The History of Woman Suffrage Volume V Part 50

Dr. Shaw told of the loyalty of women in other countries and quoted from the tributes of their distinguished men, such men as Mr. Asquith, Lloyd George, Lord Derby and General Joffre to the services of these women and in our own country of General Pers.h.i.+ng and scores of others.

She told of how the Canadian Government gave the suffrage to women and how they voted for conscription; of the splendid courage of the men of Australia and New Zealand, born of enfranchised mothers. She said that in ten of the eleven western States which filled their quota of volunteers before any eastern State had done so, there was equal suffrage. She referred to the eminent supporters of the Federal Suffrage Amendment, beginning with President Wilson and his Cabinet and Theodore Roosevelt; asked if these men were pro-Germans and pacifists and matched them with equally loyal women. In conclusion she said:

To fail to ask for the suffrage amendment at this time would be treason to the fundamental cause for which we, as a nation, have entered the war. President Wilson has declared that "we are at war because of that which is dearest to our hearts--democracy; that those who submit to authority shall have a voice in the Government." If this is the basic reason for entering the war, then for those of us who have striven for this amendment and for our freedom and for democracy to yield today, to withdraw from the battle, would be to desert the men in the trenches and leave them to fight alone across the sea not only for democracy for the world but also for our own country.... The time of reconstruction will come and when it comes many women will have to be both father and mother to fatherless children, and these mothers and their children will have no representatives in this Government unless it is through the mothers who have given everything that it might be saved and democracy might be secured.... No men better than those of the South know what it owes to southern women and shall those men stand in the way of freedom for the women who gave everything to retain for our country the very best of southern traditions--shall they plead in vain for the freedom of their daughters? What is true of the women of the South is true of the women of the North.... We are today a united people with one flag and one country because the women are worthy of their men, and we plead because we are a part of the people, a part of the Government which claims to be a democracy, and in order that this country may stand clean-handed before the nations of the world.

The speech of Mrs. Whitney, a.n.a.lyzing the vote on the suffrage amendment which was carried in New York State the preceding November was a complete statistical refutation of the charge made by the anti-suffragists that the favorable vote was due to Socialists and pro-Germans. A letter was read from Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, saying that speaking personally and not officially he favored the submission of the amendment. Telegrams urging it were received from well-known women in the southern States and Mrs. Catt read editorials strongly favoring it from a number of southern newspapers. Mrs. George Ba.s.s, head of the Democratic Women's National Committee, protested against the circulation in the Capitol which was being made by the "antis" of President Wilson's declaration made in 1914, "I believe this is a matter to be fought out in the individual States," because in 1916 he addressed the National Suffrage Convention in Atlantic City, saying: "I have come to fight with you ... and in the end we shall not differ as to methods."

Mrs. Dudley represented the women of the South, saying in the course of her address:

What has happened to the State's rights doctrine? Recently the Federal Const.i.tution has been twice amended and that under a Democratic administration. While the child labor bill and eight-hour bill are not amendments, they are really open to the same objections because they impose upon a State laws to which it has not given consent. These bills were proposed in one House or both by southern Democrats; Federal prohibition was proposed in both Houses by southern Democrats and pa.s.sed by the votes of others. So it appears that the theory of State's rights is only invoked when women plead at the bar of justice for that voice in their Government to which all those who submit to authority are ent.i.tled. Now, as to the negro problem. We southern women feel that the time has come to lay once and for all this old, old ghost that stalks through the halls of Congress. It is a phantom as applied to woman suffrage. In fifteen States south of the Mason and Dixon line there are over a million more white women than negro men and women combined. There are only two States in which the negro race predominates, South Carolina and Mississippi. In the former the percentage is 55.2, but there a voter must read and write and own and pay taxes on $300 worth of property. In Mississippi the percentage is 56.2 but there also they impose an educational qualification. In the eight years since these figures were estimated by the Government this percentage has greatly decreased, so that South Carolina claims that there is now no preponderance of negroes. In the other four States also in the so-called "black belt" an educational test is imposed upon the voters. In addition to all this we must consider that during the last decade the negro population has increased 11 per cent and the white population 22 per cent. Furthermore, in the past year alone 75,000 negroes have gone from one southern State to the north, and 73,000 have gone from three other southern States to one northern State alone. So it appears that we must transfer part of our rather hysterical anxieties with regard to the southern negro vote to some other States.

Mrs. Allen spoke from the standpoint of one who had lived many years in a State where women voted and asked the question: "Can you gentlemen not think what it means to women to know that their men are so chivalrous and have such a belief in their integrity and their intelligence that they are willing to make them their equal partners politically? Can you not see that under such conditions men and women are firmer friends; that husbands and wives are closer together and that all of the family relations are better because the adults of all the families are equally interested in city, State and national affairs?" She told how on the battlefield and in the hospitals in France could be heard in all languages the one cry, "mother," and she ended with the plea: "Our world is weary and wounded and sick and if you will listen in the silence of the night you will hear the same cry; the world is calling for the mother voice in its councils and in its activities."

The afternoon was devoted to the address of Mrs. Catt, which, with the questions of the committee and her answers, filled twenty-five pages of the printed report. For four decades the distinguished presidents of the National Suffrage a.s.sociation had made their arguments and pleadings before committees of Congress--Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Miss Susan B. Anthony, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, and then Mrs. Catt for eight years. This was the last time it would ever be necessary and the first time before a House committee which intended to report in favor.

The changed character of her speaking was shown in her opening sentence: "The time of argument on woman suffrage has gone by. The controversy has been waged over a greater part of the civilized world for the last fifty years, with the result that many nations have capitulated and woman suffrage is now established under many flags.

That it is still pending in the Congress of the United States is a disgrace to our country and a reflection on the intelligence and progress of our people." She ill.u.s.trated how the doctrine of State's rights had been ignored by the southern members in their fight for prohibition, led by Mr. Webb of North Carolina, who as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee had also led the opposition to woman suffrage on this same ground. She proved by editorial quotations from southern papers the changing att.i.tude on this point.

The vast number of American men who would be in the army in France at the time of the next election was pointed out and the question was asked: "When the election comes who will do the voting? Every 'slacker' has a vote; every newly-made citizen; every pro-German who cannot be trusted with any kind of war service; every peace-at-any-price man; every conscientious objector and even the alien enemy. It is a risk, a danger, to a nation like ours to send millions of loyal men out of the country and not replace their votes by those of the loyal women left at home." In referring to the "negro problem" in the South Mrs. Catt said:

In talking with some of the members of Congress we have learned that an idea prevails throughout the South that the colored women are more intelligent, ambitious and energetic than the men, and that while it is easy enough to keep the men from exercising too much ambition in the matter of politics, it will not be easy to control the women. When talking with these same men about the white women of the South, I have never known an exception to the rule that they have finally rested their case upon the statement that the women of the South do not want the vote anyway and if they did they would only vote as their husbands do. To say that means what? That the women of the South in the estimate of those men are too weak-minded to have an opinion of their own; it means that they have no independence of character; it means that they have been reduced so far to nonent.i.ty that they will only echo their husbands' opinions. Is living in the homes of the white men of the South so degrading to the character of the white women that they really cannot be trusted to have an honest conviction of their own, but that living in the South outside of those homes renders women more ambitious and more intelligent than the men?

Do these men realize that they are saying almost in the same breath that the colored woman is superior to the colored man but that the white woman is the inferior of the white man? Or is it possible that the climate of the South produces a stronger "female of the species" than male, and that the men of the South are afraid of both the white and the black women?

Detached quotations give a most inadequate idea of this masterly address which embodied the complete case for the advocates of the Federal Amendment. Toward its close Mrs. Catt, in speaking of the a.s.sertion of the "antis" that President Wilson was opposed to the Federal Suffrage Amendment, made this significant answer: "I request you, Mr. Chairman, to ask Mr. Wilson for a conference and go to it taking Democrats and Republicans and say: 'Mr. President, are you or are you not for this Federal Amendment?' Then you will know. I trust that you will do this and that, if then it is possible to make a public statement, you will do so." Afterwards it was apparent that she knew of Mr. Wilson's complete change of opinion and his intention to support the amendment. On January 9 Mr. Raker and eleven other members of the Lower House held a conference with the President and he urged the submission of the amendment.

At the continuation of the hearing on January 4 the American Const.i.tutional League, formed after the suffrage amendment was adopted in New York out of the Men's Anti-Suffrage a.s.sociation, was represented by the chairman of its executive committee, Everett P.

Wheeler, a lawyer of New York City, and by one of its members introduced as "Dr. Lucian Howe of Buffalo, a very eminent surgeon, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Medicine and the Royal Academy of Surgeons." The two men occupied the entire day, Mr. Wheeler about two-thirds of it, but the committee consumed a good deal of this time by a running fire of questions not far from "heckling." Mr. Wheeler offered for insertion in the _Record_ a page and a half of finely printed statistics compiled by the Men's Anti-Suffrage a.s.sociation to prove that the laws for women and children were not so good in equal suffrage States as in those where women could not vote.

The session of January 5 began with the reading of another sheaf of urgent telegrams from women of the southern States and pet.i.tions for the amendment signed by a long list of southern women. The first speaker was Mrs. L. A. Hamilton, president of the National Equal Franchise a.s.sociation of Canada and president also of the Women's Union Government League of Toronto, who was thoroughly informed on the granting of Provincial and Dominion suffrage and able to answer convincingly all the questions of the committee. The hearing was then turned over to the National a.s.sociation Opposed to Woman Suffrage, with its president, Mrs. James W. Wadsworth, Jr., in charge. I am much pleased by the personnel of this committee," she said, "because both the Republican Speaker, Mr. Gillett, and the Democratic floor leader, Mr. Kitchin, promised us that, unlike the suffrage committee in the Senate, this one would have a fair representation of 'antis.' I find we have been given two out of thirteen. Of course we think that a perfectly fair ratio, as we have always felt that one 'anti' was worth about five suffragists, but we did not suppose you would admit it."

"That is about the ratio that exists in the House," observed Mr.

Blanton, of the committee. "We will know more about that when we vote in the House," answered Mr. Clark, member from Florida. "I am going to give you the privilege this morning of hearing from my general staff,"

said Mrs. Wadsworth, "and I will have some of my officers of the line here Monday. I want to introduce Miss Minnie Bronson, our general secretary." The second speaker was Mr. Eichelberger, who presented elaborate charts and figures to show that woman suffrage was carried in New York by the Socialists. To the question of Chairman Raker, "This is nothing more or less than a compilation of figures as an idea of your own, to show what certain votes could do or certain figures would do, isn't it?" he answered: "Yes, absolutely, that is the idea."

At one point Miss Jeannette Rankin of the committee asked: "Are you the gentleman who compiled some figures on the Democratic and Republican women's vote in Montana last year?" "I think so," was the answer. "Where did you get your figures?" "From the official election report." "How could you tell a Democratic woman's vote from a Republican woman's vote?" "Well, that part of it was estimation!" The statements of Mr. Eichelberger and the questions of the committee filled twenty-four pages of the stenographic report and with Miss Bronson's address consumed one session.

The hearing in the afternoon was given to the National Woman's Party, in charge of its vice-chairman, Miss Anne Martin of Nevada. Mrs.

William Kent of California introduced the speakers--Mrs. Richard Wainwright, Mrs. Townsend Scott, Miss Ernestine Evans, Mrs. Francis J.

Heney, Miss Elizabeth Gram, Miss Maud Younger, Mrs. Adeline At.w.a.ter, Mrs. Ellis Meredith.

Monday morning the hearing of the Anti-Suffrage a.s.sociation was resumed, Mrs. Wadsworth presiding and speaking at length, saying: "We never have and never will ask a man to vote with us against his conscience but the men we do blame are those spineless opportunists who for political expediency or because they are too lazy to fight are preparing to surrender their principles for the sake of a dishonorable and, we believe, a temporary peace." Mrs. Edwin Ford followed and then Miss Lucy Price. Her remarks and the committee's questions filled fourteen pages of the report. About fifty telegrams opposing the amendment were received, nearly half of them from men and all from Ma.s.sachusetts. One purported to represent 250 women of Wellesley and another 1,000 of New Bedford. Henry A. Wise Wood was introduced as president of the Aero Club of America. During his speech he declared that "this was no time to unman the Government by this foolhardy jeopardizing of the rights of both s.e.xes"; that "one wonders at the spectacle of strong, masculine personalities urging at such an hour the demasculinization of Government--the dilution with the qualities of the cow, of the qualities of the bull upon which all the herd safety must depend"; that "this from now on is a man's job--the job of the fighting, the dominating, not the denatured, the womanlike man."

Referring to Miss Rankin's vote against war he said: "I do not think she cried; I was speaking of the real woman, the woman that men love."

He also said that during his campaign for "preparedness" he discovered that "the woman suffrage movement was hopelessly given over to pacifism in its extreme socialistic form." In closing he said that "for any sentimental or political reason it is a d.a.m.nable thing that we should weaken ourselves by bringing into the war the woman, who has never been permitted in the war tents of any strong, virile dominating nation." This speech was made Jan. 7, 1918, after nearly a year's experience in the United States of the war work done by women.

At this hearing the opponents made their supreme effort, knowing that it was their last chance, and they brought to Was.h.i.+ngton one of the South's most noted orators, former U. S. Senator Joseph W. Bailey, of Texas. He began by saying: "I shall confine my speech entirely to the political aspect of the question, leaving these very intelligent women to explain the effect of suffrage on their s.e.x and on our homes," but he got to the latter phase of it long before he had finished. He believed that under the Federal Const.i.tution the right to control the suffrage belonged absolutely to the States but he said: "I am opposed to women voting anywhere except in their own societies; I would let them vote there but nowhere else in this country.... No free government should deny suffrage to any cla.s.s ent.i.tled to it and no free government should extend suffrage to any cla.s.s not ent.i.tled to it, for the ultimate success or failure of every free government will depend upon the average intelligence and patriotism of the electorate.

I hope to show that as a matter of political justice and political safety women should not be allowed to vote...."

Giving other reasons why women should not be allowed to vote, he said: "The two most important personal duties of citizens.h.i.+p are military service and sheriff's service, neither of which is a woman capable of performing." Reminded by the chairman that there were many places where women then were performing the duty of sheriff, constable, marshal and police, he answered: "They may be playing at them but they are not really performing them. If an outlaw is to be arrested are you going to order a woman to get a gun and come with you? If you did she would sit down and cry, and she ought to keep on crying until her husband hunts you up and makes you apologize for insulting his wife.... A woman who is able to perform a sheriff's duty is not fit to be a mother because no woman who bears arms ought to bear children....

We agree, I think, that the women of this country will never go into our armies as soldiers or be required to serve on the sheriff's posse comitatus. That being true I hardly think they have the right to make the laws under which you and I must perform those services." The chairman asked: "When the men go to front with the cartridges and guns the women a.s.sisted in making are the latter not partic.i.p.ating in the war the same as men?" He answered: "They are doing their part and it may be just as essential as the man's, for if there is not somebody here to provide the ammunition the guns would be useless, but it is not military service."

The war had been in progress three and a half years when these a.s.sertions were made and the whole world knew the part that women had taken in it.

"The third personal duty of citizens.h.i.+p is jury service," Mr. Bailey said, "and while women are physically capable of performing that service there are reasons, natural, moral and domestic, which render them wholly unfit for it.... We go to the court house for stern, unyielding justice. Will women help our courts to better administer justice? They will not. n.o.body is qualified to decide any case until they have heard all the testimony on both sides but the average woman would make up her mind before the plaintiff had concluded his testimony." The awful consequences of "sending women with strange men into the jury room to discuss testimony which a sensible mother would not talk over with her grown daughter" were declared to be that "modesty for which we reverence women would disappear from among them." "Who will care for the children during the mother's absence?...

They tell me they will require the unmarried women to act as jurors.

There will be enough of them, for marrying will become a lost habit in our country if we apply ourselves much longer to this business of making women like men." Mr. Bailey appeared not to know that women had been serving on juries for from twenty to forty years in the western States where they were enfranchised.

"Will women vote intelligently? Can they do it? What time will a woman have to prepare herself for these new duties of citizens.h.i.+p? Will she take it from her home and husband or from her church and children or from her charities and social pleasures? She must take it from one or all of them and will she make herself or the world better by doing so?" Mr. Bailey asked. He said he wished that "every woman in the land was fortunate enough to have servants to do their work"; deplored "the unfortunate situation of eighty per cent. of the good women whose hard lot it is to toil from sunup to sundown" and inquired: "Do you think when they have done all this they will have time and strength to learn something about their duties as a citizen?" Asked if he did not think a woman ought to have something to say about the laws that concern the education and disposition of her children, he answered: "If she cannot trust that to the father of her children I pity her." "How about the women who have lost their husbands?" asked a member of the committee.

"If they have neither father nor son nor brother to provide for them the public will do so," Mr. Bailey replied. In pointing out how favorable "man-made laws" are to women he said: "In my State, where women have never voted and where I sincerely trust they never will, the law gives to the wife as her separate property everything she owns at the time of her marriage and everything she may afterwards acquire by gift, devise or descent," but he omitted to say that all of it pa.s.ses under the absolute control of the husband and that the wages she earns belong to him.

Further on he said: "We must have two s.e.xes and if the women insist on becoming men I suppose the men must refine themselves into women.... I dread the effect of this woman's movement upon civilization because I know what happened to the Roman republic when women attained their full rights. They married without going to church and were divorced without going to court." After having discussed widows' pensions, the double standard of morals, divorce, alimony and various other matters in carrying out his promise at the beginning to confine his remarks "entirely to the political aspect of the question" he reached the subject of women's smoking. He summed up his opinion of this by saying: "If it were a question between their smoking and their voting and they would promise to stay at home and smoke I would say let them smoke." In this connection he said: "A single standard of conduct for men and women is an iridescent dream. We cannot pay women a higher tribute than to insist that their behavior shall be more circ.u.mspect than ours."

Finally Mr. Blanton of Texas, a member of the committee, having obtained Mr. Bailey's a.s.sent that the right of pet.i.tion is the most sacred right of the people and that legislators should give it careful consideration, said: "I have here a very extensive pet.i.tion from your State signed by prominent citizens of the leading cities urging Congress to submit the Federal Suffrage Amendment and I notice from Houston, your city, the following: He then read a long list of bank presidents, judges, editors, college professors, the Mayor and other city officials, officers of labor unions, and, in addition, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Attorney General, District Attorney and other State officials, and pressed Mr. Bailey to admit their high character and standing. He did so but said: "I would not vote for this amendment if a majority of my const.i.tuents asked me to do so."

An undue amount of s.p.a.ce is given to the address of Mr. Bailey because he had been selected by the anti-suffragists as the strongest speaker for their side in the entire country and it embodied their views as these had been presented ever since the suffrage movement began. He was thoroughly representative of the opposition, and the officers and members of the women's a.s.sociation Opposed to Woman Suffrage who were present applauded his remarks from beginning to end. He made this speech Jan. 7, 1918, and the following March the Texas Legislature by a large majority gave Primary suffrage to women for all officers from President of the United States down the list and the bill was immediately signed by the Governor. The primaries decide the election in that State.[120]

The committee received pet.i.tions asking their favorable action on the amendment from the Texas State Federation of Women's Clubs and those of Houston and other cities; from women's clubs of many kinds in Waco representing 2,000 members; from women's organizations all over the State and from individuals, the number reaching thousands. There was the same outpouring from the other southern States, although it was the princ.i.p.al argument of the opposition that the vote was being forced on southern women. There was also a remarkable expression from southern men. Seventy-five pages of these pet.i.tions were printed in the official report of this hearing. As the sentiment in the northern States was now so largely in favor it was considered unnecessary for them to send pet.i.tions, although many did so. There were presented to the committee a message from the Governor of every equal suffrage State urging the immediate submission of the amendment and strong letters to this effect from Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels and Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo, Southerners and Democrats. None of this pressure was necessary to influence it but the leaders of the National Suffrage a.s.sociation arranged this demonstration in order to show that favorable action by the committee would be fully sustained by the sentiment of the country, and as an answer to the charge that "a small, insistent lobby was forcing the amendment through Congress." The anti-suffragists did not present one communication of any kind from any State except Ma.s.sachusetts.

The valuable s.p.a.ce in this volume could not be better used perhaps than for the closing speeches of Mrs. Park, chairman of the a.s.sociation's Congressional Committee, and Mrs. Catt, its president. A greater contrast can scarcely be imagined than that between their statesmanlike quality and the rambling, inconsequential, prejudiced character of Mr. Bailey's. "After the eloquent address of the last speaker," began Mrs. Park with delicious satire, "I sympathize with the committee and the audience who will have to return to the plain subject of the Federal Amendment for Woman Suffrage.... I think those who have been listening to all of these hearings will agree that the opponents have made many interesting statements but have given comparatively few facts." Saying that Mrs. Catt would reply to Mr.

Bailey's speech she answered the points in the others with a keenness and clearness that no lawyer could have exceeded and met with dignity and ac.u.men the questions of the opponents on the committee. She was not once disconcerted or unable to reply convincingly and always with a disarming courtesy but she did not deviate from her subject or allow the questioners to do so.

Mrs. Catt's answer to Mr. Bailey's speech, which filled twenty-five pages of the stenographic report, occupied seven pages and there was not a superfluous word. She began by calling attention to the pet.i.tions as a whole from the southern States, printed copies of which were furnished to each member of the committee. They included the names of over a thousand prominent men, among them two and a half pages of Mayors; the Governors of Arkansas, Tennessee and Florida and many other State officials. She said that as she listened to Mr.

Bailey's speech she was reminded of the declaration of a president of Harvard College, who a.s.serted that without question there were witches and it was the duty of all good people to hunt them out, but twenty-five years later every intelligent man knew there had never been such a thing as a witch. A man once wrote a book to prove that a steams.h.i.+p could never cross the ocean and the book was brought to America by the first one that crossed. Daniel Webster made a speech against admitting as a State one of the western Territories because its members of Congress after their election would not be able to reach Was.h.i.+ngton until the session was over. "These men lacked vision," she said, "and so does the last speaker. He does not know what has been happening in the world." She referred to the vast changes in the industrial life of women since the days of the mother of Was.h.i.+ngton and the wife of Jefferson, whom he had used as models for those of the present day, and said: "It is my pleasure to inform him that I myself am that which he regrets--a voter--and I would rather have my vote as a protector than the reverence even of the gentleman from Texas."

Mrs. Catt continued: "The speech to which we have listened has been interesting because it has seemed to be a chapter from a book that was written long ago. The week before the war began it was my privilege, sitting in the balcony of the House of Commons, to look down upon the bald head of Mr. Asquith while he made a speech against woman suffrage. 'I am unalterably opposed to woman suffrage because Great Britain is a mighty empire and it will always be necessary to defend it by military power and what do women know about war?' he asked.

Three years later he humbly confessed before the world that when a nation like Great Britain goes to war, and such a war as this one, which calls for every ounce of power the nation can offer in its defense, men and women make equal sacrifices and therefore it is not a man's job but it is a man's and a woman's job and they are doing it together. So the Premier demanded woman suffrage and voted for it in the House of Commons. Remembering Mr. Asquith, I think there is hope for Mr. Bailey."

Mrs. Catt pictured eloquently the marvelous work being done by women in Great Britain in the munitions factories, the railway service, the dockyards, and also in our own and all countries; she described the heroic sacrifices of the nurses; she told how the women of Canada and New Zealand had voted for conscription and how in all countries the women were backing their men in the war. "It is declared that American women cannot carry a gun," she said. "Why that is the kind of talk we heard forty years ago and Mr. Bailey's speech is just that much behind the times.... I am sorry for any man who has stood still while the world has moved on."

Only the merest outline of this convincing address is given but before its conclusion Mr. Bailey had deliberately insulted Mrs. Catt by leaving the room. Mrs. Wadsworth, when asked if she wished her side to be heard in reb.u.t.tal, introduced Miss Charlotte E. Rowe of Yonkers, N.

Y., who made a vigorous plea for saving the home, children and womanhood and declared woman suffrage would lead to Socialism. During the course of her speech she said, according to the official stenographic report: "If working girls and women in colleges will study cooking and sewing and domestic science and hygiene, or simple rules of health and how to care for the sick and the fine and beautiful art of home making, it will be much better for them and better for the country than if they spend their time parading up the avenue of a crowded city and praying that they may some day, somehow, become policemen or boiler-makers side by side with men.... I say to you that it has remained for this self-sufficient 20th century to have produced a womanhood which would stand--even a small proportion of it--in legislative halls and say that they are doing more in this great and terrible war than the men are doing.... Gentlemen, if I were a married woman and my husband was a feminist and on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November he said to me, 'Come, walk by me so as to strengthen and sustain me as I go to the polls,' I would say to him, 'Look here, Mabel, here is the key of the flat; I am going home to father.' I would advise men and women suffragists--and especially those suffragist men who need their wives to strengthen and sustain them on election day--I would advise them to go to the cellar and check over the laundry."

This last hearing on the Federal Suffrage Amendment closed on January 7 and the following day the committee made a favorable report to the House of Representatives. By consent of the Committee on Rules the 10th was set for the debate and vote and on that day the House by a two-thirds majority voted to submit the amendment to the State Legislatures.

FOOTNOTES:

[114] Although there was no national convention in 1918 Mrs. Catt called a conference of the Executive Council, consisting of the national officers, chairmen of standing and special committees and State presidents, at Indianapolis, April 18th and 19th. It was in effect a convention except for the presence of elected delegates and forty-five States were represented, including many of the South. They were entertained by the Indiana Women's Franchise League, welcomed by Governor Goodrich and Mayor Jewett and were guests at many brilliant social functions. A full program of daytime plans for work and committee reports and of evening addresses was carried out. The visitors were able to attend meetings of the Indiana State Suffrage Convention and the League of Women Voters.

[115] Call: The National American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation calls its State auxiliaries, through their elected delegates, to meet in annual convention at St. Louis, Statler Hotel, March 24 to March 29, 1919, inclusive.

In 1869, Wyoming led the world by the grant of full suffrage to its women. The convention will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this event. In 1869, the National and the American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociations were organized--to be combined twenty years later into the National American. The convention will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the organization which without a pause has carried forward the effort to secure the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women.

As a fitting memorial to a half-century of progress the a.s.sociation invites the women voters of the fifteen full suffrage States to attend this anniversary and there to join their forces in a League of Women Voters, one of whose objects shall be to speed the suffrage campaign in our own and other countries.

The convention will express its pleasure with suitable ceremonials that since last we met the women of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, Canada and Germany have received the vote, but it will make searching inquiry into the mysterious causes which deny patriotic, qualified women of our Republic a voice in their own government while those of monarchies and erstwhile monarchies are honored with political equality. Suffrage delegates, women voters, there is need of more serious counsel than in any preceding year. It is not you but the nation that has been dishonored by the failure of the 65th Congress to pa.s.s the Federal Suffrage Amendment. Let us inquire together; let us act together.

CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT, President.

ANNA HOWARD SHAW, Honorary President.

KATHARINE DEXTER MCCORMICK, First Vice-President.

MARY GARRETT HAY, Second Vice-President.

ANNE DALLAS DUDLEY, Third Vice-President.

GERTRUDE FOSTER BROWN, Fourth Vice-President.

HELEN H. GARDENER, Fifth Vice-president.

NETTIE ROGERS SHULER, Corresponding Secretary.