Miss Margaret Wilson was among those who showered Dr. Shaw with

flowers on Friday afternoon and she sat on the platform at the mass

meeting in Poli's Theater on Sunday afternoon. Secretary of the

Interior Lane, Senators Moses E. Clapp of Minnesota and Shafroth of

Colorado and many other officials and prominent men and women had

seats on the platform and a large audience was present. The Rev. U. G.

B. Pierce, of All Souls Unitarian Church, gave the invocation. Dr.

Shaw was in the chair and the speakers were Dudley Field Malone,

Collector of the Port of New York; Dr. Katharine Bement Davis,

Commissioner of Corrections of New York City, and Mrs. Catt. Dr. Davis

spoke with marked effect on the Reasonableness of Woman Suffrage. Mr.

Malone traced the extension of suffrage from the earliest to the

present time and showed that in seeking the right to vote American

women were asking nothing new. He spoke of "the million women in New

York State who have to go into the shop, the factory and the market

place each day to earn a living and support a home" and demanded the

vote for these women as a matter of justice. He scorned the idea of

woman's inferiority to man and said: "It is desirable to place in the

electorate every mature individual of brains, character, intelligence

and love of country to perpetuate American traditions and the American

idea of democracy. America today, facing the world problems of

infinite difficulty and variety, needs every element of moral force

and influence in the electorate which she can summon to her service,

for it may be that our country will be called upon before the world to

redeem the pledges made in behalf of democracy itself. The right of

suffrage involves the question of justice; the exercise of suffrage

raises it to one of ethics. The question before the men of the

country is, Should the women have the suffrage and if they get it how

will they use it?"

Here Mr. Malone could not resist the temptation to predict that the

vast majority would vote for military "preparedness," a burning

question at this time. This roused Mrs. Catt's resentment both because

it was contrary to her belief and because it was contrary to the

custom of the association to discuss political subjects. She largely

abandoned the rousing suffrage speech she intended to make in order

that Mr. Malone's assertion might not go out over the country with the

sanction of the association and said in beginning: "Behind

preparedness is a bigger thing--the right to maintain peace. Unless

this country carries a militant peace policy into the court of

nations, nobody will, and if we do not take a firm stand we ourselves

will soon be at war. It has been made clear to me in the last few

months that men are too belligerent to be trusted alone with

governments. The world needs woman's restraining hand. Man's instinct

has been militant since primitive times when it was his job to do the

hunting and fighting and woman's to do the work. Woman's instinct has

been to conserve and protect life. It is much easier to fight than to

make peace. We women would not allow our country to be made the door

mat for other nations but we would find a way to settle disputes

without killing fathers, husbands and sons."

Dr. Shaw sustained firmly the position of Mrs. Catt, obtained a big

collection and sent the people home in a peaceful frame of mind by her

closing speech.

Toward the close of the convention the following resolutions were

presented by the committee, Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, chairman, and

adopted:

WHEREAS, women already have the ballot in twelve States of the

Union and one Territory and in seven foreign countries, and the

trend of civilization the world over is toward enlarged rights

for women; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the National American Woman Suffrage Association,

in convention assembled, again calls upon Congress to submit to

the States the Constitutional Amendment providing for nation-wide

suffrage for women.

We rejoice in the recent granting of full suffrage to women in

Denmark and Iceland; Municipal suffrage in South Africa and an

enlarged local suffrage in the provinces of Canada and the States

of our Union....

We express our heartfelt sympathy with the women of all countries

now suffering through the war and our earnest wish for the speedy

establishment of peace with justice. Since women must bear their

full share of all the burdens and sufferings of war they ought in

fairness to have a share in choosing those in high places who

settle the question of war or peace.

The heroic work done for the sick and wounded by the women of

every land shows them to be worthy of the ballot, their right to

which Florence Nightingale declared to be an axiom, and their

plea for which has been endorsed almost unanimously by the

International Council of Nurses representing nine nations.

The association reaffirms that its policy is non-partisan and

non-sectarian, opposing no political party as such and opposing

no candidate because of his party affiliations but judging every

candidate by his own attitude and record.

We believe the home is the foundation of the State; we believe in

the sacredness of the marriage relationship, and further, we

believe that the ballot in the hands of women will strengthen the

power of the home and sustain the sacredness and dignity of

marriage; we denounce as gross slander statements made by the

enemies of woman suffrage that its advocates as a class entertain

opinions to the contrary.

The thanks and appreciation of the association are tendered to

its retiring president, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, for her long and

arduous service to this cause, her many labors and hardships and

her innumerable and powerful addresses, which have won adherents

to woman suffrage not only throughout the United States but in

foreign lands.

We highly appreciate President Wilson's action in declaring in

favor of the principle of equal suffrage and in stating his

belief in the good results to be expected from its adoption.

* * * * *

As the resolution to submit the Federal Suffrage Amendment to the

State Legislatures for ratification had been lost in the Senate and

House of the 63rd Congress it was necessary to begin again with the

64th. Usually the hearings before the committees of the two Houses

were held at the same time and the convention adjourned so the

delegates might be present but at this time the one for the National

American Association before the Senate was set for the morning of

December 15 and the one before the House for the following day. It

adjourned for the first one but as the second promised to be long

drawn out only a delegation went with Dr. Shaw and she returned to the

convention after she had made the opening speech.

At the Senate hearings the chairman, Senator Charles S. Thomas (Col.),

presided and members present were Senators Hollis (N. H.); Clapp

(Minn.); Sutherland (Utah); Catron (N. M.); Jones (Wash.). The other

members, Senators Owen (Okla.) and Johnson (S. Dak.), were suffragists

and probably were out of town. Senator Catron was the only opponent.

Senator Ransdell was added to the committee the second day. On the

third day only Senators Hollis, Clapp, Sutherland and Jones attended.

The time was divided among the representatives of the National

Association, the Congressional Union and the National Anti-Suffrage

Association, the first taking from 10 to 12 o'clock Wednesday; the

second from 10 to 11:30 Thursday; the third from 2 to 3:15 Monday. The

joint resolution for the amendment had been introduced by Senators

Thomas and Sutherland.

On the first day Chairman Thomas said: "This meeting of the Senate

Committee on Woman Suffrage is called at the instance of the National

Association of which Dr. Anna Howard Shaw is the honored president.

The hearing will be conducted under the auspices of that association

and by her direction. Dr. Shaw, we will be glad to hear you now." Dr.

Shaw said in part:

For thirty-seven years this amendment has been introduced and

re-introduced into the Congress by members who have been

favorable to our movement, or who have believed in the justice

and right of citizens to petition Congress and have that petition

heard. Last year we were permitted to address your body and we

rejoiced in the fact that a committee, which from the time of its

creation usually had been indifferent toward our subject, had now

been appointed with Senator Thomas, who from the very beginning

had seen the justice of the demand for woman suffrage, at the

head. This committee gave us great courage and hope, which were

fully justified in the fact that for the first time in twenty

years our resolution was reported out of committee and acted upon

in the Senate, receiving a majority vote but not the necessary

two-thirds. We come again with the same measure and again we

appeal to this committee, in the same terms as for all the past

years, for the women citizens of the United States who at every

call have responded as readily as the men in doing their duty and

serving their country. More and more the demand is being made by

ever-increasing groups of women that they shall directly share in

the Government of which they form a part. So we come to you today

with the same old measure but we come with greater hope than

ever before because we realize that back of you there are now in

many of the States constituencies of women.

Dr. Shaw introduced Mrs. Pattie Ruffner Jacobs of Alabama, who quoted

from distinguished southern members of Congress on State's rights and

asked that these sentiments be applied to the National Amendment for

Woman Suffrage, saying in part:

If this amendment is adopted it in no wise regulates or

interferes with any existing qualification for voting (except

sex) which the various State constitutions now exact. It leaves

all others to be determined by the various States through their

constitutional agencies. It is a fallacy to contend that to

prohibit discrimination on account of sex would involve the race

problem. The actual application of the principle in the South

would be to enfranchise a very large number of white women and

the same sort of negro women as of negro men now permitted to

exercise the privilege....

However much these chivalrous gentlemen may wish it were so, that

southern women might truly be called roses and lilies which toil

not, they must know that their compliments do not provide equal

pay for equal service, which obtains in all the woman suffrage

States and that their flowers of speech do not help us secure a

co-guardianship law, which every suffrage State has and which is

non-existent in all southern States. The pedestal platitude

appeals less and less to the intelligence of southern women, who

are learning in increasing numbers that the assertion that they

are too good, too noble, too pure to vote, in reality brands them

as incompetents. It cannot be sugarcoated into any other

significance as long as we remain classed with idiots, criminals

and some of the negro men who also are disfranchised. As things

stand in the South an incentive is held out to the negro man to

become educated that he may meet the tests; to practice industry

and frugality and acquire property to meet the taxpaying

qualification; but no such incentive is held out to the white

women, who meet the insuperable barrier of sex at every turn

which might lead to progress....

We women of the South today, while proud of our past do not live

in it. We wish to be proud of our present that we may look

forward with confidence to our future. We know that sectionalism

should have no place in our hearts or lives. This demand for

suffrage is not sectional, it has its adherents in every State

and in almost every town in every State. There is little or no

organized opposition in my part of the country but there are many

thousands of fine, thoughtful, forward-looking southern women

banded together seeking the removal of this last badge of

incompetency. For them there is no North or South but one great

nation, the interest of whose women is the same. We realize that

we are not different or better, we southern women, than the women

in Montana, Illinois, Maine or Massachusetts but are just human

beings as they are. We are not queens but political and

industrial serfs. We are not angels but our better natures, our

higher selves are becoming aroused by the needs of our common

humanity with a solidarity of purpose, a keenness of vision

unmarred by selfish motives.

Miss Caroline Ruutz-Rees, head of the Rosemary School for Girls in

Greenwich, Conn., described the work of the National Suffrage

Association and its sixty-three auxiliaries in the many State

campaigns and the long effort for a Federal Amendment and said in

closing: "In its propaganda and campaigns the association has steadily

maintained a non-partisan attitude, endeavoring so far as it had power

to help the friends of suffrage and considering as antagonistic only

its opponents. It does not hold its friends responsible for the

failure of their party to pass its measures. It never forgets that it

may have to look for help in amending the State constitutions to the

adherents of a party unfriendly to a Federal Amendment. It believes in

educating the public until the demand for the enfranchisement of women

becomes so strong as to be irresistible. The enormous change of

opinion in that public within a few years inspires the association to

hope for the speedy conclusion of its labors."

Mrs. George Bass, the well-known suffrage and political worker of

Chicago, said in the course of her remarks:

Women want the ballot because they need it in their business--the

business of being a woman--in the business that began when the

first man and the first woman commenced housekeeping in a cave.

The duties of the man and the woman differentiated themselves at

that time and they have been differentiated ever since. The woman

as mother became the first artisan because she had to clothe the

children. She became the first doctor because she had to treat

the ills that came to those children of hers and to the man who

lived by her side. She had to invent tools; she was the first

farmer. Man and his duties and his responsibilities have been the

same from that time to this. He brought in to her the slain

animal which she transmuted into food and changed into clothing.

He was the protector, and the first government that grew up about

that first home considered only the problems of offense and

defense. As the governments of the world became more stable, as

they developed, they still centered about war, offense and

defense.... Woman still is the mother of the race but what of the

home? It has become socialized and the spinning wheel is in the

attic and millions of women are standing at the great looms of

this country. The women are in the shops, the factories, the

offices, everywhere that modern industrialism is extending

itself. The school has been socialized and the children are by

the thousands in the schools.

Mrs. Bass then strikingly illustrated how the business of being a

woman now took women to legislative bodies in the interest of the

State's dependent children, of the women in the industries, of the

so-called fallen women, and showed how fatally handicapped all were

without the power of the ballot.

Mrs. Medill McCormick, chairman of the Congressional Committee of the

association, sent a comprehensive report of the vast work it had done

in district organization throughout the States and the evident

influence this had exerted on Congress. Dr. Shaw introduced Mrs.

Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the International Woman Suffrage

Alliance, who made the principal address, a searching and

comprehensive review of the methods by which men had obtained the

ballot compared to those which had been used by women and showed the

many requirements made of the latter which were entirely omitted in

the case of men. She took the four recent campaigns in Massachusetts,

New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania as the basis of her masterly

address, which will be found in the Appendix of this chapter. At the

end of it she said: "It was twenty-two years ago that I had the

privilege and pleasure of standing upon the same platform with the

chairman of this committee when he made an eloquent appeal to the

citizens of Colorado for the women there and many said that his speech

turned the tide and gave women the vote. I hope that he and every

member will not only make a favorable report but will do more--will

follow that report on the floor of the Senate and work for it and

immortalize themselves while freeing us from the humiliation and the

burden of this struggle."

The hearing was closed by Dr. Shaw with a strong and convincing

argument to show that "if nothing entered into the life of the homes

of this nation except what came through State action it might be said

that only the State should decide who should vote but since the women

are as much affected by the acts of Congress as are the men, this

becomes a national question." She drew a striking picture of

conditions among the nations of Europe where the war was raging; of

how "women in our own country every morning scanned the papers to see

whether we were nearer with the rising sun than we were with the

setting sun of the day before to connections with the Old World which

will plunge us into the war." She took up the questions of tariff and

of prohibition, asked if women should not have a vote on these and the

other great national issues before the country and concluded: "I only

wish that the woman whose name is so closely associated with this

amendment--Susan B. Anthony--might have lived to see this committee as

it exists today instead of having passed away before it was composed

of members of the character of those before whom we now come to

present our cause."

* * * * *

At the hearing of the Congressional Union the following day, Senator

Thomas, chairman of the committee, was present but refused to preside,

as the leaders of the Union had gone to Colorado during the recent

campaign and spoken and worked, though unsuccessfully, against his

re-election. Senator Sutherland took the chair. It was conducted by

the vice-president of the Union, Miss Anne Martin. "One of our chief

purposes in asking this hearing," she said, "is to bring before you

not only the ethical importance but the political urgency of settling

this question of national suffrage for women. At present the thought

and strength of large numbers of them throughout the country are

absorbed by this campaign to secure fundamental justice, which

prevents their giving assistance in matters vitally affecting the

interests of the men, women and children of the nation." There would

be five-minute speeches, she said, until the last half hour, which

would be divided between the envoys of the women voters' convention in

San Francisco during the past summer.[101]

Most of the speeches were crisp and clever and well fortified with

facts and figures to prove the advantage of a Federal Amendment over

State amendments in securing universal woman suffrage. The two

"envoys" were Miss Frances Jolliffe and Mrs. Sara Bard Field of

California, who started in an automobile from the grounds of the

Exposition in San Francisco to motor to Washington to present to

Congress a petition which had been collected during the Fair and to do

propaganda work on the way. The former made only part of the trip in

the car but Mrs. Field completed the entire 3,000 miles. Both made

excellent addresses.

* * * * *

Senator Hollis occupied the chair at the hearing of the National

Anti-Suffrage Association December 20. Its president, Mrs. Arthur M.

Dodge, introduced the speakers, saying: "We appear before you to urge

that you do not report this resolution to the Senate because we

believe very earnestly that it is a question which should be taken to

the States to be voted on by the electorates and not submitted to the

Legislatures." Mrs. M. C. Talbot, secretary of the Maryland

Anti-Suffrage Association, read a paper prepared by the Hon. John W.

Foster, a strong argument against a Federal Amendment but without a

word of opposition to the granting of woman suffrage by the States.

The other speakers were Miss Florence H. Hall, publicity chairman of

the Pennsylvania Association; Mrs. George P. White, a member of its

executive board; Miss Lucy J. Price, secretary of the Cleveland, O.,

branch; Mrs. A. J. George (Mass.), executive secretary of the National

Congressional Committee. They were trained speakers and their side of

the question was well presented. It was heard by the Senate Committee

without interruption except on one point. Miss Hall said: "On waves of

Populism, Mormonism, insurgency and Socialism ten States have been

added to the pioneer State of Wyoming and are recognizing the suffrage

flag." When she had finished the following colloquy took place:

Senator Sutherland. I do not ordinarily like to inject anything

into these hearings, but one statement has been made by the last

speaker which I do not think I ought to let go without making a

suggestion in regard to it. If I understood her correctly she

insists that Mormonism has had something to do with the granting

of woman suffrage in the ten States in which it has been granted.

I want to say that in California, Oregon, Washington and Kansas,

taking those four States which are the largest in which suffrage

has been granted, the Mormon population and Mormon vote are

practically negligible.

Miss Hall. I did not base it on that. I said Mormonism, Populism,

Socialism and insurgency brought suffrage along with them.

Senator Sutherland. There is only one State in all of these, so

far as I know, where Mormons are in the majority and that is in

my own State of Utah. There are comparatively few in Colorado,

probably not more than a thousand altogether in the entire

population, and their numbers are practically negligible in the

other States.

Miss Hall. How about Idaho? Forty per cent. there.

Senator Sutherland. I think perhaps there are twenty-five per

cent. There are probably 400 or 500 in the State of Nevada. In

Arizona I do not know just what the percentage is but there are a

number of Mormon voters there.

Miss Hall. I would refer the committee to Senator Cannon's recent

letter on that question, where he names eleven States----

Senator Sutherland (interposing). I know that claim has been made

but I undertake to say that it is utterly without foundation. I

speak in regard to this matter with just as much knowledge as Mr.

Cannon or anybody else.

Senator Jones. It is without foundation, so far as the State of

Washington is concerned.

Senator Sutherland. While I am not a member of the Mormon Church

and never have been, I have lived in that section practically all

my life and it is not correct to say that such a situation as has

been described prevails in those States.

Miss Hall. I thought I had pretty good authority for making that

statement and I think I could produce the evidence to show it.

Senator Sutherland. I would be surprised if you could produce any

evidence whatever to substantiate that statement.

Mrs. George, who spoke last, came to the rescue of Miss Hall and this

dialogue occurred:

Mrs. George. I am confident that the speaker only meant to imply

that woman suffrage has always been a radical movement and that

where Mormonism did exist it helped on suffrage....

Senator Sutherland. As a matter of fact, the Mormon Church and

the Mormon people are not radical. They are conservative and in

some instances almost ultra conservative....

Mrs. George. They may be conservative along certain lines but we

do look upon the Mormon Church as advocating certain social

measures which seem to us radical.

Senator Sutherland. I will grant you that in the past there have

been some things that you and I would not agree with, but from a

very careful observation of events I can say to you with perfect

confidence in the truth of what I say, that that sort of thing

has passed away.

Mrs. George. May I say un-American, if you object to the word

"radical"?

Senator Sutherland. I object to the word "un-American" much more

strongly because the Mormon people are not un-American. They are

good citizens, among the best in this country.

Mrs. George concluded her address to the committee with these words:

"These are grave times. Questions of international relationships, of

preparedness, of the national defense, of finance, are vexing the

wisest minds. Is it a time to further the propaganda of this new crop

of hyphenated Americans--Suffrage-Americans--who place their

propaganda above every need of the country?"

* * * * *

With the women of eleven States now eligible to vote for all

candidates at the general election of 1916 and the large number in

Illinois possessing the Presidential franchise woman suffrage had

become a leading issue. Most of the House Judiciary Committee of

twenty-one members, including the chairman, Edwin Y. Webb of North

Carolina, an immovable opponent, were present at the hearing on

December 16 and they faced sixteen speakers for the Federal Amendment

and twelve opposed. Three hours were granted to the former, divided

between the National American Association and the Congressional Union,

and two hours to the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.

Dr. Shaw opened the hearing by referring to the thirty-seven years

that had seen the leaders of her association pleading with Congress

for favorable action on this amendment and introduced Mrs. Carrie

Chapman Catt, president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance,

comprising twenty-six nations.

Mrs. Catt said in part:

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee, I fear that the

hearings before this Judiciary Committee have become in the eyes

and understanding of many of the members a rather perfunctory

affair which you have to endure. May I remind you that since the

last hearing something new has happened in the United States and

that is that more than a million men have voted for woman

suffrage in four of the most conservative States of the East? I

consider that that big vote presents to this committee a mandate

for action which was never presented before. There are those,

doubtless, who will say that this is a question of State rights.

I have been studying Congressmen for a good many years and I have

discovered that when a man believes in woman suffrage it is a

national question and when he does not believe in it he says it

is a question for the States....

Mrs. Catt told of the prominent educator who was sent from Belgium to

investigate the working of woman suffrage in the United States and

after he had made a visit to the States where it existed he summed up

the result by saying: "I am convinced in favor in my mind but my heart

is still opposed." "There are members of this committee," she said,

"who are governed by their hearts instead of their heads," and she

continued:

Gentlemen, this movement has grown bigger and stronger as the

years have passed by until today millions of women are asking in

all the States for the vote. The president of Cornell University,

Dr. Schurman, said that his reason for now aggressively

advocating woman suffrage was because he had discovered in

studying history that it was never good for a government to have

a restless and dissatisfied class; he had made up his mind that

the women of the nation did think that they had a grievance,

whether they had or not, and he believed that a government was

stronger and safer when grievances were relieved.

A few days before the election in order to show that the women

wanted to vote there was a parade in New York City and 20,000

marched up Fifth Avenue, among them a great number of public

school teachers of the city, 12,000 of whom had contributed to

our campaign funds. These women deal with the most difficult

problems; they are teaching all that the new-coming people know

of citizenship and they were asking their own share in that

citizenship. A man whose name is known to every one of you was

sitting at the window of a clubhouse watching the women pass hour

after hour until at last this great group of teachers, sixteen

abreast, marched by with their banners. He looked out upon them

and do you think he said, "I am convinced that the women of New

York do want to vote and I will help them?" That is what an

honorable American citizen, an open-minded man, would have said.

Instead he exclaimed: "My God! I never realized what a menace the

woman suffrage movement is to this country; we have got to do

something next Tuesday to keep the women from getting the vote."

There is not a man on this committee or in this House who can

produce a single argument against woman suffrage that will hold

water, and the thing that is rousing the women of this land

continually and making them realize that our Government visits

upon us a daily injustice is that the doors of our ports are left

wide open and the men of all the nations on earth are permitted

to enter and receive the franchise. In New York City women must

ask for it in twenty-four languages....

Walter M. Chandler of New York City, a member of the committee, asked

Mrs. Catt if she thought a Representative should vote against the

mandate of his district, which in his case had given a majority of

2,000 against a State amendment in November, although he himself had

spoken and voted for it. A spirited dialogue followed which filled

several pages of the printed report, Mrs. Catt insisting that he

should stand by the broad principle of justice and Mr. Chandler

equally insistent that he must represent his constituents. As Dr. Shaw

rose to return to the convention Mr. Carlin of Virginia said: "Dr.

Shaw, would you mind explaining to this committee the essential

difference between this organization known as the National Woman

Suffrage Association and the Congressional Union? There is a great

deal of confusion among the members of the committee as to just what

is the difference between them," and she answered:

It is, perhaps, like two different political parties, which

believe in different procedure. The National Woman Suffrage

Association has two fundamental ideas--to secure the suffrage

through State and national constitutions--and we appeal both to

Congress and to the States. The Congressional Union, as I

understand it, appeals only to the Congress. Another essential

difference is that the policy of the Union is to hold the party

in power responsible for the acts of Congress, whether they are

acts of that party by itself or of the whole Congress. They

follow a partisan method of attacking the political party in

power, whether the members of it are friendly to the

woman-suffrage movement or not. For instance, Senator Thomas of

Colorado, Senator Chamberlain of Oregon and other Senators and

Representatives who have always been favorable to our movement

and have aided us all the way along, have been attacked by this

Union not because of their personal attitude toward our question

but because of the attitude of their party. The National Suffrage

Association pursues a non-partisan method, attacking no political

party. If we could defeat a member of any political party who

persistently opposed our measure we would do it, whether in the

Republican or the Democratic or any other, but would never hold

any party responsible for the acts of its individual members.

Many other questions were asked, the committee seeming incredulous

that suffragists would fight the re-election of their friends. The

next speaker was Miss Alice Stone Blackwell whose address consisted in

a solid array of facts and figures that were absolutely unanswerable.

As the daughter of Lucy Stone and editor of the _Woman's Journal_ from

girlhood she was fortified beyond all others with information as to

the progress of woman suffrage; the connection of the liquor interests

with its many defeats; the statistics of the votes that had been taken

and all phases of the subject. Mrs. Harriet Stokes Thompson, an

educator and social worker of Chicago, said in part:

I wish to make my appeal this morning to both your intellect and

your sympathies when I speak to you in behalf of the nine million

women who are out today assuming their part in the industrial

world. These women who are working in the shops and factories

have simply followed the evolution of industry. It is not that

they have entered into man's work at all, because they are doing

what they formerly did in their homes, and I am asking today that

you give to them power to protect themselves. Those girls working

there now are the mothers of the generation to come and that they

may be well protected in their hours of labor, in the conditions

under which they work, that they may become mothers of healthy

children in the future, we are asking that they may speak with

authority through legislative chambers.... I wish to appeal to

you, too, for another large group of women, the teachers of the

United States. I myself am one of those who stand before the

children of this great nation day after day. The teachers should

be made citizens in order that they may keep both the letter and

the spirit of this democratic country in their teachings. I have

lived in my own State to know the difference in the spirit with

which you teach citizenship when you yourself are a citizen. A

slave cannot teach freedom, cannot comprehend the spirit of

freedom; neither can a woman who is not a citizen comprehend the

spirit of true citizenship. The teachers of Illinois since they

were enfranchised have come to their work with a new life, a new

zest and a new responsibility and we expect to send the boys out

with a finer appreciation of what it means to render public

service to a whole community and not a fraction of it. We also

recognize the fact that our men are feeling that in every good

work which they undertake a great help has been given to them.

Mrs. George Bass, whose address is quoted in the report of the Senate

hearing in this chapter, gave a valuable resume of the civic and legal

reforms which already the women of Illinois had been able to

accomplish with their votes and answered a number of questions. Miss

Ruutz-Rees spoke along the lines of her speech before the Senate

Committee, as did Mrs. Pattie Ruffner Jacobs, who made a strong appeal

in the name of southern women for the Federal Amendment. She was

subjected to a crossfire of questions from the southern members and

Chairman Webb asked the question which many times afterwards came back

to plague him: "Do you not think that as soon as you have a big enough

majority of women in Alabama who want suffrage you will get it from

the State and that you ought not come here bothering Congress about

something that it should not, under our form of government, take

jurisdiction of?" She answered: "I am very regretful that you have

been bothered." During the questions and answers that followed Mrs.

Jacobs brought forward the unjust laws of South Carolina and Alabama

for working women and for all women and said: "The southern man still

prefers to think of the southern women as the sheltered, protected

beings he would like to have them and he does not realize that now

they are the exploited class." Representatives Whaley of South

Carolina and Tribble of Georgia denied her statements and afterwards

put into the Record statistics attempting to disprove them.

In the paper presented by Mrs. Medill McCormick, chairman of the

Congressional Committee, she showed the excellent work that had been

done by its branches organized in the congressional districts; the

pressure on members of Congress by their constituents; the favorable

resolutions that had been passed by organizations and meetings

representing hundreds of thousands and closed: "I wonder whether you

gentlemen of the committee have computed the number of votes that are

now behind the woman suffrage movement in this country? I do not mean

the votes of women in the equal suffrage States alone, I mean the

popular voting strength as shown at the polls all over the country.

Nearly 1,250,000 votes were cast for woman suffrage in New York,

Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Massachusetts this fall. Nearly 800,000

were cast in Ohio, Missouri, the Dakotas and Nebraska last fall,

besides the popular vote of the equal suffrage States and Illinois.

The total of these figures from twenty-one States is 6,400,000--that

is, 191,000 more than were cast for President Wilson in forty-eight

States. Would Congress fail to recognize such voting strength upon any

other issue?

* * * * *

The rest of the time was given to the Congressional Union, its

chairman, Miss Alice Paul, presiding. The speakers were Mrs. Andreas

Ueland, president of the Minnesota Suffrage Association; Miss Mabel

Vernon of Nevada; Mrs. Jennie Law Hardy, an Australian residing in

Michigan; Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles of Delaware; Miss Helen Todd,

Miss Frances Jolliffe and Mrs. Sara Bard Field of California. The

first two speakers proceeded without interruption but when Mrs. Hardy

said that by marrying in the United States she found herself

disfranchised, the committee woke up. After questioning her on this

point Mr. Steele of Pennsylvania asked her how she accounted for the

large defeat the second time the suffrage amendment was submitted in

Michigan and she answered: "I account for it partly by the fact that

this was the only State having a campaign that year and the whole

opposition was centered there. The liquor interests themselves

admitted that they spent a million dollars to defeat it."

The address of Mrs. Hilles also brought out a flood of questions,

which, with the answers made by Miss Paul, filled four printed pages

of the official report. They began with requests for information about

the difficulties of amending State constitutions but soon centered on

the campaign of the Union against the Democrats in 1914 and this line

was followed throughout the rest of the hearing, the Federal Amendment

being largely lost sight of. The members showed deep personal

resentment. For example:

Mr. Taggart (Kan.). Your organization spent a lot of time and

money trying to defeat men on this committee that you are now

before, did it not?

Miss Paul. We went out into the suffrage States and told the

women voters what was done to the suffrage amendment by the last

Congress.

Mr. Taggart. We have before us a joint suffrage resolution by Mr.

Taylor of Colorado. You tried to defeat him, did you not?

Miss Paul. The suffrage amendment was not brought to a vote in

the House until after we went to the West.

Mr. Taggart. You tried to defeat the man in the House who

presented this resolution which you are having hearings for, did

you not?

Miss Paul. What we did was to go to the Rules Committee, a

Democratic committee, to ask that this measure be reported out

and brought to a vote; when the committee had refused to do this

we went out into the suffrage States of the West and told the

women voters how the bill was being blocked at Washington. As

soon as we did that they stopped blocking and the bill was

brought up before the House for the first time in history.

Mr. Taggart. That was after the election?

Miss Paul. Yes.

Mr. Taggart. You are aware that more Democrats voted for it than

men of any other party?

Miss Paul. We are aware that the Democrats met in caucus and

decided that woman suffrage should not be brought up in the House

and after we went out into the West they brought it up. We went

out to tell the women voters about the way some of their

Representatives were treating the matter.

Mr. Taggart. And with this result--that in the suffrage State of

Colorado Senator Thomas, a Democrat, was re-elected to succeed

himself; in the suffrage State of Arizona, Senator Smith, a

Democrat, was re-elected to succeed himself; in the suffrage

State of California a Democrat was elected to succeed a

Republican; in the suffrage State of Washington the House was

reinforced by one Democrat, and in the suffrage State of Utah and

in the suffrage State of Kansas Democrats were elected to

reinforce the party. One Democrat only, Mr. Seldomridge of

Colorado, was defeated, for the reason, he says, that his

district has been gerrymandered; nevertheless, he came and voted

for the amendment on the floor of the House. Why should you take

such an interest in defeating Democratic Congressmen and

Senators?

Miss Paul persisted that all the favorable action taken by Congress

after the election of 1914 was because they campaigned against the

Democrats, ignoring the fact that Nevada and Montana had enfranchised

their women at that election and public sentiment was veering so

rapidly in favor of woman suffrage as to compel both parties to regard

it as a political issue. After the opening sentences of Miss Todd's

speech it became a heated dialogue between her and the members of the

committee.

Miss Paul said in introducing Miss Frances Jolliffe: "She is a strong

Democrat who campaigned for President Wilson and Senator Phelan and is

one of the envoys sent by the women's convention in San Francisco, at

which there were present 10,000 people who bade her 'Godspeed' on this

journey."[102] The beginning of her speech was as follows: "I am here

as a messenger from the women voters of the West. Perhaps first I

should offer my apologies to the minority for appearing at all; for,

gentlemen, I did my level best to defeat the Republican candidate for

the Senate last year and I think I did a good deal to defeat him when

I went before the women and told them they could not send back----"

Mr. Volstead spoke quickly saying: "Will you pardon me an

interruption? Was that the pay you gave the Republicans for giving you

almost as many votes in the House as the Democrats gave you, and that

despite the fact that the Democrats had a two-thirds majority in the

House? That is, less than one-half of the vote in favor of your

proposition came from the Democrats and more than five out of every

six who voted against it were Democrats." The controversy kept up and

when Mrs. Sara Bard Field, the other "envoy," commenced her speech she

begged that she might finish it without interruption. Toward the

close, however, the hearing became a free-for-all debating society,

the discussion filling seven pages of the official report. Miss Paul's

closing remarks caused the debate to be continued through another six

pages. "Can you tell me what will be in the platform of the Democratic

party in 1916?" she asked Chairman Webb. "I can tell you one plank

that will not be in it and that is a plank in favor of woman

suffrage," he answered. The retorts of the women were clever but both

Republican and Democratic members of the committee were very much out

of humor and not in a very good frame of mind to make a favorable

report.

* * * * *

The hearing of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage

followed immediately. Its president, Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge, said in

opening their hearing: "We have come here today to ask you as a

committee not to report this bill favorably to the House, because we

consider that, in the first place, it is a question of State's rights.

In the second place we consider that the women, as represented by

their men--good, bad and indifferent, honest or venal--should be heard

through the men who represent them at the present time and whom the

majority of women are still perfectly willing to have represent them."

She then showed how much larger the majorities were which had voted

against woman suffrage than for it. The speakers were Miss Emily P.

Bissell of Delaware; Mrs. O. D. Oliphant of the New Jersey

association; Mrs. James Wells of the Texas association; Miss Lucy J.

Price of the Cleveland branch; Mrs. A. J. George of the Massachusetts

association. The Judiciary Committee was in an argumentative mood and

began with Mrs. Dodge as follows:

Mr. Dyer (Mo.). What is the position of your organization with

reference to the question of whether or not women should have the

right to vote at all? Are you in favor of women voting?

Mrs. Dodge. We are in opposition to woman suffrage generally. We

have never opposed women voting in school matters; we think that

is a perfectly legitimate line for them to vote upon. The only

trouble is they do not vote upon those questions where

authorized; only two per cent. of them do so.

Mr. Dyer. That is as far as you want them to go?

Mrs. Dodge. Yes; that is a perfectly legitimate line for them, we

have always taken that position from the first, but that does not

mean that women are to be drawn into politics and government and

we only draw the line at their taking part in politics and

government.

Mr. Dyer. I understand your position is that you favor submitting

this question to the States directly.

Mrs. Dodge. Yes. We have always rather inclined to the idea that

it should be submitted to the women themselves.[103] ...

Mr. Taggart. Would you say that it was just to require a woman to

pay the income tax demanded by the government and then deny her

the right to any voice as to who should be the Representative

that voted that tax on her?

Mrs. Dodge. I certainly should. I have paid taxes in five States

myself. I feel that I am entirely protected--that is what the tax

is for. I think that taxpaying men are just as capable of taking

care of my rights as of their own and I feel that I am justified

in saying that the men can quite as well look after that which

ought to be and is their business as I can.

Mr. Taggart asked: "Why should the women of Kansas have the vote when

it is denied to those of other States who need it as much or more?"

Mrs. Dodge answered: "We think the men in Kansas did not quite know

what they were doing when they gave it to women and a great many

thousands of women there wish they had not done so." "You are then

opposed to having a State grant suffrage to its own women?" he asked.

"Not at all," she replied. "Then why do you say the men did not know

what they were about?" "I do not know whether a majority or a minority

of the voters desired it," she said. "Well, it was a very large

majority and I have never heard a regret expressed in the State that

it was done," responded Mr. Taggart.

Mrs. Oliphant was held up because after saying that the women did not

want the suffrage she argued against a Federal Amendment because if

the women got it it would be very difficult to repeal it. Mr. Graham

(Penn.) rushed to her relief by saying: "The line of thought is that

20 States, holding a minority of the population of the United States

might pass this National Amendment over the protest of the larger

States with the greater population." His attention was called by one

of the committee to the fact that it would require 36 States. Mrs.

Wells kept reminding the committee that she was an inexperienced

speaker and knew nothing about politics but said: "I am a Catholic and

a Democrat. I claim no knowledge of northern women but I cannot

understand how southern women--I speak for them--can so far forget the

memory of Thomas Jefferson and State's rights as to insist on having a

minority of men in Congress pass this constitutional amendment against

our desire." She was reminded that it required two-thirds of each

House. She then told of opposing a suffrage resolution in the Texas

Legislature some years before but neglected to tell of opposing one

for prohibition also. Asked if women did not vote at school elections

in Texas she answered: "I do not know because I know nothing about

politics."

Miss Price was a shrewd speaker and guarded her position but before

she had finished the members of the committee themselves were making

speeches for or against woman suffrage. The speech of Mrs. George of

Massachusetts with its statistics filled fifteen closely printed pages

of the stenographic report. It was an argument for State's rights

which would have done credit to the most extreme southerner and she

protected her defenses against the volley of questions that were kept

up until time for the committee to adjourn.

The anti-suffragists had wisely refrained this year from bringing any

of their male advocates but the latter did not intend to be left out

and they obtained a hearing six weeks later on February 1. Franklin

Carter, secretary of the Man Suffrage Association of New York City,

told the committee he could "get through in half an hour," which was

granted. He consumed over an hour, the official report showing that

after the first few sentences there were not more than three or four

without an interruption from the committee and the "heckling"

continued through seventeen interesting printed pages. Mr. Carter, who

said he received a salary of $100 a month and had expended between

$6,000 and $7,000 during the recent New York amendment campaign, was

at last obliged to submit what he had to say in the form of a "brief,"

which filled six closely printed pages. He was followed by Paul

Littlefield representing the Men's Campaign Committee of the

Pennsylvania Women's Anti-Suffrage Association. His experience was

more disconcerting than that of Mr. Carter, who had freely stated the

expenditures of his association and his own salary while Mr.

Littlefield refused any information on these and other points. He

brought a message from Mrs. Horace Brock, president of the

association, saying: "The women of our State trust the men to

legislate wisely and justly for them, and the ideas of chivalry which

have existed for a thousand years are the great bulwark surrounding

and protecting women, upon which, because of their lack of physical

strength, they must rely for safety and happiness." His grilling

filled twelve printed pages of the report. Mr. Stone asked permission

to get a "brief" from the chairman of the Massachusetts Man Suffrage

Association, Robert Turner, which would clear up many matters. His own

recollection was that the expenditures of that association in the 1915

campaign were $54,000. Mr. Littlefield then relented and said that the

Pennsylvania men's committee spent $20,000 on the campaign. Mr.

Turner's "brief" of 5,000 words was afterwards submitted but did not

mention expenditures.

FOOTNOTES:

[99] Call: In the long years of work for equal suffrage none has been

so crowded with self-sacrificing labor for the cause as this one and

no year so significant of its early ultimate triumph. As we issue this

Call four great campaigns for equal suffrage are in progress in four

eastern States. Thousands of women are working with voice and pen and

tens of thousands are contributing in time and money to win political

freedom for women in these States. Other States are rapidly preparing

for active campaigns in 1916. At the same time the National

Association is putting forth the strongest efforts to win nation-wide

suffrage through the passage of its historic Amendment to the

Constitution of the United States.

We shall come together at this, our forty-seventh annual convention,

larger in numbers, more united in spirit and effort, more assured of

early success than ever before....and, with renewed zeal and

inspiration, rejoicing that the long struggle for the new freedom for

women is nearing an end. Public opinion for equal suffrage has

increased a hundredfold in this fateful year. It seems borne in upon

the most conservative that it is only a matter of time when

nation-wide political freedom will be granted to women as an

inevitable outcome of our democracy and the last step in the great

experiment of self-government....

ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President.

KATHARINE DEXTER MCCORMICK, First Vice-President.

NELLIE NUGENT SOMERVILLE, Second Vice-President.

KATHARINE BEMENT DAVIS, Third Vice-President.

NELLIE SAWYER CLARK, Corresponding Secretary.

SUSAN WALKER FITZGERALD, Recording Secretary.

EMMA WINNER ROGERS, Treasurer.

HELEN GUTHRIE MILLER,} Auditors.

RUTH HANNA MCCORMICK,}

[100] Although Dr. Shaw was but sixty-eight years old and in perfect

health she afterwards asked the custodians of this fund--George Foster

Peabody, James Lees Laidlaw and Norman de R. Whitehouse, New York

bankers--to hold it in trust, paying her only the annuity each year

and giving her the right to dispose of it at her death in some way to

advance the cause of woman suffrage, which was done.

[101] The speakers were Mrs. William Spencer Murray, secretary of the

Women's Political Union of Connecticut; Mrs. Annie G. Porritt, press

chairman of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association; Mrs. Dana

Durand of Minnesota; Miss Julia Hurlburt, vice-chairman of the Women's

Political Union of New Jersey; Mrs. Agnes Jenks, president of the

Rhode Island W. S. A.; Mrs. Alden H. Potter, chairman of the

Congressional Union in Minnesota; Mrs. Glendower Evans, member of the

Minimum Wage Commission of Massachusetts; Mrs. R. H. Ashbaugh,

president of the Michigan Federation of Women's Clubs; Mrs. James

Rector, vice-chairman of the C. U. of Ohio; Mrs. Cyrus Mead of the

Ohio C. U.

[102] The automobile started from the Exposition and there were

possibly more than that many people on the grounds. As its departure

had been widely advertised and was made a spectacular event a large

crowd was at the gate.

[103] For the last twenty years the members of the Anti-Suffrage

Association had appeared regularly before committees of Legislatures

in various States to oppose the submission of the question to the

voters, picturing the injury it would be to the community and to the

women. They had never in any State made the slightest effort to have

it submitted to women themselves. The School suffrage was granted in

most of the States before they had any organization but they went

before a committee in the New York Legislature to oppose women on

school boards.

CHAPTER XVI.

NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1916.

The year 1916 marked a turning point in the sixty-year-old struggle

for woman suffrage. Large delegations of women had attended the

Republican and Democratic National Conventions during the summer and

for the first time each of them had put into its platform an

unequivocal declaration in favor of suffrage for women; the

Progressive, Socialist and Prohibition platforms contained similar

planks, the last three declaring for a Federal Amendment. It had

become one of the leading political issues of the day and a subject of

nation-wide interest. The president of the National American Woman

Suffrage Association, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, quickly recognized the

situation and saw that its official action must not be deferred until

the usual time for its annual convention which would be after the

presidential elections, therefore the Board of Officers issued a call

for an Emergency Convention to meet in Atlantic City, N. J., Sept.

4-10, 1916.[104] The members throughout the country were much

surprised but welcomed the opportunity to visit this beautiful ocean

resort. The headquarters were in the famous Hotel Marlborough-Blenheim

and after the first day the sessions were held in the large New Nixon

Theater on the Board Walk.

After two days of executive meetings the Forty-eighth annual

convention opened the morning of September 6 in the handsome St.

Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, granted by the trustees and pastor,

with an invocation by the latter, the Rev. A. H. Lucas. Mayor Harry

Backarach gave a cordial address of welcome, ending by presenting to

Mrs. Catt, who was in the chair, a huge "key to the city and to our

hearts" tied with ribbons of blue and gold, the colors of the

association. Members of the Board made their official reports at this

and other meetings and all were valuable and interesting but space

permits only a brief mention of most of them. Miss Hannah J. Patterson

(Penn.), corresponding secretary and chairman of organization, told of

the division of the national work into six departments with a national

officer at the head of each and of moving the national headquarters

from 505 Fifth Avenue, corner of 42nd Street, New York, where they had

been since 1909, into much larger offices at 171 Madison Avenue,

corner of 33rd Street. An entire floor was rented with 3,800 square

feet of space, nearly 1,000 more than in the old location. The

Publishing Company took part of this, the association retaining ten

rooms. Miss Patterson told of the thorough organization work being

done under fourteen organizers, who had covered twelve States. She

spoke of the need of training schools for organizers and told of the

value of combining all departments, data, literature, publishing,

organizing, etc., under headquarters management.

Miss Esther G. Ogden (N. J.), third vice-president and head of the

Publishing Company, told of doing field work in Colorado and

California to interest their women in the demonstrations which were

being planned for the political conventions. She spoke of the large

correspondence in connection with the trip of the little "golden

flier," saying:

This tour was undertaken by Miss Alice Burke and Miss Nell

Richardson, who left New York April 6 to make a circuit of the

United States in the interest of the National Association and the

cause of suffrage. The Saxon Motor Company donated the car, while

the association arranged for entertainment for Miss Burke and

Miss Richardson along the route and for expenses over and above

the collections taken at their meetings, of which they have held

one a day in the closely settled States. They reached San

Francisco early in June and are now on their way east. From each

State through which they have passed we have had appreciative

letters of their endurance and courage as automobilists and of

their worth as public speakers. They have suffered actual

privations crossing the desert and more recently in the Bad Lands

of the northwest. They were on the Mexican border during the

raids and their car had to be pulled out of rivers during the

floods; their courage has never faltered and they have given

another proof of the well-known fact that you can't discourage a

suffragist. They set out to make a circuit of the United States

with the same determination that we all have set out to win our

enfranchisement and they will not give up until the circuit is

made. So far nineteen States have been included in the itinerary

and it is planned to cover six more. The newspaper publicity has

been nation-wide....

Later Miss Ogden made her report for the National Woman Suffrage

Publishing Company. "We exist," she said, "for two purposes--to serve

the suffrage cause throughout the country and to prove that we can

serve that cause and also develop a successful business." She spoke of

the devoted office staff, under the business manager, Miss Anna De

Baun, who had made personal sacrifices again and again when necessary.

The report of the recording secretary, Mrs. Mary Foulke Morrisson

(Ills.), to whom had been entrusted the organization of the great

parade of suffragists during the National Republican Convention in

Chicago and especially its financing, stated that $6,699 had been

raised by the State and Chicago Equal Suffrage Associations; $200 by

the Chicago Political Equality League and some hundreds of dollars by

local leagues and individuals. She paid high tribute to the unwearying

work of Mrs. Medill McCormick, who, speaking and organizing in the

city and outlying towns "won the support of whole sections of the

community that had hitherto been utterly indifferent." Mrs. Morrisson

herself had spoken fifty times in the interest of the parade in

Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Iowa and the Mississippi Valley Conference.

The report of the national treasurer, Mrs. Henry Wade Rogers, was

received with much appreciation of her money-getting ability and

satisfactory accounting. The total receipts for the year were $81,863

and the close of the fiscal year found a balance on hand of $8,869.

The largest contributions had been $500 each from the State

associations of Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and

Pennsylvania. The National College Equal Suffrage League gave $450.

The expenditures in round numbers were: Headquarters, including

salaries, expenses of conventions, etc., $16,531; publicity, $9,096;

National Congressional Committee, $4,676; publishing _News Letter_,

$982; contributions to campaigns, $21,131; demonstrations,

organization, etc., $20,000.

In commenting Mrs. Rogers said: "Nothing to my mind indicates so

vividly the progress of equal suffrage as the comparative ease with

which the largest budget in the history of the National Association

was pledged and most of it paid by August 25, and the fact that an

excess of that budget amounting to many thousands of dollars has been

raised three months before the usual convention date. 'Money talks'

and it is saying this year: 'No cause in which I could be used appeals

to me as does this fundamental one of enfranchising women, of opening

the door to let them enter and help to make a more Christian

civilization.' Literally we have had only to ask and it has been given

unto us. Scores and hundreds of women in sending their generous gifts

have said: 'Would that my check were ten times as large!' The

wonderful spirit of kindliness and ardent desire to cooperate have

touched the treasurer's heart deeply and made the work of the passing

year a real joy. I am confident that all necessary funds for suffrage

expenditures--national, State and local--can be raised, even to a

million dollars, if more systematic work is done on the financial side

in the States...." Mrs. Rogers outlined the business methods that

should be used and expressed her obligations to her committee of fifty

on finance for their helpful support.

Mrs. Walter McNab Miller (Mo.), first auditor, in the report of her

field work told of days, weeks and months spent in visiting cities

from New York to St. Louis, holding conferences and meetings and

writing hundreds of letters to raise money and arrange for the

demonstration to be held in St. Louis during the Democratic National

Convention--the "walkless parade," to which the Missouri Suffrage

Association contributed nearly $2,000. She attended State suffrage and

political conventions and the biennial of the General Federation of

Women's Clubs in New York. "And then came Chicago," the report said,

"with its exciting surge, its march in the rain and its near-victory

plank, followed by St. Louis with its 'golden lane' of suffragists and

a plank a little less pleasing; another trip to Indianapolis with our

Chief--and the most momentous June in suffrage history was over." The

report told of the journey to Cheyenne to attend the Council of Women

Voters; the addresses of the present Democratic Governor Kendrick and

the former Republican Governor and U. S. Senator Carey; the two days

at the State University in Laramie, "the guest of one of the

best-known suffragists in the State, Professor Grace Raymond Hebard";

the visit in Denver, "asking questions and being interviewed." "All of

this," she said, "sent me back firmly convinced that the western women

want to help us in our battle and only wait for a definite program of

work."

The second auditor, Mrs. Pattie Ruffner Jacobs (Ala.), in the report

of her field work showed an equally full schedule. She had been

present at every board meeting but one, of which she was notified too

late; as a member of the Congressional Committee had assisted with the

lobby work in Washington; had attended a three-days' State conference

in Nashville and spoken three times; the Mississippi State convention

and spoken twice; spoken in Savannah and Asheville and at the May-day

celebration of the Nashville League; attended the Chicago and St.

Louis demonstrations and spent the intervening times in raising the

money to meet her pledge of $2,000 for her State to the National

Association.

Mrs. Katharine Dexter McCormick, chairman of the Press Department,

stated that this was largely a nominal position, as the practical work

was done by professionals and would be related in the report from the

Publicity department. The reports of the national officers were

concluded by that of Mrs. Catt, chairman of the Campaign and Survey

Committee, a new feature of the association. It began: "For the

purpose of making a survey of suffrage conditions throughout the

nation, either an officer of the National Board or some person or

persons representing the Board have visited nearly every State in the

Union. I have myself visited twenty-three States; Miss Hauser and Miss

Walker visited nine enfranchised States; Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Jacobs,

Mrs. Morrisson and Mrs. Rogers have each visited several; Mrs.

Roessing and Miss Patterson have made a number of trips to West

Virginia. Our chief motive was to learn conditions. To corroborate our

impressions questionnaires were sent to all the State associations in

January and again in July. As a result of the information obtained the

National Board is convinced that our movement has reached a crisis

which if recognized will open the way to a speedy and final victory."

Mrs. Catt expressed the belief that in the future a better

understanding between national and State boards would be possible and

spoke of the visits of herself and other national officers to West

Virginia and South Dakota, where woman suffrage amendments would be

voted on in November. She then took up the case of Iowa, where one had

been defeated the past June, and made an analysis of a situation which

had existed here and in nearly all States where defeats had taken

place as follows:

When the present Board came into office, Iowa was in campaign and

but a few months remained for work. In January I met with the

State Board and we counselled together concerning the needs of

the campaign; later I met with it on three different occasions

and gave one month to speaking in the State. The National Board

contributed $5,000 to the campaign from the legacy of Mary J.

Coggeshall of Iowa and gave one organizer from January 1 until

the vote was taken. It also sent speakers and workers toward the

end of the campaign. The various States contributed generously

through the national treasury.

The campaign came up splendidly at the last. Men, I believe,

supported it more earnestly than they have done in other States.

One of the best press bureaus any State has had, under the

direction of Mrs. Rose Lawless Geyer, was at work for some

months. The able president, Miss Flora Dunlap, gave all her time

and ability. There were many brilliant forays which were truly

effective, but nothing could overcome a weakness which has

appeared in every campaign and that is the inability of

newly-formed, untrained committees to put speakers and workers to

the best use. It will be the case in every campaign that, near

the end, weak spots must be reinforced by outside experienced

workers. Another difficulty was that money-raising was left to

the close of the campaign when all the efforts of workers were

demanded by other duties. This has been the trouble in most

States. The lesson we must learn is that at the beginning a

money-raising plan must be formed and carried out and pledges

must be made to cover the major portion of the cost before the

real campaign is begun. Toward the close there are many things

which ought to be done but are left undone for want of money.

State committees grow timid because they do not see the money in

sight and naturally trim their budgets to the point which renders

defeat inevitable.

Iowa, like every other State, showed opposition from the "wets,"

tricks of politicians and the rounding up of every drunkard and

outcast to vote against the amendment. The unprecedented result

was that 35,000 more votes were cast on the suffrage proposition

than on the Governor. This could only have been brought about by

inducements of some sort which were made to the lowest elements

of the population. This story differs in coloring and detail with

each campaign but varies little as to general fact. It must be

borne in mind and our campaigns must be so good that these

purchasable and controllable elements will be outvoted.

A number of men worked against the amendment in Iowa and men are

working at this time in South Dakota and West Virginia. Who

employs or pays these men we have never been able to discover.

Their ordinary method is to secure strictly private meetings of

men only, where they spread the basest of untruths. All past

campaigns point to the necessity of waging those of the future

with a distinct understanding that the worst elements of the

population will be lined up by this unscrupulous, well-supported,

combined opposition of men and of women. The women appeal to the

respectable elements of the community; the men make little

pretense in this direction. There is a sure alliance between the

two.

The first public session was held Thursday afternoon and the delegates

looked forward with keen enjoyment to the "three-cornered debate" on

what had become a paramount question. Mrs. Catt was in the chair. Each

leader was to have ten minutes and her second five minutes to speak in

the affirmative only; when the six had presented their arguments there

was to be free discussion from the floor, and, after all who had

wished had spoken, each leader would have ten minutes to answer the

opposition to her point of view. The program was as follows:

Shall the National American Woman Suffrage Association drop work on

the Federal Amendment and confine its activities to State legislation?

Leader, Miss Laura Clay, Kentucky; second, Miss Kate Gordon,

Louisiana.

Shall the National American Woman Suffrage Association drop work for

State Referenda and concentrate on the Federal Amendment? Leader, Mrs.

Ida Husted Harper, New York; second, Mrs. Glendower Evans,

Massachusetts.

Shall the present policy of the National American Woman Suffrage

Association to work for woman suffrage "by appropriate National and

State legislation" be continued? Leader, Mrs. Raymond Brown, New York;

second, Miss Florence Allen, Ohio.

The alternative amendments to the constitution will then be put: I. To

strike out the words "National and." II. To strike out the words "and

State." If both are lost, the constitution will remain as it is and

the National American Woman Suffrage Association will stand pledged to

both Federal and State campaigns.

The speakers presented their arguments with great earnestness; the

discussion was vigorously carried on and the rebuttals were made with

much spirit. By request the honorary president, Dr. Shaw, who was

sitting on the platform, closed the debate and she strongly urged that

there should be no change in the policy of the association. The

convention voted overwhelmingly in favor of continuing to work for

both National and State constitutional amendments, nearly all of the

southern delegates joining in this vote. Mrs. Harper then rose to a

question of personal privilege and said that she should consider it a

great calamity for the association to discontinue its work for State

amendments and that she only took the opposite side at the urgent

request of Mrs. Catt, with the promise that she should be permitted to

make this explanation. Mrs. Evans made a similar statement and the

audience, which had been mystified by their position, had a hearty

laugh. This debate and the vote of the convention restored the

association to its position of standing for the original Federal

Suffrage Amendment and working for amendments of State constitutions

as a means to this end.

In the evening a brilliant reception for the officers and delegates

was given in the large drawing-room of the Marlborough-Blenheim by the

Atlantic City Woman Suffrage Club and the New Jersey State

Association.

The convention was opened in the New Nixon Theater Thursday morning

with prayer by the Rev. Thomas J. Cross, pastor of the Chelsea Baptist

Church, and much routine business was disposed of. The constitution

was changed so as to exclude from membership all organizations not in

harmony with the policy of the association and the term of the

officers was extended from one to two years. A unique program was

carried out in the afternoon under the direction of the second

vice-president, Mrs. Katharine Dexter McCormick--The Handicapped

States, a Concrete Lesson in Constitutions. The States whose

constitutions practically could not be amended were grouped under

these heads: The Impossibles; The Insuperables; The Inexecutables; The

Improbables; The Indubitables; The Inexcusables; The Irreproachables.

Each group was represented by one or more women who quoted from the

constitutions. It was intended as an object lesson to show the

necessity for a Federal Amendment.

At 3:30 Mrs. Catt began her president's address before an audience

that filled the large theater and listened with intense interest until

the last word was spoken at five o'clock. It was a masterly review of

the movement for woman suffrage and a program for the work now

necessary to bring it to a successful end. The opening sentences were

as follows:

I have taken for my subject, "The Crisis," because I believe that

a crisis has come in our movement which, if recognized and the

opportunity seized with vigor, enthusiasm and will, means the

final victory of our great cause in the very near future. I am

aware that some suffragists do not share in this belief; they see

no signs nor symptoms today which were not present yesterday; no

manifestations in the year 1916 which differ significantly from

those in the year 1910. To them, the movement has been a steady,

normal growth from the beginning and must so continue until the

end. I can only defend my claim with the plea that it is better

to imagine a crisis where none exists than to fail to recognize

one when it comes, for a crisis is a culmination of events which

calls for new considerations and new decisions. A failure to

answer the call may mean an opportunity lost, a possible victory

postponed....

This address, coming at the moment when woman suffrage was accepted as

inevitable by the President of the United States and all the political

parties, was regarded as the key-note of the beginning of a campaign

which would end in victory. In pamphlet form it was used as a highly

valued campaign document.

Mrs. Catt showed the impossibility of securing suffrage for all the

women of the country by the State method and pointed out that the

Federal Amendment was the one and only way. "Our cause has been caught

in a snarl of constitutional obstructions and inadequate election

laws," she said, after drawing upon her own experience to show the

hazards of State referenda, and we have a right to appeal to our

Congress to extricate it from this tangle. If there is any chivalry

left this is the time for it to come forward and do an act of simple

justice. In my judgment the women of this land not only have the right

to sit on the steps of Congress until it acts but it is their

self-respecting duty to insist upon their enfranchisement by that

route.... Were there never another convert made there are suffragists

enough in this country, if combined, to make so irresistible a driving

force that victory might be seized at once. How can it be done? By a

simple change of mental attitude. If you are to seize the victory,

that change must take place in this hall, here and now. The crisis is

here, but if the call goes unheeded, if our women think it means the

vote without a struggle, if they think other women can and will pay

the price of their emancipation, the hour may pass and our political

liberty may not be won.... The character of a man is measured by his

will. The same is true of a movement. Then _will_ to be free." The

address made a deep impression and was accepted as a call to arms.

Throughout the convention open-air meetings were held on the Boardwalk

addressed by popular suffrage speakers and thousands in the great

crowds that throng this noted thoroughfare were interested listeners.

The Friday morning session was enlivened by a resolution offered by

Mrs. Raymond Robins, which said that this Emergency Convention had

been called to plan for the final steps which would lead to

nation-wide enfranchisement of women; that the method of amending

State constitutions meant long delay; that many national candidates in

all parties had declared in favor of a Federal Amendment, and

therefore the delegates in this convention urged that in the present

campaign suffragists should support for national office only those

candidates who pledged their support to this amendment. The delegates

quickly recognized that this meant to endorse Judge Charles Evans

Hughes for president, although President Wilson was to address the

convention that evening. Party feeling ran high but still stronger

was the determination of the convention that the association should

not depart from its policy of absolute non-partisanship. Motions were

made and amendments offered and the discussion raged for two hours.

Dr. Shaw spoke strongly against the resolution and finally it was

defeated by a large majority. Later Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch of

Chicago offered a resolution which after several amendments read: "We

re-affirm our non-partisan attitude concerning national political

parties but this policy does not preclude the right of any member to

work against any candidate who opposes woman suffrage, nor shall it

refer to the personal attitude of enfranchised women." This was

carried enthusiastically. A resolution by Mrs. J. Claude Bedford

(Penn.) for a vigorous publicity campaign to make clear the

association's non-partisan policy was passed.

There had been such marked increase of public opinion in favor of

woman suffrage in the southern States and so many of their able women

had come into the association that a "Dixie evening" had been

arranged. Mrs. Catt presided and the following program was presented:

Master Words--Mrs. Minnie Fisher Cunningham, president Texas Woman

Suffrage Association; Kentucky and Her Constitution--Mrs. Thomas

Jefferson Smith, president Kentucky Equal Rights Association; The

Evolution of Woman--Mrs. Eugene Reilley, vice-president General

Federation of Women's Clubs and vice-president North Carolina Woman

Suffrage Association; Progress of Today and Traditions of

Yesterday--Mrs. Edward McGehee, president Mississippi Federation of

Women's Clubs; For Woman Herself--Mrs. Lila Mead Valentine, president

Virginia Equal Suffrage League; The Southern Temperament as Related to

Woman Suffrage--Mrs. Guilford Dudley, president Tennessee Equal

Suffrage Association, Inc.; Real Americanism--Mrs. T. T. Cotnam,

vice-president Arkansas Woman Suffrage Association. Southern women

have a natural gift of oratory and the audience was delightfully

entertained. But three of these addresses were published and space can

be given only to brief extracts.

"There is in America today," Mrs. Cotnam said, "a large class of

people who are restless and dissatisfied and are smarting under the

injustice of being governed without their consent. This is a class

with the blood of the Pilgrim mothers in their veins--of those who

cheerfully endured untold hardships as the price of liberty; a class

with the blood of the Revolutionary fathers in their veins--of those

who gave their lives that their children might be free; a class who

are the rightful joint heirs with all the people of the United States

of the heritage of freedom but whose inheritance after 140 years is

still kept 'in trust.'" She referred to the anxiety of Congress "to

make the Filipinos a self-governing people after only a few years of

American tutelage while 140 years have not been enough to equip

American women for self-government," and said: "Political leaders say

America is 'the waymark of all people seeking liberty' and yet

one-half of the American people have never known liberty. They promise

justice to the oppressed of every land who are seeking refuge and

practice injustice against one-half of those whose homes have always

been here. Every citizen of the United States is jealous of her

standing among the nations and just now each political party is

claiming to be the only worthy custodian of national honor. It is with

amazement we read the arraignment of one party by another and note

that in no instance have they taken each other to task for injustice

to American women which violates the fundamental principle of

democracy, 'Equal rights for all, special privileges to none.' ...

Americanism--it stands for the recognition of the equality of men and

women before the law of man as they are equal before the law of God.

Americanism--it stands for truth triumphant. Americanism--it will find

its full realization when men and women meet upon a plane of equal

rights with a united desire to maintain peace, to guard the nation's

honor, to advance prosperity and to secure the happiness of the

people."

"We are a race of dreamers in the South by choice and because of

climatic conditions," said Mrs. Guilford Dudley in an eloquent

address. After a keenly sarcastic comparison between southern chivalry

and the unjust laws for women, and the observation that "the only

business a southern girl is taught is the business of hearts," she

said:

As long as it was a question of woman's rights; as long as the

fight had any appearance of being against man; as long as there

seemed to be a vestige of sex antagonism, the southern woman

stood with her back turned squarely toward the cause. She

wouldn't even turn around to look at it, she would have none of

it, but when she awoke slowly to a social consciousness, when

eyes and brain were at last free, after a terrible reconstruction

period, to look out upon the world as a whole; when she found

particularly among the more fortunate classes that her leisure

had come to mean laziness; when she realized that through the

changed conditions of modern life so much of her work had been

taken out of the home, leaving her to choose between following it

into the world or remaining idle; when with a clearer vision she

saw that her help in governmental affairs, especially where they

touched her own interests, was much needed--right about face she

turned and said to the southern man: "I don't wish to usurp your

place in government but it is time I had my own. I don't complain

of the way you have conducted your part of the business but my

part has been either badly managed or not managed at all. In the

past you have not shown yourself averse to accepting my help in

very serious matters; my courage and fortitude and wisdom you

have continually praised. Now that there is a closer connection

between the government and the home than ever before in the

history of the world, I ask that you will let me help you."

Mrs. Dudley described the effect of the demand for woman suffrage on

the politicians, on the men who feared they would be "reformed," on

the sentimentalists, and then she paid tribute to the broad-minded,

justice-loving men who encouraged the women in their new aspirations

and concluded: "So you see not only the southern woman but the

southern man is now awake and present conditions strongly indicate

that before another year has passed we will have some form of suffrage

for the woman of Tennessee.... We have had a vision--a vision of a

time when a woman's home will be the whole wide world, her children

all those whose feet are bare and her sisters all who need a helping

hand; a vision of a new knighthood, a new chivalry, when men will not

only fight for women but for the rights of women."

The plea of Mrs. Valentine for a higher womanhood should be given in

full but an idea at least can be gained by a quotation:

If I were asked to give one reason above all others for

advocating the enfranchisement of women I should unhesitatingly

reply, "The necessity for the complete development of woman as a

prerequisite for the highest development of the race." Just so

long as woman remains under guardianship, as if she were a minor

or an incompetent--just so long as she passively accepts at the

hands of men conditions, usages, laws, as if they were decrees of

Providence--just so long as she is deprived of the educative

responsibilities of self-government--by just so much does she

fall short of complete development as a human being and retard

the progress of the race. We are the children of our mothers as

well as of our fathers and we inherit the defects as well as the

perfections of both. Many a man goes down in his business--is a

"failure in life," as the phrase goes--because he is the son of

an undeveloped mother and, like her, is lacking in independence,

in initiative, in ability to seize upon golden opportunities. Yet

she was trained to passivity, to submission, to the obliteration

of whatever personality she may have possessed. What more could

we expect of her son? Imagine for a moment the effect upon men

had they from infancy been subjected to the narrowing, ossifying

processes applied to women for centuries!

Happily for the race, however, the great majority of women are

waking from the sleep of centuries, are eagerly stretching out

their hands for the key that is to open wide the door of larger

opportunity. Happily, too, the forward-looking men of today are

seeing the vision of womanhood released from the old-world

thraldom. In rapidly increasing numbers they are welcoming the

new woman, in whom they find not only the wife and mother more

fully equipped for her task but a comrade of congenial tastes,

keenly interested in the outside world and capable of taking her

place beside the husband, whether in peace or war, wherever her

country calls.... The suffrage movement is a world-wide protest

against the mental subjection of woman. Therein lies its vital

importance. It strikes deep into the core of life. It is a basic,

fundamental reform, for it is releasing for the service of the

State the unused natural resources dormant in womanhood; it is

transforming the dependent woman into woman enfranchised that she

may the more perfectly fulfill her destiny as the mother of the

race.

The morning and afternoon sessions were crowded with reports,

conferences and business of various kinds in which the delegates were

keenly interested. Mrs. Grace Thompson Seton, chairman of the Art

Publicity Committee, gave an interesting account of its work, told of

the prizes that had been offered for posters and slogans and the

cooperation of men and women prominent in the literary, artistic and

social world; of the "teas" given at the national headquarters,

bringing many who had never visited them before: of the beautiful

banners and costumes designed for the suffrage parades and other

features of this somewhat neglected side of the work for woman

suffrage. The chairman of the Literature Committee, Mrs. Arthur L.

Livermore, submitted a comprehensive report of the systematizing of

that department, the classifying and cataloguing and the endeavor to

ascertain and meet the varied demands. A Suffrage Study Outline, a

Blue Book Suffrage School and Mrs. Annie G. Porritt's Laws Relating

to Women and Children had been published; literature for the rural

districts, for the home, for campaigns, placards, fliers and an

endless number of novelties.

It would be impossible to give in a few paragraphs even an idea of the

carefully prepared report of Mrs. Mary Sumner Boyd, the skilled head

of the Data Department, which filled eight printed pages. It told of

the progress that had been made in organizing the department, the wide

scope of the collections and the increasing demand for information

from many sources. It would be equally difficult to do justice to the

sixteen printed pages of the report of Charles T. Heaslip, national

publicity director. He had organized a publicity council, which thus

far had members in twenty-six States. His full knowledge of the large

syndicates had enabled him to keep the subject before the public

throughout the country; he had made wide use of photographs, cartoons,

posters and moving pictures. Hundreds of papers on the route of the

"golden flier" had been supplied with pictures and stories. He had

gone to Iowa to assist in the campaign there and he described also the

large amount of publicity work done at the time the suffragists were

making their national demonstrations during the presidential

conventions in Chicago and St. Louis. He showed how victory could be

hastened by thorough publicity work in every State from Maine to

California. Later the Chair announced the receipt of a letter from the

press, signed by representatives of nineteen newspapers at the

convention, expressing their thanks to Mr. Heaslip and their hearty

appreciation of his services, without which they could not have

handled its press work in a satisfactory manner.

Under the topic How and Where to Drive the Entering Wedge, Miss

Florence Allen of Ohio told of the openings offered by amending city

charters for woman suffrage and Mrs. Roger G. Perkins described the

successful campaign in East Cleveland for this purpose. The recent

campaigns in West Virginia and South Dakota were discussed by the

State presidents, Mrs. Ellis A. Yost and Mrs. John L. Pyle; that of

Iowa by Mrs. Geyer, publicity director, and the work in Tennessee for

a constitutional convention by Mrs. James M. McCormack, State

president. The chairman of the Presidential Suffrage Committee, Mrs.

Robert S. Huse (N. J.), reported that bills had been introduced in the

Legislatures of New York, New Jersey, Kentucky and Rhode Island,

public hearings being granted by the first three, but no vote was

taken.

Is Limited Suffrage Worth While? was answered by Mrs. George Bass

(Ills.) who declared it to be "a positive influence for good"; it was

called by Mrs. Grace Wilbur Trout (Ills.) "a step toward full

suffrage"; by Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton (Ohio) "a help to other

States." Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch described "the chances opened

by the Illinois law." It was the consensus of opinion that partial

suffrage was quite worth striving for. This was directly opposed to

that heretofore held by the association but in the past only a

Municipal vote had been asked for and Kansas alone had granted it.

Miss Laura Clay (Ky.) made a strong presentation of the Elections

Bill, which would permit women to vote for members of Congress. What

Kansas Thinks about Woman Suffrage was graphically told by Mrs. W. Y.

Morgan, president of the State association. Help from the West was

promised by Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe (Wash.), president of the National

Council of Women Voters.

The climax of the convention came on the evening of September 8 with

the address of Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States. Only

once before had a President appeared before a national suffrage

convention--when William Howard Taft made a ten-minute speech of

welcome to Washington in 1910 but without committing himself to the

movement. When the present convention was called, after the

endorsement of woman suffrage by the national conventions of all

parties, the two leading candidates for President were invited to

address it. Judge Hughes, who had declared in favor of the Federal

Suffrage Amendment, answered that he would be too far away on a

speaking tour to reach Atlantic City. President Wilson wrote that he

would endeavor to arrange his itinerary so as to be present. Later he

announced that he would come and would remain throughout the evening.

Undoubtedly he never before faced such an audience. The greatest care

had been taken to exclude all but delegates and invited guests and

from the stage of the theater to the back stretched tier after tier

of white-robed women, while the boxes were filled with prominent

people, mostly women. As he came from the street to the stage with

Mrs. Wilson, also gowned in white, he passed through a lane of

suffragists, one from each State, designated by banners, with broad

sashes of blue and gold across their breasts. He was accompanied by

Private Secretary Tumulty and several distinguished men and the entire

stage behind the decorations of palms and other plants was surrounded

by a cordon of the secret service. Forty-three large newspapers

throughout the country were represented at the reporters' table.

The President had asked to speak last and he listened with much

interest to a program of noted public workers as follows: Why Women

Need the Vote. The Call of the Working Woman for the Protection of the

Woman's Vote--Mrs. Raymond Robins, president of National Women's

Trades Union League. Mothers in Politics--Miss Julia Lathrop, chief of

National Children's Bureau. A Necessary Safeguard to Public

Morals--Dr. Katharine Bement Davis, Chief of Parole Commission, New

York City. Working Children--Dr. Owen R. Lovejoy, general secretary of

National Child Labor Committee. Each speaker emphasized the necessity

for the enfranchisement of women as a means for the nation's highest

welfare. Mrs. Catt was in the chair and introduced the President, who

said with much earnestness and sincerity:

Madam President, Ladies of the Association: I have found it a

real privilege to be here tonight and to listen to the addresses

which you have heard. Though you may not all of you believe it, I

would a great deal rather hear somebody else speak than speak

myself, but I would feel that I was omitting a duty if I did not

address you tonight and say some of the things that have been in

my thoughts as I realized the approach of this evening and the

duty that would fall upon me.

The astonishing thing about the movement which you represent is

not that it has grown so slowly but that it has grown so rapidly.

No doubt for those who have been a long time in the struggle,

like your honored president, it seems a long and arduous path

that has been trodden, but when you think of the cumulating force

of the movement in recent decades you must agree with me that it

is one of the most astonishing tides in modern history. Two

generations ago--no doubt Madam President will agree with me in

saying this--it was a handful of women who were fighting for

this cause; now it is a great multitude of women who are fighting

for it. There are some interesting historical connections which I

should like to attempt to point out to you.

One of the most striking facts about the history of the United

States is that at the outset it was a lawyers' history. Almost

all of the questions to which America addressed itself, say a

hundred years ago, were legal questions; were questions of

methods, not questions of what you were going to do with your

government but questions of how you were going to constitute your

government; how you were going to balance the powers of the State

and the Federal government; how you were going to balance the

claims of property against the processes of liberty; how you were

going to make up your government so as to balance the parts

against each other, so that the Legislature would check the

Executive and the Executive the Legislature. The idea of

government when the United States became a nation was a

mechanical conception and the mechanical conception which

underlay it was the Newtonian theory of the universe. If you take

up the Federalist you see that some parts of it read like a

treatise on government. They speak of the centrifugal and

centripetal forces and locate the President somewhere in a

rotating system. The whole thing is a calculation of power and

adjustment of parts. There was a time when nobody but a lawyer

could know enough to run the government of the United States....

And then something happened. A great question arose in this

country which, though complicated with legal elements, was at

bottom a human question and nothing but a question of humanity.

That was the slavery question, and is it not significant that it

was then, and then for the first time, that women became

prominent in politics in America? Not many women--those prominent

in that day are so few that you can almost name them over in a

brief catalogue--but, nevertheless, they then began to play a

part not only in writing but in public speech, which was a very

novel part for women to play in America; and after the Civil War

had settled some of what seemed to be the most difficult legal

questions of our system the life of the nation began not only to

unfold but to accumulate.

Life in the United States was a comparatively simple matter at

the time of the Civil War. There was none of that underground

struggle which is now so manifest to those who look only a little

way beneath the surface. Stories such as Dr. Davis has told

tonight were uncommon in those simpler days. The pressure of low

wages, the agony of obscure and unremunerated toil did not exist

in America in anything like the same proportions as they exist

now. And as our life has unfolded and accumulated, as the

contacts of it have become hot, as the populations have assembled

in the cities and the cool spaces of the country have been

supplemented by feverish urban areas, the whole nature of our

political questions has been altered. They have ceased to be

legal questions. They have more and more become social

questions, questions with regard to the relations of human beings

to one another, not merely their legal relations but their moral

and spiritual relations to one another.

This has been most characteristic of American life in the last

few decades, and as these questions have assumed greater and

greater prominence the movement which this association represents

has gathered cumulative force, so that when anybody asks himself,

What does this gathering force mean? if he knows anything about

the history of the country he knows that it means something

_which has not only come to stay but has come with conquering

power_.

I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the

channels and methods by which it is to prevail. _It is going to

prevail_ and that is a very superficial and ignorant view of it

which attributes it to mere social unrest. It is not merely

because women are discontented, it is because they have seen

visions of duty, and that is something that we not only can not

resist but if we be true Americans we do not wish to resist.

Because America took its origin in visions of the human spirit,

in aspirations for the deepest sort of liberty of the mind and

heart, and, as visions of that sort come to the sight of those

who are spiritually minded America comes more and more into its

birthright and into the perfection of its development; so that

what we have to realize is that in dealing with forces of this

sort we are dealing with the substance of life itself.

I have felt as I sat here tonight the wholesome contagion of the

occasion. Almost every other time that I ever visited Atlantic

City I came to fight somebody. I hardly know how to conduct

myself when _I have not come to fight anybody but with somebody_.

I have come to suggest among other things that when the forces of

nature are working steadily and the tide is rising to meet the

moon, you need not be afraid that it will not come to its flood.

We feel the tide; we rejoice in the strength of it, and _we shall

not quarrel in the long run as to the method of it_, because,

when you are working with masses of men and organized bodies of

opinion, you have got to carry the organized body along. The

whole art and practice of government consist not in moving

individuals but in moving masses. It is all very well to run

ahead and beckon, but, after all, you have got to wait for them

to follow. I have not come to ask you to be patient, because you

have been, but I have come to congratulate you that there has

been a force behind you that will beyond any peradventure be

triumphant and for which you can afford a little while to wait.

When President Wilson had finished amid enthusiastic applause Mrs.

Catt asked Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, honorary president, to respond. She

was much moved by the occasion and taking the last sentence of the

address for a text she eloquently told how women had already worked

and waited for more than three score years. "We have waited long

enough for the vote, we want it now," she exclaimed, and then turning

to the President with her irresistible smile she finished, "and we

want it to come in your administration!" He smiled and bowed and the

whole audience rose in a sea of waving handkerchiefs as he took his

departure. The President of the United States had said: "Your cause is

going to prevail; I have come to fight with you; we shall not quarrel

as to the method!"

The other speeches of the evening were all of a high order. Mrs.

Robins, as always, made an unanswerable argument for giving women wage

earners the protection of the ballot. "In the Children's Bureau," Miss

Lathrop said, "we have come to see the close connection between the

welfare of mother and child. Because we are so concerned for the

children we asked a physician to take those vast, mysterious volumes

of the census and look up the facts about the mortality of mothers.

Last year in the United States more than 15,000 women lost their lives

carrying on the life of the race. The death rate from other things,

such as typhoid and diphtheria, has been cut in half but between 1900

and 1913 maternal mortality was not lessened but seemingly increased;

yet this waste of life is just as preventable as those diseases, for

medical science has shown that with proper care the dangers of

childbirth can be made very small. Just as fast as women are allowed a

voice in public affairs it is their duty to see that no mother and

child shall perish for lack of care. Every country should have a

mother and child welfare center. When a memorial was lately proposed

for a woman who had died in the war, a well-known man said: 'We can

enfranchise her sex in tribute to the valor which she proved that it

possessed.' It is not too much to give suffrage to women in tribute to

the 15,000 who are dying every year in this great duty and service;

yet we do not ask the ballot for women as a reward but because, as a

duty and a service, we ought to ask for it...."

"Woman suffrage is needed in the interest of good morals," was the

keynote of Dr. Davis's address, who said:

You cannot legislate righteousness into the human heart but you

can reduce to a minimum the temptations that are offered to

youth. To a large extent you can stop commercialized vice and the

manufacture of criminals. I am not one of those who think that

the millenium will come soon after women get the vote, but I

believe that women will take an unusual interest in the effort to

clean up vicious conditions, because all down the ages women have

paid the price of vice and crime.

I do not believe that at heart a man is any worse than a woman,

but all through the centuries he has been taught that he may do

some things which a woman may not. It is only of late that we

have begun to fight these things in the open and you cannot

successfully fight any evil in the dark. For sixteen years my

work has brought me in contact with this peculiar phase of public

morals and I know whereof I speak. Public morals are corrupted

because woman's point of view has no representation. We have laws

to regulate these things but they are man-made and the public

sentiment behind them which should govern their enforcement has

grown up through the ages and it is the sentiment of men only.

The laws are not equal nor equally enforced. If you doubt it you

have only to go into the night court and you will see woman after

woman convicted on the word of a policeman only, while in order

to convict a man you have to pile evidence on evidence. I think

this inequality of treatment will not cease till women get a

vote.

In a very convincing address Dr. Lovejoy said:

The past month has been memorable in the history of child labor

reform in America. A three-years' campaign culminated last Friday

in the signing of a bill by President Wilson which excludes from

the facilities of interstate commerce the exploiters of child

labor. It has been estimated that 150,000 children who now bow

under the yoke of excessive toil will be able to straighten up

and look heaven in the face when this law begins to operate on

the first of next September. In signing the bill the President

said: "I want to say that with real emotion I sign this bill,

because I know how long the struggle has been to secure

legislation of this sort and what it is going to mean to the

health and vigor of this country and also to the happiness of

those whom it affects. It is with genuine pride that I play my

part in completing legislation."

I am convinced that we need the voice of the church, the school,

the home, in making and enforcing laws to protect working

children, and, since half the adult population of our American

homes are women, since approximately 75 per cent. of the church

members are women, since 90 per cent. of the school teachers are

women and since every moral and educational enterprise in the

country is represented in about the same proportion, cold logic

forces us to the conclusion that we need women in politics. Of

10,000 members of the National Child Labor Committee, 6,400 are

women. Some of the experiences we have had with men in

Legislatures in response to the appeal of mothers for the

protection of working children have forced me to the conclusion

that in this protection the participation of women in the

law-making of the State is vital.

The primary nominations and elections were held with voting machines

and when the result was announced it was found that all the old board

was nominated with the exception of Mrs. Roessing, Miss Patterson and

Mrs. Morrisson, who declined to stand for re-election. Their places

were filled with Mrs. Frank J. Shuler (N. Y.), corresponding

secretary; Mrs. Thomas Jefferson Smith (Ky.), recording secretary and

Miss Heloise Meyer (Mass.), first auditor. As there were no other

candidates the secretary was unanimously requested by the convention

to cast its vote. This was a remarkable record for 543 delegates. A

national suffrage flag was adopted, the gift of Pennsylvania--a yellow

field with fringed edges, in the center a circle of eleven blue stars

representing the equal suffrage States enclosing an eagle on the wing

holding the globe in its talons. Mrs. J. O. Miller in behalf of the

president made an eloquent presentation.

Miss Clay moved a resolution on her Elections Bill that the convention

endeavor to protect women citizens in their right to vote for U. S.

Senators and Representatives and with this object in view endorse this

bill introduced by Senator Robert L. Owen (Okla.). This motion was

carried. Mrs. Catt stated that the resolution of Mrs. Sallie Clay

Bennett (Ky.) was similar and this also was passed. A large number of

letters and telegrams were read from eminent men and women and from

societies of many kinds. Mrs. Catt stated that in not one had it been

suggested that the association lessen its activities for the Federal

Amendment. The convention then adopted a resolution instructing the

Congressional Committee "to concentrate all its resources on a

determined effort to carry this amendment through the next session of

Congress."

Invitations for the next convention were received from nine States.

Greetings were sent to three of the original surviving pioneers, the

Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell of New Jersey; Mrs. Judith W. Smith of

Massachusetts and Miss Emily Howland of New York. The delegates were

introduced who brought greetings from the National Equal Franchise

Union of Canada, and Mrs. Campbell McIvor responded. A special vote of

thanks was given to Miss Mary Garrett Hay and Miss Lulu H. Marvel,

chairman of the General Committee of Arrangements, for their perfect

management of President Wilson's visit to the convention. Among those

submitted by the Committee on Resolutions, Mrs. Alice Duer Miller (N.

Y.), chairman, and adopted were the following:

Whereas, all political parties in their national platforms have

endorsed the principle of woman suffrage, be it

Resolved, That the National American Woman Suffrage Association

in convention assembled calls upon Congress to submit to the

States the Constitutional Amendment providing nation-wide

suffrage for women.

Whereas, the Democratic and Republican parties in endorsing the

principle of woman suffrage have specially recognized the right

of the States to settle the question for themselves, we call upon

these parties in the States where amendment campaigns are in

progress to take immediate action to obtain the enfranchisement

of women, and in other States to take such action as the suffrage

organizations deem expedient.

Whereas, honest elections are vital to good government in this

country and to the decisions in the campaigns for woman suffrage;

and

Whereas, public records of all funds used in political campaigns

will benefit our movement in that they will bring to light its

real opponents, therefore

Resolved, That this convention urges the passage by Congress and

the States of a thorough and comprehensive Corrupt Practices Act

providing effectual punishment for offenders.

That in recognition of Miss Clara Barton's lifelong support of

woman suffrage, as well as her service to the country in founding

the American Red Cross and standing at its head for more than a

quarter of a century, this association endorses the bill recently

introduced in Congress providing for an appropriation of $1,000

to place a suitable memorial to Miss Barton in the Red Cross

Building now being constructed in the city of Washington.

That we express our profound sympathy with the women in the

countries now at war and our sense of the advance that has been

made in the cause of all women by the devotion, ability and

courage with which those women have risen to the new demands on

them.

That we express our deep appreciation of the great honor the

President of the United States has done the women of the country

by coming to Atlantic City especially to address this convention.

Rejoicing was expressed over the many victories during the year, the

endorsement by large organizations--the General Conference of the

Methodist Episcopal Church, the Anti-Saloon League, the Women's Relief

Corps and others; a plank for woman suffrage in all national party

platforms; a favorable declaration by all presidential candidates and

for the first time the sanction of the President of the United States.

The report of Mrs. Frank M. Roessing, chairman of the National

Congressional Committee, gave so complete an account of the situation

at the time the great "drive" for the Federal Amendment was begun that

it is largely reproduced.

At the opening of the 64th Congress in December, 1915, several

political leaders interested in the progress of social and

economic legislation stated that 1916 would be a lean year in

Congress for such movements. It was pointed out that particularly

in the Senate some of the most reactionary men had been returned

at the preceding election. It is also a presidential election

year and neither of the great parties is willing to take one

unnecessary step which in its judgment may tend to add to the

number of its adversaries or to its vulnerable points in some

particular section of the country. All of the 435 members of the

House and one-third of the Senators come up for re-election in

November of this year--they, too, are shy and sensitive. Some

legislation, notably child labor after it had been endorsed by

the National Democratic platform, successfully ran the gauntlet

but not so our Federal Suffrage Amendment. It is with keen regret

your committee reports that it has not had action in either the

Senate or House of Representatives.

In the Senate the resolution was introduced Dec. 7, 1915, by

Senators Sutherland, Thomas and Thompson of Kansas and referred

to the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage. This committee

reported favorably resolution No. 1, introduced by Senator

Sutherland. The written report made from the committee by Senator

Thomas is one of the best pieces of literature on the subject and

copies were mailed to every State president and State chairman of

congressional work. Since that early date our measure has been on

the calendar. It has come to the top a number of times but at the

request of suffrage Senators has been held until a more

auspicious hour.

As the National Association was desirous of having a vote on the

measure at this session, your committee began to work to that end

immediately after receiving specific instructions from the Board

June 17, 1916. The meaning of the suffrage planks in the

Republican and Democratic platforms was disputed by some men in

both parties. The leaders stated that the planks were silent as

to the Federal Amendment and thus left men free to vote on the

amendment as each decided. In order to ascertain the

interpretation which would be given by members of Congress it was

determined to push for a vote in the Senate. On June 27 Mrs.

Catt, Miss Hannah J. Patterson, corresponding secretary of the

National Suffrage Association, Mrs. Antoinette Funk,

vice-chairman of the committee, Miss Hay and the chairman held an

informal conference with the Senators of the enfranchised States

in the office of Senator Shafroth to secure their assistance. As

unanimous consent is required for the consideration of such a

measure, the Senators agreed that if we would have the vote taken

without debate it would probably be possible, since this would

not consume the time of the Senate. We believed that this was

best in order to make sure of the vote. On July 22 Senator Thomas

wrote to every Senator asking whether he would consent to a vote

being taken without debate. He informed us that on both the

Republican and Democratic sides there were men who would not give

such consent, some stating that they had been asked by certain

suffragists of the other organization not to consent. After the

endorsement of the Federal Amendment by Judge Hughes, the

candidate for President, frequent remarks were made in the Senate

on it by members of both parties. Senator Clark (Republican) of

Wyoming and Senator Pittman (Democrat) of Nevada were among those

who urged action at this session but finally in August Senator

Thomas gave up the effort.

The unfair treatment of the amendment resolution in the House

Judiciary Committee and its final suppression by Chairman Edwin Y.

Webb (N. C.) were described in full and the unsuccessful efforts, led

by Mrs. Catt, to obtain action on it. [See Chapter on Federal

Amendment.] The report continued:

Federal Elections Bill: On December 6 Representative Raker

introduced at the request of the Federal Suffrage Association a

bill to protect the rights of women citizens of the United States

to register and vote for Senators and members of the House. The

bill was referred to the Committee on the Election of the

President, Vice-President and Representatives in Congress and has

not yet been reported out. On December 10 this same bill was

introduced by Senator Lane of Oregon, referred to the Committee

on Woman Suffrage and is still there.

United States Elections Bill: The United States Elections Bill,

introduced by Senator Owen at the request of Miss Laura Clay on

February 3, aims also to secure to women the right to vote for

Senators and Representatives in Congress. Miss Clay says it is

simply a declaratory act; that it does not permit Congress to

specify qualifications of voters and therefore does not involve

the issue of State's rights. This bill was referred to the

Committee on Privileges and Elections, where it remains. Your

committee assisted the suffragists in the District of Columbia in

the effort for a bill enabling it to elect a delegate to the

Lower House....

* * * * *

Planks:[105] For some time prior to June your committee used

every opportunity with Senators and Representatives to further

the work of securing suffrage planks in the Republican and

Democratic national platforms. Its chairman was put in charge of

drafting for submission to Mrs. Catt the planks which were to be

offered to the two conventions on behalf of the National

Association. Its members who went to Chicago and St. Louis

concentrated their efforts on the planks. The two demonstrations

of women planned and supervised by the National Board were the

culmination of the campaign on behalf of these planks. In

cooperation with your Congressional Committee, many State

delegations of women who came for the demonstrations did special

eleventh-hour work with the delegates to the conventions.

Your committee regrets that the planks in the two dominant

national party platforms, since they mention method at all, do

not specifically endorse Federal action, but they will be of

great value in the States and progress there will help the

Federal work. Every man in Congress is keenly alive to the

strength of our movement in his district and State. For that

reason we urged the women of each State to secure planks in the

State platforms endorsing the principle of woman suffrage. As a

last resort, if they could not secure a separate plank in their

State platforms, we asked them to make sure that each State

convention endorsed its party's national platform, that the plank

might in this way have the equivalent of a State endorsement.

With the final yielding of the two dominant parties to the

justice of woman suffrage all are now on record in favor of the

principle; all except the Republican and Democratic endorse the

Federal Amendment. Republicans have been strengthened in their

advocacy of Federal action by Judge Hughes' personal endorsement

of the amendment. Your committee must sound a note of warning

here against over-confidence. Some too zealous suffragists,

including one suffrage organ, state quite seriously,

notwithstanding the fact that their attention has been called to

their error, that "the Republican party has specifically declared

for the Federal Suffrage Amendment." Alas! it has done no such

thing. It has not done one bit more than the Democratic party.

The personal endorsement of the Republican candidate for

President can not properly be construed as party endorsement.

Those of us who have had some years of experience have witnessed

the worming and screwing, fallacy and treachery exhibited by

members of a party after their leading candidate has endorsed a

particular measure. We know that we can not hold the party

responsible for one man's utterances made after the platform had

been adopted by the party convention and accepted by the party

candidate.

Committee: Mrs. Medill McCormick was unable to continue as

chairman of the Congressional Committee and the present chairman

was appointed by the National Board in January, 1916, immediately

went to Washington and lived there eight months, until the

opening of this convention. During the entire term of this

session of Congress this committee has had some representatives

on duty at the Washington headquarters every moment. The service

of each member has not been continuous but has varied from a week

to three months in length. In addition to the chairman, the

committee consisted of Mrs. Funk of Illinois; Miss Hay of New

York; Mrs. Jacobs of Alabama; Mrs. Cotnam of Arkansas; Mrs. C. S.

McClure of Michigan; Mrs. Valentine of Virginia; Miss Martha

Norris of Ohio; Mrs. Elizabeth Higgins Sullivan of Nebraska and

Miss Ruth White of Missouri.

Mrs. Funk resigned March 14 to take up other work and in July

Miss White was appointed secretary and has done much special

work. Because of the amount of travel involved only two meetings

of the full committee have been held, on March 2 and September 4.

Every plan for congressional work has been submitted to the

National Board or to the national president for approval.

Revision of Work: At the beginning of the present year the work

of the National Association was revised and departmentalized, the

organization branch was separated from the congressional work,

made a distinct department, placed under another head and

operated from the New York office. This division was advisable,

since each task is big enough by itself. The only disadvantage

resulted from the distance between the bases of operation of the

two departments--one of the paramount reasons for the removal of

all the headquarters to Washington.... The work of the committee

in 1916 consisted of the supervision and direction of all

activity connected with the Federal Amendment, including lobby

work at the Capitol; the stimulating of congressional activity in

the States; the cataloguing of information concerning Senators

and Representatives; the assembling and filing of all information

specifically relating to the Federal Amendment in Congress and in

the States; the issuing of newspaper articles; the handling of

the large correspondence.

Headquarters: The chairman had been on duty only a short time

when the necessity for removing national headquarters to

Washington was deeply impressed upon her--so deeply that she made

a special trip to New York to labor with the national officers

there to this end but was unsuccessful. The headquarters of the

Congressional Committee at the opening of this session consisted

of two rooms in the Munsey Building at Washington too diminutive

to hold even our furniture, to say nothing of our workers. On

February 19 it moved to two larger rooms in the same building.

A summary of the correspondence, etc., was given and the report said

of the lobby work:

All the direct work with Senators and Congressmen is a time as

well as brain consuming process. Usually it means tramping up and

down the long stone corridors, hour after hour, in order to find

one man in his office. Then he may be having a committee meeting

or a previous engagement or emergency business and you are

invited to come some other day. Perhaps you have waited an hour

before you are sure that he can not see you. It is not uncommon

for the members of our lobby to state that they have made as many

as six, eight or ten calls before they succeeded in reaching a

man. Speaking from my own knowledge, I have wasted hours at the

Capitol trying to see men who would not make appointments. I have

called eighteen times to see one man and have not seen him yet!

He is the Representative from my own district. We carried the

district for suffrage in Pennsylvania last year but I am told

that he does not want to vote for the Federal Amendment. It is,

of course, possible to interview members by calling them out of

the session but this method is uncertain and not very successful,

since they feel hurried and interviews in a public reception room

are seldom satisfactory.

The latest piece of work done by the committee is the

interviewing by letter of all congressional candidates who will

stand for election in November. This has been done in cooperation

with the State associations which have been urged to institute

vigorous interviewing in the congressional districts.

Presidential Interviewing: The presidential candidates of the two

parties whose platforms do not endorse the Federal Amendment have

been interviewed in person. On July 17 Mrs. Catt, Dr. Shaw and

Mrs. Norman deR. Whitehouse, president of the New York suffrage

association, called on Judge Hughes in New York and had a long

and satisfactory conversation. He told them that in his speech of

acceptance he could not endorse the Federal Amendment because

this was the accepting of the party's nomination and of its

platform, which had not mentioned it. He said, however, that he

believed in it and that soon after his speech of acceptance he

would announce his personal advocacy of the amendment. He asked

them to hold this information in confidence, which of course they

did. His public statement of August 1 was therefore no surprise

to them but was nevertheless most gratifying.

On August 1 Mrs. Catt and your chairman called on President

Wilson in Washington. He reiterated his belief that woman

suffrage should come by State action. We presented the arguments

in behalf of the Federal Amendment but he remained unconvinced.

He is a fair and openminded man and your representatives have by

no means given up hope of proving to him the justice and

advisability of the amendment.

Conferences: At the last national convention a special committee

recommended that the Board of Officers should consider the

suggestion of conferences between the Congressional Committee of

the National Association and the Legislative Committee of the

Congressional Union, with a view to securing more united action

in the lobby work in Washington. Nine such conferences were

held--one in January, three in February, three in March, one in

June, one in July. Your chairman was present at each and Miss

Anne Martin, representing the Union, was present at each. At some

of them each organization had additional representatives. Mrs.

Catt attended two and our corresponding secretary, Miss

Patterson, attended one. The subject was the time at which action

on the Federal Amendment should be secured in both branches of

Congress. When on July 20 it was found that the National

Committee wished to obtain a vote in the Senate before

adjournment and the Congressional Union wished to postpone it the

conferences came to an end. It is the unanimous judgment of your

committee that they were of no value to the work on the

amendment.