mrs. L. Crozier-French, and of the Nashville Equal Suffrage League by the president, Mrs. Guilford Dudley. As Dr. Shaw rose to respond she was presented by Miss Louise Lindsey, vice-regent of the Ladies' Hermitage a.s.sociation, with a gavel made from the wood of a hickory tree planted by General Jackson at the Hermitage, his home.

She spoke of memories which made Nashville dear to the whole country; referred to the merry barbecue which had been held for their entertainment the preceding day "at the old mansion of that great Democrat, Andrew Jackson," and continued:

When his Honor the Mayor spoke of the hope that if women entered into the political life of our country conditions would be made better, I forgot the North and turned back in memory to the great South, where no stronger argument in favor of our cause can be found than the women themselves. It is not the men who have made this nation what it is, it is the men and the women, and in no part of it have women contributed more than in the South. When we look back over its past history; when we see the land barren, the desolation everywhere; when we see the homes left dest.i.tute and the women prostrate by the graves of their dead; when we realize that the men were nearly all swept away--we know that the power which kept the South steadfast, which held the homes together, which cherished the traditions, which made the South what it is today was the loyalty, the patriotism, the unconquerable courage and the devotion of Southern women in that hour of darkness and despair. Had it not been for the new spirit of action born of the necessity of the times in the character of Southern women to inspire Southern men with hope and courage, desolation would still be over the South. They evolved from within themselves a power which no one knows that women possess until some hour of extreme trial calls it forth. Never has there been a test of human endurance and wisdom to which women have not responded and become the inspiration and the strength of manhood. If any women of this nation have ever bought their freedom and paid a dear price for it, it is the women of the Southland.

I cannot see how any man who calls himself a Democrat can fail to recognize that the fundamental principle of democracy is the right of the citizen to a voice in the government under which that citizen lives; much less can I understand how any southern man can look unmoved into the face of southern women knowing that they are branded as no other body of intelligent people in this country are--by disfranchis.e.m.e.nt--that they are deprived of that one symbol of power which elevates the citizens of a democracy out of the cla.s.s of the defective and unfit. The only way men can redeem themselves, the only way they can be honest American citizens and Democrats is to stand by the fundamental principle of democracy--that "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed"--"governed" women as well as "governed"

men. When Nashville and Tennessee and the South and the North and the East and the West shall stand on this basic principle of just government, then we shall have a republic, a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

At the close of the address this resolution was enthusiastically adopted: "The National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation in convention a.s.sembled hereby expresses its heartfelt thanks and deep appreciation to our national president, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, for her devoted and unremitting work for woman suffrage and for this a.s.sociation during the past year; for her splendid services in the campaigns which did so much to lead to victory two States; for her willingness to stand for re-election in order that she may lead us to new victories in the coming year."

Greetings were brought from the recently formed National Suffrage a.s.sociation of Canada by Miss Ida E. Campbell, who said that although it was only eight months old it represented many affiliated societies in all the Provinces. She spoke of the splendid war work that was being done by women and said: "Our national president, Mrs. L. A.

Hamilton of Toronto, is at the head of the relief work in that city and the feeling is general that the patriotic activities of the suffragists are doing much to enhance the cause of woman suffrage in the eyes of the Canadian public.[83] May we now express the hope that when the war is over we may welcome many of our American sisters to what we have been looking forward to--our first Canadian National Suffrage Convention. Canada salutes you." Greetings were read from the Colorado State Federation of Women's Clubs and were presented from the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference by its president, Miss Kate M. Gordon (La.).

The large hall was crowded at the first evening meeting and the convention was formally welcomed by Governor B. W. Hooper, who said in the course of his address:

It is highly appropriate that your progressive movement should unfurl its banners in this, the most progressive State in the South. Our people are not swift in their pursuit of strange doctrines, but they are as a rule open to conviction and tolerant of differences of opinion. Whatever may be our views of the necessity and efficacy of woman suffrage most of us have sense enough to know that it is surely coming in every State in the republic.... When it comes to Tennessee I trust that there will be no faltering compromise, giving only the limited right to vote in the election of certain cla.s.ses of officials. The suffrage, if granted at all, should not be grudgingly given but should be the complete and comprehensive right to partic.i.p.ate in all elections.

When suffrage comes to the women of Tennessee I shall derive one substantial pleasure from it if I am still living, the joy and exultation of my little daughter, who has been a p.r.o.nounced and persistent suffragist since she was nine years old. She has taken a keen and intelligent interest in all of my struggles, has rejoiced in the hour of my victory and wept in the hour of my defeat. She is the connecting link between me and the woman suffrage cause.

In behalf of all the good people of Tennessee, I extend greetings to your great a.s.sociation and express the hope that your sojourn in the historic Volunteer State may be filled with pleasure and profit to each and every member of your convention.

The Governor's daughter was introduced to the convention and it settled itself in antic.i.p.ation of the stories of the campaigns for woman suffrage amendments which had ended with the general election the preceding week, in some of them with victory, in others with defeat. Miss Anne Martin, president of the Nevada Suffrage a.s.sociation, was heartily applauded as she told of the triumph in her State, saying:

The suffrage victory in Nevada means not only a solid equal suffrage West and another step toward equal suffrage for the United States but a triumph for better government in Nevada. It is the most "male" State in America, perhaps in the world. The census of 1910 shows that there are two men to every woman. Law, custom, social life are more nearly man-made than those of any other country; consequently Nevada needs the help of her women to modify law, custom and social life, the help of those women whose pioneer mothers stood shoulder to shoulder with the men in building up a great commonwealth out of a wilderness. Owing to the transitory character of many of the industries, such as the construction of irrigation works, railway construction and mining, there are nearly three times as many unattached men living outside of home influences as there are married women in the State.

The male population is over 50 per cent. transient; the population of women is only 20 per cent. transient, as they have permanent occupations on the farms and in the schools. The argument of the anti-suffragists that "the women do not want it"

was answered by a house-to-house canva.s.s throughout the counties of the State. In many of them at least 90 per cent. of the women enrolled themselves in favor of equal suffrage and their signatures are on file at the headquarters of the Nevada Equal Franchise Society. The fact that out of a voting population of only 20,000 a majority of 3,400 votes was cast to give women the franchise shows not only that men all over the State were just and fair-minded but that they must have instinctively felt the need of women's help....

The story of victory for Montana was related by Miss Mary Stewart, as the president, Miss Jeannette Rankin, had been detained to prevent a tampering with the election returns, but she afterwards arrived and was enthusiastically welcomed. Mrs. Clara Darrow, president of the North Dakota a.s.sociation, gave an account of how the amendment had been lost in that State through political tricks. Mrs. Draper Smith, president of the Nebraska a.s.sociation, gave a report on the loss of that State and paid tribute to William Jennings Bryan, who had made sixteen strong speeches for it. Mrs. Walter McNab Miller, president of the Missouri a.s.sociation, told of the effort through the hot summer to get the necessary 38,000 signatures to an initiative pet.i.tion, after the Legislature had refused to submit the amendment, and the tactics used to defeat it at the polls. Her mention of the name of Champ Clark, Speaker of the National House of Representatives, who had recently declared for woman suffrage, was applauded. As Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, president of the Ohio Suffrage a.s.sociation, was not at the convention, the loss of the amendment in that State was described by Mrs. Myron Vorce. [See State chapters.]